Now For You Chancellor

Now I wouldn't be me if I didn't have a view on the EU referendum and you may well have guessed what it is. However I will be keeping my final opinion powder dry until a little nearer the day when I intend to publish the finest constitutional analysis this side of Lord Denning. Bet you can't wait.

This self-imposed ban should not however stand in the way of excoriating pitiful purveyors of plain old porkies. The Boy Cameron copped it a few weeks ago with his mendacious presentation of the 'deal' he had so assiduously won from the good burghers of le Grand Projet. But his best mate Gideon, our not very esteemed Second Lord of the Treasury (Dave is the first in case you wondered), has today usurped his boss as the biggest tosser on show in this unpleasant spectacle.

man with smokey pants

Gideon has had the unreliable elves at the Treasury beavering away (at our expense mind you) on a fourteen year economic forecast for good old GB & I should it disentangle itself from the EU. Fourteen fucking years. Apologies for the profanity but yes you did read that right. Fourteen years. This from people who can't get it right month to month, never mind anything measured in years. What guff. The entire purpose is to create a headline which suggests to the gullible that we will be £4300 per household worse off if we leave. Note the clever 'per household' usage, which naturally gives a far higher total than 'per person'. And Gideon has the bare-faced cheek to describe this misbegotten pile of speculation as 'fact'. I don't care which side of the debate you stand but we really do have to agree on one thing: as they say in political science circles, liar, liar, pants on fire.

This tripe is available for your delectation - Pick a Number - all 206 pages of it. As I will at later length explain, this is not primarily an economic issue and there should not be any need for either side of the debate to indulge in this sort of pathetic fiction. Both camps are up to it but to use the minions of the Treasury to produce such bilge is offensive. I think the best I can say of it is that it is exactly the type of blustering certitude one might have expected from Gordon Brown. Remember him? He was the Chancellor who abolished boom and bust. God preserve us.