Where does spin end and lying begin?

Mandelson, the Lord High Everything Else, probably did himself as much harm as he did to George Osborne, his intended victim, in the famous interview with Evan Davis this week. If you heard the interview on Toady, you will know that Davis was unimpressed, despite his sympathies.

The main porky was that there would have been far in excess of 500,000 more unemployed at the moment but for action by government and Bank.

What is untruthful is the "far in excess of". What the Treasury had forecast was that there could eventually be up to 500,000 jobs saved. This Darling quoted in his Budget speech. In fact Oxford Economics published a forecast recently suggested that the stimulus of November 2008 might have saved 35,000 jobs, but in future years higher taxes to repay the debt could cause a loss of jobs, with 2012 itself 91,000 fewer. It is quite possible that government action will have had a perverse effect, although the reduction in interest rates by the Bank almost certainly had a beneficial effect.

His Lordship then when on to say that the conservatives opposed all strands of government policy, which is mostly arrant nonsense.. The only policy they have opposed was the ineffective cut in VAT rate, although they did warn that the results of Quantitative Easing are not easy to predict. In fact one or two of the policies, including business deferment of taxes due, were originally proposed by the Tories, as was support to enable banks to lend.

It would be easy to complain about the lies spread about with encouragement from the BBC, but in fact Mandelson has probably shot himself in the foot. Nobody now believes anything Brown says, and Mandelson is wearing his mantel.