Cameron tears into Brown's lies
Fraser Nelson 1:01pm
Cameron kicked off on the 10 percent issue. "Some Labour MPs were a bit confused when they were told about 10 percent: they thought it meant his opinion poll ratings." The gag went down well, and Cameron picked up where he left off with those spending totals that Brown read out in PMQs last week. They spelled out a real terms cut - though Cameron wasn't to know at the time (the figures were brand new and, suspiciously, cut out of the Treasury documents* perhaps when they realised that they spelled a cut). But he certainly did this time, and kept asking Brown whether there are real terms cuts in the Budget.
"I relish the chance to debate for once policy" said Brown - I very much doubt he does. He's been exposed as a liar. What will he do? Interestingly, Brown shifts as what the Tories "would" do if they were in power now. But then returned to his central lie (not a word I use lightly, but a lie it is) "they want to spend less, where we would spend more."
"The whole country will conclude that he's taking them for fools," said Cameron - reprising what is now his central attack line. Brown was finally forced into admitting what Darling (deplorably) did not tell MPs on budget day - that there is a split between current and investment spending. "Real current expenditure will grown in every year to 2013/14 not just in cash terms but in real terms," he says. Note the crucial word "current" - this is only part of total spending (the other two parts being depreciation and investment). Brown continues: "Capital expenditure will grow until the year of the Olympics, after the year of the Olympics capital expenditure will be less but asset sales will make up for much of the difference... the unfortunate thing that his proposals is to cut expenditure by 10 percent".
Brown's tool here, a reflex, is to try and blow smoke. Why say "the year of the Olympics" - why not "2012" or, in fiscal terms, 2011/12? And, anyway, it peaks far ealier. I've pasted a graph below showing what Brown's plans are for his so-called "investment" and it peaks, oooh, this financial year. As Cameron said: "It sounds more and more desperate" - the right response, rather than be wrestled down into a detailed debate. Financial debates are won by whoever can speak with the most clarity, and Cameron did well to keep it simple. "Whichever way you look at the figures the government have plans to cut spending." He quoted the figures on the below chart. On "current spending", he rightly said, it is being cut when you factor in debt interest. All this is pretty easy, actually. Brown then reads out current expenditure total, sounding every inch like the over-promoted finance minister he is. "£603 to £629 to £633 to £638 to £642" - yes, Brown, but take away debt interest and this figure falls sharply.
"Every commentator, every economist, has concluded that the PM is wrong." Cameron quoted Robert Chote from the IFS to Brown, saying that the PM "needs help" to interpret his own Budget figures. Brown reads a set of figures again. "Why does he find it so impossible to give a straight answer and be honest with the British people?" Brown says he is the one who gave statistics - but Cameron's charge transcends statistics. It is about honesty. Brown sounds shifty, and the more he blasts this message the shiftier he will sound. Brown promised that this "debate is going to go on for many months". The Tories will hope so. The louder Brown shouts, the better he unwittingly makes the Tory key point: that he is not to be trusted on the economy.
* To see how the Treasury has airbrushed out the falling spending totals, open this spreadsheet and go to Sheet B1. The figures Brown mentioned in PMQs - this week and last week - are not included. The horizon does not to 2013/14 - even though such figures are in the Budget. But you can work them out by adding together current spending + depreciation + investment. Why didn't the Treasury want us to tally that total? Why are such figures apparently important enough to mention in Parliament but not in a mammoth spreadsheet? The truth, eventually, will out. As Gordon Brown is discovering.
Previous
Draughtsman
June 17th, 2009 1:15pm Report this comment"the over-promoted finance minister he is" - he was over promoted AS finance minister.
David Hignett
June 17th, 2009 1:22pm Report this commentWatching PMQs has gone beyond pain. The PM "Still does not get it." Many of us are sick of being lied to, being overlooked and being treated like idiots. Brown may have taken too much notice of another spin doctor and really believe that a lie will be believed if it is big enough. I hope that no matter how big it is, no matter how often it is repeated, it will still be seen to be untrue.
Not the usual biased poster
June 17th, 2009 1:25pm Report this comment"Cameron tears into Brown" maybe in your world it is tearing,since when has an MP quoting statistics been tearing, about as interesting as watching grass grow.In the real world that is a luke warm heated discussion at best.Keep up the Cameron ejaculating, it is the only thing amusing about PMQ's at the moment.
Iv'e written to my MP(a Conservative) asking if he can bring the question to the House about you being thrown out of Camerons Special Club...very unfair.
Tissueometer : a very poor 6.19 out of 10.
Richard
June 17th, 2009 1:25pm Report this commentFraser - the spreadsheet link doesn't work (but may not be your fault).
boulay
June 17th, 2009 1:25pm Report this commentrather surprised but mayo has just been totally skewering kitty usher on five-live about the cuts/investment lie.
Slim Jim
June 17th, 2009 1:26pm Report this commentYou keep chipping away Fraser, while Brown keeps digging. It is clear that no government representative is going to admit to cuts/reduced 'investment', etc. The point that should also be made is how all this spending is going to be paid for. Increased borrowing? Tax increases? Or both? Neither is not an option.
Simon
June 17th, 2009 1:51pm Report this commentThats curious - the link to the spreadsheet above doesnt work. Maybe the ghost of McBride has hit....
Jonathan
June 17th, 2009 1:52pm Report this commentFraser,
You seem to think that Cameron did well – I thought he was ill-prepared. If he is going to nail this lie, he needs to start talking facts and figures. For example, today Brown outlined what he called real terms spending increases: “£603 to £629 to £633 to £638 to £642". It wasn’t enough for Cameron just to retort that these increases did not take account of higher debt repayments and increased welfare bills; rather he should have asked directly by how much our debt repayments and welfare bills were expected to rise over this period of time. Of course, Brown won’t answer, but if Cameron had the figures to hand then he could challenge Brown to deny them and simultaneously illustrate how Brown’s spending increases were just an illusion i.e. every £ spend on paying welfare and interest repayments is a £ less to be spent on schools, hospitals etc… and since these non-discretionary payments are greater than Brown’s planned increases, then departmental budgets will suffer. As you say, it’s not rocket science and I agree, Cameron doesn’t need to get too technical, but some facts and figures (if deployed sparingly) would sustain rather than complicate and dilute his argument. Today – Brown won (despite not telling the truth) because he was the only leader quoting figures of any kind and this made him sound credible, even though he wasn’t (if you catch my drift)…
Chuck Unsworth
June 17th, 2009 1:54pm Report this commentWell, someone should be asking why the Treasury has made this change - without notifying anyone at all. Or need we even ask? This is yet another example of gross Civil Service politicisation.
Pete Hoskin
June 17th, 2009 1:57pm Report this commentRichard: I've fixed the link. Should work now.
Paul B
June 17th, 2009 2:15pm Report this commentJonathon, I don`t agree. The point about Brown going over and over the figures, is that people turn off, don`t listen & glaze over. I was bored witless, and I`m a political anorak. I felt like shouting Bingo (incidentally another industry, mainly enjoyed by the working classes, that Labour are destroying) to all Browns figures. To quote would be to play Brown on his home ground. DC played it right today, he does not need to do specifics, he just needs to keep to the bigger picture and to keeping jabbing Brown with ridicule.
Ben Gladstone
June 17th, 2009 2:24pm Report this commentjonathan's point is well made for those of us not so close to the action and without the time to do the calcs - it all ends up a bit he says/she says at the moment. we might trust cameron's words more than brown's, but we;re running on faith not facts...
it would snap into clarity if you set out the figures for a few years, starting with brown's quoted numbers, then correct them like a school maths exercise and get to the true answers
thanks
ben
David Logan
June 17th, 2009 2:28pm Report this comment"they want to spend less, where we would spend more." This is probably (hopefully) not a lie. The Labour party would spend more than the Tories even although the country could not afford it. The Tories will surely cut Government expenditure by even more than Labour are planning. It is not unhelpful to show that GB cannot be trusted in respect of spending butthe Tories need to front up with a real, credible economic policy to get us out of this mess with a serious program to address spending and borrowing.
Russell
June 17th, 2009 2:33pm Report this commentSince "debates are won by clarity", it would be worth clarifying *exactly* what you are plotting in the figure. At a guess, it is current + depreciation + investment expenditure? But it can only be a guess, since you have described it only as "a graph below showing ... so-called investment". (I'd give my students hell for doing that.)
Ian C
June 17th, 2009 2:50pm Report this commentSounds like Cameron needs a line - like "The gov'ts spending plans only increase IF you include the interest on the loans they've put on Britain's credit card".
Jonathan
June 17th, 2009 3:03pm Report this commentPaul,
It need not be boring, providing Cameron does his homework. I’m certainly not suggesting that Cameron starts trotting out tractor statistics like Brown, but figures can, when used, sparingly illustrate an argument. For an example, Brown conceded that investment spending will peak in 2011-12. In fact, it drops like a stone as Fraser has outlined here before. Cameron could have asked: “In 2010-11 the GVN plans to spend x on investment projects, in 2011-12 this drops to y – how is this not a Labour cut?”
Of course, Brown will waffle, but the watching public will begin to understand what brown is about. Furthermore, throughout the week, Tory commentators and politicians will be able to say... ‘In PMQ’s last week, the PM refused to deny that the GVN plans to cut public spending on investment projects by (x-y) billions.
As for current spending, Cameron needs to press Brown for precise figures on projected debt repayments and welfare bills. Perhaps George Osborne should write to the Chancellor asking for the current GVN projections… Darling will have to give some form of statistical reply and the projected rises are so steep, that no amount of numerical trickery will be able to conceal the fact that these pieces of non-discretionary expenditure will far outstrip Brown’s planned rises in current spending. For example in the final 4 years of the GVN’s plans, current spending only rises from £629 to £642 (£13 billion in total, at an average of £3.25 billion a year) with debt interest rising at 8%+ in the same period, and with some 3 Million unemployed, he has no chance of safeguarding departmental budgets.
Think about it, our national debt is going to double, but we only have 3.25 billion put aside (each year) to pay-off the increased interest payments, before schools ‘n’ hospitals start to be cut – it’s a very simple argument to illustrate, but so far Cameron has failed miserably.
Denis Cooper
June 17th, 2009 3:12pm Report this commentI couldn't easily find the spreadsheet, either, but I did come across some figures for government expenditure, receipts and borrowing for April, and the answer was that 24% of the expenditure was financed by borrowing.
The fact that a quarter of the money being spent by the government is now borrowed money seems to me to convey a very simple and stark message, much more so that than the fine details of how proposed Tory spending cuts would measure up against implied Labour spending cuts.
What would happen if the govenment could no longer borrow that £1 in every £4 that it spends?
Public sector salaries cut by a quarter, or a quarter of all public sector workers dismissed; old age pensions cut by a quarter; unemployment and other benefits cut by a quarter; public sector contracts with private companies either cancelled, or their prices cut by a quarter ... pretty much what is happening in Latvia.
It's obvious that this can't carry on; it would be far better to make gradual, carefully selected, cuts to reduce the deficit, than to be forced into making immediate, drastic, cuts across the board.
Roger
June 17th, 2009 3:13pm Report this commentWell Gordon is only an amateur economist, his real expertise is in mendacity. Why does not Cameron point out his lack of education or experience and help him with the simple arithmetic.
strapworld
June 17th, 2009 3:19pm Report this commentWell, Robinson the Labour Governments tool on the BBC believes that Cameron has been nailed by Brown on this!!
He thinks that the people-come the election- ((which I think will be in October as Brown kept repeating "welcome the debate over the next few months")) people will want Labour 'investment' to Tory 'cuts of at least 10%'
One liners are the way forward. One liners.
mac
June 17th, 2009 3:38pm Report this commentThe predictable smoke-blowin' Labour toady poster:
Keep bleatin', please: as one of the "usual biased" posters hereabouts I do soooo feel your pain. How do you support such outright liars as Brown and Blinky, the not-the-new-Chancellor-after-all-then-And- honest-I never-intended-to -move-Darling?
Chris
June 17th, 2009 4:23pm Report this commentN-TUB Poster: Oh, I get it. You think you're funny, just as Gordon thinks he's saved the world. You're both equally correct in your ass-umption.
David Belchamber
June 17th, 2009 5:43pm Report this commentKeep up the good work, Fraser. The dividing line is now clear: honesty versus dishonesty.
However, David Cameron should repeat what he has said elsewhere that he will ring fence essential services and make a bonfire of quangos, red tape etc.
He has to hammer away at the size of the nation's debt and blame Gordon's fuelling of consumer credit for the initial problem and the ineffectiveness of the tripartite regulatory system for the secondary problem.
Lola
June 18th, 2009 9:49am Report this commentTactically this is clever. New Labour's whole philosophy rests on 'we can spend your money better than you, therefore the more of your money we spend the better off you will be'. They've managed to make 'public spending a good in itself. Of course it mostly isn't and especially not on the scale Brown wants to spend. Camerons attacks are quietly and persistently eating into this nonsense and Brown's leaden responses reinforce Cameron's message without him actually saying it. The message is that 'Government confiscates and spends too much of your money and wastes most of it. Listen to this bloke Brown and you will see what I mean.'
Tories as natural tax and spending cutters. Now that Brown has been forced to cut what Cameron has to do is back him inot the corner to admit this. Once he's done that the Tory Cuts mantra is dead. Both Brown and Cameron know this.
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