Osborne defends sterling warning
George Osborne has defended his stark warning that sterling faced "collapse" - insisting he had a duty to tell voters the truth.
The shadow chancellor has come under fire for breaching convention and putting crucial G20 financial negotiations at risk by "talking down" the pound.
The intervention on Saturday drew an angry response from Gordon Brown, who stressed that politicians should not speak "irresponsibly" at a time of crisis.
The row is seen as having upped the pressure on Mr Osborne amid criticism from within the Tory Party of his response to the global financial crisis and controversial contacts with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.
But Mr Osborne insisted he was right to warn that Government plans to borrow billions of pounds for tax cuts and higher spending risked disaster.
"My job as shadow chancellor is to tell the British people the truth about the British economy," he told BBC One's Andrew Marr show.
"The truth that it is the worst prepared economy in the world for recession. The truth that we have got the highest personal debt in the world. The truth that the pound has fallen by a record amount against other currencies.
"I am telling the public the truth and that is the job of elected politicians, particularly opposition politicians, in difficult times."
Mr Osborne went on: "We are warning the country that Gordon Brown is abandoning fiscal responsibility and when a government does that it stacks up debt for future generations and stacks up tax rises for future generations as well."
He accused the Prime Minister of trying to "max out the credit card", adding: "The truth is that it is the public that will have to pay this back and not Gordon Brown."
