Only Fools and Trojan Horses

Rishi Sunak just repeated a £300bn lie in today’s budget. This video explains the government’s Del Boy economics.

What do you think the biggest porky the Tories have told during the pandemic is?

Is it that Dominic ‘Rodney’ Cummings was testing his eyes ‘up North’?

Or that all the ‘don’t ask questions’ contracts Matt ‘Del Boy’ Hancock handed out were perfectly cushty?

Maybe it’s Boris ‘during the war’ Johnson’s repeated line that the Tories have done ‘everything they could’?

But, Châteauneuf du Pape! It’s probably none of these. Because the biggest lie is that the government borrowed £300bn on behalf of the public – and that we’ll have to pay it back at some point. They’ve all been at it, repeating this lie. Not least was Andrew Marr, live on Sunday morning TV, playing it ‘nice and cool’ to the nation 

But the idea that we’ve “borrowed £300bn” is simply not true. I repeat. It is not true. Now, I could talk about how the excellent Richard Murphy broke this down. He said that the Bank of England bought some government bonds (IOUs to you and me); ones which the Treasury made, which the Bank of England then bought straight back and gave the ‘hooky’ money to the Treasury. And mange tout! That’s how the lie about borrowing works. Or, “Quantitative Easing” if you prefer.

But you don’t need to know all that. What you need to know is that the Tories got their mates at the Bank of England to print a load of money, which was then funnelled into the economy.

But don’t worry either. You didn’t miss the cheque in the post for £4.5k. Because the money went straight into rich people’s savings accounts and the stock markets. No income tax, no VAT, you could say. What it also meant is that government accounts looked like they had a lot more money in them. So, it could afford to do things like ‘Eat Out To Help Out’. Yeah. Because that ended so well.

But you don’t have to be a Nobel Prize-winning economist to know why the Tories and media are pushing this “£300bn borrowing” lie. Because when you borrow something, you usually have to pay it back. So, expect more austerity incoming. And, as always, it will be those of us that can least afford it paying for the Tories’ ‘Only Fools and Horses’ economics. Lovely jubbly.