Brown's Big Lie provokes Cabinet tension

Simon Stephenson

The IFS forecast for debt interest and AME - has it been confirmed as consistent with the amounts the Treasury included in arriving at the 702 : 717 : 738 : 758? Or failing this, have the IFS assumptions for AME/debt interest been confirmed as consistent with the projections for the economy included in the Treasury figures? Particularly the IFS methodology behind the calculation of benefit payments and local authority expenditure?

In other words, is it correct to assert that because the IFS has come up with a 7% spending cut, the Treasury must have done so as well? Is it impossible that the Treasury could have made less expensive predictions for AME and debt interest; that these in turn release more funds for departmental spending; and, tellingly, that the Treasury predictions are more robustly based than the IFS's?

Short the UK

Excellent piece on the W shaped UK economy by Sean O'Grady in the Indie this morning.

Best economic analysis I've read since March.

Neil Turner

Fraser

Suggest you take a look at Daniel Hannan's piece in Today's Telegraph.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/5587735/We-cant-have-an-election-until-its-too-late.html

He explains why Mandleson is sacrificing New Labour to allow the ratification the EU Treaty

This explains so much of Mandleson's behaviour and Brown's weakness

McKenzie

Keep your finger on the pulse here Frazer, you're doing a champion job mate.

The Oncoming Storm

Even Mrs Balls is uneasy at Gordon's precious "10% cuts" mantra??

It must be pretty chilly around that family's table then!!

John Smith

PUBLIC spending will have to be slashed by BILLIONS more than either Labour or the Tories dare admit, it was revealed last night.

New figures show that, whichever party wins the next election, there will have to cuts of around 15 PER CENT . . . totalling a massive £22BILLION.

That's equal to the ENTIRE budget for Britain's secondary schools or FIVE TIMES the current bill for unemployment benefit.

And it's enough to pay for ONE MILLION nurses or 100 new hospitals - or 750,000 bobbies.

Otherwise every household in the land will have to fork out a whopping £30-A-WEEK extra in tax to balance the books.

This is despite Gordon Brown insisting he would actually INCREASE spending - regardless of his own figures showing the opposite.

And although the Tories have come clean on their plans to make savings they are only talking about 10 per cent cuts. But new figures - worked out by top accountants PricewaterhouseCoopers after analysing projections from Labour's own Budget - show far more savage savings will be needed in the three years to 2013/14.

From the Times

Trevorsden

You must stay with this story Mr Nelson - Brown must not be allowed to get away with lies. And more important all other journalists must be made well aware of it. They the journalists must be kept on ntheir toes.

Pat

Well an unscrupulous politician in the present cabinet could say that current spending will be maintained-lying-on the assumption that they will lose the next election anyway, and it might help them in the one after.
If they believe the next elections in the bag then promising more than they can deliver will hinder them at the one after.
It boils down to how unscrupulous politicians view their prospects at the next election, and of course just how many are unscrupulous.

Peter from Maidstone

It doesn't really matter, though your point is worth investigating and firming up. Since there is already a -0.3% cut, ANY expenditure on debt interest and AME makes the cuts worse and cannot turn the forecast into one of growth.

Moraymint

Simon Stephenson ... since when, in recent years, have Treasury predictions been "more robust" than most, if not all independent forecasters?

Right now, I don't believe a word coming out of anything associated with Government or our political class. The central political institutions of this country are totally discredited after a decade or more of self-serving politicians treating the British people with contempt.

These days, I'm making my judgements on the future well-being of my country based on cross-referencing information from credible, apolitical, third-party institutions. The further they are from Government, the better.

Anything coming from Westminster generally and the Government specifically will more than likely be, at best, spin and, at worst, deceit.

This is the dismal political legacy of the Blair/Brown/Balls era. I hope they're proud of it.

Trumpeter Lanfried

Simon Stephenson @ 9.17 a.m. You ask:

1. Is it impossible that the Treasury could have made less expensive predictions for AME and debt interest?

2. That these in turn release more funds for departmental spending?

3. And, tellingly, that the Treasury predictions are more robustly based than the IFS's?

Answers:
1. No.
2. Yes.
3. Are you having a laugh?

mitch

Brown can say whatever he likes, no one in the UK is listening to him anymore.We assume he lies and ignore him and his figures,where is this vision we were promised? as PM he is an object of pity now.

R

So we're told that, when his strategy was questioned in cabinet, Brown got in a huff and ended the meeting. This is presumably an example of the new, more collegiate style that he is adopting.

Chuck Unsworth

Brown is not an object of pity as far as I'm concerned. He's an object of contempt and revulsion.

Frank P

Neil Turner

Thank you for that link; I fear that Hannan is right and it augurs another terrifying shift in the Euro political tectonic plates that moves England towards complete annihilation in he first half of this century.

mitch

Pity? What a sensitive soul you must be! Surely utter loathing negates any pity anyone, of any stripe, might have felt for the baleful, albeit barmy, bastard.

Owen Morgan

Mitch says, "As PM [Brown] is an object of pity now."

Not for me. I agree with everything else you say, mitch, but Brown is still hell-bent on destroying Britain. If we won't vote for him (not that he ever has the guts to give us the chance), Brown will lay waste to the political and economic landscape. As far as the economy is concerned, people may think that the Brown Destroyer did about as much damage as he could possibly do, before ever he became PM (or "was elected", as Brown himself bizarrely puts it). Unfortunately, that is not the case. He has now handed over financial regulation to Brussels. Since Britain's previous regulatory system was of Brown's own devising and since he has been loudly droning that the financial catastrophe was all a foreign import, this surrender to Brussels is impossible to square with his propaganda. True: Brown's regulatory system was hopeless, but it is typical of the man that he would sooner quietly offload the whole responsibility to an unaccountable and, by definition, unproven body somewhere in "Europe", rather than admit his errors and endeavour to correct them. Even when he finally goes, I shan't pity him. Brown belongs behind bars.

Hawkeye

@Neil Turner

Thanks for the link. Having read it, it makes perfect sense. I hope that the press and Cameron have enough sense to use this gem to open up the divisions in Labour.

Will the activists be prepared to sacrifice Labour on the altar of Brussels? How will the general public react to Mnady's Trojan horse.

These socialist types are disgusting - they even lack loyalty to themselves.

Austin Barry

OT but can everyone stop using the ugly Orwellian word 'redacted' instead of 'censored'. I'm sure our crooked masters prefer the former, but let's not humour the weasels.

Simon Stephenson

Peter from Maidstone

What you say is not correct. If AME/debt interest are projected to decline by a greater amount than the overall decline, then the residual amount, departmental spending, will increase.

Moraymint

Notwithstanding what you say, the nub of all this comment initiated by Fraser is that it is THE GOVERNMENT'S figures that are projecting a 7% cut - NOT the government's total, as adjusted by SOMEONE ELSE'S projection for AME/debt interest. So for this claim to be intellectually valid it needs to be demonstrated that the AME/debt interest figures used by the IFS are at least broadly similar to those used by the Treasury. If, for example, the Treasury is projecting a slower increase in unemployment than is the IFS, then the Treasury AME for unemployment benefit will be lower than the IFS forecast.

I'm not saying that the IFS figures are rubbish, nor that the Treasury figures DON'T project a cut in departmental spending. But I AM saying that my understanding of the situation is that Fraser has over-stated his case from the information he has available.

To me, it doesn't do to accuse the other party of making ficticious claims by making one up yourself. It IS immensely frustrating that Brown's team are too clever to leave anything obvious to beat them up with, but, for heaven's sake, they're the crème de la crème of illusionists, so what do you expect? The key to me was that Brown should have been asked to give details of the AME/debt interest figures included in the budget totals, as well as the key assumptions used in producing them. Reconstruction from the ground upwards is the only way that you can avoid the deniability that will inevitably be built into this government's figures given out for public consumption.

Trumpeter Lanfried

No 3. Whether I'm having a laugh or not, it's still possible, surely, for the Treasury figures to end up nearer the mark that the other projections. We're only ASSUMING that the Treasury have been leaned on to come up with ridiculous figures purely to suit the government's purposes. If we want to establish this, we need to address the methods and assumptions that have been used in putting the figures together - just saying "Brown, he lies for a pastime" isn't going to impress anyone who's not already convinced this is true.

Verity

Neil Turner - Hannan's piece has caught fire.

Let's hope, like his speech in the EU "Parliament", it goes viral.

Neil Turner

Hawkeye / Frank P - thanks.

Now we know what is keeping New Labour afloat, I guess we have to ask ourselves "what's in it for me?" and "what's against my interests?" for Cameron

What's against his interests....
- now he is ahead in the polls he is terrified about opening up an EU schism in his party
- as a Europhile, does he really want to bring the UK out of the EU ?
- what will UKIP make of this ? My understanding is that UKIP cost the Tories around 25 seats at the last election. This at at time when UKIP was wounded by internal division and not particularly well resourced
- how many seats could a well organised UKIP cost Cameron if Cameron dithers ?

What's in it for Cameron ?
- if he goes for the jugular, he will promise a referendum if the Treaty is ratified. This will poll well as voters seek a greater say in the future of our country. It would also negate Mandelson's strategy

TGF UKIP

Fraser, a link to your NoW column would be extremely helpful each week otherwise by going direct to the Screw's site we can only read you a week in arrears.

Your NoW columns are always hugely enjoyable not only for their style but for the far more robust views you express over there.

I think we can all probably guess the reason for the discrepancy in style and content.

Simon Stephenson

Fraser

Thanks for the clarification.

I refuse to believe that the Treasury have published the 702 : 717 : 738 : 758 figures without having built them up from the sum of their constituent parts. We're not talking about a tin-pot little company without the accounting resource to do much more than "last year + inflation". They just WOULDN'T have put the figures on paper unless they had back-up calculations as to how they got there.

Look, I know that as an accountant I'm more familiar with these things than some people, but it seems obvious to me that the totals given are the Treasury's accurate estimate of what will happen if all it's assumptions pan out. And if they'd reached a previous total that wasn't politically acceptable, then one of the assumptions would have to have been changed. It's not just a question of putting a line through it and scaling it down a few billion. The total's what comes from the assumptions - it's not an independent figure that the assumptions can only loosely be reconciled to.

So if I were you I shouldn't give up on trying to get out of the Treasury the breakdown of the totals they have given. The key questions are if they've got the breakdowns why haven't they released them, and if they claim not to have the breakdowns, what justification do Brown, Balls, Burnham and co. have for asserting that departmental public expenditure will be maintained when, apparently, the Treasury is unable to confirm that there will be financing available to do so?

Fraser Nelson

TGF, many thanks but two things. The style is obviously different: tabloid columns are punchier and harder hitting. But there's no difference in the opinions, or the robustness thereof - and I suspect you're just suggesting so to wind me up. This time, I'm not falling for it.

And also, can I recommend buying the newspaper? You know: money, part with it, that kinda thing? Without a hard copy of the Spectator, weekends are dull - as I hope you know. CoffeeHouse is simply a tangent of our offer. And the NOTW website has less than a third of the number of items I file for my weekly column. And the paper itself is full of life in all it forms: something appealing, something appalling - something for everyone (as Stephen Sondheim rather wonderfully put it).

hadrian

If tax did go up by £30 a week I think I'd be better off just joining the dole! We shall soon be entering madness territory, certainly quite alien territory unexperienced since the War and the end of Austerity.
If the politicians refuse to be bluntly honest about this then it'll be on their heads when an unprepared, hitherto cossetted generation suddenly hits the brick wall of no money in the public kitty.

Peter Morris

There are plenty more lies.

Fairness is in our DNA said Gordon Brown not so long ago.

The British Government continues to treat its state pensioners living overseas unfairly.

One half get their pensions uprated each year just as if they lived in the UK.

The other half have their pensions frozen at the rate at which it is first paid.

They have all paid exactly the amount under the same rules to qualify for their pensions but some pensioners are more equal than others.

Yvette Cooper, now DWP Secretary of State, has said that Labour's commitment to fairness and equality is not mere rhetoric. But in reality it is for those poor pensioners living overseas. One pensioner living in Sydney Australia was getting less than 7 pounds per week, whilst his cousin, living in the USA, was getting over 80 pounds per week. Both on a full pension.

It appears that fairness and equality for British people disappears at the water's edge!

Frank P

Fraser

Aren't the commercials supposed to be on the side bar?

I doubt you'll get TGF to replace the subscription that I withdrew when you dumped Paul Johnson. For that, you lot will never be forgiven as long as breathe remains in this wilting husk. Bastards. Callow youth with bloody nobs on! I note nobody had the balls to respond to my bitter complaint. Did Pete Hoskin forward my comment to PJ as requested? Or to Andrew Neil. Cowards - the lot of you.

Major Plonquer

Fraser - it would be VERY difficult indeed for the vast majority of the Speccy's readership to actually part with money to buy a copy of your rag. This is largely because having read your pieces over the past few years the majority of us wealth creators have taken your advice and buggered off to warmer and less tax intrusive climes where you are not on the news-stand.

Oops, sorry, but must dash - time for another dip in the pool, mate.....

Major Plonquer
A Trial Anus Daily Sex Society
(Australian Dyslexia Society)

G'day from Brisbane....

Chuck Unsworth

And anyway, why are these people concerned about Brown's lies? Are they not all immensely gifted liars themselves? What is it about Brown's lies which is so particularly abhorrent to his mendacious colleagues?

David Bouvier

Simon

If you have been paying attention over the last 12 years then you would like the rest of us learned that the IFS gives a truer description of the Red Book than Brown's budget speeches ever did.

As for debt, we have huge deficits running ahead of expectation, and interest rates that are flat or going up. There is only one way that government debt repayments are going.

Note that no one has seriously debunked the IFS numbers. Only part of the government even disagrees. Can you find me a serious economic commentator, or even a mainstream political commentator, or frankly anyone, who has a reasoned disagreement with the IFS?

In this instance they created an aspirational borrowing line that they thought the markets would not choke on, and perhaps they did not think too hard about underlying allocations.

Simon Stephenson

David Bouvier 10.08am

I don't dispute what you say. I have no doubt in my mind that Brown's assertions bear no resemblance to the what will actually happen over the next few years, nor to what wise current comment should be concluding about what is in store for us.

But this is not the point I am making. What I'm saying is that there is a difference between adopting unlikely assumptions to create the figures you want to portray, and wilfully misrepresenting the figures that have actually been created.

The prevailing argument is that Brown must be wilfully misrepresenting the Treasury figures because the IFS calculations show what these have to be. I don't think this is the case at all. I'm sure that the Treasury numbers are consistent with Brown's assertions and that this has been made possible by setting assumptions that ensure that this is the case.

The attack on Brown should not be that he is lying, because he almost certainly isn't. He must be attacked on the intellectual implausibility of the assumptions he has caused to be made in order to be able to present the portrayal he desired, without actually telling an untruth.

He has no obligation to accept what others say are the MOST LIKELY assumptions for the future. But where he doesn't, he should be made to justify why he has chosen to do this. It's much deeper than the liar/not a liar slanging match that's going on at the moment.

Richard Holloway

At least now the Speccie is calling them lies and not Brownies.