Norman Lamont has a letter in today’s Independent, Telegraph, and Guardian, defending his ‘green shoots’remark – 18 years after he made it.
Baroness Shriti Vadera, the Government’s business minister, caused anger this week when she suggested there were ‘green shoots’in the economy.
Gordon Brown had to remind voters the Government was ‘never complacent”.
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A similar episode took place in 1991’s downturn when Lamont said he could see ‘the green shoots of economic spring”.
This week, his comments were criticised again by the nationals.
But Lamont – now Lord Lamont – has hit back. ‘Was the remark so wrong?’he wrote.
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‘Shoots are shoots, not bushes. Statistics now show that the recovery began in the second quarter of 1992 after a broadly stable first quarter.
‘Gavyn Davies, one-time adviser to Tony Blair but then working for Goldman Sachs, in May 1993, described my “green shoots” remarks as ‘remarkably prescient’.”
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