West Berkshire Conservative Association - News - Westminster Diary 6th July 09

Oh dear. The next 11 months may not be the most edifying if Messrs Brown and Balls are allowed to dictate the battle lines between the two main parties. Mr Balls was all over the airwaves last week plugging a line that his boss tried at the last two Prime Ministers Questions. Their problem is that it is not getting through. It goes something like this. They say that the Government will spend more money each year and national debt will come down and the wicked Tories will just cut, cut, cut. Its pretty pathetic stuff, I grant you, but even so lets see what really is the truth. Our national debt was £775 billion last month and is predicted in the Governments own figures to rise to a staggering £1.4 trillion by 2013/14 and then keep on rising. So where is the “less debt” that Brown and Balls are on about? In the real world people know what is meant by debt. If their own borrowing goes up it has increased. It is that simple. Not in the topsy-turvy world of this Government where Ministers look you in the eye and tell you night is day, black is white and up is, in fact, down. This tactic is all about stating an assertion with enough confidence and repeating it week in week out hoping that it will stick in the minds of the electorate. It presupposes that the electorate are bone from the neck up. In Orwell’s 1984 this worked with a subjugated population because the Government were the sole providers of information. In today's Britain a savvy electorate knows more than Brown and Balls give them credit for.

And as for spending, or “investment” as it is called in the Orwellian language of our Prime Minister, he claims “current expenditure will rise, and continue to rise”. However, the Government’s own figures show that if you take debt interest into account there will be a 7% cut in every Government Department. If you remove the NHS from the figures you get a 10% cut across the board. Sounds familiar? That is what they are accusing the Conservatives of planning. The truth is hidden somewhere in this ridiculous false argument and it is this. The British public understand that their country is wallowing in unsustainable levels of debt and that no Government can spend its way out of this mess.