Lies, Damn Lies and Gordon

"Politician Lies" is hardly a news story these days, but this story does take some beating:

The Conservatives today accused Gordon Brown of lying to Parliament as they published Treasury papers on public spending.

The document, prepared by officials in June, appears to show how the Government would meet Alistair Darling's pledge to cut the massive budget deficit in half in four years. It outlines spending falling by more than 9 per cent between now and 2014.

After a whole summer of talking about the Tories' 10% spending cuts, Labour now reveal that they are going to have to reduce spending by 9.3% themselves. The shameless nature of it is utterly staggering. Still, it just goes to show that they didn't pluck the 10% figure out of the air after all. It came from the Treasury.

This will probably lead to a whole host of rhetoric about how a fall in spending is not the same as a spending cut, and that the Tories are planning a 0.7% greater decrease in spending, and that Gordon Brown wouldn't lie anyway because of his much vaunted (but apparently soundly fucked up) moral compass. In fairness, I don't believe Labour did lie about spending cuts. Not for the crap reasons listed above, but simply because at this rate they aren't going to be in power long enough to have to implement them.