Son of Brownies

How generous of Ed Balls to publish a transcript of his interview on the Politics Show earlier, so that we can amble through it on a Sunday evening. It contains, as you’d expect, more disagreeable parts than agreeable, and nothing more so than his comments about the national debt, deficit and all that. Two of his arguments, in particular, are worth alighting on because they’re Brownies in the classic mould, and will probably be served up again and again:

1) ‘After the Second World War we took a number of years to repay our much higher level of debt. The government and Vince Cable have tried to get this done in one Parliament and it is backfiring.’ Here, Balls is right on two counts: measured as a percentage of GDP, we did have a much higher level of debt in 1945, and it did take decades to repay. But, beyond that, the rest of his point is utterly misleading.