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Spring European Council

I welcome the fact that the European Council has adopted many of the ideas that the Prime Minister has advocated consistently now for months—a co-ordinated response on regulation and, yes, on a huge fiscal stimulus. Is it not extraordinary to get the same vacuous and juvenile posturing from the Leader of the Opposition when unemployment is 7.6 per cent. across the European Union and expected to rise to more than 10 per cent., with about 5 million jobs still to be lost across the EU? What we need in that context is huge public investment: the Tories simply will not learn the lessons of the 1930s and, yes, their own failure in the 1980s to tackle these problems through the power of Government, using a fiscal stimulus to do so.