A percentage game at PMQs

Open up your political lexicons. Inscribe this one in permanent ink. We’ll be laughing about it for years to come. Answering a question at PMQs on budget reductions, Gordon Brown promised that in 2013/14 there would be ‘a zero percent rise’ in spending. This bizarre piece of tweak-onomics was flung straight back at him by David Cameron. ‘That answer will get zero percent,’ said Dave. He then produced a Treasury report confirming that spending will shrink in the medium term.

Brown wriggled and shifted and changed the subject clumsily. ‘The debate is about this – how to return to jobs and growth in the economy.’ He rattled off a list of pet schemes – mostly for kiddies and the unemployed – which he claimed the Tories proposed to cut. Cameron disagreed. The debate was about trust. Would the prime minister be straight with the British people and admit the truth about cuts? Fat chance he would.