Jeremy Corbyn [Image: Russell Cheyne / Reuters.]

It turns out it wasn’t Rebecca Long-Bailey’s figures for Labour taxation and spending that Jeremy Corbyn didn’t “recognise” on the Today show on Monday (March 13) – but figures put together by the BBC for The Andrew Marr Show and repeated by Nick Robinson.

It’s welcome to see Skwawkbox killing another lie.

On Radio 4 this morning, Nick Robinson asked Corbyn about spending plans and Corbyn responded. Here’s the exchange with the most relevant parts highlighted:

Is it the case that you’re now saying to the country that you’ll spend £60 or £70 billion more than the Tories and you will pay for that by taxing £60 billion more.

Note: Long-Bailey had not mentioned Labour’s tax plans, only the Tories – and while she agreed Marr’s figures were “broadly accurate but based on projections that will change if Labour gets into government”, she had not put a figure on how much Labour would tax.

Corbyn – again, intelligently – refused to let Robinson pin a figure on him that was not a Labour calculation and was at best provisional anyway:

I don’t recognise the £60bn figure but what I would say is that corporation tax was 28% and is.. now dropping to 17%… on the calculation of OBR (Office of Budget Responsibility) figures, by 2022 £70bn will have been given to corporations and the wealthiest. We would seek to raise taxation income at the top end rather than at the bottom… we would reverse the corporation tax cut…

but our programme is not complete so the figure that was used on the Marr show is not one we recognise.

That’s it. No ‘confusion’. No undermining of his front-bencher. No conflict or contradiction. Just two intelligent Labour politicians refusing to allow two (known Tory) BBC interviewers to ‘frame the narrative’ and get them to accept figures that they hadn’t worked out themselves and could be used against them later if they allowed it.

Professionalism, in other words

Source: Corbyn DIDN’T ‘not recognise’ Becky L-B’s spending plans. More ‘moderate’ misogynism | The SKWAWKBOX

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