Day 4932: You Can Prove Anything With Statistics Part Deux

Thursday:

This time it’s Tom Clarke writing in the Gruaniad to assert:

“How the Tories chose to hit the poor”

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/02/tories-poor-george-osborne-inequality-conservatives

(and just look at all those buzzwords in that URL!)

“George Osborne claims to have cut inequality,” adds the sub-editor. “But look behind the figures and it's clear the Conservatives can't take any credit.”

To summarize: the existing data points do not agree with his thesis so he says that they don't count and makes up what next year's figures will say instead.

It seems Iain Drunken Swerve isn’t the only one for whom denial is a preferred tactic.


The implications of the piece are that the CHOICES of the Coalition are bad ones, and therefore that any beneficial outcome is accidental. To come to that conclusion it is necessary to downplay, ignore or indeed run away and hide from the contribution of the Liberal Democrats to Coalition policy.


Inequality, measured by the Office for National Statistics figures for 2011/12, FELL in the UK under the Coalition, and the new 2012/13 figures show that fall has not reversed.

As Lib Dem Voice reports, the Institute for Fiscal Studies have commented that inequality is now lower than since before Tony Blair brought Labour back into government in 1997.

This is a fact.

A startling one but indisputably a fact. Startling not just because this is the first fall in inequality for nearly three decades, but also because it is unique among Western nations.

Is this a beneficial outcome?

What has happened has happened in the worst way. I – and I think most Liberals – would prefer to reduce inequality by raising everyone up, not grinding the richest down. Making the rich pay, that’s Labour’s way. In this recession, everyone has had to take a hit, including hitting some of the least well off, but proportionately the better off you were the more you’ve been asked to pay – from each according to their means, as it were. And it must gall Labour and the left that this Coalition has been more socialist than the socialists ever were.

But if, as Labour do, you subscribe to the “Spirit Level” thesis that more equal societies are happier, healthier and better then you would have to say this is a beneficial outcome. Even if you don’t subscribe, you would have to accept that the cost of the Crash had to be borne by someone, and these figures show that the better-off have shouldered their share of the burden. Those better able to pay have paid and as a result there has been a slight rebalancing of income after tax and benefits.

So is this just by accident or does it down to the choices we have made in government?

It is not difficult to see how it’s happened. Salaries were frozen or even reduced, whereas, at the insistence of the Liberal Democrats, benefits continued to be increased*, and with a triple lock pensions – more than half the Social Security budget – were and still are increased by even more.

(*Full disclosure: for the period covered by these figures, benefits were increased in line with inflation. For 2013/14 benefits were still increased, but we could not stop George Osborn capping many increases, but not pensions, at 1% – a cut in real spending power as it is below the rate of inflation. Because pensions increase by more than inflation, the impact of this is uncertain, but it does, of course, form the basis of Mr Clarke’s speculation that inequality will rise again in next year’s official figures.)

Add to that the effect of the flagship Liberal Democrat tax policy of raising the personal allowance, a tax cut directly aimed at the less well-off earners.

And the Liberal Democrats also required, in the price for Coalition, that Capital Gains Tax – a tax largely paid by the well-off – be increased from Labour’s inequality-creating low level of 18% to a more reasonable 28%.

Furthermore, the Lib Dems would not let Master Gideon reduce the top rate of tax from 50% to the 40% rate that it was under Labour.

Remember when Labour raised the top rate to 50p… for a MONTH. The Coalition because of the Liberal Democrats has a rate of 45% that is still higher than under any budget presented by Gordon Brown.

Remember when Labour DOUBLED the tax paid by those in the lowest band, and how Mr Balls still wants to reintroduce the 10p starting rate? The Coalition because of the Liberal Democrats gave those people a ZERO starting rate and took them out of paying income tax altogether!

You can see the theme here: Labour under Mr Blair and Mr Brown – who, if you recall, were in the words of Mr Peter “Prince of Darkness” Mandelson: “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich” – saw inequality rise like a rocket. The Coalition, because of Liberal Democrats’ fair tax policies, has seen a remarkable fall.

For that fall in inequality to come about because “the Tories chose to hit the poor” IS. NOT. POSSIBLE.


Remember Labour’s COMPLICITY in the Great Crash of the Twenty-Nothings. It wasn’t ALL down to a few “rogue bankers”. I’ve written before of how Labour’s “borrow and spend” economic policy buoyed the bubble, how their “let the good times roll (on tick)” philosophy cheered on many millions of small borrowers to risk more than they could afford on the (fictitious) promise of a never-ending supply of cheap money lent from China – how often did Gordon Brown say “no more boom and bust”? What did he think he was encouraging people to do?

Remember how Labour were taking bungs and favours from everyone from Bernie Eccleston to Rupert Murdoch. They were deeply entwined with the really filthy rich.

Remember the facts of what Labour really DID, not the fairy story of good times that they want you to believe in.

Labour, even when they nationalised a bank or two, were only ever socialist by accident; we have achieved this by design.

In this crash (which, whatever the causes, you have to admit happened on Labour’s watch) everyone has done worse. But Liberal Democrat choices have made good on the Chancellor’s promises of being “all in this together”.

And that’s important to us because we CARE about a Fairer Society as well as a Stronger Economy.

The impression from his article is that Mr Clarke appears not to care that Labour never really cared at all.

"…so when the truth finally outs, what will be the response?"

Practically an admission there that he doesn't know that either. So he’s just making that answer up too. Not necessarily an unreasonable prognostication – Mr Drunken Swerve has form – but still not in fact fact.

The 2013/14 data – when it comes out next year – may (or may not!) undermine the Chancellor's current statement, but at least Mater Gideon is basing his words on the facts as they are known now. Mr Clarke and the Graun are not.

And the confirmation bias of 450 below the line CiFers nodding and saying “he’s right you know” does not count as supporting evidence.

Mr Clarke touches their G (for Grauniad) spot again by referring to the 2008 crash as “Lehman Brothers' implosion” pinning the blame on the bank and definitely not the profligacy of any governments that might have supposedly had oversight of the economy at the time.

And again we have the lazy accusation against the Coalition of “a government that has lurched to the right”.

Then there is this:

"This week's data only takes us up to this point, the financial year that began in April 2012"

This is such a weirdly constructed sentence that I have to wonder if it's deliberate. If you are talking about the point that the data takes us to, then surely it only makes sense to talk about the *end* of that Financial Year, so April 2013.

By using 2012 (whether by accident or design) it conveys the impression that the data is even more out of date and only covers maybe a year or so when the Coalition were in charge, rather than 60% of the current Parliament.

If you are going to criticize the use of statistics by others, then you must take the greatest care that no distortion creeps into your own version – that he has failed to do so critically undermines his argument.

I realize Mr Clarke has a book to sell – it’s actually advertised right there in the article (or “advertising feature” as these things used to be called) and "oops I have no evidence" doesn't help with that, but really this is just hiding from the facts.

Inequality has fallen. This is not because the Tories chose to hit the poor. It’s because the Liberal Democrats chose to defend the poorest-off where we could and to raise fair taxes from the rich.

Day 4931: Most Right-Wing Government Evah…

Wednesday:

Number One in a series of lazy clichés that need stamping on…


Again and again you see this snide little assertion slipped into an article or among the comments. It’s a nasty little code phrase for sneaking around Godwin’s Law (for who would the Coalition have to be more right wing than?) Rather than addressing why a policy might be bad, it’s used as a “joker” to declare any policy simply to be bad because of its authorship, rather than outcome.

And of course it’s just not true!

This isn't even the most right-wing government of the last TWO!

In the last 30 years…

The Coalition gave us Equal Marriage; the Thatcher Government gave us Section 28, and you think the Coalition is more right wing?

The Coalition gave us cash back with a tax cut for basic rate taxpayers, and the first fall in inequality in 30 years; Maggie gave us the Poll Tax and Major gave us Back to Basics and Cash for Questions, and you think the Coalition is more right wing?

The Coalition gave us an end to child detention, scrapping of DNA databases, reform of the libel laws (and Nick Clegg blocked the Snooper's Charter); the Blair government tried to give us ID cards and 90 day detention-without-trial, and you think the Coalition is more right wing?

The Coalition acting under International Law and with a UN Resolution used minimal force to defend Benghazi from Muammar Gadhafi’s air strikes; Labour invaded Iraq.

The Coalition gave a triple lock to pensioners; Gordon Brown gave them 50p. The Coalition achieved the Millennium Development target of 0.7% of GDP in overseas aid; the Brown Government gave a massive bailout to bankers, and you think the Coalition is more right wing?


The Coalition were faced with quite simply having a lot less money to spend and has managed this very difficult very painful loss of income without it all ending in a Winter of Discontent or a year-long strike and with only one major bout of rioting.

You don't have to be right-wing to be financially responsible.

Running up a mountain of borrowing means transferring money from future generations to the present bankers. Labour might believe that it is left-wing to throw away our children's money, but that’s probably why they’re still in such a pickle over the economy; where I come from selling kids into slavery is the very worst sort of Victorian values.

And if your response to the above – looking at you, Mr Balls – is “but Master Gideon is still borrowing”, are you really saying that the Coalition has not been “right-wing” enough?! The Coalition has curbed but not conquered the deficit precisely because they are on the moderate and not the extreme right.

Have there been right wing proposals? Sure. Theresa May and Michael Gove can hardly shut up, except to take chunks out of each other. But when they get to the Quad, Nick Clegg says “No” and that’s the end of the matter.

This is the most liberal, centrist government since the post-war consensus ended in the Seventies.

Isn’t that depressing enough?


Coming soon: "30 years of Neo-Liberal consensus – the only Liberal Conspiracy is that there isn’t one"