I’ve just been on the BBC1 Breakfast sofa doing the “Brown lies on spending” debate with Nick Watt of The Guardian. That they invited us on a mass audience programme to discuss statistical fibs is an indication of how badly all this is backfiring on Gordon Brown. This debate may have started in the blogosphere but it is spreading to the mainstream. Brown himself upped the ante during that BBC package yesterday, telling Nick Robinson “I always tell the truth,” and (to me) sounding uncannily like Bill Clinton saying “I did not have sexual relations with that woman”. People who tell the truth never say “I tell the truth”. They don’t have to. It’s never in question.
So I kicked off saying Brown’s claim to always tell the truth was, in fact, a lie. Not a word anyone uses lightly, but he says spending will rise after the general election when in fact it will fall.
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