UK: BRITISH PRIME minister Gordon Brown launched the first phase of his promised recovery programme yesterday with a package of measures designed to revive a stagnant housing market and protect those at risk of repossession, writes Frank Millar, London Editor
But Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg dismissed the package - including a 12-month UK-wide stamp duty holiday on properties costing £175,000 or less - as "a hotchpotch of measures thrown together to save Gordon Brown's political skin".
The Conservatives, meanwhile, seized on the fact that the treasury will not reveal how the estimated £600 million stamp duty exemption is to be funded until this autumn's pre-budget report.
"This is a short-term survival plan for the prime minister," said shadow chancellor George Osborne. "They've had months to prepare and on the day it's launched they can't even tell us how much it costs, or where the money's coming from."
Communities secretary Hazel Blears rejected suggestions that the announcements were designed to boost the government's popularity. "This is nothing to do with a political package, this is a package to help families," she insisted.
With the post-holiday consensus that Labour MPs contemplating a leadership challenge will stay their hand at least until after this month's party conference, Mr Osborne predicted: "I suspect what we will see in the coming weeks is a desperate and short-term survival plan for the prime minister rather than the long-term economic plan the country needs."
Speculation continues, meanwhile, about chancellor Alistair Darling's survival prospects in any cabinet re-shuffle following his doom-laden weekend interview suggesting Britain's economic conditions were "arguably the worst they have been for 60 years".
With the tensions between 10 Downing Street and the treasury on full public display, the chancellor found himself accused of triggering a crisis of confidence and "talking the economy down" as the pound fell to a record low on Monday.
Some opposition critics have cheerfully suggested Mr Darling could not be sacked without seeming to be punished for "telling the truth" about the extent of Britain's economic difficulties.
Expert commentators such as Anatole Kaletsky in the London Times, on the other hand, have suggested Mr Darling is unlikely to deliver another budget because his reputation will not recover from revealed "basic ignorance of economic facts and figures".
At the same time, a Populus poll for that newspaper yesterday suggested that a change of chancellor is unlikely to make much difference to Mr Brown's standing with voters, who now trust Conservative leader David Cameron and Mr Osborne to deal with the country's economic problems by a substantial margin.
The poll found general approval for yesterday's anticipated measures to help the housing market, but with few of those surveyed thinking they would make a significant difference to their own situation.
Other measures announced included "free" five-year loans of up to 30 per cent of a property's value for first-time buyers of new homes in England; and the extension of council and housing association powers to pay off debt for homeowners unable to meet mortgage commitments, and then charge rent.
The UK's biggest mortgage lender, the Halifax, welcomed the announcement on stamp duty as "a sensible measure", but the Council of Mortgage Lenders said the move did not go far enough.
Mr Brown insisted the government was showing itself "resilient. . . in dealing with these problems".
However, Scottish National Party treasury spokesman Stewart Hosie claimed the government had been forced into another "concession" by fear that the SNP is set to repeat its Glasgow East success in the forthcoming Glenrothes by-election.