He's not deceiving anyone any more

Well, almost. There could have been few journalists at his press conference yesterday who believed what G. Brown said about his re-appointment of Alister Darling.

Brown claimed that he had never intended to replace Darling as Chancellor. We have seen his studied refusal to praise Darling, for several days. This was so evident that Cameron used up at least two of his questions last Wednesday on the issue. Stories were emerging, briefings in the Brown style, that Balls was to be the next chancellor.

A less obvious "porkie" was Fraser Nelson's attempt to pin him down to admit that there will have to be reductions/savings in government expenditure. Nelson introduced his question by referring to Brown's presbyterian upbringing and his father's advice to tell the truth.

In fact there are already signs that reductions or savings are being made. Nelson used carefully worked out figures from the Institute of Fiscal Studies, that given the need to reduce an horrendous government debt mountain, and the present plans for this, there would have to be unacceptably high tax increases or else spending reductions.

Brown claimed that expenditure would continue to rise, despite the debt mountain. (He has already tried to browbeat Darling into a further expansion of fiscal stimulus/quantitative easing, so perhaps he is not lying. Perhaps he is becoming detached from reality!)