Yet another week in Westminster has begun with yet another Labour U-Turn. This time, the party has said that it will now keep the two-child benefit cap, which their Deputy Leader previously called “obscene and inhumane”. Despite the fact Jonathan Ashworth, the Shadow Cabinet member responsible for *checks notes* benefits, decried the “heinous policy” just last month, Keir Starmer said on Sunday that Labour wouldn’t change the policy. It’s left Yvette Cooper facing some tough questions on the morning round…

Speaking to Kay Burley on Sky News, Yvette Cooper couldn’t say whether Labour supported the cap – though she was quick to spell out that they “opposed it when it first came in”. Should give CCHQ the chance to flog more flip-flops in time for summer recess.

On Saturday morning Labour sent out an embargoed press release on behalf of Jonathan Ashworth MP, Labour’s Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, claiming “The Tories are breaking all the wrong records…”. The claim was that more than half a trillion working days had been lost to sickness since the last General Election. An astounding number.

Ashworth was due to do the media round on Sunday morning where no doubt he would be intoning gravely about this Tory record. A trillion is a thousand billion. Or a million millions. There are 33 million people in the British workforce. So doing the maths this works out 500,000 / 33 days lost per person since 2013, which equates to 15,151 days lost per British worker to sickness.  You can see where Guido is going with this maths lesson. This is roughly 7 times as many working days as there have been since 2013.

There are exaggerations and there are exaggerations. The implicit claim from Jon Ashworth – that no one had gone to work since 2013 – was so ridiculous it made Guido laugh even before doing a rough calculation. If Labour win the next general election he will be responsible for a £250 billion spending budget. That he signed this press release off suggests he is innumerate. 

This wasn’t a typo, in the footnotes of the press release they repeated the “half  a trillion” claim. After some 4 hours had passed Labour’s press office realised their numbers were out by a mere 100,000%. They sent a correction. These are the same people who claim their spending plans are fully costed and their figures have been checked. 

Yet again, Labour have been putting rhetoric over coherent economics. The party has been denouncing the Government’s fiscal proposals, with Sir Keir calling the package a “Kamikaze” budget and Jonathan Ashworth criticising “£45 billion of unfunded tax cuts”. 

These attacks contain an element of self-harm because Labour support many of the proposals.

They plan to vote with the government on scrapping the Health and Social Care Levy, by far the biggest measure in the package, accounting for some 40% of unfunded spending. This is £18 billion of the £45 billion they decry.

Labour also supports the 1p cut to basic rate tax.

In the most generous interpretation, Labour supports billions in unfunded tax cuts, and oppose at most £27 billion.  

None of it is a surprise after Rachel Reeves’s previous monetary mishaps. Guido would advise Labour to spend less time conjuring adversarial attack-lines and more on getting the numbers right. If Kwasi’s unfunded tax cuts are “kamikaze” economics, Labour’s economic platform is no different.

Interesting line to take…

UPDATE: Ashworth has apologised:

“This is obviously embarrassing I misread the news ticker in an interview and thought a member of the public had now died. My deepest apologies for this mistake.”

At 4.26 p.m., Jon Ashworth was asked on Times Radio by Tom Newton Dunn “it does sound like you’re saying ‘Plan B now Mr Government’?” The Shadow Health Secretary replied:

“We are in favour of Plan B… of course the Plan B, but I’m giving you a broader point, which is if you want to bring infection rates down, particularly amongst children, you’ve got to get on and fix this vaccination programme. So it doesn’t matter whether it’s Plan A, or Plan B, or even the Plan C, which is now floated in some of the news today… We’ve got to deal with the vaccination first”

Six minutes later, a Labour spokesperson clarifies to Sky News:

Labour is not in favour of moving to Plan B on Covid, a spokesperson says. They are in favour of "making Plan A work"

— Sam Coates Sky (@SamCoatesSky) October 21, 2021

Guido gives it a fortnight before Captain Hindsight uses Ashworth’s original quote as a claim they were in favour of moving to Plan B before the government…