Thread by @L__Macfarlane

Some thoughts on the ridiculous figure splashed across the Sunday news papers:

1) This has literally been plucked out of thin air — Labour’s manifesto hasn’t even been published yet, so this can’t be taken as a serious assessment of the party’s policies

2) The analysis makes a series of fanciful assumptions about the up-front cost of some policies, but makes no attempt to assess the potential benefits that may offset the costs. You wouldn’t last long in the civil service producing this kind of rubbish

3) The Tories haven’t published costings of their own policies to compare against. It’s little more than a propaganda exercise designed to generate newspaper headlines. It should not be taken seriously as credible economic analysis

4) This is a classic example of the formula I described last week:

1 - Calculate an inflated up front cost

2 - Exclude a range of economic and social benefits

3 - Claim the policy is “unaffordable”

We can expect a lot more of this in the weeks ahead opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/…