I have now been sent the Labour dossier on their claim to save the average household £6,700. Even by the standards of modern politics, it is impossible to stress how bloody shoddy these numbers are and how quickly they fall apart. Thread follows, with occasional swearing.
This document comes in two parts - 'cost of the Tories' and 'savings under Labour'. You can see the summary here. 
The first and most important point to make - THIS IS NOT AN AVERAGE HOUSEHOLD.
This is a 'household' in which two working parents are rich enough to both commute into London (or another big city), to pay for their own NHS prescriptions, and receive zero state help with childcare.
Yet at the same time poor enough to still be receiving free school meals, and renting their home - and, according to the final paragraph, earning the minimum wage.
The next point - these costings are taken from a universe in which inflation does not exist. Every single bill increase between 2010 and 2019 is calculated on the basis of the actual figure, rather than the real-terms cost.
Except that when it comes to wages, Labour miraculously discovers the phrase 'real terms'. So the entire 'cost of living crisis' section is comparing apples with porcupines.
As for the 'savings under Labour' section, it's even worse. Again, we're examining the same mythical dual-commuting couple, simultaneously earning six figures and on the breadline. But some of the 'savings' are 'promised by 2030 if nationalisation goes well'.
And the estimates for water and energy bill savings under nationalisation cite a paper which literally doesn't even mention the topic, I swear to god.
Now, I don't expect you to take my word for it, so I'm going to go through each of the figures in that screenshot and explain why it isn't accurate. (Yes, it's pure drama on my Twitter feed.)
'£68 more for their dual-fuel energy bill' between 2010 and 2019 - adjusted for inflation, this becomes £233 LESS
'£75 more for their water bill' - adjusted for inflation, this is £16 less (btw, all figures done pretty quickly by me just now, so please shout if any are wrong - but the trend is pretty clear)
'£204 more for their broadband bill' - for once, a fair cop. Broadband is more expensive (though also much faster). But it's gone up by £161 per year in real terms.
'£1,740 more for season rail tickets' - in a disgracefully shoddy document, this is one of the shoddiest figures of all. According to the DfT's modal transport statistics, only 11% of people in the UK commute by train (vs 68% who drive) assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/upl…
How in the name of Jesus Christ almighty then, can you claim that in the 'average household', not one but two people are commuting daily by train?
That's without adding in inflation, which brings the increase in cost per head down from £870 to £191. Or pointing out that in a document where everything else is costed for 2019, Labour have sneaked in the 2020 figure for season tickets.
'£1,916 more on average for childcare per child'. Did I say the season ticket figure was dodgy? It's pure as the fucking snow compared to this one.
Here are Labour's childcare costings. The links in the document take you to Family and Childcare Trust's annual survey, which is entirely respectable familyandchildcaretrust.org/sites/default/…
But as the report itself says, that doesn't include WHAT THE GOVERNMENT IS PAYING FOR CHILDCARE. Which is just, y'know, £6 billion a year cypnow.co.uk/news/article/g…
I don't have the latest statistics, but this DfE report from 2014-15 gives a rough idea of what parents are actually paying for out of their own pocket. Compared to the Labour figure, it is... less. dera.ioe.ac.uk/25635/2/SFR09-…
'Save £108 on free prescription charges'. Fine. Except that 84% of NHS prescriptions area available for free. And there's this thing called inflation.
So what this should actually say is 'if you have to pay for one prescription a month, out of your own pocket, your annual costs between 2010 and 2019 went, er, down by £1.68'
Sorry, was reading the wrong section - Labour claimed that Tories had cost you £22 in prescription charges. Actually, it's that they're £1.68 cheaper in real terms. £108 is what they're promising to save you - but only if you are actually paying prescription charges.
(Side note: if you are paying prescription charges, you can presumably afford them. So isn't this just a bung to the middle classes?)
Final figure from the costings section - '£1,924 more on rent'. Again, this ignores that pesky thing called inflation. In fact, multiplying the 2010 figure by inflation, average rents are £250 less.
Now, you may quibble with my use of a flat inflation multiplier. There are other options. But I think we can all agree that doing this in nominal terms - while complaining that wages have not risen in REAL terms - is batshit.
Now, because this thread has gone on for quite enough already, a quick gallop through the 'Labour's plan for real change will save average families' section.
'Save £2,941 on average for childcare per child' - here Labour appears to be costing its own expansion of free childcare, but ignoring the Government's existing provision of free childcare.
'Save £437 on free school meals' - sure, though again poor kids already get free school meals, so this is just a straight bung to the middle classes.
Prescription charges we've already dealt with. Likewise rail season tickets.
'Save £364 on their broadband bill' - this is taking a 'by 2030' promise and treating it as an immediate saving. And it is ignoring the fact that 'free' broadband will of course have to be paid for - there is literally no reflection here of any of those costs
'Save £559 on their dual-fuel energy bill' and 'Save £113 on their water bill'. The vast bulk of this saving comes from the gains from insulating homes - as per this screenshot.
But Labour's own 'Warm Homes for All' makes clear that a) this is another 'by 2030' promise and b) mostly it will be done by giving homeowners loans - £190 billion of them - that they will have to pay back from the savings labour.org.uk/press/warm-hom…
(You may see now why I have spent most of this morning gibbering to myself in impotent rage at the statistical fuckery that is going on here.)
But it gets even better. The rest of the water and energy savings are attributed to the University of Greenwich - a gang of Corbynite economists whose main contribution to the debate has been to argue that yeah sure Jezza can nationalise everything at whatever price he wants
One of the great puzzles of renationalisation, which I've been shouting about for a while, is how Labour can simultaneously promise huge investment, price cuts for consumers, higher salaries for staff, more control for unions, less of a profit focus AND to cover borrowing costs
So I was very excited to see an actual figure in the wild. But when I followed the link, I found that a) they can't actually spell and b) the report says literally nothing about how much consumers would save
You can check for yourself - I may have missed it. But this paper is about why it would be legal for Labour to renationalise without compensation. If you can get from there to 'at least £142 saving per household on energy and £113 on water', well done ecpr.eu/Filestore/Pape…
Oh, and one final complaint. In the wages section, it complains about stagnant real wages under the Tories, but then contrasts it with how much Labour's going to raise the minimum wage by. Apples and oranges (though not porcupines this time).
Alert readers may have spotted that by now I have covered every single claim/section made by Labour in this document. It is truly impressive that not a single one of them comes without significant and occasionally fatal qualifications.
It is also truly impressive that the @guardian's economics correspondent, @RJPartington, managed to 'fact-check' this document without raising a single one of these points theguardian.com/politics/2019/…
Now, I have done these calculations quickly, off my own bat. There may be some minor errors or objections.
It is also the case that the other parties have often been economical with the facts (Lib Dem bar charts, anyone?). And that I am obviously on the side of capitalism and free markets and all the rest of it, so come to Labour's promises with more of a sceptical eye.
(For example, even though I have volunteered for the Tories during this campaign - and declared it - I criticised their use of CPS costings for Labour's four-day week in their original £1.2 trillion.)
But claiming that 'the average household' has been cost X by the Tories, but would save Y under Labour - when it is not the average household, you are only counting inflation when it helps you, and you have tortured other figures to breaking point - is naked deceit.
Oh, one final post-script. The Labour document only talks about wages. If you look at actual disposable income (ie wages post taxes/benefits) the situation looks even better, thanks in part to the raising of the personal allowance, as first proposed by @CPSThinkTank...
Did I say final post-script? Because this document is the gift that keeps on giving, I've just noticed that Labour calculates the average cost of childcare by taking the cost of nursery for two-year-olds, and childminders for two and overs, and splitting the difference.
No attempt to work out how many kids fall into each category. Just Number A plus Number B, divided by two. You've got to laugh, really.
Oh, and apologies - there's a mistake about free school meals when I'm describing the average family above. Was typing too hastily. Sorry.
