Another Word About Michael Gove

My admiration for the man has, if anything, risen even further after his dignified apology to the House of Commons in a personal statement he made in the past few minutes.

Of course it's a cause for concern that 25 schools were left with the impression they were going to enjoy the post-Labour luxury of refurbishment, at massive cost to the taxpayer, through the astonishingly inefficient Balls Future Schools policy, but after his sincere apology about the inaccuracy of the lists released on Monday, which is ultimately a Civil Service issue for which the education minister is properly taking ministerial responsibility - Labourists take note - Gove's reputation remains intact, if not enhanced.

Compare and contrast the reputations of the screaming Labour benches with their fake anger, wallowing in the deepest of hypocrisy. Compare their behaviour and reach the only conclusion possible: not only are they not fit for government, after the hideous unpleasantness of Tom Watson MP, for example (shrieking baseless accusations and vicious insults directly at Gove), a fair proportion of them aren't fit to be Members of Parliament. That will be crystal clear to any sane person watching the exchanges.

There is one other point that's emerged from this latest parliamentary spat and it concerns Bercow. He seems to think the being "Speaker" means he has to speak all the time. He appears to imagine that not only must he intervene to keep order, he must pass judgment on every point made, especially on the Tory side. He apparently considers his condescending, smug, self-publicising manner is appropriate for the great office of state he's attempting, and failing, to fill. I've seen this odious man in action long enough now to know that he's little more than a catspaw for Labour, no doubt to please his wife. He's got to go before he does any more damage to the proper business of parliament and the reputation of the House of Commons. He's that bad.

So, this procedural storm in a teacup, predictably stirred-up by the malignant, mendacious opposition and, one has to say after his questionable interventions and rulings today, by their tame placeman in the Speaker's chair, Bercow, will soon blow over. But the debris left in its wake will not represent obstacles to Gove's or the coalition's programme of righting Labour wrongs and getting their disastrous, spiralling deficit under control. Far from it. Gove's statement has re-established the principle of ministerial responsibility (I have no doubt he offered his resignation to David Cameron, judging by the depth and sincerity of his apology on behalf of his department) after all those years of abuse by the previous Labour regime. It has also revealed the pettiness and revisionism of a contemptible Labour contingent unable to take any responsibility whatsoever for their role in causing the worst crisis in British public finances for, to quote one of their number, sixty years.

Perhaps that's what Gove was doing: smoking out the dishonest, discredited cabal of ex-ministers and their sweaty-toothed left wing comrades on the backbenches with sincerity. It's possible - he's that clever. However, I prefer to think that he was just doing what he thinks is right - owning-up, taking responsibility and apologising for the error. Insodoing he has left no one in any doubt as to his good faith and decency, and cast massive ones over a large swathe of Labour party members'.

"Good faith and decency"? Thy name is not the oily, weasily Bercow, and certainly not the scrofulous Tom Watson. Thy name is Michael Gove.

A Word About Michael Gove

Education is an area that interests me intensely so it might not be surprising that I'm spending the early evening watching the education funding statement on the parliament channel at this very moment (exciting, eh?).

Suffice to say, and in the spirit of his refreshing brevity and precision, Michael Gove is giving one of the more polished parliamentary performances I've seen in defending his policy of suspending Ed Balls' pie-in-the-sky, dishonest pre-election plans for building and refurbishing 700 schools. A number of facts are emerging thanks to Gove's extraordinary mastery of the detail, not least among them the bureaucratic waste, vast inefficiency and dreadful mismanagement of PFI contracts by Ed Balls and the department he apparently headed (even though he seemed far more busy most of the time trying in his role as Gordon Brown's barely house trained thug, propping up the auld fraud and protecting him almost 24/7 from his own cabinet, a full time job in itself).

Gove's handling of the various whining Labour opposition MPs, moaning about things that their own pathetic leadership brought down on them, is just breathtakingly good. The more insulting and detached from reality they become, the more witty and precise his answers become and, in a spiral that can only ever tarnish the grim image of the socialists further, causes the Labour MPs to become even more insulting and detached from reality.

The reason for this is simple: the principles underpinning Gove's policy initiatives, even ones that amount to large but necessary cuts in the education budget at a time, thanks to the disastrous failures of the previous government, of great insecurity in the public finances, are bullet proof. Better value for money, less bureaucracy and higher standards through greater choice are on offer. And you would bet your house that Gove is the sort of man who will deliver.

All poor old Balls, the biggest villain of this piece, can do meanwhile is moan about the list of affected schools not being available in the Commons library for a handful of minutes. That really is the best he can do - and it's not very good, is it? I think I can predict Gove's response: "Ball, E: must do better, but on the strength of past performances probably won't. D-".

Gove is a truly impressive figure - everyone knows that. But when he's up against the likes of feeble Balls and his ilk on the opposition benches, he looks like a world beater. Cameron beware!

Oh dear. And Balls is still moaning away - this time about his money fiddling of that dodgy Islamic faith school some aeons ago. Labourists - you've gotta love 'em (sort of). They are totally clueless. It's a wonder to me they remember to breathe.

For them to be whinging about pre-announced policies is just priceless!

Flash Gordon II

Guido has the lowdown on the latest sighting of the Brown Pimpernel. Apparently, like Flash Harry from the St Trinians films, he's taken to wearing a trilby hat low over his eyes and a long coat that makes him look like he's gliding along without any sign of leg movement, slithering from Important Rich Luminary to Important Rich Luminary, touting for a bit of trade. "Inconspicuous" is the watchword.

After some excitement this morning that Gordon Brown might actually be in town to represent his constituents the truth unravels. While he may have put a fleeting five minutes in the chamber, (making the number of days he as been in two out of a possible forty-nine,) King of the Lobby Gary Gibbon has; what he was really down here for. A meeting with a Kennedy, a chat with Sir Tim Berners-Lee about his future employability and a natter with his old cabinet allies.

So it seems the great Brownian contempt for his own constituents, the public purse that provides his unearned salary and his abject lack of contrition for - or even interest in - his role in the debt disaster now confronting Britain thanks to him will just go on and on and on. Until someone in government has the guts to put a stop to it, preferably with legislation on the conduct of sitting MPs.

People should be a lot more angry about this than the painful budget Brown has brought down on our heads thanks to that sponging loser's economic incompetence and political desperation.

As much as it was a Coalition budget, this was Brown's budget. The Tories were right: let no one forget that. Oh, and if we are expected to make sacrifices for the sake of the future security of the nation's finances, then might I suggest that everyone should be forced to pull his or her weight. We're all in this together, after all.

Flash Gordon, that ex-wrecker and now dodgy shirker, would be a top target for me for the chop. Why should I be paying for him not to do his job? Cameron can lead by example, but he can also make them - preferably of the predecessor who is so frightened of facing the music to the extent that he is effectively now on the run.

It's time Brown's past caught up with him.

Not NICE Again!

Swansea city centre last Friday night. NICE!

Another one of these pejorative, interventionist (socialist) medical reports has just been released by one of the UK's many health scare professional quangos, this time calling for enforced national temperance. I have several bones to pick not just with this particular, latest piece of medical meddling in people's lives, but with these kinds of moralising "experts" and this sort of lifestyle intervention nonsense period. They seem to think that if something "costs the NHS" x-billions of pounds, they have the right to launch into moral crusade mode, as if the NHS is some sort of precious thing with a life of its own that must be protected as an institution over and above the people who pay a fortune for it and whom it is bloody well meant to serve, doubleplusungood lifestyle or not. These are the same clowns who helped give us the pub smoking ban, with no discernible impact on smoking rates anywhere seen so far as a result of it, but the destruction of the entire pub industry imminent thanks directly to it. Hewitt's and Labour's masterpiece.

I'm not going to rant too much about this latest here - haven't got the time this morning - but I will say two further things. NICE is the same quango that regularly fails to take on big pharmaceutical corporations to get the price of, for example, life saving cancer drugs down so they are affordable. Instead it simply rations them, but never objects when the NHS iniquitously refuses further free treatment to patients who opt to buy the drugs for thousands of pounds privately. Why does NICE behave like this? Well, I was unsurprised to find out from Private Eye not that long ago (no links, sorry) that a suspicious number of "experts" who work for NICE also have strong connections with big Pharma. Surprise surprise. So it is hardly surprising that I do not trust them when they start pontificating about how people should live their lives. Sure, drink related illnesses kill 10,000 people a year (so they say). But you know what? About 500,000 people died last year, many after prolonged periods of treatment for things like heart disease and cancer and most of those diseases were the product of old age rather than any specific, chronic lifestyle problem.

Of the 500,000 dead, most were over the age of 75 (some 66% of all deaths for 2009, says the ONS). So the real "problem" for the NHS is that better diets, hygiene, sanitation, inoculation, peace, affluence, antibiotics and yes, medical technology, means that Britain's annual death rate is plummeting. And that means the NHS is having to cope with tens of thousands more elderly and infirm bods each year - and guess what, it can't. But it can't talk about that so it allows one of its quangos to go into displacement activity overdrive by talking about binge drinking which, let's face it, is far more a social ("Broken Britain") issue than it is a health issue. Ask anyone who lives in any town centre anywhere in the UK.

That's the general point. The second point is that while there are lots of good reasons to encourage people to live healthier lifestyles, especially if they are drinking too much, smoking, not getting enough exercise and/or taking drugs, you have to give them a reason why. Attempting to force people to drink less by hammering them in the pocket and saying that a) it's for their own good, and b) it's for the good of the NHS (as if some patients are somehow more 'deserving' than others) has never worked, won't work today and will never work in the future. All it will do is hammer the poorest and those millions in Labour heartlands up and down the country living on benefits while annoying the hell out of the middle classes who have done nothing wrong generally speaking (although NICE or that moron Liam Donaldson will doubtless come up with another spurious, anecdotal study on middle class binging), but who will be forced to stump up another chunk of money to fund the biggest bottomless pit the world has ever seen - the NHS.

But that's what this is really all about, isn't it? The National-bloody-Health Service. Well, at least Andrew Lansley, the new health minister, has seen some sort of sense.

"Regarding Nice's recommendations... it is not clear that the research examines specifically the regressive effect on low income families, or proves conclusively that it is the best way to impact price in order to impact demand."

He went on: "The root causes of social problems lie not just in Government policies - although 24-hour drinking legislation has severely undermined clinician and police efforts to get to grips with this problem - but in social norms and peer influence.

"We must work across Government, society, communities and families to challenge negative social norms and promote the positives."

Between the sociology-speak lines, this is more or less a comprehensive rubbishing of the report and a libertarian reading of the causes of the binge culture. A cause for hope, then, if not for celebration. We finally have a health minister with a brain. Next thing he can do is use that brain again to save his department, and us, about, oh, potentially £70 million in 2011 by abolishing Labour's drug-rationing, talkative, 1999 brainchild altogether.

the Institute [has grown since 1999] from an organisation with no staff, premises, or bank account and a nominal budget of £8.5 million a year, to a body now employing over 270 people, with offices in London and Manchester, and an annual budget of £35 million which is set to more than double over the next few years.

...said one of its talking heads last year. Well, there's been an election since then and there will be no need for a shadow, unelected Department of Health, inventing work for itself and expanding its remit daily, from now on thanks all the same. Abolition should be imminent. Well, you decide. Here's its website. It looks suspiciously like another Department of Health to me. So, and I say this with unabashed relish, this report should be that particular expensive quango's swan song.

'NICE' to have known you as they say.

The World Wants Britain To Vote Tory

Read this and weep, Labour wreckers.

The world expects a rational conclusion to the British general election, and that means kicking out this Labour government. Only idiots and socialists would fail to do that simple thing, and let the entire world down as a consequence. But idiots and socialists - they're one in the same thing, aren't they? They refuse to "get it".

"Don't let them [the British idiots and socialists] ruin Britain again," is the clear message from the rest of planet earth.

The only way forward for Britain, and the only way the international community will listen to Britain again (rather than being lectured to by an arrogant, unrepresentative weirdo like Brown), is by meeting their expectations by voting the arrogant fool out. Forever.

We absolutely musn't disappoint the world.

Budget Bluster

What a load of laughable lightweight rhetoric. "I believe that government can make a difference," whimpers Darling. Yes, mate. But not this one. Not your bust government.

The whole tone of the thing makes me think that he's decided to vote Tory himself, actually (on the sly), because then, in his confused mind, at least he could guarantee the "big changes" he thinks we so desperately need - without Gordon there to wreck them, that is. Well, at least that's two things we can agree on then: the need for big changes and the necessity to vote Conservative to get them.

Peter Hoskin was a little less (a very little less) scathing about this pre-budget manure. He also thinks it's a signal that Darling's nicked another Tory policy and is going to cut business tax. I doubt it will be handled competently even if he does, however, given this nightmare government's record when it comes to the private, productive heart of the British economy. What's more, you can guarantee that it will be paid for not with vital cuts in government debt and overspending, but with tax hikes everywhere. Prepare to become a lot poorer after tomorrow, everyone.

Epic, unravelling fail, 24 hours before it's even happened.

Indefensible

HMS QE: casualty of Labour incompetence

Iain Dale had the story earlier this evening, but now that it has been confirmed on the Channel 4 news website, one can only say that this is the most extraordinarily shocking news yet about this wicked government's handling of a financial and economic disaster largely of its own making. Defence is to face Labour cuts of beyond 16% at a time when Britain is at war. On a day when Brown announced at the Copenhagen junket he was happy to waste a whopping (and borrowed) £1.5Bn of British taxpayers' money on other countries' infrastructure, we discover, via some sort of leak to a journalist, that billions are to be stripped out of the defence budget, including, potentially, the cancellation of two major capital projects (the two supercarriers and the A400 transport aircraft). Why? Well, on the face of it as a seriously belated reaction to the MoD's huge procurement mismanagement and overspend during Labour's disastrous period in office, but in reality because Labour cynically imagines that defence is not a priority for them because it does not appeal to its core vote or clientele. Perhaps that's why there was no mention of it in the PBR, another bit of brazen dishonesty beneath contempt on the part of Brown and his ventriloquist's dummy, Darling.

Meanwhile, our troops continue bravely to struggle through in Afghanistan, undermanned, underequipped and under-represented in Westminster. If you have found it difficult to contemplate the depth of the cynicism of this regime up to this point, this latest betrayal of our armed forces, already cut to the bone after 13 years of Labour hell, should leave no further room for doubt: the only thing they care about is saving their own skin. And that is indefensible.

My God, this stupifyingly duplicitous bunch of dangerous political whores calling itself a 'government' needs to be wiped out at the general election, or else they will truly annihilate Britain. They should be hammered into the dust, if not for these devastating cuts, for which there might have been an argument had they been but one component of a coherent, across-the-board emergency plan for tackling Labour's (and consequently our) deficit and debt crises, then for the abject dishonesty which this latest scandal once more exposes. This Labour government can't be straight with anyone, because it is, as a body of people, starting with its unelected liar-in-chief, Brown, a total stranger to the truth. It's habitual and they should be made to pay for that habit by being annihilated themselves - at the ballot box.

Wake-Up Call: "The Pound Never Stops Where You Want It To"

It's marginally gratifying to hear the odd expert voice in the forlorn darkness of Labour's Keynesian nightmare warning the people of Britain to wake-up and get real about the true, truly terrifying cost of Brown's bust and consequent economic crisis, or risk going down without a fight.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, who is, I still believe, one of the many MSM fans of hairbrained Brownomics, filed this report for today's Telegraph on a timely speech made by former FSA boss Sir Howard Davis to the clients of one of Britain's two remaining solvent banks.

...Britain faces a dangerous rise in the levels of public debt – even taking into account tax increases planned for coming years [according to Sir Howard].

"The next six months are going to be extremely delicate in the UK", he told a gathering of HSBC clients in London. "It is very clear that something dramatic has to happen to control spending: but is the economy robust enough to survive fiscal tightening?"

The Government is already running out of weapons to fight the crisis. While the fall in the pound has helped boost exports and proved benign so far, Sir Howard said that past experience handling sterling crises had taught him that the matters can turn ugly fast once confidence is lost. "The pound never stops where you want it to," he said.

What is disturbing is that the British people seem unwilling to face minimal belt-tightening. Even professors in higher education are balloting to strike, demanding a continuation of boom-time pay raises. "You have the best minds in the country planning to go on strike for 8pc. People are miles away from understanding what is needed."

Polling data shows that 48pc of the public are against any spending cuts and only 20pc see the need for retrenchment. Britons appear to assume that the "fantastic growth in public spending" over the last decade has become an entitlement.

Sir Howard said the reality is that the Government has so far come clean on just half of the fiscal consolidation necessary over the next five years merely in order to stabilize debt. By 2014 we will be among the Big Four of global profligates. "It is not a great club to be in," he said.

Oh, I don't know. Brown doesn't seem to mind what club he belongs to, so long as he's in it. Trouble is right now, he joins and we all join.

It's the currency, stupid, which is in slowmotion freefall because of the levels of borrowing and spending, stupider, which itself will lead to years of stagnation and economic and social decay, stupidest.

Stick that in your Brownite pipe and smoke it, Blanchflower.

Anyhoo, while he gets on with that, the rest of us should just ignore the moronic Labourist politicians, ultra-useless leftwing economists and their tame, pet journalists and bloody well wake up!

Portillo Doesn't Really Get It - We've Moved On From Brown

Just been listening to Michael Portillo arguing on This Week that it's in Brown's political interest to 'sort out' the public finances immediately because Cameron's 'inexperience' will somehow then tell against him and Brown's 12 years in office (his 'strength') will suddenly, somehow win him support. This misses a lot of elephants in the proverbial room. For one thing, it is not only the electorate that seems to have collectively moved on from Brown, as even former Brownite, spendaholic economics guru, Anatole Kaletsky, has now acknowledged in the Times, the wider media has too.

Added to this is the fact that there is precisely no evidence to support the idea that Brown accepts the cuts argument anyway, let alone has a firm agenda set for spending controls. He is psychologically, stubbornly opposed to the non-expansionist narrative. His reluctance to admit his errors (and lies) over public spending is testament to this. He has not promised cuts in the way his Chancellor (sort-of) has, he has merely given vague, generalised assurances about efficiency savings and the abandonment of 'unnecessary' and/or 'wasteful' departmental projects - in much the same way as he did in 2005 when he told the same lies to cut the ground from under Michael Howard's feet over the latter's modest proposals, explained in his brilliant manifesto, for an efficiency drive. The idea of genuine reductions in government spending, and bringing the deficit and debt under control, are anathema to Brown. He might have been bounced into using the 'c' word by his own party, but he did so reluctantly and he did it disingenuously. He hasn't changed - and he hasn't really changed his tune.

In fact, I think Portillo knows this and he was actually seeking to make a clever if implicit, disguised point about how boxed in Brown has become, as is always the way with someone who has a genuine problem facing up to reality. The reality is that the electorate have had enough of him, in every possible way. The reality is that he can't immediately start setting the agenda for real public spending cuts because he'll be straying straight into the unmarked political minefield that is Tory economic territory: sound money and the small state. In other words, he won't because he can't. Whether he knows this or not is quite another matter. I think evidence suggests not. That's what the public suspects, too - and that's why he (and Balls with his sudden, bizarre, £2Bn assault on his own department), and Labour generally, have no credibility in this key policy area. Unlike 2005, when debt-fuelled growth and Brown's property bubble were reaching their peak, in 2009 no one's buying the Brownite lies and spin any more. A crash, Gordon, is a crash and the leaders in charge at the time of that crash and the recession that follows will be forced to take responsibility for it - especially if they are responsible for it!

For this and a whole host of other reasons, Brown-Labour has completely lost the argument on public finance.

Add to this the view that, as is clear now from a succession of polls, in the minds of millions of Britons, Brown caused not only the debt crisis but the crash itself and the rampant recession that followed, and there is more than enough evidence to suggest that Labour under Brown is facing total wipeout, assuming David Cameron's Tories don't make cannibalism and the culling of all six week-old puppies owned by small children firm manifesto pledges. Labour's only hope of avoiding this fate is to oust Brown - and November looks like the month. Last chance. Don't they get that?

Regardless of them, we really have moved on - and there are signs the mainstream media is beginning to sense that. Slow on the uptake, aren't they?

But not as slow, it seems, as the Labour party.

The Desirable Cut

This Gerald Scarfe cartoon from the Sunday Times is typically brutal - and honest.

The Emergent Osborne

Critical though I have been, almost constantly, of George Osborne since I began to write this stuff, I am happy to admit that all recent evidence points to the fact that I was, in truth, wrong about him. My lack of faith in his ability to engage with the zeitgeist, judge the political temperature and seize the moment was thoroughly weak-willed, it seems. Oh fickle me.

Yesterday was good (today will be better). Osborne railroaded Brown and trainwrecked Mandelson with the devastating timing of that leaked treasury document - and many excellent anti-Brown bloggers explained just how (I didn't). Today he's going for Labour's jugular, according to the DT's chief Conservative party news conduit, Benedict Brogan. Now that he's trumped Labour on the argument, he's going to stick it to them on policy. Public spending and debt levels are a national emergency, he will say, and that calls for an emergency budget. Excellent.

The last time the Conservatives returned to power with an emergency budget, there were no surprises. The Economist declared, "It's what you voted for", while the Daily Mirror said, "No one who voted Conservative can complain". It was 1979 and Margaret Thatcher had prepared the groundwork with a manifesto that addressed directly the twin challenges of the day: "Any future government which sets out honestly to reduce inflation and taxation will have to make substantial economies, and there should be no doubt about our intention to do so."

George Osborne is aiming to do the same again. By the time you and I vote, he hopes to have made it plain as a pikestaff that he intends to introduce sweeping measures to get the public finances back within reach of reason. It may not all be done in that first "emergency" Budget he plans to present within weeks if the Tories are returned, but he will go fast and furious, I'm told. The window of opportunity for doling out the bad medicine is narrow.

Quite what he tells us between now and polling day is another matter. He is weighing up calls for candour against the risk of showing a hand that can be trumped by a desperate Labour Party. He is aware of the need to prove there is more substance to his programme than making MPs pay more for their Commons salad, but is mulling the "how much is too much" dilemma. His conference speech in three weeks' time needs to impress the City with its maturity. He knows he should display the soberness of Geoffrey Howe rather than the showmanship of Derren Brown. It must be the address of a chancellor, and not of his shadow.

Yesterday, though, Mr Osborne was still demonstrating his knack for political coups. He released a leaked document that reveals the Government is assuming spending cuts worth 9.3 per cent between 2011 and 2014. This breach of confidence has had a devastating impact inside the Treasury. Labour exploited leaks in opposition, and is being undone by them now. This one has turned Gordon Brown's retreat from "Tory cuts v Labour investment" into a rout. To have shifted the ground of the political debate while in opposition is some feat. How far have we come if a shadow chancellor can accuse the Prime Minister of lying without provoking even a murmur of outrage?

What to cut is the new frontline in a war of attrition between the parties. But now comes the hard part. The Conservatives are committed to closing the deficit more quickly than Labour, which leaves the shadow chancellor having to explain how much greater than 9.3 per cent his spending cuts will be. As Ronald Reagan said in his first inaugural address: "All of us, together, in and out of government must bear the burden."

But do we even understand what reducing debt and reforming the public sector might mean? Glib talk of axed programmes, redundant civil servants and slashed benefits takes little account of the difficulties the politicians implementing such cuts will face. Vital? Yes. Do-able? Of course. But easy? No, and yet Mr Cameron and his shadow chancellor are being egged on as if restoring us to fiscal health is as easy as 1, 2, 3.

The Conservatives face four obstacles that cannot simply be wished away, the first of which is the public sector unions. Mr Cameron may be trying to seduce Brendan Barber, the TUC's general secretary, but the noises from its conference suggest no takers among the brothers for his olive branch. He is right to highlight the regiments of public sector employees who, like him, believe more can be done for less. But three in five workers in the public sector are unionised, and the BMA can be just as reactionary when it comes to protecting the largesse lavished on its members by Labour.

Then there is the Civil Service. Senior officials are desperate to be rid of this Government – yet, over time, Whitehall has developed its own addiction to unlimited money, coupled with an aversion to risk. A generation of mandarins has grown up fearful of delivering hard truths face to face, and of challenging poor performance. As a result, what a private company would find straightforward – the removal of failure – in Whitehall has become complicated and mired in treacle. Teaching civil servants to address poor performance with the same kind of brusque efficiency that obtains in the private sector must be part of the next government's programme of reform.

Mr Cameron, in his pronouncements so far, not least his promise to go to war with the educational establishment, shows all the signs of a politician who is not afraid to suffer the scars on his back that Tony Blair so famously complained of.

Which brings me to my next obstacle: the politicians themselves. Whitehall is gripped by short-termism, yet in a world dominated by the targets culture introduced by Labour, is this any surprise? When ministers themselves prioritise short-term results that can be ready for the Six O'Clock News or the autumn conference, how can the Civil Service hold out for the long view? Take the permanent secretary I know who was asked by Gordon Brown to deliver a 5 per cent real terms cut in his departmental budget (long before the Prime Minister was prepared to admit such a thing), only to have his ministers – all cronies of Mr Brown – veto every suggestion for shedding jobs, for fear of alienating the militants in the PCS union.

It's not just a Labour problem. Last week, Michael Fallon argued cogently in The Daily Telegraph that the shadow cabinet does not have the faintest idea of the commitment needed to cut public spending, and is still racking up spending pledges rather than offering savings.

And then there's us, and by that I mean the political and media classes of which I am a part. Are we truly ready for reform? What will we make of the grind of austerity, of the complaints from angry constituents and furious readers who have lost a hospital or a surgery, or seen their children refused a university place?

Mr Cameron proposes a long-term project of restraint and reform, but will face resistance, not just from the machine in the centre, or from the demoralised manager of a Leeds benefits office baulking at making a 10 per cent headcount reduction, but from top to bottom, an accretion of human resistance, born of short attention spans, lack of imagination, special pleading, and the siren calls of an economic recovery. How easy will it be for a Cameron government to argue austerity, when others are emerging into the sunlight and thinking: "It's over, why bother?"

Still, I remain an optimist. The public gets the need for "more for less". It's what they have always done, in the kitchen, with the home finances, and in running their small businesses. With the right leadership they can be persuaded to support a national endeavour to spend less and run things better. But it will require candour from government. In 1979, Mrs Thatcher was returned with a majority of 44, not a landslide. Her side wavered and came close to throwing her out when things got tough, until a gamble in the Falklands rescued her. We should not make the next government's job any more difficult by pretending that what lies ahead will be easy.

Great writing, especially the concerns - all of which I share. But once Labour get theirs and are kicked out of power - preferably forever - Osborne and Cameron will be given a free rein, and they'll bloody well need it to overcome those obstacles to which Brogan so eloquently refers. If they are honest with the people from the beginning, then they will. They must be honest.

It's all about faith, you see - the faith I didn't have in Osborne/Cameron initially but am rapidly discovering I now have. From faith comes a mandate; from a mandate comes leadership and strong government. None of these things has Brown ever enjoyed or deserved or, indeed, sought. And that's why he is doomed. The sooner he goes, the better for everyone.

So I say to the inheritor, Osborne: well done! But you must stick to your guns in order to rescue the country from the terrifying, deep, black hole that Brown, thanks to his catastrophic incompetence, mismanagement and world-beating, unbalanced arrogance, has dug for us.

Tories: over to you, then. You've won the argument.

Don't blow it.

Turning Up The Heat

Con Home has hit back at Brown's (fake) U-turn on cuts already. Powerful stuff!



Hattip to Guido, BOM, et al.

Jackie Ashley Comments

I just thought I'd take the opportunity to make a quick note of some of the more entertaining responses to Jackie Ashley's fresh assault on the Conservative government in yesterday's Grauniad. "The what?" The Conservative government. No, not the last one, for that one has gone and can be trashed no more. She speaks of the Conservative government that is to come (she's convinced it's coming then).

This left wing ("leftwing" as the Graun hacks prefer to use, pathetically copying the US media) seer seems to think the the next Tory government will be some sort of dystopic nightmare, a la Nineteen Eighty-Four or Darkness At Noon. You know, just like the last one wasn't and just like this Labour government has more-or-less been. Curious.

To be honest, I'm not especially interested in what this silly cow has to say for herself. She (and her husband) are the journalistic equivalent of soggy toilet tissue as far as I'm concerned. But some of the comments 'below the line' - some from people whom I know have absolutely no love for the Tories - are quite refreshing and, in fact, far more interesting than the original, basically dishonest bit of lefty propaganda penned by the other half of the Marrs show. If you really want to read it then you can find it on the Graun website. I wouldn't recommend it, unless you're very bored, so I haven't bothered to link to it.

A few of the comments...

1. "stevehill":

What are they supposed to do? They're history and they know it.

They can't uninvade the Middle East. They can't credibly repeal reams of legislation like 4,000 new criminal offences and manic control-freak surveillance without looking stupid. They've been well and truly rumbled on the fact that their "investment" in better public services has been at the price of mortgaging my childrens' futures, and probably their children too, while they've studiously ignored the hard questions like public sector pensions.

I'd like to say "the left" faces being out of office for a generation, possibly for ever. But let's be honest, "the left" has already been out of office since 1979. It is not only an ex-parrot, the species is extinct.

The Guardian kindly provides a forum for a few nostalgic old relics to muse and dream about what might have been.

2. "CybilWrights"

Cloud cuckoo land.

a big expansion in further education, F.E has been all but privatised under Labour and the workforce demoralised by new and onerous contracts.

public investment in transport Oh yeah? Where? Most weekends you can't get a train anywhere because they've all been cancelled.

success in containing terrorism The worst terrorist atrocity - the London bombings - took place because of and following Labour's wars of aggression - they caused this terrorism.

You need a reality check, Ms Ashley. I've never voted Tory and probably never will, but I'd rather have them than this bunch of authoritarian, spendthrift, high-taxing, freedom-hating, war-mongering, expense-fiddling liars.

3. "EvilTory"

More scaremongering about a possible Tory government, Jackie?

This country needs a bonfire of its quangos; indeed one could go so far as to say that every single one should be closed down, its senior management and directors banned for life from public office, and their responsibilities passed on to elected MPs and mayors and councillors. Who, let's face it, could hardly do a worse job than the tens of thousands of petty paperpushers we are stuck with now. And that's before the enormous duplication and the total lack of accountability that quangos embody.

That you support such organisations is not surprising; you are after all a 'big government' social democrat judging from your writings. Personally I think government is by and large the problem, not the solution, but I suppose we can disagree on that.

However I do have to ask you, do you honestly believe that an incoming Tory government can be worse than the current one? Could waste more of our money? Fail to replace more of our power stations? Send more of our troops into battle inadequately supplied and equipped?

Cameron has his faults, but he's not Hitler, and he'd pretty much have to be to outdo brown in the civil liberties destruction stakes. Or don't they count either?

Yes, a Tory government will do things people on the centre left and left will hate. Tough. We've had to put up with the current bastards for more than a decade. At least a Tory government will be moderately fair and reasonably competent.

Who knows, maybe a Tory government will do something really liberal, such as scrap ID cards and ASBOs. Or perhaps junk the entire government funding for multiculturalism that has fucked up race relations in this country for forty years and more. Seeing Trevor Phillips and his whole cretinous and racist organisation on the dole would certainly make me happier than seeing another battalion of soldiers come home to P45s.

Sorry jackie, but I can't agree with this article; Labour have done far more harm than the minimal good they have achieved. Why don't all you Labour supporters vote libdem instead? They can't be worse, and will likely be much better, than your current loyalty.

4. "1nn1t"

I'll start the list of what's not going so well:

Social Services - broken
Lots of new graduates - no jobs
Banks - broken
Housing - unaffordable
Army - inadequately equipped
Immigration Controls - broken
Unemployment - lots, and rising
Power cuts - due soon
Prisons - full, and getting fuller
Railways - trains only run on Sundays if someone feels like driving one
University Science Departments - fewer than ever
Pubs - illegal to sing in them
Smoking ban - closing pubs
Teenagers - drinking more heavily than ever
Illegal Drugs - universally available
Income Tax - collected from people on benefits

and someone else please continue the list..

And so it goes on. And on and on and on. Ashley getting comprehensively trashed by her own readership. Not quite on the scale of the regular monstering Polly gets, but very entertaining nonetheless. At least we know what the Graun (and the Beeb) will be whingeing about in the coming years. "Tory cuts" will be the main theme, even though they absolutely know that what they will be attacking will be policies the Labour Party would have had to follow too, anyway - or finally destroy the economy for good. The Tories will have to cut spending to clear up Labour's monumental, catastrophic mismanagement of the economy, which has left us in the icy wastes of the deepest recession since WWII.

So what's new?

Brown: Bad To Worse To Terrible

Peter Hoskin in the Speccy has given a pretty tidy round-up of the latest assault on Brown's mindlessly tribal and dishonest approach to Britain's coming years of austerity and stagnation, thanks to his record-breaking debt crisis after his superbust caused by his credit megabubble. Here's a bit of it.

It's public spending time again, dear CoffeeHousers, with a couple of eye-catching articles in today's papers. The first is a comment piece by Steve Bundred, chief exec of the Audit Commission, on the necessity for extensive spending cuts. If you recall, Bundred claimed a few days ago that health and education shouldn't be ring-fenced from cuts, and here he repeats the point, adding a snappy conclusion:

"So don't believe the shroud wavers who tell you grannies will die and children starve if spending is cut. They won't. Cuts are inevitable, and perfectly manageable. We should insist on a frank and intelligent debate about how and where they will fall, which will then enable everyone to make more sensible plans."

And the second is the Sunday Times scoop that civil servants are already drawing up "doomsday" plans for 20 percent cuts in public spending, fearful that "politicians are failing to confront the scale of the budget black hole". The article also claims that Downing Street advisers are threatening to quit unless Brown sacks the man "they blame for encouraging him to make misleading claims about budget figures": one Shaun Woodward. And there was me thinking that Brown wouldn't need any encouragment to spin misleading yarns about his "investment vs cuts" dividing line...

More evidence, as if any were needed, that Brown has comprehensively lost the argument on cuts and that his administration is now in a state of total disarray: divided, rudderless and out of its depth. The clock is ticking...

Brown's Bodylanguage Says It All

Ignore what he says - it's total, insulting, mendacious nonsense. (Update: as Fraser Nelson once again points out so well.)

All you need to know about Brown is in the body language. The man is a liar, pathologically.

OECD: More Pressure On Brown's Lies

The Telegraph reports that the latest OECD study of the UK economy makes terrible reading for Brown and the Treasury and puts Brown's lies about Labour cuts into clear context. His stated plans to try to fool persuade the nation into voting for him at the next election by launching a slash and burn spending programme, funded with even more gargantuan chunks of borrowing, are also thrown into disarray the day after they were announced in Parliament (or, rather, two days after they were pre-announced on TV). The impact of his self-serving and utterly dishonest course for getting himself elected - for the first time, lest we forget - will cause hardship and pain for years to come, according to the report.

In its annual survey of the British economy, the Paris-based institution told the Government to slash the size of its deficit far more than it currently intends or face major problems in the coming years.

The OECD said that Britain's deficit would climb to 90pc of economic output – significantly higher than the 80pc level the Treasury projected in the Budget. In order to keep the UK economy in good health, it added, the Government should target "more ambitious" budget cut-backs once the recession is over.

These are conservative estimates. There are indications that if conveniently ignored public sector pension liabilities and off balance sheet, PFI costs are factored-in, that hideous number would be driven far higher. But it's not all bad news in the report. Some is even worse:

The institution...cut its growth forecast, saying Britain will shrink by 4.3pc this year, adding that the deficit next year – at 14pc of GDP – would be worse than in any other major country.

Meanwhile, the government can't even decide whether it is going to review its own spending plans or not, at least according to Edmund Conway's article, which seems to be slightly at odds with virtually every other report on the subject over the past few days.

The statement is significant, since it is becoming increasingly clear that the next election will be fought over public spending, with the Labour party already attacking the Conservatives for what it claims are excessive cuts in Government spending.

It came amid speculation that the Government has postponed the expected Spending Review this year, with Shadow Chancellor George Osborne speculating that this was intended to avoid spelling out inevitable post-election cuts.

So there it is. Britain will be broke for years to come and all you get from this dissected, stinking corpse of a government are increasingly desperate attempts to save its own rotting skin. Just what's needed in a crisis. Really inspiring stuff.

But this evil man, Brown. My word, what a lying, cheating, bullying, spiteful, poisonous, destructive, vainglorious waste of humanity this creature has become. Are you one of those people willing to be fooled by Brown's lies? Do you really want the con-artist who drove Britain to ruin in Downing St.?

If the answer is 'yes' then you are either insane or a brain-dead Labour tribalist. If the former, you have my sympathy; if the latter, then you belong to an ever-shrinking minority of idiots, thank God.

Cuts And New Structures

Cuts in government expenditure is one issue that has dogged the Tories for nigh on a decade of Brownian dictatorship. As long as Brown was able to fool people into thinking that there was endless money available for massive growth in government spending, then any Tory even suggesting that it was not only desirable but essential to peg back what they argued was an unsustainable expansion of the state was laughed off the stage. Not any more. The bust has come and Brown has not only been made to look a fool, his mismanagement of the economy has been revealed in all its stark reality, with the consequent pain being felt throughout the country. [Check out this devastating article in today's DT, if you want to know how bad that pain is and how much worse it is going to get.]

The Tory predictions of the 2005 general election have come true in spectacular fashion. As Mervyn King said only yesterday, running a structural deficit during what turned out to be little more than a property bubble - ie, a period of unsustainable growth - has just about ruined the UK. The myth of Labour's reputation for economic competence has been exploded once and for all. All we have had, in fact, is a near ten year explosion in state spending with little or no return in terms of improved productivity in virtually every targeted sector. In fact in some areas, such as the NHS and schools, standards have fallen, despite gargantuan chunks of money being thrown at them. One area where there have been improvements, if you can call it that, is in state wage levels. An NHS GP can now earn twice as much as an MP; a state school teacher in his first year, after gaining a fairly modest degree followed by a year of PGCE indoctrination, can expect to clear £30,000 plus, depending on the school. I simply do not believe these people are worth that kind of money. (I know from my own experience that many NQTs certainly aren't!)

It's difficult to cut state salaries, but they can and must be capped. That will help, but genuine, capital cuts are also required if the country is to avoid a return to the disease the last Labour government caused: stagflation. Brown has lost the argument on cuts - even his own party knows that now. He has been caught out lying about, among many other things, Labour cuts, something for which he will never be forgiven. Further, the mood of the public has altered and there are signs that Tory proposals will be taken seriously, as long as they are constructive. There is such a thing as constructive cuts, as long as the new spending levels are managed professionally, something which has been sadly lacking in the chaotic Brown years of profligate waste and corruption.

Fraser Nelson this a'rtnoon has written another decent piece on this subject. I like Nelson, by the way. If Guido caught Brown out on the smears thing, it's Nelson who's really got him on the economy - and deserves as much credit as the former got for his expose. In his piece today, though, he made some interesting observations about how the Tories might re-organise goverment spending in their first years in office, which are likely to be, thanks to Brown's nation-breaking levels of borrowing and debt, extremely difficult (no change there, then). According to Nelson, however, the first thing to reconstruct will be the mechanisms of cabinet government smashed to pieces by Brown as a consequence of his dictatorial style of what can be loosely described as leadership "where ministers are handed their budgets and told to eat it."

Here’s how it would work. The spending envelope would be set, in the Budget – but it won’t just be the Chancellor demanding cuts. The Office for Budget Responsibility would be up and running too. Very little attention is being given to the OBR, perhaps because it sounds like some spivvy quango which will be an irrelevance. But Americans perhaps thought that about the Congressional Budget Office before Nixon set it up in 1973 – it now has huge authority, and is a powerful check on the administration. If Britain had a CBO then Brown would not be able to lie through statistics so much. The Tories genuinely regard the OBR as a shift in power, removing the ability of the government to vandalise the public finances (and conceal debt) to the extent that Brown has done.

Crucially, the OBR would be responsible for telling the government when it needs to start repaying the debt. Mervyn King yesterday argued for prompter repayment—in the Tory era, we will have an OBR saying “quite right, and here is what we demand of the government.” It would be apolitical, and would not specify if these cuts were to come from extra tax or lower spending. It may (I hope) produce a model for dynamic tax forecasting – thus giving a realistic assessment of the options available to the Treasury. At present, HMT does “ready reckoners” which don’t account for the fact that higher taxes lower the incentive to work. The Treasury is programmed with false, zero- sum, high-tax logic. The OBR has the potential to take a real-world view of taxes – and hopefully a Tory Treasury will too.

Who would do the talking? Sir Alan Budd has been advising the Tories on the OBR, and I suspect that he may well end up chairing it (although other candidates are in the frame). So when the OBR speaks, the Chancellor will respond - in the Budget. That will set out a general spending envelope. Then, the Tories will start to work out who will eat the cuts.

To me, this is very significant in that it implies that after nearly a decade and a half of one, unanswerable man spending the country into oblivion, ably assisted by a constant stream of over-promoted and under-qualified, low-grade ministers given entire departments to play with, that game is over. No longer will ministers be beaten into submission by an all-powerful Chancellor/PM, it seems. And no longer will the Chancellor/PM be able to do such a thing even if he was corrupt enough to be so-inclined if this new quango really will have the kind of power the Tories claim.

However, surely there are constitutional issues involved, which Nelson does not discuss, preferring instead to continue revealing details of the Tory proposals, which, he says, are almost certainly going to be implemented. But the constitutionality of this OBR quango is an issue that must be explored. An elected Prime Minister is also First Lord of the Treasury and he appoints his Chancellor to run the country's finances, who is also (but not necessarily) elected to the House of Commons. At least with this arrangement it can be argued that, however superficially, the will of the people in the area of state expenditure is represented. The same cannot be said were Prime Minister Cameron to go ahead and create this committee, appointing unelected, paid experts ostensibly to oversee the government's performance in the area of budgetary management (presumably in a similar way to the Bank of England's oversight of monetary policy).

In fact, this body, assuming it has powers of censure, will have more authority than, possibly, it is within the gift of the elected guardian of the nation's treasure to cede. But without Cameron giving-up that authority, then the new organisation will be toothless rendering the proposal as little more than a political move to deflect some of the blame for budgetary errors away from the government ("Ah, but, the OBR said this. We did what they said so don't blame us that it's gone wrong." And so on). Clever, but dishonest. Rest assured, it is something the Left will seize upon with typical, breathtaking hypocrisy.

For myself, I agree with the idea in principle. Anything that can restore the reputation of government and parliament and offer genuine transparency and scrutiny after the utter disasters of the Brown years must be a good thing. But I do believe this new proposal for a new uber-quango must be examined from a constitutional standpoint before it is created, and it must be proved to me that it is not just a stunt.

Incidentally, there is one other 'constitutional' issue worth mentioning: how will this affect the 'authority' of the supra-national EU budgetary committees, one wonders? It seems to me there might well be a very wily ulterior motive for the creation of the OBR: to limit the influence and interference of EU policymakers in UK spending plans. In other words, this is Cameron and Osborne's way of cocking a snook at the interventionist Eurosocialists.

If this is true, then for almost the first time with the New Tories, I'm genuinely impressed.

Randall Rubs It In

That peerless pillar of the commentariat and occasional Sky anchor, erstwhile BBC Business Editor, Jeff Randall, has penned a piece for the DT that makes mincemeat of Gordon Brown's claims that he isn't the most isolated and unwanted PM in this country's history. But what he also talks about is the economy, specifically Brown's attempts to fool the population, with his typical doublethink, about Labour's vast cuts in spending which were carefully buried away in the small print of his tame Chancellor's recent budget.

After the roasting John Humphreys gave Andy Burnham on the same subject on Today this morning, it seems that the wool Brown is still so desperately trying to pull over our eyes about the economy he has ruined has become so moth-eaten and worn-out, it's disintegrating in his clammy hands. But first, the humiliation:

Imagine the scene. It's late and the lights are out in Downing Street – except for a lamp burning on the Prime Minister's desk. Alone, brooding, he stares at a political map of the United Kingdom in the aftermath of the European elections. The colour red appears to have been rubbed out.

Of the 15.6 million people who voted, 84.3 per cent did not put a cross in Labour's box. How dare they! Who are these 13,244,063 ingrates? Right across southern England, from Penzance in Cornwall to Margate in Kent, more than 90 per cent of the electorate rejected the party of Gordon Brown. Even in Labour's redoubts of Scotland and Wales, close to 80 per cent turned away.

It seems that no one in Labour even now has the guts to face-up to the real reason for their total, epic failure in these elections. But try as they might to prop-up their hopeless leader, they simply can't come-up with a plausible alternative reason. As Randall lists, some of the excuses for Labour's poll implosion are priceless.

For a ruling party at Westminster, this was close to humiliation. Having told us that he had saved the world, Mr Brown was unable to save face on home turf. As the horror show developed through Sunday night and into Monday, there began a desperate search for excuses. The Prime Minister and his coterie of sycophants plunged into their lunchbox of red herrings, porkie pies and cheesy one-liners, hoping to distract us from the real reasons for Labour's drubbing.

First to be blamed were MPs who had fiddled while their homes earned. "It was the expenses scandal," shrieked Agent Harman, the Opposition's secret weapon inside Labour's high command. Of course it was, dear, except that The Daily Telegraph's exposé of moat clearances, duck islands and the double-claiming of husband-and-wife MPs had shown many Tories to be equally shameless.

Alistair Darling, the Big Borrower, fingered his party's poor communications. "We need to explain ourselves better," he said. "We need to set out clearly what we are for." Wrong again. His problem was that Labour had explained itself too well – and we, the coping classes, were appalled.

What I like about Randall, apart from the fact that he is usually right, is the way he expresses himself. You just know in your bones that when he calls Alistair Darling 'the Big Borrower', what he's actually thinking, but can't write in a 'serious' newspaper, is 'that Brainless Bankrupt' - or, perhaps, worse. Where he says 'we, the coping classes, were appalled' what he really means is 'we, the people who have to pay for your incompetence, are f**king pissed off and want to see you ritually disembowelled at our earliest convenience'. It's all in the tone, and Randall usually finds the right one.

His real point in this piece is not about Labour's unpopularity, however, deserved as it may be for a whole forest of reasons. It's about Labour's - and particularly Brown's - abject dishonesty. Over immigration and Europe, their perfidy has been so complete it beggar's belief and, in Randall's view (and mine) it has caused their own, traditional core-vote to feel betrayed and to desert to the lunatic fringe in the form of crypto-fascist throwbacks, the BNP. The middle class vote that Blair had wooed have deserted to UKIP, at least on these issues. Randall makes no play on the subject, but I think these voters (the 'coping classes' as he calls them) on the economy are drifting back to the Tories. When times are tougher, middle Britain's natural conservativism tends to emerge. Simples!

It's on the economy, though, that Randall saves his best shots for Brown Labour:

Labour's leadership is resorting to what George Orwell called "political language". This, he said, was "designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind".

Mr Brown exuded another blast of hot air this week when inviting voters to distinguish between Labour's future "investment" in public spending and Tory "cuts", after shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley admitted the need for targeted budget reductions to restore financial sanity. In effect, the Prime Minister was trying to repeat the scare tactic that had worked so well for Labour at the last election in 2005, ie the Tories will obliterate our public services.

Aside from the fact that after 2011, when inflation and debt interest payments are factored in, Labour's own plans will necessitate a seven per cent cut, about £26 billion at today's prices, it was Mr Brown's use of the word "investment" that was so telling. In truth, much of Labour's spending is naked consumption, money burned in the pursuit of votes, with no return for the taxpayer.

The truth revealed by Fraser Nelson's scoop a few months ago about Darling's hidden cuts appears finally to have taken root in the MSM and it is only a matter of time before it spreads to the popular consciousness. Once Brown is checkmated on this, it will become a mantra: "Brown's stealth cuts." And there will be nothing he can do about it - mainly because it is true. But Gordon doesn't do truth. Convinced as I am that the man lost his two remaining marbles just after Smeargate ("I take full responsibility so I've had those responsible shot," or whatever it was), he will simply become more and more detached from reality and keep on repeating his stuck-record, garbage 'message' of 'do-nothing Tories/Tory cuts' until he sounds so ridiculous, even the press will be hard-pushed to suppress a fit of giggles whenever he opens his goldfish gob.

Randall sums it up thus:

When Margaret Thatcher was at Number 10, an MP who had studied several prime ministers told The Observer: "You see, they all go mad, they all start hearing voices… they are cut off from the real world." After almost exactly two years in the job, Mr Brown has joined that club. While the sound of an unhappy electorate is ignored, the voices in his head are coming over loud and clear.

Fraser Nelson: "Brown Lied"

Different lie, same liar. Fraser Nelson gives a great account of his brush with that unique personification of absolute dishonesty, our cuckoo PM.

I was at Brown's press conference today and decided to tackle him on the way he spun the last Budget. Off topic on a momentous day like today, I know, but it was towards the end of the conference and the old rogue may be gone within a month. I may never get another chance to tackle him directly on the way he has misled the public over the huge cuts he has planned for us post-election.

It seemed all the more relevant because his theme was that he is an honest chap. “Candid”, he said. He quoted his father telling him "always be honest". And then he claimed that the choice at the next election was between a party of cuts and one of investment. So when my turn came to ask a question, I addressed what is - in my view - one of the worst falsehoods he is peddling.

Labour's planned cuts were so well hidden in the Budget that no Fleet St newspaper either spotted them on the day or spoke about them subsequently. Yet the Institute for Fiscal Studies did pick up on them, and I blogged their discovery at the time. To remind CoffeeHousers: Brown had Darling mislead the House in claiming spending would rise by an average 0.7pc a year in 2011-14. The truth is that it will be cut by an average 2.3pc a year over this period - actual cuts of £22bn a year. Brown has never admitted this, nor have the Tories raised it - fearful of being asked what they would cut. As a result, the public is being kept in the dark about the sharpest spending contraction in UK postwar history.

How do you pose a question like this? If you generalise, you give him a get out clause. So I decided to give it to him in detail, thus:

“Prime Minister, you say you’re being candid with us today. And you are quoting your father saying, 'Always be honest'. Why then haven’t you mentioned the cuts that you plan after the election? The Budget proposed what the Institute for Fiscal Studies claims is 2.3% cuts year after year after year. A cumulative 7% over three years, across government. This is a hugely significant fact that will directly affect public services. All I want to ask you, Prime Minister – and please “always be honest” – is the IFS right? Do you plan 2.3% cuts in public services for three consecutive years?”

"Not at all" he replied, “Public spending is rising every year. Let’s be absolutely clear about that” – and went on about spending today. “And in every year in the future of public spending it will continue to rise." Predictably, he then moved on to those wicked Tory cuts. “And I think you yourself wrote an article only a few days ago saying that if the Conservatives cut public spending their plan was to cut public spending by 10%”.

The sheer scope of Brown’s mendacity can overwhelm a guy. He is attacking his own Budget: Labour plans 7% cuts but because the Tories would spare health (and not spend more than he plans to) they would cut 10%. So I shouted out at him: “Your budget. Your cuts.”

But what No.10 do is to have a chap with a microphone on a rod, who takes it away from you when the Dear Leader has had enough of your question. Only Brown has a mike, so his comments are always heard. He continued, saying that under the "Tory cuts," “schools close, hospitals close”. But this is what would happen under his cuts. If he thinks that the cuts he has proposed in Budget 09 would lead to such closures, it is a matter of national importance.

He then moved to take another question. So I started shouting out again: “No, Prime Minister, this is an important point. It’s in the national interest to discuss it.” He then tried to flag me down. “I know you want a second point like everybody else, but please.” But I was making such noise that the No10 microphone guy came back to me. “You misled us in the first question. This is important to get accurate.” Brown kept trying to shut me up, waving his hand: “Please, please. I’ve said…” Soon enough the mike guy worked out what was going on, and skidaddled. I was mute.

The point I was trying to make is toxic to Brown's election narrative. He wants it to be spending v cuts, whereas the truth is that - going off their current plans - each party would impose identical cuts. The only difference is where in public services the axe falls: debt interest, Brown’s parting gift to this nation, is not discretionary. Brown’s strategy is to hope Tories will be honest about their cuts, while he covers his up.

About five years ago, when I was at The Business, one of Brown's aides told me that no one would take me seriously as a journalist because I was so "off beam" writing about Brown's destructive economic agenda while others were praising him to high heaven. I did feel a bit Speaker's Corner today, shouting out at him over the coming radical spending crunch that is simply not an issue, anywhere, because Brown has done such a good job putting the media off the scent. In fact, I doubt if anyone watching this exchange would have known what I was getting worked up about. So to this extent, my intervention was a failure.

We spend some time here in Coffee House tearing up figures, and exposing Brown's deceptions. Quite a few of you rightly ask, "Why don't you journalists do your job and raise it with him?" Well. all I can say is that today, in what may well have been my last chance, I did try. And I can't say I got very far.

I don't know about that, Mr Nelson. You might not have made him break down in sobs of remorse for his lies and sin, begging all the journalists in the press room for their forgiveness through his snotty wimpers, but you certainly showed everyone in the country the way to penetrate his armour-plated integument of gutless perfidy: with the Hartkernmunition of revealed truth.

Now we know.