Douglas Carswell

Deficit-Denying Diane

Labour is not having a good time. Having lost their reputation for economic competence when they tanked that banks in 2006-07, Labour is still in denial mode.

It was the world economy's fault, they claim. That chronic budget deficit that Gordon Brown ran up? It was investment, they insist.

The denial turned a bit comical this week when Diane Abbott was sent in to defend Labour's u-turn on the Fiscal Charter.

Asked why John McDonnell, Labour economic spokesman, is now against a Charter he said he supported only two weeks ago, Diane said Labour had always been consistently Keynesian.

If this is consistent Keynesianism, it would be news to John Maynard Keynes.

Keynes argued that public spending should be counter-cyclical, not fiscally incontinent. Governments should run surpluses during economic booms and deficits during busts. Which is, in fact, precisely what the Fiscal Charter says.

Rejecting the Fiscal Charter is not remotely Keynesian; on the contrary, it is a repudiation of one of Keynes's core principles.

UKIP supports government living within its means. I have voted for cuts to public spending. I am backing the Fiscal Charter too, because it is right to support the principle of balanced budgets.Labour's commitment to ever-expanding government borrowing is not just irresponsible but deeply immoral. How can it possibly be fair or right to leave for us to spend money now and leave our children to pay for it?

Of course, having doubled the national debt and borrowed throughout a boom, the Conservative Government is no closer to economic credibility than Labour. Britain is currently running a higher budget deficit than almost every other country in Europe – even Greece is borrowing less than we are.

I agree with George Osborne that borrowing forever is a "threat to the economic security of working people." When will he put his own principles into practice?

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