Quote, misquote

Bless. Dennis MacShane says Brown could not possibly be have used a false quote in his leadership speech. In his write-up of Brown’s speech for Comment Is Free, the ex-Europe minister has this to say:

Brown sought to take the battle to the Conservatives. Did George Osborne really say that in the midst of a financial crisis “it’s a function of financial markets that people make loads of money out of the misery of others”? Brown quoted the shadow chancellor, and a prime minister has to be hyper-accurate in what he says, so this extraordinary quote from Osborne should be more widely known.

Hyper-accuarte? MacShane should come by CoffeeHouse more often. For the record, Osborne’s real words were not only “widely known” but said on Newsnight last week. What he said was “Well look, no one takes pleasure from people making money out of the misery of others, but that is a function of capitalist markets” – ie stating a grim, but hardly controversial truth about the way debt markets work.