Thread by @faisalislam

Reports like this morning are exactly why some other countries get independent Budgetary watchdogs to cost parties’ manifestos.

Bottom line - understandable for Conservatives to point out Labour spending would be tens of billions higher. Indeed Labour freely acknowledge it... /1

First thing is the report has clearly been designed to get the trillion number headline - most obviously by summing the scorecard over 5 years... eg this not what Osborne did in 2015 in exactly the same exercise... just one year ahead then: /2 conservatives.com/~/media/Files/…

Obviously it is not actually a manifesto costing - because the manifestos haven’t been agreed yet ... for example - abolishing private schools is scored at £35bn, and nationalising the Big Six energy companies at £124bn /3

In any event you can’t compare this 5 year sum to individual nations GDP (“more than Denmark, Ireland and Austria combined or 60% UK) (an annual measure) - as release does, makes no sense.

Depending on value of £ - you are talking about either Sri Lanka or Uzbekistan... /4

The good news is that both Conservatives and Labour seem to have now committed to fully costed manifestos - so we can all come back to this with some actual hard numbers in just over a week /5

Here is how it is done in Netherlands and Latvia...

Dutch budget authorities actually publish “promising policies” costing on a rolling basis

ec.europa.eu/info/sites/inf…