And so it is with George Osborne. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has said, with a straight face, that “the British economy is continuing to grow and is creating jobs”, when it is clear to everyone and their dog that the opposite is true.
The truth is there are no fairies at the bottom of the garden and the British economy is slowing not growing. Which is why fears of a Conservative-led coalition-induced double-dip recession grow by the day.
As Ed Balls, the Shadow Chancellor, has pointed out time and again, this Government’s policies are recklessly choking every ounce of life out of the economic recovery.
The difference between Mr Balls and Mr Osborne is not just a matter of policy or ideology. It is not even a matter that, while Mr Osborne believes there are fairies at the bottom of the garden, Mr Balls does not. It is that Mr Balls understands economics while Mr Osborne does not.
Mr Osborne, driven by a peculiar mix of free market theory, professional malice and personal ignorance, clings to his discredited policy of ideologically-driven cuts in public spending.
Remember Franklin D Roosevelt and the Great Depression? Mr Balls understands that you can only spend – not cut – your way out of recession and that a pound in the pocket of the public sector worker will be spent in the private sector, too. As Mr Balls says: “The economy has effectively flat-lined for nine months and this is very bad news for jobs, living standards, business investment and for getting the deficit down.”
Mr Osborne still believes there are fairies at the bottom of the garden.
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It is not yet clear how strong the links really are between Anders Behring Breivik, the right-wing extremist who carried out the killings in Oslo and Utøya, and far-right groups in this country such as the English Defence League. But it is clear that the poison spread by the likes of the English Defence League and their racist neo-Nazi friends in Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands, needs to be challenged at every turn.
