THE TELEGRAPH: John Howard, the former Australian prime minister, has warned that Gordon Brown's policy of imposing large debt levels will load "nasty medicine" onto future generations.
His comments come after Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President, said cutting VAT in the UK was a "mistake" and warned that running up large debts in Britain could "ruin the country".
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Mr Howard said that spending billions to try to survive the recession merely stored up problems for future generations, he said.
He said: "Medicine will have to be taken and it is a question of making sure that we don't load all the bad nasty medicine onto future generations.
"It is common-sense that if you get too deeply into debt the burden you put on future generations is enormous."
Mr Howard, who was led the right wing Liberal Government from 1996 to 2007 and a close ally of Tony Blair when he was Prime Minister, said he was worried that governments seemed to think that there was no alternative to this form of "deficit spending" to survive the recession.
He said: "There is a danger that governments generally will think that the solution is to go ever deeper into debt. That troubles me because I don't think it is.
"My sense is that over the last month or six weeks the sense of restraint how far you go into debt seems to have disappeared and that troubles me.
"There is a mood developing that it does not matter how much you are going into debt. I am not sure that is a sensible thing." Former Australian PM John Howard Warns of Gordon Brown's Nasty Medicine >>> By Christopher Hope, Whitehall Editor | Monday, March 9, 2009
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