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UK prime minister mocks 'the French dream'

Ben McPartland
Ben McPartland - [email protected]
UK prime minister mocks 'the French dream'
Photo: AFP

The UK Prime Minister David Cameron has taken an unprovoked swipe at France and its struggling economy as he tried to score points over his left-wing rival for the UK parliamentary elections in May.

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Writing in the Sunday Times newspaper the UK Prime Minister mocked both the opposition Labour party and its leader Ed Miliband as well as France's Socialist government.

The title of the column: “Labour will make us as bad as France”, leaves no doubt as to how Cameron views the state of the French economy.

In a dig at his rival, the Conservative party leader said the Labour leader Ed Miliband wanted “to follow the same path as the French government” three years ago.

“But where did this path lead to?” writes Cameron. “Unemployment on the other side of the Channel is almost twice as high as in the UK and our economy is growing seven times faster than that of France.”

“Imagine if David Miliband had the freedom to achieve his French dream: The impact would have been felt through catastrophic job losses, a drop in the quality of life, debt to make us weep, and a massive fall in all hope for the future,” Cameron continues.

Trying to convince the British electorate the UK would end up like France if Labour won power is part of the Conservative party’s ploy to be re-elected.

The Prime Minister’s dig at France comes after the UK Chancellor George Osborne jibed that even the northern English county of Yorkshire “had created more jobs than France”.

In announcing his budget Osborne rejoiced that the level of economic growth in the UK was double that of Germany, three times that of the Eurozone and seven times that of France.

France has recently implemented a series of reforms under pressure from Brussels that are aimed to reign in its budget deficit which stands at around 4.3 percent.

While the EU wants France to bring its deficit to under 3 percent, it’s worth pointing out that its own budget deficit stands at around 5 percent.

It’s not the first time the UK Prime Minister has engaged in a little French bashing.

After French President François Hollande vowed to bring in a 75 percent tax rate on millionaires, Cameron said the UK would roll out the red carpet for all the French businessmen and women wanting to flee the high tax rate.

Some of The Local's readers took to Twitter to denounce Cameron.

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