A close ally of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said that the current global recession is "the most serious for over 100 years," according to media reports.
The comment by Ed Balls, the childrens' minister and former close adviser to Brown, that the recession was "more extreme and more serious than that of the 1930s," was reported by the Yorkshire Post newspaper.
Balls told a regional Labour Party conference in the northern county of Yorkshire that these were "seismic events that are going to change the political landscape."
The remark, coming as criticism grows of the government's policy of handling the crisis, was described as "staggering and very worrying" by a spokesman of the Conservative opposition, dpa reported.