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Several Hon. Members rose--Mr. Lamont : No, I should like to press on.
I know very well that times are difficult for business, but industrial production in Britain has fallen by less in the past year than industrial production in Canada, Italy, Belgium, Sweden or Australia.
Although the December fall in retail sales was disappointing, in this country sales were still higher in the last quarter than they were a year ago. Retail sales in Canada are down 10 per cent. on a year ago, and they are down in Italy, too. In the United States, the retail sales figures were the worst for 20 years.
It is pure folly to imagine, if one were ever tempted to do so, that we in Britain can isolate ourselves from the world economy. Economic conditions in other countries affect us directly, through the level of demand for British products abroad, but also indirectly through the effects on confidence. That in turn further affects domestic demand and output.
Of course, as the hon. Member for Durham, North (Mr. Radice) has said, domestic factors have also been at work. The most important of those is the sharp rise in the savings ratio in the course of the recession. Many individuals, having incurred large debts in the late 1980s, have chosen to repay those debts and, indeed, to build up their savings rather than to spend money on consumer goods. In the short run, manufacturers and retailers have suffered as a result of weaker consumer demand. But it is not the business of Government to tell individuals that they should be spending rather than saving. In this country there has for a long while-- quite rightly--been concern that our level of national savings has not been high enough. For too long, we have relied on house price inflation to do our saving for us. In the long run, an increase in real, genuine savings will help to finance investment, to reduce real interest rates and to strengthen the economy. That means that the recovery will be stronger and more soundly based.
Mr. A. J. Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) : Clearly, the Chancellor of the Exchequer genuinely believed that, by this time, consumers would be spending more money--that the pent-up demand of which he has spoken would have been released so as to start the economy moving again, and that that would lead the recovery. Why, does he think, have consumers not had the confidence to go into the shops and spend money? What does that reluctance say about Government policies?
Mr. Lamont : I have already said that one would not normally expect monetary policy to have had it full effect--for instance, the considerable loosening of policy that occurred between February and July last year. I am sure that the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) is not suggesting this, but it would be absurd to suggest that, because output does not follow a predicted path from one quarter to another, the thrust and direction of policy should be changed, or that policy is wrong.
Good management of the economy has nothing to do with changing policy in the futile pursuit of each month's passing statistic. Good management is about getting the policies right and sticking to them. That is what we have done, and that is what we will continue to do. We must, of course, be realistic and open about this recession. It has caused much hardship. However, it is not
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realistic to talk, as Opposition Members do, about a never-ending recession. It is positively irresponsible and shows that they will stoop to any depths to gain power and to try to frighten the British people. In the past few months, the Labour party has certainly succeeded in frightening the British people, but it is the Labour party of which the British people are frightened, because they know perfectly well that the one thing that could mean a never-ending free-fall recession is the advent of a Labour Government. As this autumn statement has demonstrated once again, we are the only party that can keep public spending and taxation under control. Inevitably, the recession has added to the pressures both on public spending and on tax revenues. Weaker than expected activity in the second half of last year will mean that those pressures are even greater than anticipated in the autumn statement.I shall present my Budget to this House on 10 March. The House would not expect me to anticipate my Budget, but I can tell the House that we will continue our prudent stewardship of public finances, in contrast to the reckless promises of the Labour party.
The right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East likes to pretend that he has some alternative policy. For months, as we were lowering interest rates cautiously and carefully, he said they should be lower. Whatever the state of the economy, Labour's refrain has been the same-- [Interruption.]
Mr. Speaker : Order. I ask the House to settle down. This is a very important debate, and many right hon. and hon. Members wish to participate. Interruptions do not make it easier for them to do so.
Mr Lamont : Whatever the state of the economy, the right hon. and learned Gentleman's policy has always been the same. Whatever the level of interest rates, he has always argued that they should be lower. Even in 1987 and even in 1988, right at the top of the boom, the right hon. and learned Gentleman advocated that interest rates should be lower. We all know where we should be if we had followed his policy. Today, inflation would be higher and the recession would be deeper.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman has been rumbled. Now he is trying to give the impression that he would not devalue the pound. He has been forced to admit that he could not cut interest rates. He has lost his only policy, so what does he call for now? He calls for a change of course--a new direction. He parrots the phrase. But what is this change of course-- [Interruption.]
Mr. Speaker : Order. This gives a very bad impression-- [Hon. Members :-- "Oh."] I mean the reaction of the House.
Mr. Lamont : We all know that the last thing the Labour party wants is for any attention to be focused on its policies. That is the one thing that it cannot bear.
The right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East has repeatedly in debate called for a fresh approach, a new policy and a change of course, yet in speech after speech we have not had the slightest sign or demonstration of what that policy is meant to be. In the previous debate on the autumn statement, I asked the right hon. and learned Gentleman this question : if he did not disagree with monetary policy, what did he think about fiscal policy, about spending and about
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borrowing? I asked him then if he thought that public spending was too high, too low or just about right. I asked him whether he thought that borrowing was too high, too low or just about right, and he did not answer. What the right hon. and learned Gentleman lacks in frankness he makes up for in evasion.Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) : Will the Chancellor admit that, this time last year, he forecast that there would not be a budget deficit? We are now running into the possibility in 1992 of a deficit of the order of £19 billion. On top of that, when the Government came to power in 1979, personal debt on average was 45 per cent. The latest figure is 102 per cent. That figure will haunt the Government for ever.
Mr. Lamont : The House will have noticed the cheers that the hon. Gentleman was getting from his Back-Bench colleagues. Perhaps that is because he is one of 25 hon. Members who signed an amendment to the motion, rejecting the market economy, calling for a fully socialist policy and disagreeing totally with the policy advocated by the Front Bench of his party.
Mr. Lamont : I will answer. For all his austerity, the hon. Gentleman has quite a few contacts with the City, but he does not seem to be well informed. No such prediction was made in the Budget last year. The hon. Gentleman has got it totally wrong.
To return to the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East, he is caught between the massive spending plans of his shadow Ministers and his wish to appear to be in a position to deny that a Labour Government would put up taxes, but he does not seem to be having much success with his colleagues.
Let me turn now in detail to public spending, the subject of the debate. On the programme for each Department, we have set out our spending plans for the next three years. On each of those, Labour promises to spend more. I hope that today the right hon. and learned Gentleman will tell us which of Labour's promises we should believe and which are just empty words.
Let me start with social security. In the autumn statement, I announced that provision for social security in 1992-93 would rise by £4.25 billion, to over £70 billion. That is a massive sum and a massive increase. We have honoured our commitments to the old, the disabled and the jobless. We gave extra help to the poorest disabled pensioners and those over 80. Unlike the Labour party, we did not use an economic downturn as an excuse to break our promises to pensioners.
But all that is not enough for the Labour party. Indeed, on 30 September last year the right hon. and learned Gentleman said : "And of course that Labour Government will restore the link between retirement pensions and earnings and prices--whichever is the higher."
I noticed the right hon. and learned Gentleman nodding to confirm that. So much for the pledge that Labour has got only two specific pledges in its spending plans. We can see that not just the party but the right hon. and learned Gentleman himself does not believe in his policy.
The autumn statement demonstrated again that the national health service gets a better deal under this
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Government than it ever did under Labour. I announced an increase of £1.5 billion in United Kingdom spending on the NHS ; for the hospital and community health services, the real increase in spending planned between this year and next is 5 per cent.In 1992-93, we will be spending a greater share of national income on the health service than ever before--more than half as much again in real terms as in 1979. That has given more doctors, more dentists, more nurses, more midwives and more patients being treated. In addition, we are investing for the future of the health service because capital spending is three quarters as high as it was under the Labour Government.
All that is not enough for the Labour party. The hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) was reported on one occasion as saying that he would pour money into the health service. On 23 September last year, he said :
"We are going to restore the underfunding of the NHS."
On 21 October, he said :
"in the first year we shall start to tackle underfunding".--[ Official Report, 21 October 1991 ; Vol. 196, c. 673.]
How much would he spend--£3 billion, £1 billion, or nothing? Is it a pledge--it sounds like a pledge--or is it just empty words? Despite the recession, we have maintained British Rail and London Regional Transport's massive investment programmes. I announced an increase of £1.4 billion in Government finance, enabling them to maintain an investment programme of more than £2 billion in 1992-93--three times as much as in 1979. Over the next three years, they will be investing half as much again in real terms as in the past three years.
But again that is not enough for the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott). On 22 April 1991, he said :
"the Government have the overriding responsibility to see that there is a high-speed rail link from the tunnel not only to London but to areas beyond --the midlands, the north, Wales and Scotland?"--[ Official Report, 22 April 1991 ; Vol. 189, c. 760.]
He said nothing about having only two pledges on child benefit and taxes and about everything being optional. Are we to take those words at face value or not? Are those words a pledge? They sound like a pledge. Are they a pledge, or are they just empty words designed to deceive the electorate?
Opposition Members go on and on about education and training, but when will they look at the facts? Next year, we are providing for a real-terms increase of 15 per cent. in Government support for maintained schools. We have more students in higher education than ever before--one in four, compared with one in eight when the Labour party was in power. Again, it is not enough for the Labour party, and it is not enough for the Leader of the Opposition. In October 1991, he said :
"If that level of expenditure"--
he was talking about the proportion of GDP spent on education in 1979--
"had been maintained, an extra £2.6 billion every year would be going into education. We will continue with the scale of commitment at least at the levels of 1979."
Again there was nothing about having only two pledges. Is that a pledge, is it a firm promise--it sounds like it ; it is calculated to be like it--or is it just empty words?
We announced that the overseas aid budget would increase by 2 per cent. in real terms. Again, that is not
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enough for the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman). He was not worried about things being phased in over the next Parliament or over two Parliaments. On 3 October 1991, he said :"During our first Parliament we shall increase Britain's aid budget to the United Nations' target of 0.7 per cent. That is a firm commitment, costed and clear, that I pledge our Labour Government will carry out."
Again, that sounds like a pledge, but the Labour party says that it has only two pledges. Is it a pledge, or is it just empty words? Yesterday, my right hon. and learned Friend the Chief Secretary showed that the bill for Labour's spending plans has now risen to an astonishing £37 billion over and above the public-- [Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker (Miss Betty Boothroyd) : Order. Barracking does not improve the quality of our debates.
Mr. Lamont : We all know that the Labour party simply cannot take any examination of its policy--it simply cannot. The Labour party has made- -I quoted them today and there has been no intervention by Opposition Front -Bench Members--what sound like specific promises. Those promises add up to £37 billion. We have repeatedly challenged Labour Members either to drop those spending pledges or to tell the country what taxes they would put up to pay for them, but they have not responded.
Mr. Tony Benn (Chesterfield) : Is the Chancellor aware that, because of unemployment, each day 3 million working days are lost from production, and that the cost of benefit and lost production put together is probably about £50 billion a year?
Any proposal to expand production will be self-financing. [Interruption.] Of course it will. That is exactly how the rearmament programme before the war brought full employment back to Britain, after a slump under Neville Chamberlain as serious as the one that the Chancellor has engineered in this country.
Mr. Lamont : The right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) in recent debates has made some telling contributions, but I am afraid that that is not one of them. It is a sheer fallacy to think that any public expenditure measure can be justified simply because it would create jobs and be self-financing. We have heard that many times before, but I am afraid that it does not work like that.
Hon. Members opposite have refused repeatedly to respond ; perhaps we shall hear from the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East something about this today.
These plans have huge implications for taxation as well, although the Labour party has been a little more forthcoming than at first about its tax plans. It promised to raise the marginal rate of tax for the better-off to 59 per cent. I am not sure what it thinks that will do to house prices in the south-east, about which we will no doubt hear so much from the right hon. and learned Gentleman in a minute.
Labour Members promised to hit everybody earning more than £390 a week with a full extra 9 per cent. on national insurance contributions. That will hit not just those earning more than £20,000 a year but anybody
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whose earnings go over £390 in a week, perhaps because of overtime : they will be penalised by the tax proposed by the Labour party. Despite their professed concern for investment, Labour Members promise to introduce a new 9 per cent. tax on savings income. They still call income from savings "unearned income", and they are determined to tax it as heavily as possible. The whole country knows, and we know, that the Labour party is the party of high taxation. We saw in The Sunday Times --a quality newspaper that I read very carefully--an Access opinion poll which revealed that 57 per cent. of hon. Members on the Benches opposite want to put the basic rate of tax up by 2p. We also heard the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) admit in a broadcast the other day that he did not think that 83 per cent. was a penal rate of tax. Both those things reveal the attitudes of the party opposite.We thought that we knew what Labour was promising on taxes, but now all seems to be in confusion after the Leader of the Opposition's famous dinner at Luigi's. I do not know if it was the effect of the frascati, but the right hon. Gentleman seems to have been in expansive mood. The dinner certainly cost a lot. It has cost Labour its last slender vestige of credibility on taxation. The truth is that Labour knows that it will have to increase tax and national insurance to pay for its extra spending. Even if it was able to phase in the increases, the phasing in would make no difference. In the end, the taxes would go up--and everyone knows it.
We were told by the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East that all this was going to happen, and happen immediately. Now we are told that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is furious with his leader--again according to that reliable paper, The Sunday Times. I am not surprised about the right hon. and learned Gentleman, because his credibility has rested on creating the impression that they had only two spending plans and that those plans could be financed simply out of the increases in national insurance and the higher rates of tax.
The priority package of the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East is in ribbons, and not just because the Leader of the Opposition wants to delay the tax increases to pay for it. The right hon. and learned Gentleman himself has also bungled it, because, on top of the two specific pledges which he keeps saying are their only ones, he has added £1 billion for training as an immediate package for industry. So the right hon. and learned Gentleman simply cannot say that they can finance their child benefit and pension increases and the industry package out the tax measures that they are proposing and at the same time postpone the introduction of those tax increases.
Mr. John Smith (Monklands, East) : Perhaps the Chancellor will refresh my memory. I do not know whether it was in The Sunday Times, but he claims that his credibility is much greater than mine. Why is that not reflected in the opinion polls that appear in newspapers?
Mr. Lamont : Powerful and persuasive though the right hon. and learned Gentleman is, he does not seem to have been very successful, because polls show that eight out 10 people think that a Labour Government would put up taxes.
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Mr. Smith : If the Chancellor has such an outstanding economic record, and if I am so incredible, can he explain why he is so badly regarded by the public in every opinion poll?
Mr. Lamont : I am sure that the right hon. and learned Gentleman puts that question to his right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition all the time. The right hon. and learned Gentleman used the phrase "credibility gap". The Labour party does not have a credibility gap : it has a credibility chasm.
I hope that the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East will answer some questions today. Where is the money coming from ? What is the order of priorities ? How does Labour plan to build up the supply side ? How would Labour cope with a flood of public sector wage claims ? How serious is Labour on inflation ? Those questions, which some hon. Members may recognise, are very good questions, not because they come from me ; they were raised by the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) in a slim volume that was wistfully entitled, "Awkward Questions : Random Thoughts." The hon. Member wrote that two years ago, but the Labour party has still provided no answers. Labour does not have an alternative policy ; it simply has alternative presentation. Behind the lawyer's patter of the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East, he knows that he is defending a guilty party that is misleading the country. We know it, Labour knows it and, increasingly, the whole country knows it as well.
In the autumn statement, I announced a programme of public spending which the country can afford, designed to meet the needs of those areas that we see as the highest priority. I set out the economic policies that we have put in place that will provide the ground for a sustained, non-inflationary recovery--a real recovery, not the kind of sham recovery that we saw in the 1960s.
Some people say that there is not much difference between the policies of the two parties. However, some people are wrong. There is a vast divide between us and the Labour party on economic questions, in particular on taxation and public spending. We await the answers from the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East today. There is no doubt that he would increase spending rashly, indiscriminately and unaffordably, inevitably leading to the higher taxes that Labour Governments always introduce-- higher taxes, higher interest rates and higher borrowing. All that would stop the recovery in its tracks.
We commend our spending proposals to the House with the confidence that they are realistic, affordable and clear. No such description can be applied to the spending explosion foolishly promised by the Labour party. That is why the House should endorse our plans and reject the amendment.
4.44 pm
Mr. John Smith (Monklands, East) : I beg to move, to leave out from "House" to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof : "declines to approve the Autumn Statement ; deplores the continued mismanagement of the economy, which has plunged all parts of the nation into a deep and damaging recession, causing unprecedented and avoidable levels of business failures and rapidly rising unemployment ; regrets the errors that are already apparent in the Government's
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forecasts for the economy made in the Autumn Statement ; condemns the failure of the Government to invest in the economic infrastructure and vital public services ; and calls upon the Government to promote an investment-led recovery including financial incentives for investment in manufacturing, tax credits for the enhancement of technology, assistance for regional economic development and a major programme of education and training to tackle Britain's continuing skills crisis.'."As today's debate proceeds, it might be necessary to remind ourselves continually that it is about the autumn statement which was produced by the Government last November. That statement did two things : it provided the Government's assessment of the economic prospects for 1992, and it outlined the Government's spending plans for the forthcoming year. We have already heard the Chancellor attempt to divert attention from the Government's economic record and their totally inaccurate forecasts. No doubt that tactic will be pursued relentlessly today and in the period ahead.
Conservatives want political debate in this country to feature on almost everything except their economic record. One can of course understand their motivation for that, particularly with regard to the autumn statement.
Let me remind the House of the forecasts that the Chancellor made in his autumn statement in November. He told the House that he expected GDP to rise by 0.75 per cent. in the second half of 1991. He said that growth in 1992 would rise by 2.25 per cent. He said : "The increase in output from the second half of this year" that is to say, 1991--
"to the second half of the next is expected to be 2 per cent."--[ Official Report, 6 November 1991 ; Vol. 198, c. 453.]
He claimed that growth from July 1991 to the end of June 1992 would be approaching 3 per cent. [ Hon. Members :-- "No."] He did. There can be no question about it. The Chancellor said that very clearly on 6 November and I have quoted his exact words from Hansard. It is absurd to claim that growth would be nearly 3 per cent. between July 1991 and June 1992. It is right that that should be exposed today. We are now in January 1992, more than halfway through that projected year. Where is the 3 per cent. growth? We are still declining and not expanding. It is now abundantly clear that all those forecasts, particularly the last one to which I referred, were rubbish.
In the light of the undisputed facts about the British economy, in particular the absense of growth in an economy which, in 1991 shrank by 2 per cent., it is astonishing that the Chancellor claimed on 6 November, when the forecasts were produced, that he was "realistic and cautious".
We all know what he was doing when he spoke to the House last November. He was doing one simple political task : he was creating a mythical economic scenario for a November election. That is what he was up to when he gave the House those figures.
Unfortunately for the Chancellor's reputation as an economic forecaster, the Prime Minister let him down by not having a November election because he ran away from the prospect of facing the electorate. We are now in January 1992, more than halfway through the economic year in which 3 per cent. growth was predicted. As we know, the economy is stagnant. At the very best, we are bumping along the bottom.
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Mr. Tony Marlow (Northampton, North) : I am an admirer of the right hon. and learned Gentleman. We share certain objectives. He would like to see manufacturing industry expand and succeed to promote growth in the economy. How would the right hon. and learned Gentleman achieve that if, at the same time, he seeks to introduce swingeing tax increases on managers and entrepreneurs and also introduce a tax on savings? How will he achieve investment in manufacturing industry on that basis?
Mr. Smith : May I ask the hon. Gentleman for a small favour? I should like him to keep his professed admiration for me to himself for some time. In the forthcoming election I could do without it. The hon. Gentleman said that if I were Chancellor I would introduce swingeing tax increases. Let him reflect that under Labour the top rate of tax--even adding tax and national insurance together--would be lower than the rate that was in force until March 1988 under a Conservative Government.
Mr. Marlow rose --
Mr. Smith : I am tempted to give way again, but if I were to do so I might encourage the admiration that I wish to stop.
Mr. Robert Adley (Christchurch) : The right hon. and learned Gentleman has referred to the rate of direct taxes that applied in 1988. Presumably he is familiar with the Laffer curve. Is not it true that since the direct tax reductions of 1988 there has been a substantial increase in the tax take? In contrast, when his party was in government higher direct taxes produced a lower tax take. What on earth can he say to the British people to make them believe that what happened under the last Labour Government and what has happened under the present Government during the last two or three years would miraculously be reversed?
Mr. Smith : Let me make it quite clear that I have never accepted any economic propositions to the effect that if one constantly reduces tax rates one will constantly increase tax revenue. That seems to me to be an inherently absurd proposition. [Interruption.] Hon. Members must allow me to reply to the question. The reason for the higher-tax band figures is that well-paid people have received huge salary increases. We know perfectly well that the Government invited the late Professor Charles Brown to investigate the connection between tax and incentives. Professor Brown, whose investigation was financed by the Treasury, came to the conclusion that there was no reliable connection between the two things. With respect to the hon. Gentleman, I say that the professor probably knew a little more about this than he does.
Mr. Peter Thurnham (Bolton, North-East) : Can the right hon. and learned Gentleman say exactly how he would fund the increases in pensions and child benefit that he has promised--not to mention the rest of the £37 billion--if he were to phase in his tax bombshell?
Mr. Smith : I shall come to that matter. The hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that we have proposed tax changes that would more than cover our promises in respect of pensions and child benefit. I must get back to the autumn statement. I am quite happy to answer hon. Members' questions--
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Mr. Patrick Nicholls (Teignbridge) rose--Mr. Smith : I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman as he seems to be hailing me.
Mr. Nicholls : If right hon. and learned Gentleman were to be so generous on future occasions I should hail him more often. The right hon. and learned Gentleman denied that his party would introduce swingeing tax increases. Is not he aware that Labour's stated intention to tax savings income in excess of £3,000 would hit 750,000 people who are basic-rate taxpayers? In those circumstances, how on earth can the leader of his party say that his tax proposals will not affect people earning less than £20,000 a year?
Mr. Smith : The hon. Gentleman does not seem to realise that the purpose of our changes is to treat unearned income and earned income in exactly the same way. That is a first-class principle that should apply to all tax systems.
I really must get back to the autumn statement. The Chancellor, in introducing that statement, sought to justify his claims, which I believe were ridiculous. He sought to rebut my challenge that his forecasts were incredible by saying :
"What the right hon. and learned Gentleman ignored was the fact that our forecasts are in line with those of independent organisations".--[ Official Report, 6 November 1991 ; Vol. 198, c. 456.]
Let us look at what independent forecasters are saying. In Consensus Forecasts of 1992, which usefully brings together the data from 34 different independent British forecasting organisations, growth for the whole of 1992 is predicted to be 1.4 per cent. So let there be no doubt that the autumn statement's assessment of the British economy is so absurd that it should be withdrawn and fed into the Treasury shredder--an over- worked machine that is well used to pulping reams of bogus forecasts made by the present incompetent Government.
Anticipating the inevitable downgrading of his estimates, which he had to make today and will have to make in his Budget statement on 10 March, the Chancellor took the opportunity of an early-morning slot on TV-am to begin the process of his tortuous recantation. The risk, of course, was that he would appear to be a dismal Johnnie--"dismal Johnnie" being a phrase which appeared in the press release of the Prime Minister's recent speech to Newcastle business men but which, on delivery, was changed to "moaning Jimmy". The Chancellor had little choice but to accept what the nation knew only too well and to admit to David Frost
"The forecast I made at the time of the autumn statement will prove to have been somewhat over-optimistic."
Hard on the heels of the Chancellor, the Prime Minister himself appeared on TV-am last Sunday and conceded that the recovery that he said he had previously imagined had been delayed. Note the revealing choice of words : "imagined" and "delayed". The Prime Minister appeared to forget his own admonition against moaning Jimmys when, as a dismal Johnnie, he sought to downgrade the economic prospects for the world as a whole using the well- tried Conservative technique of blaming others. But we now know that the point at which a moaning Jimmy becomes a dismal Johnnie is when the Prime Minister appears on TV-am and admits that the recession will not be over before the general election.
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