Brown isn't paid to lie to us

A new Brownie was born today at 7am. Gordon Brown came on to BBC Breakfast this morning to tell presenter Sian Williams about how, as a family man himself, he sympathises with Ruth Kelly wanting to devote more time to her children. He didn’t expect to be grilled on his untrue claim that he has lowered the national debt. He repeated his Sky/Marr line: that debt had gone down from 44% to 37% of GDP. Williams told him this was untrue, and that the Office for National Statistics said so last week. She told him, rightly, that he arrived at his figure by subtracting Northern Rock – which he can’t wish away because he’s already sunk billions into it on the taxpayers’ behalf. Brown suggested it was daft to count in Northern Rock “No country does that,” he said. It was a Brownie I haven’t heard before. He denied the existence of any debt measurement which contains Northern Rock.