Learned Helplessness Drives Hopeless Behavior

By LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | JULY 3, 2012

People are broken people. They have been intentionally transformed into manageable human resources that consciously and otherwise have stopped fighting for what is theirs; they have stopped fighting oppression and injustice. There is a system that has been established to inflict pain and desperation, fear if you will, which seems so paramount, that makes people lower their arms and give up. Daily, we can see clear examples of this behavior. The most recent one is the installation of body scanners in airports and courthouses around the globe under the pretext of terrorism. What is people’s answer to this invasion of privacy? Compliance. (1)

Before the scanners — which capture a digital picture of a person’s naked body — (2) we had other examples of how the system continuously corrals us and we do not seem to know what to do. For example, the financial meltdown that began several years ago turned into a bailout of powerful banking interests. (3) The same banks and same financial system that created and perpetuated the collapse, gave themselves a pat on the back and carried out the most gigantic transfer of wealth in history, leaving the ordinary citizen in shambles, jobless, in debt and homeless. (4) What was the reaction given this illegal wealth transfer? Compliance.

Previous to the financial collapse, citizens were indoctrinated into believing that humans were responsible for the warming of the planet, and that only a global carbon tax would be the solution to save ourselves from doom. (5) Fortunately, a series of leaked e-mails and documents from the University of East Anglia, revealed not only that Anthropogenic Global Warming was a hoax,(6) but that it was part of a greater plan to further consolidate power and the resources of the planet into the a few hands. Although the climate alarmists’ agenda was debunked beyond doubt, (7) there are people out there who still have not looked at the science and continue to claim that the warming is occurring and that it is due to human activity. More compliance.

Going back even further in history, we find another very clear example of how people became hopeless and easily manipulated. Common wisdom dictates that it is correct to count on synthetic pharmaceuticals in order to prevent, treat or cure disease. People could not and cannot figure out that health freedom and a healthy state of being could not be further away from such industrially manufactured products. Due to lack of information or a way to check false statements from manufacturers and doctors, the citizenry simply trusted the “experts” and their magic pills in their blind pursue of health and fall into learned helplessness.

A state of learned helplessness is a psychological condition in which people have learned to believe they are helpless in a particular situation. They believe they have no control over their situation and that whatever they do is futile. As a result, they will stay passive in the face of an unpleasant, harmful or damaging situation, even when they actually do have the power to change their circumstances.”For example, in politics, when there is a two-party dictatorship in a country and people can only vote for one or the other — a false sense of choice — and things do not change or continue to get worse because the same corporate interests continue to maintain control. The automatic psychological response is a sense of hopelessness. Another valid example is when a person is in a relationship where he or she is physically, mentally or sexually abused. The victim knows the truth, but is unable to liberate himself or herself due to fear, guilt or any other feeling of despair. The same happens in a society, where the citizen is no longer called a citizen or a human being, but a consumer or a human resource. In a society filled with broken people, the truth no longer sets them free. Different from say, colonial times, when most members of a society still adopted the fighting spirit, today most citizens are conformists, laid-back or apathetic.(8)

What all these people who have learned to be helpless have in common is that pain, in any shape or form, simply makes them weaker, more prone to abuse, and more easily swindled. This takes us to another form of learned helplessness. When people feel depressed, lonely and mentally drained the immediate answer by common wisdom is to look for a psychiatrist or a psychologist to deal with their problems. “What they do not know,” says Dr. Bruce E. Levine, “is that most of the psychologist and psychiatrists out there are only looking to make money out of helpless people.” They are also instruments of the plan the establishment has to maintain control of society.

In today’s society there are three main pillars that support the learned helplessness and cognitive dissidence filled environment: School, Television and the Mental Health Profession. According to doctor Levine, television makes people more passive and docile due to the effect it has in brain waves. It is one of the most effective tools for pacifying the population,” he adds. (9) “Schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant for the important enterprises of the planet,” says professor John Taylor Gatto, author of books such as the Underground History of American Education and Weapons of Mass Instruction. Professor Gatto was named New York’s teacher of the year. “School is not the place where most people get any kind of education. In fact it is a place used to subdue the population, ” agrees Levine. (10) Are scientists trained in science classes, or politicians trained in politics classes? The only thing schools are good for is to teach people to obey orders. This is a conclusion that people who have any critical thinking skills learn very easily and very fast. Of course, school has also been used to eliminate critical thinking and creativity in the population. (11) From very young we are taught to worship and depend on the government for every single aspect of our lives. A clear example is that a majority of the most relevant citizens in any country were and are people who did not attend school. They can even become presidents! A couple of things people who attend the traditional educational system have in common are that they end jobless in many cases and with a pile of outstanding debt. The traditional educational system has turned into a tool for the creation of an assured state of servitude.

Mental health professionals and psychologists are along with teachers, two of the most compliant groups in society. Health professionals are also one of the groups with the highest suicidal rates. (12) What happens when psychiatrists find resistance to compliance? They become anxious and tend to pathologize. So, almost every person who disagrees with the establishment or with authority is automatically diagnosed as mentally ill. Ernest Hemingway was himself a victim of this system. He was drugged and punished with electric shocks after being diagnosed as mentally imbalanced because he thought he was being followed and watched. It later turned out he was indeed being harassed by intelligence agencies. So, does it make sense to obtain advice from professionals who cannot even control their own personalities? Can we trust people who are indoctrinated to maintain the status quo?

Imagine society as a victim of kidnapping who then suffers from Stockholm Syndrome during and after a kidnapping. The incapacity to react to a kidnapping is such that they begin to make excuses as to why it was normal not to run away when given the opportunity or the chance. Society as a whole, just as kidnapping victims do, even get to a point where they defend their kidnappers. Most people shield themselves from reality by being apathetic, or ignoring what is staring at them as a mechanism of defense against their impossibility to react to such reality due to a feeling of fear and helplessness. In other cases, people choose to spend their lives worrying about football games, reality shows, fashion, gossip and so on.

Another very common problem in today’s society is cognitive dissidence. This happens when people are incapable of being in a state of tension, so they choose to make up a series of excuses to escape such situations. The most common reaction is to tell themselves they are not in such tense situation, which serves them to ignore the humiliating state of affairs they are in. So, even though society seems to be turning into an abusive place, where all of our rights are disrespected or taken away, citizens still conform by saying things like “it is not good, but we still live in the best country in the world”. This kind of statements reflect people’s lack of power to face the truth that they live in a repressive tyrannical city or country.

An example of a society where all hope and reason has been lost is the United States. In 2000, one president was elected but the losing candidate was who took power. Short of the circus created by the main stream media, no one else manifested the slightest interest in resolving the election through democratic means. In a clear example of how weak democracies, or pseudo-democracies work, the Supreme Court of the country was the one that decided who would govern the nation. In other countries often called Banana Republics, such as Iran or Mexico, the decision reached by the Court would have resulted in many manifestations on the streets and perhaps a real recount of the votes or a second round. How is it that 50 or 60 million people simply let their votes be stolen away without any interest to make it count? In Iran, 3 million people would have turned to the streets to protest a few tens of thousands would have certainly manifested in Mexico. (13)

Madison avenue found out a long time ago that it was possible to make people feel inadequate, that it was possible to tell people what kind of person they should be and that everything that was not so would be socially unacceptable. (14) With that it also realized that it would be easier for the industry to commercialize its crap among insecure people. That is how most women use Botox or surgery to manipulated their bodies to look like the model from the magazine cover. That is why men inject themselves with human growth hormone to look as strong as the baseball player who also takes drugs to improve his performance. This insecurity spurred the sale of make up and slave-made goods such as sports shoes, apparel and handbags. So the image makers tell the people that not fitting a specific pattern or mold will render them worthless; and people believe it. This of course makes people who are financially incapable of providing themselves with Madison Avenue products victims of their own ignorance, and those who can afford it become petty victims of their power trips. People were taught to hate their humanity and that of others.

Equally insidious is the abuse perpetrated by “professionals” who mostly take advantage of weak-minded people. “There is a lot of money to make out in my profession,” says Dr. Levine. The amount of money people spend in pharmaceuticals and visits to their psychologist or psychiatrist — that in turn supports the very same system that benefits from people’s weakness — is uncountable. “Is it not easier to control a population whose self-esteem is low or non-existent? It is in the total interest of the corporate authoritarian society we live in,” adds Levine. That is why it is common to hear professional psychiatric associations call for the identification of new mental disorders. The recognition of such disorders will not only ensure that more people can be subjected to their management model, but also that society will continue to operate business as usual. Recently, the American Psychiatric Association revised its “bible” with the purpose of creating and including new mental diseases. (15)

The “bible” now contains things like “Oppositional Defiant Disorder” (ODD), which includes anyone who disagrees with authority. People who are antisocial are suddenly considered as victims of “Antisocial Personality Disorder” and require pharmacological treatment. Children are no longer unhappy or throwing a temper tantrum, they are suffering from “Temper Dysregulation Disorder with Dysphoria.” The so called “bible” even adopts other made-up disorders such as Repetitive Dysmorphic Nose Picking Disorder With Itching (RDNPDWI), Oppositional Disorganized Speaking Disorder With Indigestion (ODSDWI) and so on. (16)

Is there a solution for Learned Hopelessness and Cognitive Dissidence? Sure. Does it work for everyone? Unfortunately not. So many people are so deep into depression or a state of helplessness that it may be impossible to let them out. The level of indoctrination is such, that losing their homes, families, jobs, liberties and self-respect may not be enough to wake them up. For the lucky ones, it seems that the start of a solution is called Individual Self-respect and/or Collective Self-confidence. In other words, what can I do on a daily basis to restore confidence, faith and respect in myself and people around me? All democratic movements or nations had these two ingredients. What can I do to help myself and others? People who follow these paths are those who identify what is bothering them, but instead of handing those issues to the government — which in turn will make them captives — they give themselves the opportunity to use their problems and solutions to connect with other people. They themselves form their own support groups where everyone shares their solutions to their own problems and those of others. It is what not too long ago used to be called communities.

Another way to pick oneself up is to take on intelligent safe risks. There are projects or goals that everyone has which would exponentially raise his or her confidence and self-esteem. It is precisely pursuing those goals and projects — especially those that include a certain degree of healthy risk – and conquering them, what exalts people out of their sorry empty lives. This risk-taking sometimes includes a decision to get away from people who always drag you down or who simply do not help. A decision needs to be made as to whether this person needs to be left behind in order to achieve that which will help you become what you want. So, the advice is to let the backbiters and backstabbers behind and get on with your life by surrounding yourself with those who support you and wish you well.

Sources:

(1) New scanners break child porn laws

(2) Exposed: Naked Body Scanner Images Of Film Star Printed, Circulated By Airport Staff

(3) Central Banks were complicit in Robbing the Middle Class

(4) 2009 US Economy: The largest transfer of wealth in history

(5) The Carbon Tax Deception

(6) The E-mails from the East Anglia University

(7) The Great Global Warming Swindle

(8) Learned Helplessness

(9) The Awful Truth about Television

(10) The New Dumbness

(11) How School Kills Creativity

(12) Professionals with the highest rate of suicide

(13) Iran Election Protests

(14) Madison Avenue and your Brain

(15) Revision of ADM could introduce new mental disorders

(16) New Psychiatric disorders flag normal human behavior as diseases

This article was first published on May 1, 2010.

EU Dictators to Control National Budgets

Sovereign Independent

As reported in today’s Irish Independent, the EU will be given first option on whether to approve of Irish fiscal policy thus opening

If the theory of Super States is adopted globally, the countries will effectively loose independence, sovereignty, identity and liberty.

the way for another €3 billion of cuts in spending, no doubt in public services we all pay our taxes into. This is of course dictatorship in its most basic form.

When a nation state is no longer in control of its own finances, which have been handed over to an unelected cabal of appointed lackeys, then the nation state no longer exists. This is exactly the position which Ireland and every nation in the EU face today. Let’s be clear, there are no longer nation states. Taking over a nation’s finances is only the start. When we no longer have individual countries, with individual cultures, as they are rapidly being mixed into a standardised ‘brand’, the result will be that in a generation or two from now, we will no longer have any distinction between individual sovereign states which could be classed as cultural identity whatsoever.

This is not only undesirable to the native peoples of the nations of Europe but it is also detrimental to world culture as a whole. I would envisage a day when travelling abroad, if still permitted, will be no more of a cultural experience than travelling through ‘one size fits all’ airports and staying in brand name hotels. Every ‘experience’ will be standardised.

Sticking with financial control, why is it that our ‘elected’ representatives have sold us off to these pirates of finance whereby they have allowed an unelected, private organisation to dictate terms and conditions over and above our national governments as to what they will and will not plan for in their own fiscal policy to benefit the people of their nations? When did outside forces have any right to interfere with the internal finances of a nation state? Haven’t we witnessed many times in history the ‘economic sanctions’ imposed on nations? How about the recent example of Iraq which was spuriously, and ultimately dishonestly, accused of having weapons of mass destruction? The result of these economic sanctions was mass starvation and death of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis.

I’m not saying it’ll come to that in Europe but at the same time when these criminals, and let’s not mince our words here, they are criminals, when they are allowed to impose what amount to economic sanctions on our country then we are in for extremely hard times ahead with the eventual result being mass poverty across Europe.

What then for the EU?

It clearly will not have worked as it was supposed to so why would we still want to be part of it?

Why would any nation want to be part of a criminal organisation which has gone out of its way to impoverish the ordinary peoples of what were once independent nation states whilst at the same time destroying cultural identity?

The powers that be insisted and repeated their lies that the single European currency would solve all of our financial troubles forever. That has obviously not worked either and indeed has brought us closer to the brink of utter catastrophe in terms of our financial security.

But of course, that was always the intention of the European Union. Its job was always to amalgamate all the nations of Europe under their control so that when the time was right, like now, they could collapse every nation in the Union to achieve their ultimate goal of bringing into being the single European Soviet Union Superstate. This was finally achieved after the illegal and blatantly fraudulent 2nd Lisbon Referendum in which the Irish people were robbed of the last elements of national sovereignty thus plunging the other members of the EU into the new European Soviet Bloc with all rights and rules being dictated from Brussels.

The European Parliament was overnight given the status of a National Superstate, with all the powers of a government over the 500 million people of Europe, with only 27 unelected Commissars deciding our fate.

Whilst those politicians pushing for a ‘YES’ vote in the bogus referendum celebrated a victory before the first vote was counted, they never told the people that they had effectively sold them into slavery to a foreign power, namely the European Union; a European Union that have steadfastly refused to submit its own accounts for scrutiny, to any one of the nation states funding it, for over 15 YEARS!

Why have we allowed, what is obviously a corrupt organisation, to take over our lives to the extent that they decide how our tax money is to be spent? No doubt a lot of it will be going into the grubby paws of these very same commissars who are dictating that we the people need to cut back on everything from energy consumption to foreign holidays and even what foods we will eventually have to eat as GMO crops are rolled out across the continent.

I was never asked about any of this in my entire life and certainly never voted for any of it.

If you voted ‘YES’ for the Lisbon Referendum are you happy with the results so far?

Do you have one of those mystical jobs that were promised by every major political party at the time?

Do you still have the job you had then or are you one of the close half a million officially unemployed people in a country of approximately 4 million people with a workforce of less than 2 million?

That’s a 25% unemployment rate folks!

Do you have the security we were promised even though what security they were talking about was never discussed?

Financial security is the bedrock of any civilised society. This doesn’t necessarily mean monetary security. That is simply a red herring and a fraud in itself being perpetrated on humanity since the first banker lent to the first borrower thousands of years ago.

No, ‘financial’ security comes in many shapes and forms. The main concerns for human beings since the beginning of time have been firstly, shelter whereby we need some form of a home to protect us from the elements and to raise our families. The second basic element is of course good healthy food combined with clean water. Some kind of health security is also essential although good healthy food and clean water go a long way to preventing any health problems in themselves.

Every person in this country could now be living in a home, perhaps not the ideal home, but a home nevertheless, if the wads of cash given to private corrupt banks had simply been given to the people via payment of mortgages and personal debt to the extent that the country could have started with clean slate so to speak whereby we could then have started creating our own independent monetary system in whichever form that took.

Why then have we borrowed billions from private banks simply to hand it over to other private banks which the taxpayers of Ireland have to pay for and who will now have to live in poverty for generations?

Why are our politicians not on trial for ECONOMIC TERRORISM and TREASON?

At this stage in the game it is probably too late for any intelligent debate from any intelligent political figure because let’s face it, they are extremely hard to find despite the claims of the establishment that we pay politicians so much money to attract the best minds in the country to the political process.

Does anyone seriously think that we have the best minds in politics? If that were indeed the case we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in would we?

It’s about time the public woke up to the fact that they have been duped all their lives and in generations prior to that. It’s a bitter pill to swallow and it does take an element of personal courage to admit, not only to yourself that you have been conned, but also to tell other people that they’ve been conned too.

Firstly they will ridicule you, secondly they’ll shun you until eventually something will happen to them personally which will dispel any doubts in their minds that something is seriously wrong in society, not only in Ireland, but across the globe. When innocent human beings are being blown to bits in an illegal war which has been proven to have been started using lies and deception, one would like to think that that time cannot be far off. I won’t hold my breath though. The current ‘crop’ of ‘human beings’ seem incapable of empathy for their fellow man whatever the dreadful circumstances the victims find themselves in. We have in effect been utterly desensitized to the suffering of others with the ‘self’ being the most important being it seems in most people’s lives.

In terms of people finally accepting that we are all in serious trouble, let’s hope that it’s not the day they turn up at Tesco’s to find the shelves empty and starvation becomes a real possibility. This is not wild ‘conspiracy theory’. This is exactly how things were in the Soviet Union when millions, just over half a century ago, were allowed to starve to death by Stalin and his cronies whilst they lived in absolute luxury in a land of plenty for them.

The new European Soviet Superstate is riddled with so called ‘ex’ Soviet Communist Party members who were active in Eastern Europe right up to the day they became part of the European Union.

I don’t want to live in the Soviet Union or in, as the UN has pointed, the state we should all try to emulate, the People’s Republic of China.

Every human being in the EU and around the world has a basic right to live their lives free of restriction so far as they do no harm to any fellow human being or their property. This is the basis of common law which the vast majority of people adhere to. We don’t need ‘Big Brother’ diktats from anyone telling us what we can and can’t do, what licenses we need for this or that and how many children we’re ‘allowed’ to have.

I’m sick of it all and it’s about time that the entire human race extricated its head from the sand and got off its knees. We do not owe our lives to any state whether real or created. We are not slaves to be bought and sold at the whim of unelected bureaucrats in a puppet government far removed from any nation state.

Responsibility comes at a price but ultimately it must be a price worth paying if the alternative is so bleak.

As Predicted, Spain on the Brink of Collapse

The tentacles of the international banking cartel are about to envelop the fifth most important economy of the old continent

The Independent

European leaders meet in Brussels today amid growing fears that Spain, Europe’s fifth-largest economy, is preparing to ask for a

The horns of the depression are in Spain's rearview mirror. An aid package is in the works to rescue one more failed State.

bailout which would dwarf the €110bn (£90bn) rescue plan for Greece.

The Spanish government yesterday dismissed reports that it was already in discussions with the European Commission, International Monetary Fund and the US Treasury for a rescue package worth up to €250bn.

Officials in Madrid, Brussels and Paris were forced to deny that a Spanish bailout – which would take the European debt and euro crisis into a potentially dangerous new phase – was on the Brussels summit agenda.

“Spain is a country that is solvent, solid and strong, with international credibility,” said its Prime Minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. The European Commission spokesman said: “I can firmly deny [that a Spanish rescue is under discussion]. I can say that that story is rubbish.”

Brussels diplomats have been at pains to send out feel-good signals ahead of a summit in which Europe’s leaders are supposed to take the first steps towards more disciplined and co-ordinated, control of national finances. Those reforms are meant to restore confidence in the euro and underpin the €750m EU and IMF safety-net, created last month for euroland countries that lose the confidence of the financial markets.

However, it is proving hard to shake off persistent market fears about Spain, which, if it needed a lifeline, would swallow up a large part of the emergency fund. Worryingly for the EU, the doubts about Spain – whether real or driven by speculation – are eerily similar to the gradual seeping away of confidence that sent Greece into a financial death spiral in March and April. The Spanish government’s cost of borrowing hit a new record yesterday. The interest rate gap, or spread, between 10-year Spanish bonds and their German equivalents, rose by more than 0.10 of a point to 2.23 percentage points.

A senior Spanish banker, Francisco Gonzalez, chairman of the BBVA financial services group, confirmed that foreign private banks were now refusing to provide liquidity to their Spanish counterparts. “Financial markets have withdrawn their confidence in our country,” he said. “For most Spanish companies and entities, international capital markets are closed.”

As a result, the European Central Bank is said to have provided record amounts of liquidity to Spanish banks in recent days. The closure of bank-to-bank credit to Spanish institutions recalls to some market commentators the ripple of crisis through the global financial system after the fall of Lehman Brothers in the Autumn of 2008.

The IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn is expected in Madrid tomorrow to see Mr Zapatero – but brushed off speculation of a crisis. “It’s a working visit,” he told reporters in Paris. “I am in France [today] – are there such rumours about France?”

Fears over Spain’s finances checked the recovery of the euro on money markets yesterday. The single currency lost much of the gains it had made in the past seven days.

One of the proposals on the table at the Brussels summit is public “stress tests” to force banks to reveal the state of their books. The Spanish government offered yesterday to open the books of its own private banks unilaterally to prove that they were sound.

Today’s summit in Brussels was intended to be a time for the EU leaders to catch their breath and discuss ways of restoring the euro’s long-term credibility. The threatened Spanish crisis may blow all that out of the water.

Despite an apparent rapprochement between Paris and Berlin this week, President Nicolas Sarkozy and Chancellor Angela Merkel remain deeply divided on how to prevent the currency and debt crisis from dumping Europe back into recession. Mr Sarkozy has agreed to drop his proposals for new institutional machinery for a political “government” of the euro by its 16 member states. Ms Merkel prefers to talk of a vague “governance” of the euro, and European state spending, by all 27 EU governments.

More fundamentally, Paris is deeply concerned that the austerity plans announced by Berlin last week could – on top of budget cuts in other countries – plunge Europe into crisis.

The French fears were echoed yesterday by the billionaire investor, George Soros, who warned that Europe would almost certainly face a recession next year which might generate “social unrest” and the kind of populist nationalism seen in the 1930s. “That’s the real danger of the present situation – that by imposing fiscal discipline at a time of insufficient demand and a weak banking system… you are actually… setting in motion a downward spiral,” he said.

The collapse of Spain’s housing boom has helped fuel a deep downturn which has sent unemployment spiralling to 20 per cent, the second worst in the EU. Mr Zapatero introduced a range of measures last month, including spending cuts of €15bn over two years and reductions in public sector wages and spending. Unions have called a general strike over labour reforms.

UK demise: Deficit ‘to surpass Greece’s as worst in EU’

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UK Guardian

Whoever wins the election must make sorting out the public finances the top priority, the European commission warned on the eve ofUk debt the poll, as it predicted the British budget deficit would swell this year to become the biggest in the European Union, overtaking even Greece.

The commission’s spring economic forecasts put the UK deficit for this calendar year at 12% of GDP, the highest of all 27 EU nations and worse than the Treasury’s own forecasts.

The country’s budget shortfall was the third largest in the EU last year but will overtake both Greece and Ireland this year, according to the forecasts. Greece’s measures to tackle its public finances problems are projected to cut its deficit to 9.3% of GDP.

Worries about Britain’s public finances – in their worst state since the end of the second world war – continue to unnerve financial markets and analysts are divided over whether a hung parliament will have the clout to rapidly reduce the deficit.

“The first thing for the new government to do is to agree on a convincing, ambitious programme of fiscal consolidation in order to start to reduce the very high deficit and stabilise the high debt level of the UK,” said European economic and monetary affairs commissioner Olli Rehn.

“That’s by far the first and foremost challenge of the new government. I trust whatever the colour of the government, I hope it will take this measure.”

The deficit forecasts are an improvement on the commission’s last outlook for Britain but they still paint a gloomier picture than the government itself.

In financial year terms, the commission’s forecasts are for a worse deficit than predicted by Alistair Darling at his March budget. In 2010/11 the commission puts the deficit at 11.5% of GDP, compared with Darling’s forecast for an 11.1% ratio of public sector net borrowing – the gap between tax and spending – to GDP.

The EU’s executive did double its forecast for British growth this year to 1.2% from 0.6%, in line with a March budget forecast for 1-1.5%. But in 2011 it warns growth will only pick up to 2.1%, significantly below a Treasury forecast of 3-3.5%.

It described “a slow start to a protracted recovery”, highlighting pressures on private consumption, a key growth driver, from employment worries and stagnant wages.

Darling pointed out that the commission expected the UK to grow more quickly than other major European countries next year – including Germany, France, Italy, and the Netherlands. “The European commission’s report shows again that our judgment call to support the economy was right. Yet again George Osborne’s flaky judgment is exposed. The Tories cannot be allowed to derail the recovery,” he said.

But opposition politicians seized upon the outlook as evidence that a new government was needed to get the economy back on track. “The day before the election the European commission has issued a damning indictment of Gordon Brown’s economic record,” said shadow chancellor George Osborne, claiming only the Conservatives would start dealing with Britain’s debts on Friday.

“He has left this country with the largest budget deficit in Europe – larger even than Greece – and projections for future growth well below his own forecasts.”

Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Lord Oakeshott said the EU report laid bare government overconfidence. “This shows the government has been far too optimistic,” he said.

“What matters now is a credible deficit reduction plan backed by the nation. If the Conservatives scrape home with barely a third of the vote and indulge in butchery behind closed doors, that just won’t work. That’s why the Liberal Democrats call for a council of fiscal stability with all three economic spokesmen, whoever they are, and the governor of the Bank of England to agree a credible deficit reduction plan.”

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