Brendan Barber of the TUC and David Frost of the British Chambers of Commerce debate the merits of the Spending Review

Comments

[john parkes]

Barber is really on the spot. Labour would have been his preferred government after the last election and even he can see that the country would have been broke by now had they become so. The present civiilian unrest in France, Union provoked, has seen him trying to remain reasonable in his approach here (`riot and disturbance is not the British way` - he has a short memory that clearly does not stretch back as far as the Miners Strike, Scargill and the Union destruction of the deep mine coal industry in the UK)
To hear the unreality of the Union ideas on our economic future shows what a menace they would have become had they remained the major paymaster of a Labour government with all that implies.
Barber is in an impossible position and this is a problem he shows no sign of solving