The signs are that Brown will be undone by his PBR

TrevorsDen

You mean the BBC will ask awkward questions - are you insane?

And more to the point if an awkward question is asked will anyone query the answer- or should I say the non answer?

All you will get is propaganda and an ignorant supine lefty media.

Reality is what has an effect and reality is what Labour are doing their best to defer. They are even thretening the credit card companies now.

They want more debt piled on more debt since that is the drug which will keep the electorate comatose.

Come on you Spectator hacks, wake up are you completely dim or is Brown right - we are all as thick as two short planks.

Wily Trout

The public has form on 'not cottoning on', as Labour's spin-masters know only too well. That's what they'll be betting on and they'll probably be right.

Short the UK

Now even the dimmest can see an L.

The twits still hoped for a V bordering on a U.

Now they see the disaster and realise they and their childrens future and standard of living are at stake.

The property porn has turned to debt porn of the hardest, sickest, variety.

Only a masochist would revel in the Brown Bust. Labour are on the rack.

Attack, attack, attack.

Ian C

All figures need translating to per person and to per household, by the Tories as they bash at this. £100mn means £n per person/h'hold, £1bn = £10n pp/h'hold. If they can get a simple sum into peoples minds it will counter the Mandy/Campbell/Brown propaganda.

Dominic Allkins

Agree absolutely with Ian C.

Nu LieBore are hoping that the BIG numbers will be too much for people to comprehend.

It's much easier for individual voters to understand that the government expects them to pay back £x0,000s each + plus interest and that should be the line of attack every time.

William Norton

Yawn - bring back Lisa Hilton. Analysis you can believe in.

TomTom

All figures need translating to per person and to per household, by the Tories as they bash at this. £100mn means £n per person/h'hold, £1bn = £10n pp/h'hold. If they can get a simple sum into peoples minds it will counter the Mandy/Campbell/Brown propaganda.

No it won't.

It is better to say that the Government is borrowing the entire NHS Budget each year from China and Japan and might have to make patients pay User Charges to defray the cost.....unless they charge Fees for Post-16 Education instead

Dave Clemo

"The pound in your pocket"
catchy eh?

Ken

@3:06pm
"The pound in your pocket" now worth ? {a (pre decimal) farthing} and headed downwards till 2060

Trumpeter Lanfried

TrevorsDen @ 1.55pm: In fairness, John Humphrys did ask Darling some very awkward questions yesterday morning.

HJ

Yes, the individual household figures will bring it home to people.

Next financial year alone, the government is expecting to borrow £118bn. There are around 20m households in the UK, so this amounts to an extra £6000 of borrowing per household just in one year. Of course, even this assumes that the government's borrowing forecast is accurate - and in recent years they have always hugely underestimated their future borrowing.

What sane person wouldn't be scared by that figure? Even public sector workers (Labour's core constituency) would begin to realise that it isn't sustainable.

Bocephus

I see Germany and the ECB don't want to introduce a large stimulus package as they believe it will not work. How exactly is Brown getting away with telling everyone that every country in the world agrees with him?

Andy Leeds

The Tories need to plug away at how dreadful the States finances are - Gordon has bankrupted the state is the truth - and keep the message simple. That is Gordon has spent, spent , spent and borrowed, borrowed, borrowed and we have to pay the bill for this folly. Gordon is sinking like the Titanic.

However one is given to wonder if the Tories really want to have to sort the mess out. Maybe a hung Parliament which had to vastly increase taxes might be best for the Tories. 18 months of that and then a new election and a huge Tory majority. And this time the Tories should take an axe to the State and destroy Labours core vote.

David

What Bocephus said is crucial here. Brown's recent bounce is for precisely the same reason as he got one last year; he gave off the perception of leading. The floods gave him good PR, but it was his lack of funding for flood defences that partially caused them. He took credit for dealing with a government lab causing foot and mouth, and for a series of bombs which, thankfully, didn't go off. I still speak to people who think that plot was foiled by the intelligence services, when the truth is we got lucky. The point of all this is that once Brown's 'the world is with me' narrative dies this, combined with people looking more closely at the nation's finances, could kill him politically.

TGF UKIP

Ian C this time we agree and indeed this is what I have been posting ad nauseam. Unfortunately, though, from your point of view the Cameron Tories simply "don't do" propaganda. It's beneath Dave & Co to simplify matters down to reach "the ordinaries." That's probably one of the mainreasons why Brown, Mandelson and Campbell know they've still got everything to fight for.

The other thing the Tories must do is to stick to big numbers. Billions mean nowt anymore but A TRILLION, now that's different. But it needs a contrast and no doubt James or Fraser or one of the Coffee House number crunchers will be able to tell us what the corresponding number was, inflation adjusted, back in 97.

So at least we have Brown as the "Trillion Pound" PM but why leave it there. The Tories should do a Gordon and make the most of numbers. So throw in PFI and public sector pension deficit etc and you've easily got Brown "THE TWO BILLION" PM.

Lucky, lucky Gordon to have the Bullingdon Boys as his opposition.

TGF UKIP

PS, Guido over at order-order.com has an interesting take. Brown dithered over the VAT 18.5%, couldn't bring himself to go with it and now as a result there is a HUNDRED BILION gap in the whole statement.

Coffee House number crunchers wil no doubt be able to confirm or reject Guido's allegation
but if valid then the Tories really do have the sort of open goal that even Emile Heskey would have dificulty missing.

hadrian

No one's asking the awkward questions of Broon and his cohorts because, one suspects, they're as scared of the answer as our political masters. Still, console yourself that one day reality will catch up- possibly when it's too late, admittedly, but hey ho,it'll be great to be vindicated with an 'I told you so!'