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.
Not only does it exist and have a name (RUTO) but it is used by, erm, HM Treasury as the official British debt measure. The ONS ruled that Northern Rock must go on the national accounts, for the fairly simple reason that the British taxpayer is liable for its debt. Since first reporting to CoffeeHousers on the subject I have got my mitts on the monthly figures. In May 1997, UK net debt was £351bn or 43.2%. In August 2008 it was £632bn and 43.3%. So Sian Williams was precisely right. And when Brown said “no country does that” he was misleading her and the country he is paid to be honest with.
I wish I could believe that Brown was just mistaken. But he is fibbing in order to mislead. I suspect some CoffeeHousers will get bored on these Brownies, and ask does it really matter about a tiny percentage figure. But it is important to note these Brownies to show we have a PM who knowingly and routinely misleads the people he is paid to be honest with. Tiny little lies. I doubt we’ll hear this one again, though – if he says it in the House of Commons he’d have to return and correct himself.
UPDATE: Okay, I’ll keep going with the Brownies. And I don’t call them “lies” because not all of them are. Saying “3m new jobs”, for example, is not a lie – its just that 2m of them are immigrants and the rest public sector workers and pensioners. In making out this figure is taking folk from welfare to work, it’s a Brownie. Another tiny point: strip out the £87bn of NR debt and the UK net debt figure would be 38.3% of GDP in 2008 Q2 – not 37% as he said to Sky/Marr/Sian.
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