In his speech today, Ed Balls proved himself worthy of the “Son of Brown” tag,
slipping in more than a few “Brownies”. I thought CoffeeHousers would be interested in some of the figures behind his claims…
Balls claimed that “we went into the crisis with lower national debt than we inherited in 1997”. That is flatly untrue. Public sector net debt when Labour took over was £350
billion. In 2006-07 it was £500 billion. Even adjusting for inflation, Brown and Balls had added £62.8 billion in today’s money to the national debt they “inherited” by the
time the crisis started:
Balls’ defenders will say that he meant “debt ratio” – and, to be sure, debt did not rise as
fast as GDP over those years so the ratio fell (from 42.5 per cent to 35.9 per cent). But Balls didn’t mention a ratio: he claimed to have cut debt.
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