So much for the positive vision. Labour have spent most of the day attacking the
Tories and their national insurance cut. You’d have heard Brown trying to wheel out statistics about it
during his Today Programme interview. And then the PM’s press conference, alongside Peter Mandelson and
Alistair Darling, reduced to a How The Tories’ Sums Don’t Add Up session.
One thing that’s striking about the latest attacks is how Labour are slipping, with calculated ease, between different figures to represent the efficiency savings that the Tories hope will fund their NI policy. Here’s a quick guide to the numbers, so you know what’s what:
£6 billion: This is roughly how much the Tories think the Exchequer will lose from their national insurance plan. They hope to cover this by cutting public spending by £6 billion this year – and those cuts will come from efficiency savings.
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