Sunday, November 23, 2008

Why No Fuss About the Budget Leaks?

Isn't it hilarious that on the Sopel interview, Gordon Brown refuses to talk about the likely measures to be announced tomorrow? He won't discuss a cut in VAT because "Jon, you wouldn't expect me to discuss measures which haven't been announced yet." Does this man's mendacity know no limits?

The VAT cut is the main headline story in every single broadsheet paper today. Does Gordon Brown think these newspapers all, coincidentally, got the story by accident? No, they got it because either Number Ten or the Treasury leaked it to them yesterday.

In 1947, the Chancellor was forced to resign over a pre budget leak. With this lot it's become something they do as a matter of routine. It's all about tomorrow's headline.

The Conservatives should hit Darling hard with this tomorrow.

4 comments:

@molesworth_1 said...

"measures which haven't been announced yet."

But are coming, obviously.

The whole interview was an object lesson in dissembly.

Null said...

I was thinking the same thing this morning. When will a policy / budget actually be announced in Parliament rather than in the MSM?

So much for the end of spin.

brian in the tamar valley said...

Perhaps the VAT business is a monster bluff Iain! It seems totally bizarre to leak such information to the MSM - one of the biggest advantages of being Chancellor is that you have the golden opportunity to wrong foot the Leader of the Opposition who has to make an immediate reply. (Example: if a Chancellor slashes income tax he will always make that statement the sentence before "I commend this budget to the house") So why give Dave and George ample time to do the sums and prepare a counter-attack on VAT, unless they want to test the water to get a media reaction or to see how sterling reacts tomorrow morning. Very, very odd.

LiberalHammer said...

Iain,

Agree completely that the Labour government has no sense of shame at all nor has it since 1997. If the policy is announced as expected then why on earth isn't it treated as a leak of confidential information? And if not (i.e. an attempt to wrong foot the Tories), isn't this equally reprehensible for the knock on effect on FTSE levels, etc?

I'm no fan of your lot (West Ham excepted) but they surely can't be any less scrupulous than Brown.