国际英语新闻：Britain's Deputy PM: Coalition gov'ts are future for Britain

And Clegg defended forming a coalition with the Conservatives, saying it was out of necessity in a critical economic situation, and defended the drastic cuts in government spending, to total 100 billion pounds (about 150 billion U.S. dollars) by 2015, which the coalition has announced in its first two months and which will see about 600,000 public sector jobs go.

"If we didn't assert control very quickly you would have something immeasurably worse than what we are doing now," Clegg said.

"Instead of a government that was accountable to the people taking difficult decisions, you'd have even more unpleasant decisions taken by people who are not accountable at all."