Various half-truths, lies and myths about the deficit have been peddled by the Tories, the Liberal Democrats and their supporters in the press in recent months. Right-wing deficit hawks pretend that the deficit had already ballooned prior to the 2008 banking crash when, in fact, as Labour’s new shadow chancellor, Alan Johnson, pointed out in the House of Commons yesterday, this country entered the financial crisis with the second-lowest Budget deficit in the G7.
They also claim that the Blair and Brown governments spent excessively and unwisely in the run-up to the crash, omitting to mention that Messrs Cameron and Osborne backed Labour’s spending plans right up until November 2008. (See Jonathan Freedland’s excellent column in yesterday’s Guardian for further details and observations.)
But the biggest contradiction (lie?) at the heart of the Con-Dem spin strategy concerns their (mis)representation of the Labour Party position on deficit reduction.
In a round of interviews this morning, George Osborne claimed:
People keep saying, “Where’s your plan B?” I’ve got a plan A – this country didn’t have any plan at all a few months ago.
Yesterday, however, in his Spending Review in the Commons, he concluded:
I am pleased to tell the House it has been possible – and the average saving in departmental budgets will be lower than the previous government implied in its March Budget. Instead of cuts of 20 per cent there will be cuts of 19 per cent over four years.
So, let me get this straight. The Tories have been saying for months that Labour left the country in a mess, without a deficit reduction plan, that Labour frontbenchers are “deficit deniers”, blah, blah, but then, yesterday, Osborne suddenly claims that Labour had planned for 20 per cuts in departmental spending and his 19 per cent cuts were therefore lower than those. But then, this morning, he reverts to form and starts droning on about the alleged absence of a deficit reduction plan until, God bless them, the Con-Dem coalition came to office in May.
This is as absurd as it is dishonest. They cannot claim, on the one hand, that they are making these draconian, swingeing and severe cuts because Labour didn’t have the balls or the brains to do so, but then, on the other, claim that Labour’s cuts would have been worse than theirs.
UPDATE
You can watch me debating the Spending Review with the Tory blogger Iain Dale and the Chatham House economist Vanessa Rossi on al-Jazeera’s Inside Edition here.
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