Borrowing

Asked repeatedly by journalists whether he thought Labour had borrowed too much, he said: "I'm saying borrowing was within acceptable limits. It was about 2% of national income and then the financial crisis hit. That's why we have a high deficit now." "The question is why do we have borrowing which is not at 2% which it was before the financial crisis hit, but went up to 10%. The reason it did was because of the global financial crisis." Miliband pointed to other countries like the US and Japan that had also had high deficits. When asked whether a borrowing level of 2% was acceptable, he said that the last government's policy of borrowing shouldn't have come as a surprise to the Conservatives with Labour standing in the 1997 election on a platform of "borrowing to invest".
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