Guido fears Brown’s innumeracy may cost taxpayers dearly when a deal is done on Northern Rock. Two examples illustrate Gordon’s tendency to be numerically misleading. On the Downing Street website Brown’s second sentence in his recent speech on developing the English language reads “Today more than a billion people speak English, a third of humanity.” Eh? The world population is estimated to be in excess of 6 billion. So he is only out by a margin of error of some 100%
More seriously, remember Gordon Brown’s cynical pledge to bring 1,000 troops home by Christmas as promised during Tory Party Conference whilst on a visit to Iraq? There were some 5,030 personnel in the country a the time and on the 26 December, 2007 that was only reduced to 4,600. So actually only 430 troops came out of Iraq, they didn’t even come home. According to the MoD, Operation Telic had some 6120 assigned to it before Gordon made his promise. A total of 6500 were assigned on December 26, an increase of 380. Cynical lies, playing politics with soldiers lives.

Incidentally, Guido was told about the above photo by a serving soldier, who said that there was a panic by MoD spin-doctors eager to find women and black soldiers to provide the right photo-op backdrop for Gordon. You can see what the real political priority was when he made that announcement. Making it look good.