True, George Osborne didn’t sound desperately sympathetic to the plight of credit crunch victims when he said on Newsnight last week: “Well look, no one takes pleasure from people making money out of the misery of others, but that is a function of capitalist markets.”
But that is NOT the same as the quote attributed to him by the prime minister just now:
“That it’s a function of financial markets that people make loads of money out of the misery of others.”
UPDATE
I’ve just spoken to one minister and one ex-minister who were both aghast at the idea that Brown had used a false quote. Brown would have been on safe ground if he had paraphrased the shadow chancellor. But he didn’t. Remember: This is the party which crucified Andrew Gilligan and the BBC because of the corporation’s lack of stringency….over a single quotation.
Jim Pickard
Kiran Stacey
