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Britain's Brown sees enormous economic challenge ahead
Wed Dec 31, 2008 7:04pm EST
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LONDON (Reuters) - Britain faces an "enormous economic challenge" in 2009 but it must also grasp opportunities for future growth, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Thursday.
The year ahead "won't be easy," Brown warned in a New Year's message, but he voiced optimism that the British people would respond to the challenge.
"We can meet the security challenge, the environmental challenge and the enormous economic challenge," he said.
Britain is sliding into recession after being hard hit by the credit crunch. The economy contracted at its sharpest rate since the early 1990s in the third quarter of 2008.
Brown's government has been forced to step in to nationalize two banks and to take stakes in several others.
The scale and speed of the global financial crisis had been almost overwhelming at times, Brown said, leaving people "bewildered, confused and sometimes frightened."
Brown, long a champion of "light-touch regulation" for London's financial district, said 2008 was the year in which "an old era of unbridled free market dogma was finally ushered out."
He said that, despite the downturn, there were great opportunities for Britain, singling out the technology, environment and transport sectors as potential growth areas.
"We must prepare ourselves for these massive opportunities as the world economy doubles in size over the next two decades," he said, pledging to work with U.S. President-elect Barack Obama to create a "global coalition" to tackle climate change.
In a thinly veiled attack on the opposition Conservatives, Brown said British governments in previous downturns had cut back investment. "This will not happen on my watch," he said.
CLASH WITH CONSERVATIVES
Brown is spending billions of pounds on an economic stimulus plan that will sharply increase government borrowing. The opposition Conservatives, ahead in the opinion polls, attack Brown's spending plans as unsustainable.
In his New Year's message, Conservative leader David Cameron accused the government of wasting billions of pounds on "useless schemes" such as a temporary cut in sales tax.
Cameron said the Conservatives must offer constructive ideas to help keep people in work and in their homes and to make sure the recession is as "short, shallow and painless as possible."
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, focused on moral aspects of the financial crisis in his New Year's message, to be broadcast on BBC television on Thursday.
The spiritual head of the Anglican Church acknowledged that many people felt anxious and insecure about the coming year because of fears about disappearing savings, lost jobs and home repossessions. Continued...
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