Though Cowards Flinch

Here’s a Tory MP on the radio the other day (about 1hr 8 mins in). He’s on autopilot about the need to make quick cuts:

International investors are worried about the credit rating of the UK  and we need to be extremely careful with that. The real risk is if we don’t do something about the public finances.  Our credit rating may be at risk……….  It is going to be a huge job to try to address the big structural deficit we have  and we cannot afford to wait until after the election and then say “and now we’ll start thinking about it”.

Then, in response, here’s a man who actually ran the sovereign debt bit of a credit rating agency:

You’re being far too complacent about it.  I used to actually run part of a credit rating agency that looked at government risk, and one thing that would really worry rating agencies was if growth was stalled, and then you didn’t get the growth in tax revenues  which you normally expect in an upturn,  and you being to get benefit claims rising because unemployment was not coming down.

I do hope the said credit ratings agency man, now a senior LibDem MP, gets a say in who the LibDems form any coalition government with.