So you say Labour's plans would cost £1.2 trillion ...

The Tory party have concocted an absolutely absurd misinformation campaign aimed at convincing the gullible that Labour would waste £1.2 billion if they win the next election.

If you come across anyone dim-witted enough to actually repeat these nonsense numbers, here are eight simple questions you can ask them to illustrate exactly how gullible they're being.

1. Where did you get this figure from

The figure was jumbled together on the Tory 'costofcorbyn' website, and then uncritically splashed all over the pages of the right-wing billionaire-owned propaganda rags.

No reputable source has mentioned this bogus figure without the disclaimer that it's been calculated in an incredibly shoddy way. Even the BBC called it out as "bogus numbers" and "dodgy accounting"!

2. Why do you believe it?

Whether this claim has been sourced from the Tories directly, or rote learned from the pages of the S*n/Daily Mail/Express, whoever is repeating it is believing it at face value with no critical thought whatever.

Don't they even know not to trust politicians without checking their claims first, or that they shouldn't believe everything they read in newspapers?

3. Did you check the workings?

Whoever is repeating this nonsense obviously didn't check the workings, because they're absolutely full of basic errors.

The idea that Labour would enact every single one of their policies on the day they formed a government is as blatantly ridiculous as the idea that government investments create absolutely zero returns to offset the cost.

Anyone who even remotely looked into how this figure was devised would definitely not be repeating it, because nobody actively wants to make themselves look an economic illiterate. Do they?

4. Do you understand the difference between an investment and an expenditure?

This is absolutely basic accounting stuff, but it's apparently beyond the abilities of the Tories who devised this number, and all the gullible piss-wits who are regurgitating it.

The difference is that when you invest in something, like taking the water supply, railways, or national grid back under public ownership, it's an investment that provides returns on investment, while expenditures are not recouped (at least not directly).

Investing in the de-privatisation of vital national infrastructure and services is not an expenditure with no returns because once private profiteers are prevented from soaking away the benefits in huge dividends and bloated executive salaries, the profits go back to the nation.

Jumbling up national investments up with government expenditures, like extra spending on stuff like free childcare, and free school meals is utterly ridiculous.

5. How did they work it out when Labour haven't published their manifesto yet?

Working out what a party's election manifesto would cost before they've even published it seems like pretty odd behaviour, especially since Labour set the precedent of explaining their spending pledges in their last manifesto.

Shouldn't the Tories be working on their own manifesto, and figuring out how much it would cost, rather than making up fake figures to discredit Labour's manifesto, when they've not even seen it yet?

6. How much does the Tory manifesto cost in comparison?

In an extraordinary car crash interview Tory minister Kwasi Kwarteng was asked by Sky News how much the Tory manifesto was going to cost in comparison, to which he gave the incredible reply that he was "not going to bandy around figures".

The absolute brass neck of bandying around such economically illiterate figures about Labour's spending plans, then bare-faced dodging questions about their own!

7. If the Tories are this bad at maths, why would you trust them to run the country?

The £1.2 trillion figure is so riddled with basic errors and economic illiteracy it's absolutely astounding that anyone would be happy to have the incompetents who produced it running the country.

If they can't even do basic stuff like differentiate between an asset and an expenditure, is it any wonder the Tories have delivered the slowest economic recovery in centuries, caused the worst period of sustained wage depreciation in history, and chucked away the UK's AAA credit ratings?

8 How much has austerity cost?

In 2010 the Tories promised that austerity fanaticism would have eliminated the budget deficit by early 2015, it's late 2019 and the national debt is still growing.

How much has all of this extra borrowing added to the national debt?

Well the national debt has risen almost £1 trillion since 2010, and what do we have to show for it? Worse public services, failing schools, smaller army, fewer police and fire fighters, bankrupt local councils, vandalised social safety net, the lowest level of infrastructure investment in the developed world, cancelled flood defence spending, soaring poverty, collapsing wages ... and according to Tory tribalists that represents money well spent!

And how much has the ruinous economically stifling austerity agenda wiped off the value of the UK economy?

According to research by NEF austerity has wiped a whopping £100 billion off the value of the UK economy already, and that's not a made up figure, it's economic value that's already been destroyed.

Do you see any Tories crying over that?

Of course you don't, because they don't actually care about the health of the UK economy, all they care about is transferring as much wealth as possible from the poor and ordinary to the mega-rich, no matter what harm this upwards wealth redistribution does to the wider economy.

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