Why this Gordon Brown hates the old Gordon Brown

Remember the Gordon Brown who became Prime Minister in 2007? So keen was he to distance himself from Tony Blair’s premiership that he made the Office for National Statistics independent, so that there would be “no more spin” and public faith in government statistics would be restored.

Sir Michael Scholar was made chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, overseeing the ONS. He took up his post in April last year. He told a journalist: “Good statistics are as important as sound money or clean water”.

Sir Michael is one of the heroes of Complete and Utter Zebu. It was he who laid into Home Secretary Jacqui Smith for misleadingly boasting of a sharp reduction in stabbings as a result of the government’s “Tackling Knives Action Programme”. She had to apologise to the House of Commons, something she’s getting well used to.

It was Sir Michael, and the ONS’s National Statistician Dame Karen Dunning, who have repeatedly ticked off Equalities Minister Harriet Harman and the Government Equalities Office for consistently exaggerating the Gender Pay Gap.

So when Gordon Brown claimed in the Commons on 29th June that thanks to action from the government 500,000 jobs had been saved, the Conservatives asked Sir Michael for his view. Sadly, the ONS is responsible for only about a fifth of government statistics this one fell outside the ONS’s scope. However, Sir Michael said: “It would be inappropriate for the authority to comment on what are essentially speculative estimates in a political debate.” In other words, while they aren’t his figures, even though Gordon Brown has been repeating them ad infinitum since June, they are conjured up out of thin air to win a political argument.

It turns out that Treasury officials have been advising ministers that there was “huge uncertainty” about the figures and claiming any more than 250,000-400,000 would be pushing it.

The present Gordon Brown must be cursing the 2007 Gordon Brown for his stupidity. But what of the future? As the Conservatives are so supportive of Sir Michael, why don’t promise to extend the scope of the ONS and the UK Statistics Authority if they come to power? The old Tories have plenty of “previous” when it comes to misinterpreting statistics. What better way would there be for Cameron to prove that he is serious about being a new broom?