Mandelson warns over pessimism rise

The Business Secretary warned against "talking down the country".

Excessively bleak predictions of hard times ahead may breed hopelessness and sap the national will to succeed, he said.

Although he did not mention Mr Cameron by name, Lord Mandelson said there was a "deliberate political or media ploy" to make voters feel bad about the UK's prospects in the hope of winning electoral advantage.

And he warned that undermining confidence in the country's future was "a route to inexorable economic decline".

At Tuesday's launch of the Conservative campaign for the June 4 local elections, Mr Cameron urged the electorate to "vote for change", saying: "This Government is running our country into the ground - borrowing eye-watering amounts of money, presiding over social decline, letting our politics descend into the quagmire."

His comments were the latest in a string of warnings from the Conservatives over the scale of debt run up by Chancellor Alistair Darling in his attempts to spend his way out of the recession.

In a speech, Lord Mandelson said: "We seem to be seeing a deliberate political or media ploy to move us from recognising how severe and painful the present recession is to believing that we can never recover or be as strong again. That, indeed, the country is being run into the ground.

"This attempt to make us feel worse about ourselves may have an understandable electoral motivation. But its effect, if we are not careful, will be felt beyond politics.

"If insecurity breeds economic hopelessness, we risk cutting ourselves off from the economic opportunities and growth markets the world economy offers us. Sapping our nation's will to succeed won't help us win in global markets."