Interviewing Gordon Brown is a horrible job. He normally regards interviews as speeches with occasional interruptions, and typically he reverts to his lines while his PR man calls up after to say ‘what Gordon meant to say was…’. Yet Sky News team squeezed a fairly decent amount out of Brown in their inteview broadcast at 8pm last night. Plus a new crop of Brownies. Some were slips (‘Fannie Mac’ etc) but the below were, we should believe, deliberate – and should not pass without comment:
1) “In 1997 we came in and… the debt of the United Kingdom was 44% 45% of national income, we cut that and it is now about, I think the figure yesterday was 37% so that is a major cut in debt.” This is – how you say? – untrue. HM Treasury says net debt was 41.3% in 1997-98 Yesterday the ONS said net debt was 43.3% (report here, ONS here) and no you can’t wish away Northern Rock. What strikes me is the straight poker face with which Brown delivers his made-up figures.
2) “Q: Prime Minister – why are you doing so badly in the polls? A: Because we’ve got an economic downturn” This is significant – it wasn’t just evasion. I hear from several people who speak to Brown privately that he genuinely believes this.
3) “We have the lowest levels of debt of any of the major countries.” Really? The Maastricht-definition debt (ie, standardised) collated by the OECD puts Britain’s debt/GDP ratio at 47% for this year. Netherlands (43%) Socialist Sweden (35%), Finland (34%) Spain (34%) Ireland (28%). Outside Europe: Canada (22%) Australia (6.7% surplus).
4) “It is right to support the economy in a period when the economy is affected by these world factors. It’s right to maintain our public services and to maintain our public investment and anybody who says the opposite would be condemning us to higher unemployment” Significant, as this is one of his attack lines for the Tories. ie: Brown refuses to rein in spending, debt balloons, Tories call for spending restraint. Brown replies: ‘you heartless Tories are condemning people to higher unemployment’.
5) “The last time we had a world down turn, interest rates were 15%, in fact they went up to 18%. Interest rates are 5%…. So compare the 1990’s with now – 15% interest rates, 5% interest rates, that’s the difference.” Our little magician is using two Brownies here: one is the “nominal terms” one where he ignores inflation. Real terms interest rates are comparable now and then – I’ll get the figures later. The second Brownie is the ‘false proxy’ where he uses Bank of England rate as “interest rates”. For most people, “interest rates” are what the can actually borrow at – way over the BoE base rate.
6) “What I criticise people for [is] irresponsible taking of risks in situations where they thought that nothing could go wrong” – like a Chancellor who ramped up debt because he thought he’d abolished boom and bust?
CoffeeHousers may ask ‘why didn’t the interviewers pick him up on the Brownies’ – but to paraphrase LBJ, arguing with Brown about statistics is a lot like pissing down your own leg – it seems hot to you, but to no one else. Sky will have taken enough of a hit on viewers screening one hour of Brown interview at 8pm on a Friday night. Start bickering about stats and you’d decimate what audience remained. Jeff Randal picked him up on several (GB: ‘there are more people in work than 1997’ ‘JR: ‘That’s because there are more people’) but it was rightly cut from the edited version (full transcript here).
His modus operandi continues to be presenting fake figures to a public who stopped listening months ago. But consider this: if the City firms who he’s now lambasting were to use such fake figures in a document regulated by the London Stock Exchange, it would be a criminal offence. Brown’s game – debt concealment, tweaking definitions, rule bending – shows that the practises we’ve seen in Wall St and the City are being perpetuated in government. And there will be a price to pay.
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