LONDON, June 6 (Reuters) - Britain's coalition leaders both emphasised the need for public spending cuts in interviews published on Sunday, but a sharp contrast in their tones highlighted political differences at the heart of government.
Prime Minister David Cameron, a Conservative, spoke of "pain" and a "difficult journey", while his deputy Nick Clegg, a Liberal Democrat, sought to reassure Britons the cuts would be "sensitive" and people would not be left to "sink or swim".
The centre-right Conservatives won most parliamentary seats in a May 6 election but fell short of an overall majority, forcing them to enlist the smaller, centre-left Lib Dems.
The coalition has said its most urgent task was to reduce the budget deficit, which ballooned during the economic downturn due to lower fiscal revenues and higher welfare bills, reaching 156 billion pounds ($228 billion), or about 11 percent of GDP.
"There is a huge amount of debt that has got to be dealt with … We have got to take people with us on this difficult journey," Cameron said in an interview with the Sunday Times.
"Proper statesmanship is taking the right action, explaining to people the purpose behind the pain," he told the newspaper.
Cameron has long argued that the previous government had set Britain on an unsustainable fiscal path, warning that if he did not rein in spending to slash the deficit Britain could see its AAA credit rating downgraded and face a Greek-style debt crisis. Before the election, the Liberal Democrats said spending cuts would be damaging while economic recovery was still fragile.
Since then, Clegg and other Lib Dems have changed their minds, saying that the euro zone crisis sparked by Greece’s woes had shown the danger of delaying deficit reduction.
But in an interview with the Observer newspaper also published on Sunday, Clegg was at pains to stress that in cutting spending, the government would be mindful of regional inequalities and of the most vulnerable members of society.
"It is important that people understand that fiscal retrenchment does not mean a repeat of the 1980s," he said, referring to the years when former Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher was in power.
Thatcher’s free-market reforms prompted strong economic growth in parts of Britain, particularly the southeast and London’s financial district. But critics say her public spending cuts increased social inequality and left other regions behind.
"Our collective memory of difficult budget decisions harks back to … the harshness of the 1980s, north-south divide, sink-or-swim economics … We are going to do this differently," Clegg told the Observer.
His comments are unlikely to go down well with many Conservatives, who revere Thatcher and her legacy.
The government has already pledged to cut spending by 6.2 billion pounds this year. An emergency budget is due to be unveiled on June 22 that is expected to contain details of bigger cuts stretching further into the future.
Cameron told the Sunday Times that welfare bills and public sector pay were among areas that had to be addressed.
That could be hard to reconcile with Clegg’s pledge that the government would be "sensitive particularly to those parts of the country … which are very dependent on the public sector".
