The PM serves up Brownies for Sky

TrevorsDen

To paraphrase - 'Brown is a lying bastard, and I'm never even going to think of reading a Hary Potter book ever again.'

(last time I tried I never got past the first paragraph)

Matthew Blott

A good attempt at getting at the facts but wasn't it ever thus? The Tories were hardly transparent with their figures when in office and I don't think it'll change when they return to power. One that immediately springs to mind is the nineteen changes in unemployment measurement.

Nicholas

Classic socialist manipulation. As practiced by all totalitarian socialist regimes (have there been any other types?). Blame others. Create a demon to attract the ire of the public to divert attention away from the ruling regime. In this case it's those nasty counter-revolutionary risk takers in the City.

The nice twist about this is that it becomes the convenient cue for yet more regulation, which socialists with totalitarian tendencies (most of them?) love to impose.

This is an excellent dissection of Brown's Big Lies by Fraser but I fear it may remain unknown outside the Spectator's Coffee House unless the opposition parties can find a way to get their voice heard in the mass media.

The Huntsman

One of the problems is that Brown and his ilk never get cross-examined by people who know how to do the job properly. Almost all of the TV and Radio types who reckon themselves pretty good at it would flounder in a Magistrates Court doing parking offence cases.

Nor do any of his interlocutors ever bottle up and put it to him to his face that he is a liar or, having closed off three sides of the box manage to deliver the killer punch and close off the fourth. Instead they move on just as it gets interesting.

I'd love to see him put through his paces for an hour by a well-prepared member of the Criminal Bar. I reckon we would be looking for a new PM by nightfall.

The last decent interviewer was the late Robin Day, who, of course, trained as a barrister.

Ray

No wonder J K Rowling has just bunged him a million quid. After all, Gordon Brown has "lifted millions of children out of poverty", you know.

mitch

I cant watch the fool on TV any more,I hear the lies he spouts and wonder how he ever became PM If a child lied like that he would be punished.

Fraser Nelson

Matthew, it's an important point. All governments lie, but for Brown the deceptions are central to his proposition to the country. Ask him to list his achievements, and you'll her some Brownies pretty quickly. He's dazzled by the lack of regulation (no Congressional Budget Office like in America) and how fake statistics, unlike verbal lies, go broadly unchallenged. So he has used them to a huge extent.

Look at the critiques of Thatcher - esp 'where there is greed' by one G.Brown - and you don't see any accusations of data manipulation. Thatcher used her own metrics, Labour used its. Both would do war with competing, but unmanipulated data series.

This is why I do consider this government to be the most dishonest in our postwar history. Its spending project is built on its ability to conceal the full extent of liabilities it holds on the taxpayers' behalf. The Wilson/Callaghan years were full of dodgy figures, but that's because the Treasury couldn't get it right (or, if you believe Denis Healey, proudcing fake figures to manipulate the government into lower spending). That said, the deplorable use of incapacity benefit as hidden unemployment - which has kept so many millions on the margins of society - was started under Thatcher. Like PFI, it was a tool of statistical manipulation that Brown grasped with delight.

cuffleyburgers

It is Cameron's job in PMQs to ask Brown something along the lines of "will the prime minister explain the difference between what he told sky news (Brown is red)and the official statistics which show that Brown is in fact Brown.

What part of the word "truth" didn't they teach him in the Manse?

Curiously Brown is what you get if you mix Red, Yellow and Green.

Although in his case the greenness is largely illusory.

Ian C

Disgusting as Brown's lies are, MAthew is right that we have allowed generations of politicians to get away with it.

Are we surprised that standards in public life are so low - and what can we do about it?

David C

If the public isn't interested with the figures then use that against him.
To get at Brown, go for the big picture.
The message is that like any crooked financier, he is running two sets of books.
He presents one to the public and hides the other.
Hit him with his own off the balance sheet debts and then let him answer with his tractor stats. People will believe that he is trying to confuse them, and in the present climate he doesn't have an audience.

northernmonkey

To think I've financed this regime through such innocent activities as buying Harry Potter books.

JK Rowling has betrayed the children of Britain.

oldtimer

Thank you for the analysis - I could not face watching one hour of Mr Brown.

I see that JK Rowling is donating £1 million to the Labour party. She says that Labour has reduced child poverty, quoting GB statistics. You have previously pointed out that these have been manipulated like most other data presented by Brown. I wonder if Ms Rowling is party to the deception or whether she too has been bamboozled?

Stephen

Arguing about whether the national debt is £400 billion or £500 billion (or whatever) is irrelevant given that the unfunded public sector pension liability has ballooned from around £250 billion to £1,000 billion over the last eleven years. Yes, the GROWTH in the liability is getting on for double the disclosed current National Debt.

Austin Barry

Nicholas is correct: Fraser's figures reveal the lies, but to the converted. More superficially, but perhaps no less important in dissuading people from voting Labour, at least with Brown as PM, was the image he created: gloom masquerading as gravitas, enervation as intensity. We Brits also like some evidence of humour in the trenches, however bad the situation, but from Brown there was nothing but a depressing threnody purporting to be vigilance on behalf of an ungrateful nation. Grim beyond grim.

Fraser Nelson

Stephen, you're right but it's the devil's own job to get international comparison that need to put this in perspective. Pete and I steered away from this in our cover story, partly as it makes intl comparison impossible but partly as its a separate scandal, perhaps the biggest of all.

DM

Perhaps JK Rowling is simply one of the last for the scales to fall from the eyes....
Remember, she was a very poor single mother at one stage of her life and that was when the Tories were in power. Single mothers had a lot of stick in those days, not least from the government. There was strong disapproval.
Child poverty is a subject close to her heart, and always has been. She has been an outspoken supporter of Gingerbread, the one-parent family group. If she hears more about action on child poverty coming from Labour, then, naturally she leans towards Labour.
Time now for her to look at the fine detail...

LAURA WILLIAMS

George Osborne - learn those Brownies and repeat in every interview until everyone, including JK Rowling is in the picture once and for all.

Fergus Pickering

I don't think J.K. Rowling's political opinions matter much. I wouldn't have asked for political nous from Enid Blyton and rich fools are not at all uncommon.

Frank Pulley

I always suspected that Harry Potter was a strand of the culture war and I suppose one could assume that this proves it; but now I'm not so sure. Why would a culture warrior want to save Brown's ass? He's doing more damage to the Left than even Michael Foot or Neil Kinnock did. Anyway - what's a £m to Rowling - loose change? Moreover it will disappear into the void that was once the labour party's bank account. It's a publicity stunt for Rowlings isn't it? What's her current project?

John Page

Jeff Randall wrote a stinging denunciation of Brown's performance in that interview in yesterday's Telegraph.

As to interviewers, Evan Davis does numbers and is going to get more and more dangerous.

Brown's economic 'achievements' are being demolished widely just now, for instance by the Taxpayers' Alliance paper and in Jim Pickard's blossoming FT blog.

kinglear

I agree about the Harry Potter book - never again

ChrisD

Fraser, I despair of the political lobby/news channels. They have failed to scrutinise and report the true nature of the fiscal fantasy of Gordon Brown's management of the economy over the years. Particularly his poor judgement and decisions in allowing the debt bubble to grow to maintain a feel good factor in the economy for political reasons.

I am not an economist, just an ordinary voter and I saw this disaster coming and adjusted accordingly way back in 2004.
A lot of people are now going to feel a lot of financial pain because they did not.
A lot of journalists who should have know better, hailed a Brown premiership when he had shown no skill what so ever in that department in all his years at the Treasury.

Frank Pulley

Rowling

PS: From Wiki: "In March 2008, Rowling confirmed that her "political fairy tale" for children was nearing completion."

Yerss!

golfwidow

Why, oh why, does no-one ever challenge him and other government mouthpieces about the much vaunted "£120 tax cut"? It is no such thing, but merely a botched attempt to rectify the 10p tax fiasco.

Nick Kaplan

Fraser was national debt increasing or decreasing before Labour came to power in 1997?

RabidTommy

“It is right to support the economy in a period when the economy is affected by these world factors. It’s right to maintain our public services and to maintain our public investment and anybody who says the opposite would be condemning us to higher unemployment”

Much like extortionate corporation tax and a market mutating minimum wage legislation- effectively a prohibition on employment?

JimBob

Cant we have something independent that sets the measures for unemployment, inflation, debt, etc? They mean nothing they get changed when politicians feel like it.

oh and Brown is a disgrace for this

disenfranchised

I tend to agree that the warping of truth can only continue if TV and radio interviewers are not up to the job.

We have all known our money is being wasted (deliberately in my opinion;what other reason is there for managing our economy in such a hopeless manner?) and our country is in massive debt but this news would have been reserved for the financial sections of our newspapers. It is only because of the credit crunch that the problem has forced itself onto our front pages.

Bring back Brian Waldon and the brilliant Weekend World.

John

" The Tories were hardly transparent with their figures when in office"

They didn't lie through their teeth like this disgusting gangster.
It was ZanuLab who were lying even then, e.g. the vile Milburn when he claimed that there was nil investment in cancer research in the NHS under the Tories.
These people are dyed-in-the-wool liars. They lie every time their lips move.

Ken

Christmas is a'coming, so do remember children, Rowling and all her works have been struck off Santa's little list.

simon s

The Sky interviewers didn't pin Brown down on the fact that the UK economy is like the US economy in that from 2002 there was a credit boom which fueled ridiculous house price inflation. But the UK correction has just begun.

Brown is a supporter of the comprehensive ideal. Rowlings Hogwarts is a glorified public school. See Orwells essay on the young working class miner who was - tragically - fascinated with the goings on at Greyfriars. Where will Rowling send her kids to school - thats the acid test. The local comp?

Fraser Nelson

I'd like to again defend the Sky interviewers. We're talking about Jeff Randall, he's is the best out there. A bloodied Brown-baiter who has been putting him bang to rights for literally years on pensions, spending, you name it. He would not have been fooled - but as an experienced broadcaster nor would he have been daft enough to get dragged down into a debate about statistics. Sure, we'd all watch it on YouTube, but anyone still awake after 15 minutes of Brown on Sky News would reach for the remote. For most (rightly) disinterested voters the word "million" and "billion" is interchangable. It's an unimaginable amount of money. They know they're being shafted. They don't trust Brown on any figures anymore.

This is where I think Brown falls down. If he were to use truthful figures, it would not diminish his argument much because the average viewer hears "la la la percent la la la billions la la stability laq la".

Nick, debt was indeed falling under the Tories - and kept doing do until Brown ditched the Tory spending criteria he had pledged to follow. Brownonomics only really kicked in at the turn of the century.

mckenzie

I agree with Fergus Pickering.
They announce that JKR is donating large amounts of money, and we are all supposed to assume that the Oracle of Delphi has spoken because she has arcane knowledge from the underworld of fantasy bloody fiction. It just adds to the insult.

seb

Would not a healthy bung from, say, a vastly wealthy Labour supporter to a well-run children's charity lift more kids out of poverty than anything this government has ever done for them? Food for thought.

simon s

Brown should be nicknamed 'Stable Door Brown'. The man believes himself to a superb policy wonk whose wide reading and trips to America to conflab with great and good - Greenspan! - gives him some superior wisdom and insight into affairs.

But the reality is he has no foresight whatsoever. for example - energy - a 'new deal' or please sheik invest in the uk with our 'special expertise' - and then sell off the british nuclear industry to the french who had the genuine insight to generate 70pc of their electricity from nuclear.

TGF UKIP

simom s, "the french who had the genuine insight to generate 70% of their electricity from nuclear." And what, pray, happens when, rather than if, there is a nuclear accident and nuclear stations have to be shut down for safety checks and possible accompanying remedial work.

I am all in favour of nuclear but only as part of a balanced mix and because of the extreme alarm a major nuclear accident anywhere in the world would cause I would suggest a maximum of 25% for nuclear in a future energy mix.

PS, if you want a real laugh, go to the the "Conservative" Party website and have alook at their energy "policy."

Robert Williams

Fraser "For most (rightly) disinterested voters the word "million" and "billion" is interchangable"

But Brown has always felt compelled to gild the lily. The 1998 triple counting of "investment" was unnecessary spin. the BBC wrote "Ministers announced that education would get an extra £19bn over the next three years, but that's a cumulative figure - adding each year's new increase to the previous years' increases. If you add up only the new increases introduced each year, you get the more realistic total of £10bn over the next three years."

TGF UKIP

Fraser, nowt to do with this but what are Labour up to on immigration?

Yesterday and today I've spent many hours watching the Ryder Cup on Sky and I think virtually every commercial break carries a Home Office ad for their Border Agency and "their" points system. Given the likely audience profile the cost of such blanket advertising must be stratospheric (is it also being carried on other channels?)

What else is being lined up to accompany this advertising and shouldn't some hack be asking just what the cost and cost justification is?

JohnAnt

"It’s right to maintain our public services and to maintain our public investment and anybody who says the opposite would be condemning us to higher unemployment.” Higher unemployment is the natural result of an economy in which the government has left itself no leeway and spent all our money already. Of course the only way to reduce spending is to sack the wave of 'public service' non-jobsters who were recruited in 2001-05: - last in first out, no early retirement, no unfunded pensions, no replacement. Losing a job is tough but salutary. Long-term unemployment will be the result of not reducing government spending now.

Augustus

Brown always seems to be saying that the consensus is wrong. It is he who has managed to avert a strong prolonged recession, while other less fortunate countries are threatened. He can no more look into the future than anyone else. Every boom period in history has been followed by a bust, there is nothing unusual in that. But Brown uses a crisis like a whale uses a beach: Perhaps the world financial crisis will evaporate? Perhaps the Government will make a profit from Northern Rock? Then again, perhaps oil will sell for $10 a barrel again? And maybe the Russians will reconsider, and go back to standing in line to buy peas? Yes, Brown once had the wind in his back, and it is he who thought that nothing could go wrong. The economy
'grew' but the ordinary citizen became worse off. A flawed leadership with a flawed policy.

Ian

If Brown was the CEO of a major public company (some may thinks he already is) and consistently lied to his shareholders on this scale, he wouldn't last very long. However, in politics it's par for the course to lie your way through each and every crisis and if there isn't a crisis, lie anyway about something else. It's what they do and Brown is an absolute expert at it. That's why he's still there...