A bumper pack of Brownies
Fraser Nelson 5:04pmJust as Mr Brown’s jokes are no laughing matter, you imagine his facts are not supposed to be taken seriously anymore either. His statistics go over the heads of the public and one almost tires of correcting them here. But as Simon Mayo mentioned CoffeeHouse on air on Five Live and our fondness for “Brownies” (a word, alas, he didn’t mention) here is a list of today’s top PMQs Brownies.
1. “We now have the second biggest defence budget in the world”. This dodgy figure is cooked up by looking at military spending in nominal terms – rather than adjusting for purchasing power parity (PPP). If you spend £1 million it will obviously go further in China than Britain - which is why analysts routinely use PPP adjustments for international comparisons. Brown takes the raw data from the Stockholm Peace Institute (find it here, pdf). Unadjusted for PPP (ie, the dodgy raw data Brown uses) than America is first ($547bn) then Britain ($59.7bn), China ($58.3bn), France ($53.6bn) and Japan ($43.6bn). But adjust for PPP and the real figure has Britain fifth. And by the way, Brown inserted “as a share of GDP” afterwards. He’d forgotten his own scam. If you take it as a share of GDP then Britain at 2.6% is fifth behind the India (2.7%), Russia (3.6%), the US (4.0%) and the Saudis (8.5%).
2. Labour inherited debt at 44 percent of GDP and reduced it to 38 percent of GDP. This was his response to Ken Clarke. One can set aside Brown’s vast array of Enron-style debt concealment vehicles and look at debt under the Maastricht definition (a definition he can’t tweak). Annex 62 of the OECD World Economic Outlook (data released a couple of weeks ago) shows us that Brown inherited debt of 50.6 percent which was fast falling and hit 47.4 percent (mid-98). It is 47.1 percent of GDP now. As his scorched earth policy gets underway, this debt will soar up to 49.5 percent next year. Let’s remember that Brown had 11 years of growth, which prudent governments use to pay off their debts. Denmark took debt from 60 percent to 22 percent over this period, Ireland from 54 percent to 28 percent. In Western Europe, only Germany and France join Britain in the ignominious club of countries that increased their debt during the boom years – and, of course, for these basket case economies there were no boom years.
3. Labour inherited rising inflation, which Brown had to bring down. Even by his own CPI measure, the inflationary dragon was slain in the early 1990s peaking at 8.5 percent in April 1991. By January 1997 it was 2.1 percent and by May 1997 it had fallen to 1.6 percent. This is what he inherited from Ken Clarke. And did I mention that CPI is now 3.8 percent? For more on inflation, our original Brownie, click here.
4. Three million jobs as a result of this Labour government. Or, to state it more accurately, as a result of this Labour government’s policy of paying 5 million Brits to stay on benefits and importing a new, cheap and dedicated workforce: the Statistics Commission tells us, 81 percent of the new jobs are filled by foreign workers. Brown also includes in this figure pensioners returning to work, and even then he rounds it up from 2.8 million. Strip out pensioners, immigrants and the public sector and there would – scandalously - be fewer people in work than in 1997.
Brown was right to say today’s CPI inflation of 3.8 percent is below the 4 percent CPI average for the Eurozone – but is that really a difference to boast about? The US inflation is measured differently (ie, urban areas only) so one cannot (honestly) make a comparison. But if Brown thinks the US’s 5 percent inflation is a horror story he just has a few months to wait before this nightmare hits Britain. Just in time for Christmas shopping. Remember: unemployment lags economic downturn. The economic nightmare has just started.
Previous
Water
July 16th, 2008 6:41pm Report this comment"Brown was right to say today’s CPI inflation of 3.8 percent is below the 4 percent CPI average for the Eurozone – but is that really a difference to boast about?" but considering some of the fiddling he has done in the past it seems very out of character, today is a word very much worth keeping in context, what happened no switch today?
anthony adams
July 16th, 2008 7:13pm Report this commentIs there a reason why the Opposition parties don't refer back to these Brownies at the next PMQs?
i.e. "Last time the PM said the UK has the second highest defence spending - could he explain how he calculated this?"
This could tie down the PM for the exaggerations and "misstatements" and might remind people that his statements are sometimes baloney..
Chris
July 16th, 2008 7:17pm Report this commentGermany and France "basket case economies? There's a bit of pot and kettle going on here. If this is just going to come down to you telling us that your fantasy world doesn't coincide with Brown's fantasy world it's not contributing much.
Hysteria
July 16th, 2008 7:25pm Report this comment"sometimes" baloney ...?
Water
July 16th, 2008 7:43pm Report this commentI'll be the third one to support that comment, baloney indeed.
Alex
July 16th, 2008 7:52pm Report this commentShouldn't the popular media and the opposition parties be bringing Brown to account for this sort of thing? COME ON!
David Cameron, George Osborne et al. - please will you do the honours at a future PMQs?
Anthony Adams
July 16th, 2008 8:11pm Report this commentWell yeah - sometimes - I guess I was trying to avoid having a whole load of Brown supporting blogpeople shout me down in a tsunami of bogus facts and figures.
I reckon the Opposition should coordinate their slots at PMQs to pick up Brown with two or three questions on the same "Brownie".
Even so - I have to say I've stopped listening to government ministers on the TV and radio - they just trot out the same old tired phrases and hark on about how "It's not as bad as it was in the early 90s"
If it was so bad then how come they still didn't win in 1992?
Lance Corporal Jock McJock
July 16th, 2008 8:28pm Report this commentAnthony Adams: If it was so bad then how come they still didn't win in 1992?
That would have been Neil Kinnock dear boy.....
Nicholas
July 16th, 2008 8:43pm Report this commentAnthony has a good point. Why doesn't Cameron dissect the Brownies with surgical precision by referring to the previous PMQs and asking difficult questions?
TrevorH
July 16th, 2008 10:08pm Report this comment"below the 4 percent CPI average for the Eurozone"
But even though the eurozone use the comparable CPA, I believe I read somewhere that the weightings given to the items in the 'basket' might be different.
There are indeed lies damned lies and statistics - and there are liars, damned liars and Gordon Brown
kinglear
July 16th, 2008 10:28pm Report this commentNicholas -= cos Brown doesn't answer the questions - he would just trot out another series of Brownies - to be asked abouit the next week and so on - which would suit him pretty well, methinks.
geoff
July 16th, 2008 10:35pm Report this commentI think the reason cameron doesnt go on them is they are not quite as bad as this article is making out. PPP adjustments are right, but its definitley not wrong not to make them. On any measure, debt is now well below what it was in 1997
We can sit here and believe these are all black and white facts, but they arent.
If Cameron tries to argue defence spending is down or debt is up he is on a hiding to nothing.
Brown keeps tempting him to talk about the past, but cameron has to stay as far away from it as possible.
I expect brown will get more outrageous over the coming months - anything to tempt cameron into a war of words about the major government record.
Water
July 16th, 2008 10:55pm Report this comment"I believe I read somewhere that the weightings given to the items in the 'basket' might be different" I think I may have read that as well and you're quite right the mass in the basket is fiddly, lies galore.
Silent Hunter
July 16th, 2008 11:26pm Report this commentPerhaps we need a new saying....
"There are Lies, Damn Lies and Brownies"
John
July 16th, 2008 11:48pm Report this comment"On any measure, debt is now well below what it was in 1997"
Evidence, please?
Watervole
July 17th, 2008 3:24am Report this commentThank you Fraser for the detail. I am fed up with having my intelligence insulted by the great ditherer-in-chief and today's PMQs was a particularly blatant catalogue of obfuscation and evasion.
His lies are now so extreme that the public cannot fail but observe them.
The economic nightmare is indeed upon us and I would not be surprised if things get so tough that our current verbal frustrations become rather more forcibly expressed.
Personally, I would get out the knitting needles and book a front row seat should the tumbrils role into Downing Street - unless of course, the Glasgow East by-election is the ultimate act of defenestration...
Pericles
July 17th, 2008 6:26am Report this commentThe Conservatives' lead in the polls is built upon very weak foundations. People want ZanuLabour out of power and are currently placing their faith in Cameron.
However the man has feet of clay, because he will not address the main issue, which is that of taking the UK out of the EU. That is the main wish of up to 70% of voters and Cameron will destroy his position as effectively as Brown has destroyed his, if vacillation and devious double talk are all that can be heard from the Conservatives. Cameron has only one chance and he will blow it, if more people join in my perception that he is just another mealy mouthed politician. Cameron will not be PM if he does not understand that continued membership of the EU is anathema. It's that straight forward. Cameron can yet grasp defeat out of victory.
CCTV
July 17th, 2008 6:40am Report this commentBritain has never fought ongoing wars with as low a proportion of GDP or manpower before....and the last Labour GOvernment had 380,000 soldiers
John
July 17th, 2008 8:27am Report this commentPericles, are you saying that the voters will prefer McGoon who has already sold us down the river - and has lied to us at every turn, and has destroyed our economy? Seems a little fantastical to me.
Matt
July 17th, 2008 10:08am Report this commentBrownies.
In a Brown Study.
In a Brown Funk.
We need a palace coup. Though the supine creatures in Nu-Liebore could only manage "Get rid of Brown? Coo!"
Chris Paul - Labour of Love
July 17th, 2008 6:12pm Report this commentThe opposition parties won't be too hard on any of this - and most of it is simply picking a favourable metric, which is valid presumably - because they are foreever doing it ... and worse. For example Osborne claiming about a year or so ago in the Manchester Evening News that Mancs would be £50 a week worse off under Labour tax arrangements than under his. Even £50 a year seemed a bit far-fetched at the time.
Dave, Wirral
July 17th, 2008 9:01pm Report this commentIt's amazing isn't it, the little toe-rag that is Brown claimed all the credit when the sun shone and the times where good yet the second a black cloud appears on the horizon, 12 years nearly since taking office, it is all the fault of the tories, or "the abroad" for causing problems.
It obviously has nothing to do with the incompetant waste of blood and organs that could be clearly better used elsewhere, that I have championed for years, that is the disgusting disgrace to humanity in the "human" form as James Gordon Brown.
Perish that thought.
The digusting wretch will try to blame everything under the sun in a pathetic attemt to try and save his own disgusting neck, but, I'm afraid sunny Jim, that the facts are laid bare and naked for all to see, and they are that you are an incompetant waste of space that nobody with more than two brain cells would urinate on if they where on fire.
Just call a general election and referendum that you claim is " not legally binding" and let us, the people, get rid of your corrupt shower of freeloading incompetant scumbags once and for all.
Never mind the opposition benches, once the public have had their say on this shower, they'll be reduced to nothing other than a throwback to the seventies and other communist relics that they are.
Goodbye and good riddance to this trotskyite BBC liberal left scum that is the Labour party today, that has NO place in the present twenty first century.
Goodby.
I won't shed a tear of despair but one of joy, as I see them crushed unto the dust !!!
Four Legs
July 17th, 2008 11:30pm Report this commentSorry Pericles but Pennywise the Grinning Clown is but the figurehead of a thoroughly despised party of liars and thieves. Even their core supporters are saying never again. Labour will get a drubbing come the next election, and yes it will be Labour that lost it and Cameron winning by default, but who cares? Getting shut of ZanuNL is a victory in of itself.
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