Tag Archives: fact

Johnson Marr-ed – repeated lies lead to live-on-TV humiliation and fact-check crucifixion

That’s awkward – perhaps Boris Johnson thought he’d have the usual easy time on the BBC’s flagship politics programme, The Andrew Marr Show.

But it seems that the Establishment has already started shifting (prematurely) towards Keir Starmer.

So we all got to enjoy this:

(I’m not saying Marr had to point out the huge, ONS-shaped, hole in Johnson’s wage lie because This Site had already done so, but it’s nice to put it out there.)

Here are some more Johnson lies defeated by facts, courtesy of Peter Stefanovic:

He was tackled over the fuel crisis:

And then the Mirror fact-checked the whole interview:

WHAT BORIS JOHNSON SAID: “What you’re seeing is finally growth in wages after more than 10 years of flatlining. What you’re seeing is people on low incomes being paid more.”

WHAT THE FACTS SAY: The ONS has warned it is “clearly misleading” to use these “distorted” figures to make claims about the health of Britain’s economy.

Inflation is soaring this Autumn, and is already sitting at a nine-year high of 3%. That means any rises in wages could soon be outstripped once again by rising prices.

WHAT BORIS JOHNSON SAID: “What you’re certainly seeing is the stresses and strains caused in a UK economy that is now the fastest growing in the G7.”

WHAT THE FACTS SAY: That’s only if you compare to the period January-March 2021, when the UK was stuck in lockdown. According to the House of Commons Library, UK “real” GDP fell by 4.4% between October-December 2019 and April-June 2021 – the steepest drop of any G7 country. The US grew 0.8%, while Japan fell 1.5%, Canada 2%, the Eurozone 2.5%, Germany 3.3%, France 3.3% and Italy 3.8%, the Commons Library said.

WHAT BORIS JOHNSON SAID: Asked about justice funding after Sarah Everard’s murder, he said: “We’re almost certainly putting record sums into all parts of government.”

WHAT THE FACTS SAY: There are three problems with this. First of all, it ignores previous sweeping cuts to budgets under austerity. According to the House of Commons Library, the Ministry of Justice budget was around 25% lower in 2019-20 than in 2010-11.

Secondly, Mr Johnson’s boast appears likely to be in cash terms rather than real terms (factoring in inflation). The MOJ budget did rise between 2020-21 and 2021-22 – but only from £10bn to £10.1bn.

Thirdly, the Spending Review is coming at the end of this month which could put a financial squeeze on “unprotected” departments like the MOJ. The independent IFS think tank has warned unprotected services face a £4bn cut, and those areas – “including perennially squeezed budgets like justice and local government – are now facing real-terms cuts in 2022–23”.

WHAT BORIS JOHNSON SAID: On fuel shortages, Mr Johnson said: “It has been abating. What you’re hearing now from the Petrol Retailers’ Association is that supplies are getting on to the forecourts.”

WHAT THE FACTS SAY: On Saturday, the PRA said that while the fuel situation was easing in Scotland, the North of England and the Midlands, elsewhere it was deteriorating.

WHAT BORIS JOHNSON SAID: “We’ve had to look after the British people with £407 billion of a protection for their jobs, for people’s livelihoods. And I’ll tell you something about that package, it was most beneficial to the poorest and the neediest in society.”

WHAT THE FACTS SAY: Not all of this related directly to “jobs and livelihoods”. 32% has been for households – that vast majority of that the furlough scheme and self-employment grants.

WHAT BORIS JOHNSON SAID: “You have no fiercer and more zealous opponent of unnecessary tax rises than me, but we have had to deal with a pandemic on a scale which this country has not seen before in our lifetimes and long before.”

WHAT THE FACTS SAY: The IFS think tank has said the UK tax burden is set to reach “the highest-ever sustained level” due to the PM’s National Insurance hike in April – with various estimates putting it at the highest since the war, since 1950 or since 1969, depending how you count.

WHAT BORIS JOHNSON SAID: “The people who are paying the most for the NHS, the people who are paying the most to fund the NHS bounce back, the £36 billion that we’re putting in, are the richest, the wealthiest people in society. And that’s entirely right. That’s what’s happening.”

WHAT THE FACTS SAY: This appears to be a reference to health and social care funding, which is being raised through a National Insurance hike from 12% to 13.25%. You start paying NICs if your salary hits just £9,568 per year – a much lower threshold than Income Tax. It’s charged at a much lower rate once your earnings get beyond £50,270 per year. And it’s focused on workers – who are hardly all the richest people in society. The tax will charge nothing to the unearned wealth of landlords, for example.

All in all, it seems we finally have reason to be grateful to Andrew Marr for actually doing his job – and at a critical moment.

It means that, going into the Conservative Party Conference, we can all see the extent of Johnson’s failures.

And we can use this information as a yardstick against which we can judge what the Tories try to tell us over the next few days.

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Are people turning on Boris Johnson because they’re tired of lies like this?

Boris Johnson: He’s all ‘blood and thunder’ in Parliament but analyse what he says and it turns out to be ‘bull**** and bluster’ instead [not This Writer’s words].

Even the BBC is criticising Boris Johnson. Well, at least it’s sitting on the right side of the fence.

The Corporation fact-checked Johnson’s comments about the delta variant of Covid-19, made during Prime Minister’s Questions on June 16.

Criticised for failing to close the UK’s borders to travellers from India after delta was discovered, Johnson said: “We put India on the red list on April 23 and the Delta variant was not so identified until April 28.”

But the BBC fact-checkers pointed out:

It had been identified through genetic sequencing as being in the UK in the week beginning 8 March.

And it had been designated as a “variant of interest” by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 4 April.

While health bodies are constantly monitoring large numbers of emerging mutations, they are given these designations only if they seem to be making the virus spread faster, making people sicker or escaping the defences put up by vaccines or prior infection.

At a meeting on 21 January, the government’s scientific advisers, Sage, said: “No intervention, other than a complete, pre-emptive closure of borders, or the mandatory quarantine of all visitors upon arrival in designated facilities, irrespective of testing history, can get close to fully preventing the importation of cases or new variants.”

And in its weekly update on 30 March, the WHO pointed out India had the third highest number of new cases in the world, with a 55% increase on the previous week.

So we see that Johnson allowed the delta variant into the UK from India for a month and a half before actually doing anything about it at all.

It is lies like this that undermine trust in the Conservative government – rightly. And this is likely to be what is motivating Tories (and former Tories) to speak up against him.

Source: Delta variant: Fact-checking claims about Covid and borders – BBC News

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Labour expels members for quoting facts about anti-Semitism, deputy leader admits

Rayner and Starmer: who knew their “new direction” would be towards blatant dishonesty?

We all owe Angela Rayner a debt of gratitude for admitting publicly what some of us have known for years: that the Labour Party will expel members for quoting facts about anti-Semitism complaints.

That is what she said in front of television cameras in an interview yesterday (October 31) – albeit not in so many words.

Referring to Jeremy Corbyn’s statement that the amount of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party had been exaggerated – a statement borne out by the facts – she said this:

“Hurt” and “distress” are irrelevant if they are not based on facts. And how do we know that the people saying they were “hurt” and “distressed” actually were? There are a lot of liars out there.

And now we know they include the current Labour leadership among their number.

Rayner was saying that she and current leader Keir Starmer will lie about anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, to keep on the right side of people who aren’t even members (and who are probably Conservatives).

She was saying that any party member who quotes factual information contradicting the party line will face suspension and possible expulsion for doing so.

And in doing so, she has said that Starmer was lying when he said he accepted in full the report on anti-Semitism in the Labour Party by the Equality and Human Rights Commission; after discriminating against 60 per cent of party members accused of anti-Semitism (as noted in the report), it is clear from Rayner’s words that such discrimination will continue.

It makes me glad to be out of the Labour Party.

I don’t want to be a member of an organisation whose leaders admit they will lie freely about an issue as important as anti-Semitism – and who are saying they will only allow other people who lie about it to be party members.

Who would?

I don’t know – but I’m willing to bet that, among those who would, we would find a high number of anti-Semites.

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Here’s the reason it is impossible to treat the plague in a post-truth country

The United Kingdom is never going to get to grips with Covid-19 if its government ministers continue to lie about it.

Grant Shapps – a man well-known for playing fast-and-loose with the facts – was up to his old tricks at a press briefing last week when, as Transport Secretary, he claimed trains were not overcrowded since the Tories ordered people back to work, despite numerous photos of overcrowded trains.

Let’s have a look, shall we?

That looks pretty crowded – and this was the Victoria Line. The Central Line at the height of rush hour must be a nightmare.

Bear in mind that social distancing rules still apply and we are supposed to stay at least two metres away from other people.

Shapps claimed that tube trains have been at just five per cent occupancy – which leads This Writer to wonder whether he has been averaging out usage over each 24-hour period, rather than examining the situation at times when people are most likely to be infected by close proximity to others.

He has announced that it will be mandatory to wear face masks on public transport from June 15, when the government intends to ease lockdown restrictions further and send more people back to work.

There is no justification for such easing; the nation remains at Covid alert level 4, meaning the virus remains at large and its reproduction rate is increasing.

But this is a government that won’t accept our truth; it is too busy pushing its own on us.

So snake-oil salesman Shapps told us, in very poor English: “In fact, there hasn’t been very much crowding situation going on.

“It’s not the case … that transport’s been overcrowded. We’ve been watching it very carefully.”

He continued to deny the facts, despite being shown photographic evidence of overcrowding on trains, taken on different days since the lockdown was eased:

“We tracked it on a day by day basis.

“I can literally tell you the trains where there was an issue, because the train was broken down, or Canning Town [in east London], where those pictures were shared very widely.

“But actually the broad picture is there have been one or two people sitting in carriages a lot of the time.”

What can you do, in the face of such blatant denial of the facts from a government minister who is hell-bent on exposing you to a killer disease?

What will you do?

Source: Grant Shapps claims trains aren’t overcrowded despite photos of overcrowded trains – Mirror Online

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Fact checkers have supported Vox Political’s claims about £70/week pension cut

Less cash for senior citizens: this story was about the removal of an allowance for dependent adults from nearly 11,000 people’s pensions. There is no guarantee that they will receive top-ups of the same value from other benefits, despite assurances from the Conservative government.

Independent fact checkers have confirmed much of what This Site has said about the end of ADI – the adult dependency increase – on thousands of UK pensions.

But this has done nothing to allay This Writer’s fears about the use of so-called independent “fact check” services.

I stated that the Tories will be cutting £70 a week from around 11,000 people’s pensions – and this is confirmed by Full Fact.

I also expressed doubts about the government’s claim that people who are set to lose around £3,500 a year as a result of the cut will be able to get a top-up from other benefits – and this is supported by a comment in the Full Fact article.

There are reasons to believe that at least some pensioners who were in receipt of ADI payments may struggle to claim the money in other ways once the payments end.

From 15 May 2019, couples who aren’t both over the State Pension age cannot make a new claim for pension credit, unless one is receiving housing benefit for pensioners.

Changes to Universal Credit mean a couple where one person is below the State Pension age are considered working-age and will share a standard monthly allowance of £498.89. It can only be claimed if the younger partner is eligible.

Steve Webb, who was minister for pensions in the Coalition government from 2010 to 2015  and is a former Liberal Democrat MP, told Full Fact he was “deeply sceptical” that the loss of ADI payments would be offset with other benefits.

He said recent changes to pension credit mean any mixed-age couples who were not already receiving the payment “have little chance of claiming it when their income drops £70 a week”, while the Universal Credit rate is “so low” that that they may not “get much even if they qualified”.

I’m not convinced about the criticisms of other reports in the Full Fact site, though.

The fact was that “It is not right to suggest all pensioners will be £70 per week worse off, given how few receive this benefit.”

But the infographic on the Wear Red – Stand up and Be counted Facebook page (for example) correctly stated that “The £70 per week allowance for adult dependents is being scrapped from April”.

It could have been better-phrased, to make it clear that not all pensioners receive that allowance – but then, why should any reader assume that they all do?

Some of us have concerns about the use of so-called “fact check” facilities, because it is possible that they could be used to reinforce particular political viewpoints.

Claims that articles are presenting fake news, that are not correctly explained (such as the Full Fact piece), do not instil any confidence at all.

Source: Some pensioners will lose £70 a week, but Boris Johnson didn’t introduce the change – Full Fact

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Anti-Labour Jewish groups launch fact-free attack on Jeremy Corbyn

Ephraim Mirvis: On the eve of the Labour Party’s “race and faith” manifesto launch, he made a fact-free rant claiming that the party has not done enough about anti-Semitism. It is nonsense.

How mendacious of Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis to attack the handling of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, just before Jeremy Corbyn launches a new “race and faith” manifesto!

Isn’t it telling that the attack is heavy on emotion but contains no factual evidence?

And doesn’t the contribution of the usual suspects, leaping on the bandwagon, prove that this is a tissue of lies and nonsense, intended to whip up fear among the Jewish community and distrust in the wider electorate?

Mr Mirvis wrote his comments in The Times – a publication This Writer won’t support in any way after its Sunday edition libelled me as a Holocaust denier in 2018. It took me nearly a year to secure a very full apology with the help of newspaper regulator IPSO.

The BBC’s report of his words suggests that they contain absolutely no factual evidence against Mr Corbyn – just a lot of emotive verbiage.

He said anti-Semitism was “a new poison – sanctioned from the very top” of the Labour Party.

Jeremy Corbyn is the man at the very top of the Labour Party, and his record of support for Jewish people is outstanding. Read it for yourself:

https://twitter.com/ToryFibs/status/1199084351771811841

Mr Mirvis said Labour’s response to anti-Semitism accusations had been “utterly inadequate” and said it “can no longer claim to be the party of equality and anti-racism”.

He wrote: “The way in which the leadership of the Labour Party has dealt with anti-Jewish racism is incompatible with the British values of which we are so proud – of dignity and respect for all people.

“It has left many decent Labour members and parliamentarians, both Jewish and non-Jewish, ashamed of what has transpired.”

This Writer is here to tell you that those people should be ashamed – of the way innocent Labour members were persecuted by the party’s so-called ‘disputes’ team, simply for supporting Mr Corbyn.

When that organisation hounded me out of the party, it seemed clear that guilt was assumed from the moment of accusation – no evidence was needed.

That’s why, when my case came before Labour’s quasi-judicial NCC, it had to rely on charges that took my words out-of-context, and in some cases out-of-sequence, in order to present a false impression of guilt.

That is the fact of the Labour anti-Semitism witch-hunt – all, in my opinion, carried out to appease people who won’t be satisfied until Mr Corbyn himself is removed from the party leadership.

Many of them support the Conservative Party, it seems. They fear a Labour government.

The mainstream media is having a huge amount of fun recycling all the lies about Labour anti-Semitism that have been voiced since Mr Corbyn became Labour leader in 2015.

The social media have responded with factual information – but, do you know what? It seems that material isn’t getting through to the TV, radio and print news sources!

And in a time of supposed legally-imposed impartiality, too. Shocking.

Let’s redress the balance with some facts:

Tweets 24 to 42 of Red Robin’s thread, below, detail actions taken by Labour to handle accusations of anti-Semitism. While I don’t agree that the actions taken by individuals in the party as part of this were fair – innocent people have been expelled from the party – can anyone say that the party hasn’t done enough, and expect to be believed?

Yes, vote with your conscience.

But first make sure your conscience isn’t being manipulated by liars.

Source: General election 2019: Chief rabbi attacks Labour anti-Semitism record – BBC News

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It’s open season on Jeremy Hunt! Let’s ALL tell him the facts of his failures

Jeremy Hunt.

There’s a new contact sport out in the Twittersphere: Hunt-baiting.

The rules are simple: Contact Jeremy Hunt on Twitter and pick a fight with him about any aspect of his treatment of the National Health Service.

Let him try to argue his case.

Then hit him with the facts and see if he runs to the BBC and lies about you. You can treat it as a relay if you like, with one person setting him up and another – or several others – hitting him with the facts

The game was (inadvertently) invented by actor and footballer Ralf Little, who challenged Mr Hunt in a lengthy Twitter thread. Mr Hunt then surprised everybody by appearing in a BBC Newsbeat interview, claiming that Mr Little had not produced any evidence to support his criticisms.

The information Mr Little quoted was older than Mr Hunt’s recent claims; if he really wasn’t knowingly lying, then Mr Hunt was admitting that he doesn’t actually know what is going on in the area of government for which he carries ultimate responsibility – that he is, in fact, incompetent.

And some people have been calling him out over it – people like Johanna Walden, who tweeted: “Everything about that Newsbeat interview with Hunt was disgraceful.”

Mr Hunt responded, and the game was on:

It was Rachel Clarke who provided the evidence:

Whether Jeremy Hunt has been back to Newsbeat yet is not clear. Perhaps you’d like to have a go?

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A fact-check for silly Cameron apologists

Media manipulation: The Sun, and the Scottish Sun, supported both the Conservatives and the SNP on the same day. Did it affect the results in Scotland and the rest of the UK?

Media manipulation: The Sun, and the Scottish Sun, supported both the Conservatives and the SNP on the same day. Did it affect the results in Scotland and the rest of the UK?

Here’s a piece in the New Statesman that is worth debunking straight away. Entitled 10 delusions about the Labour defeat to watch out for, it makes assertions that suggest to This Writer that it is author Ian Leslie who’s been having dodgy visions.

Let’s focus on three:

“1. THE MEDIA DID IT

“No left-wing account of this defeat will be complete without a reference to the Tory press (bonus drink for “Murdoch-controlled”) and its supposed inexorable hold over the political psyche of the nation. Funny: the day before the election everyone decided The Sun was a joke and nobody reads newspapers anyway.

“3. CLEVER TORIES

“It will be said that the Tories, in their ruthlessly efficient way, pinned the blame for austerity on Labour and Labour allowed it to stick. Clever Tories. Few will mention that the Tories were, for the most part, a hubristic and directionless shambles, divided amongst themselves, the authors of several howlingly stupid own goals that would certainly have sunk them had they not got so lucky with their opponent.

“5. THE SNP STOLE OUR VICTORY

“It is true that nobody, but nobody, foresaw the SNP tidal wave. But it’s not true that Labour would have won or even done OK without it. Labour saw a net gain of one seat from the Tories in England. One. Seat. One seat, in an election where everything favoured them. One seat, after five years of a shabby and meretricious government making unpopular decisions and a third party that virtually donated its voters to them. An epic failure.”

Firstly, nobody is blaming the media entirely for voters’ insistence on self-destructively supporting the Tories. The media helped hammer the Tory messages home, by amplifying Cameron’s statements and ignoring or vilifying Miliband’s. After a while – and in accordance with Goebbels’ (Cameron is a big fan of Goebbels) claims about The Big Lie – people start believing the claims they see most often.

This is why Conservative claims must be challenged at every opportunity from now on. Whenever a Tory puts forward a policy in the papers, on the Internet and social media or wherever, let’s try to put the questions in front of them that deflate their claims. It has been said that a lie can go around the world before the truth gets out of bed; let’s kill The Big Lie before it can get its shoes on.

Secondly, nobody This Writer knows is saying anything at all about “ruthlessly efficient” Tories. This lot are about as stupid as they come. It’s just a shame – and this was a constant problem for bloggers like Yr Obdt Srvt – that nobody in the Labour leadership saw fit to counter the silly Tory claims with a few ounces of fact. Therefore we must conclude that, not only are the Tories monumental imbeciles; most of Labour were, as well.

This is why the Conservative Party as a whole should be undermined at every opportunity. Whenever they make bold claims about their record – especially against that of the last Labour government – let’s put up a few embarrassing facts to pull the wool out from under them.

Finally, nobody but the SNP and its supporters is making any claim that the SNP’s “tidal wave” – alone – stopped Labour. As This Writer has already mentioned (and the election result was only known yesterday), the Conservative Party used the threat of an SNP surge to put fear into Middle England that “loonie-left” Labour would ally with these crazed Caledonians, to the detriment of the nation. Amazingly, people were gullible enough to believe it.

But you don’t have to take This Writer’s word for it. Here’s Professor Simon Wren-Lewis, from his latest Mainly Macro article [italics mine]:

“Why do I say Cameron is lucky? First, largely by chance (but also because other countries had been undertaking fiscal austerity), UK growth in 2014 was the highest among major economies. This statistic was played for all it was worth. Second, although (in reality) modest growth was not enough to raise real incomes, just in the nick of time oil prices fell, so real wages have now begun to rise. Third, playing the game of shutting down part of the economy so that you can boast when it starts up again is a dangerous game, and you need a bit of fortune to get it right. (Of course if there really was no plan, and the recovery was delayed through incompetence, then he is luckier still.)

“The Scottish independence referendum in September last year was close. 45% of Scots voted in September to leave the UK. One of the major push factors was the Conservative-led government. If Scotland had voted for independence in 2014, it would have been a disaster for Cameron: after all, the full title of his party is the Conservative and Unionist Party. That was his first piece of Scottish fortune. The second was that the referendum dealt a huge blow to Labour in Scotland. Labour are far from blameless here, and their support had been gradually declining, but there can be no doubt that the aftermath of the referendum lost them many Scottish seats, and therefore reduced their seat total in the UK.

“Yet that led to a third piece of luck. The SNP tidal wave in Scotland gave him one additional card he could play to his advantage: English nationalism. The wall of sound coming from the right wing press about how the SNP would hold Miliband to ransom was enough to get potential UKIP supporters to vote Conservative in sufficient numbers for him to win the election.”

While I’m not convinced about the UKIP claim (UKIP’s vote share enjoyed the largest increase of any of the parties in Thursday’s election) the rest rings true.

You have already heard an awful lot of hogwash about the reasons for the Conservative Party’s slim win. Don’t believe everything you hear.

It’s long past time that facts and evidence were reintroduced to politics.

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Tories put Labour’s cart before their horse in budget row

Iain Duncan Smith has had 15 months in which to tell us where he'll make £12 billion in cuts to benefits. He simply doesn't want you to know and can't be bothered to tell you.

Iain Duncan Smith has had 15 months in which to tell you where he’ll make £12 billion in cuts to benefits. He simply doesn’t want you to know and can’t be bothered to tell you.

This writer is a big fan of The Critique Archives. Martin Odoni has no problem saying what he means and backing it up with facts – and the latest piece, In a democratic process you are supposed to tell us what your own damned budgets are before you insult someone else’s, is a prime example.

“Well, that was a blundering start to the Election campaign, even by the standards of the modern Conservative Party,” he writes.

“According to [Iain] Duncan Smith, the Conservatives have not yet made decisions on exactly how they are going to make the pledged cuts of twelve billion pounds to public spending, even though they announced them well over a year ago. They just have a nice, juicy-sounding target-figure to aim at, without even calculating whether it is a suitable target, and they are going to work out a budget to reach it ‘after-the-fact’? However, they have managed to calculate a budget for the Labour Party’s plans – and in such impressive detail that they can even tell us how much extra tax the average household will pay?

“After four hundred and fifty days of not figuring out their own budget, that may go down as a disproportionately-rigorous examination of Labour’s plans.”

Having gone on to show that the Institute for Fiscal Studies had comprehensively debunked the Tory claims, the article gets downright festive in its description of how “Britain’s Most Perennially-Caught-Out Serial Liar” – that’s Grant Shapps – responded. You’ll have to go and visit the article to read it.

The point is that the Tories were more concerned with lying about Labour’s plans than they were with telling the public about their own.

In an election period, those details become very important, don’t you think? And the Tories can’t be bothered… after around 15 months.

There are more festive descriptions of the possible outcome of any further Tory spending cuts, then we get to the meat and the (blue) blood: “It says a great deal about the arrogance and inflated self-importance of Cameron and his closest circle of colleagues that they see no need to explain to the country what they hope to do next. Make no mistake, these are people who see themselves as ‘above’ most of the rest of Britain, and as such, feel no compunction over lying to them, and sneer at the very thought of being ‘accountable’ to them. No, it is their innate ‘right’ to lead.

“It is the nature of democracy, if it is ever to work, that the public are trusted with the truth, so that they can make informed decisions on whom to trust in turn with their vote. The Conservatives will not co-operate with that ideal though. Their priority is power alone, and they rightly fear that an informed public, aware of precisely what a Tory Government would do to them, would never trust them with that power.”

That’s worth bearing in mind when you’re watching the televised leader debate on ITV tomorrow!

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Risible PMQs performance is no win for Cameron

The face is red but the heart is black: Cameron's strategy is to say one thing and do something entirely different.

The face is red but the heart is black: Cameron’s strategy is now one of false arguments and ignoring the questions put to him.

Was anybody else dismayed to see media commentator after media commentator blithely commenting that this week’s Prime Minister’s Questions was, for example, an “easy win” for David Cameron (George Eaton, New Statesman), with Guardian political correspondent Andrew Sparrow tweeting, “Verdict from the Twitter commentariat – Unanimous for Cameron”?

It offends this writer’s sense of Britishness and fair play. If Cameron won, he did so by evasion, false argument, and perverting the facts.

Let’s go through the leaders’ exchange together, using the BBC live blog and Hansard for reference.

The first thing mentioned by Ed Miliband was the Iraq Inquiry – he called for its findings to be published as soon as possible. Then he changed subject, pointing out that the Coalition government will be the first to leave office with living standards lower than when they came into power.

David Cameron did not answer the question but went back to Mr Miliband’s comment about the inquiry instead. He said he too wants to see the Iraq Inquiry published as soon as possible – but it would have been ready years ago if the previous Labour government had set the inquiry up sooner, as the Conservatives and others had wanted.

This not true. Labour’s position on it is that the inquiry was set up at the appropriate time – after hostilities in Iraq had ended. In any case, we are now in the sixth year since the inquiry was established (in November 2009); most of the delays have taken place under the Coalition Government led by David Cameron. The reason currently being given for the delay, by inquiry chairman Sir John Chilcot, is that witnesses need an opportunity to respond to any criticisms of them that have been made.

This blog wishes to point out that Mr Cameron himself is also partly responsible for delays in this matter. The Guardian reported in November 2013: “The Cabinet Office is resisting requests from the Iraq inquiry… for ‘more than 130 records of conversations’ between Tony Blair, his successor, Gordon Brown, and then-US President George W Bush to be made public. In a letter to David Cameron, published on the inquiry’s website, the committee’s chairman, Sir John Chilcot, disclosed that ’25 notes from Mr Blair to President Bush’ and ‘some 200 cabinet-level discussions’ were also being withheld.

“The standoff between the inquiry and Sir Jeremy Heywood, the cabinet secretary, has been going on for five months and has meant that the [process] in which politicians and officials are warned that they will be criticised in the report, is on hold. As a result, a date for the final publication of the report has yet to be agreed, more than four years after the inquiry started. ”

That’s a delay directly attributable to David Cameron and his government. It would have been more accurate if he had said the inquiry’s report would have been ready years ago if Mr Cameron himself had not done everything he could to hinder it.

Back to today: Ed Miliband noted that Mr Cameron made no mention of the economy in his reply, and pointed out that people are £1,600 a year worse off since 2010. According to the BBC blog: “David Cameron says Labour has no apology for not launching the Iraq Inquiry earlier – before launching into a defence of the coalition’s economic record. He says Mr Miliband is wrong about everything.”

In fact he raised the alleged drop in unemployment and rise in wages recorded by the ONS (and debunked on this blog earlier today). His mention of tax reductions as a defence against the “£1,600 a year worse off” claim is ridiculous as it shows how lightly his government has taken its self-described reason for being – reducing the deficit. This is not going to happen under a government that doesn’t want to take taxes.

Cameron’s claim that there is no cost of living crisis because inflation is at 0.5 per cent is a silly ‘excluded middle’ false argument; just because the headline level of inflation is low, that does not mean people are not struggling to make ends meet – especially when they have to deal with measures brought in by Cameron’s government like the Bedroom Tax, that have nothing to do with inflation and everything to do with Tory neoliberal ideology.

Mr Miliband stood his ground: Cameron has raised taxes on ordinary families, raised VAT, cut tax credits. Wages are down; taxes are up – and a report by the Joseph Rowntree foundation has shown that half of all families where one person is in full-time work cannot make ends meet at the end of the month.

“You can work hard and play by the rules, but in Cameron’s Britain you still cannot pay the bills—that is the reality,” he said – and it’s strong stuff.

Cameron’s response was feeble. He claimed that more than 30 million people are now in work – but we know that this is partly due to the rise in the population, and most of the jobs are zero-hours, part-time or temporary, meaning that Mr Miliband is right; families are struggling to pay the bills. His repeated reference to the ONS statistics – which were discredited within minutes of having been published, is risible. Cameron was making an ‘argument by selective observation’ – what he was saying was factually accurate, but he was deliberately failing to put all the facts before us.

The claim that people in work are seeing their pay rise by four per cent seems to be an outright lie. Even the ONS could only support a rise of 1.8 per cent.

“If we had listened to [Mr Miliband], none of these things would have happened,” blustered Cameron. “If we had listened to Labour, it would be more borrowing, more spending, more debt: all the things that got us into a mess in the first place.” How does he know that? He doesn’t. It’s another false argument – an ad hominem (attacking Mr Miliband, rather than his argument), also an ‘appeal to widespread belief’, as many people still seem to believe that Labour will borrow more and create more debt (despite repeated evidence that Labour will do nothing of the sort) and that the economy is safer with the Conservatives (even though their own rampant borrowing has nearly doubled the National Debt), and a non sequitur – it doesn’t follow that, if the Tories had listened to Labour, none of the favourable outcomes he listed would have happened.

Mention of borrowing prompted Mr Miliband to point out that the Coalition Government has failed on the deficit – accurately. According to his original preductions, Chancellor George Osborne should have reduced the deficit to around £37 billion per year by now – instead it stands between £90 billion and £100 billion.

Mr Miliband’s claim that executive pay has increased by 21 per cent in the last year alone, meaning the recovery is only for a few at the top, is also accurate. Spread among the workforce as a whole and coupled with the small pay rises they have received, the average may be 1.8 per cent – but most people aren’t enjoying any sudden increase in prosperity. Are you?

Cameron’s response: “The right honourable Gentleman criticises me on the deficit—he is the man who could not even remember the deficit.” Another ad hominem, and another non sequitur. What does Mr Miliband’s lapse of memory in a speech from last year have to do with today’s statistics?

Mr Miliband’s last question was about David Cameron’s decision not to take part in televised election debates if the Green Party is excluded. If he is so confident about the economy, why is he “chickening out”?

Again, Cameron did not even answer the question. Instead he quoted Christine LaGarde, head of the International Monetary Fund, in support of his claim that the UK economy is improving. That discussion was over. Why did he have nothing to say about the TV debates? It’s a simple change of subject but, again, it’s no argument against what Mr Milband was saying.

So let’s tot up the Prime Minister’s score – did he win or lose? Let’s see: Iraq inquiry – lose; economy – lose; employment – lose; wages – lose; deficit – lose; TV debates – lose.

The moral of the story: You don’t have to win any argument if enough people are willing to say you did.

Follow me on Twitter: @MidWalesMike

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