Interviewed on the Today programme this morning, Liam Byrne was asked a straightforward question; if he wrote his notorious memo (“there’s no money left”) in April did he expect to lose the general election in May? The answers were brilliantly evasive.
Today: You wrote the letter on the sixth of April when the election was called, you obviously didn’t expect to be returning to your desk?
LB: No, not at all, because, you know, chief secretaries are paid to go to work to be tough on public spending, and that’s why we had very clear, very strong plans to halve the deficit over the next four years and in fact they were the fastest, clearest plans over any major country in the G7
Today: Why did you write to your successor if you expected to be keeping your job?
LB: Because that’s the approach that is going to be needed in years to come but there is a right way and a wrong way of restoring the public finances to health and the risk is, with the coalition, they are making the wrong decisions….etc….
Jim Pickard
Kiran Stacey