Three 'Wrongs' in Four Lines

Is Caroline Lucas merely a fool, or does she lie deliberately?

"Why is this lying bastard lying to me?" - Louis Heren, a former deputy editor of the Times,

The big surprise I got when standing for the SDP at the last election was the casual disdain which my fellow candidates had for knowledge, for facts. At hustings, they’d stand there quite happily pushing policies which could not possibly survive engagements with the facts as known.

Not only did they not know stuff, they plainly didn’t want to know stuff. If necessary they’d flat out lie, making numbers up on the hoof.

At strictly time-disciplined hustings, this made me very angry, because if your practical thinking isn’t based in observed facts, what can it be based on? This was my electoral undoing: no-one likes a know-it-all and no-one likes Mr Angry. Oh dear - more votes lost.

I can never quite make up my mind about the motivation: when politicians are busking with made-up ‘facts’, are they just stupid and lazy or actually bent on hoodwinking the public?

Consider Caroline Lucas, who has had the honour of representing Brighton Pavilion in Parliament since 2010, and is currently leader of the Green Party. Consider her tweet delivered on the occasion of the third anniversary of Brexit.

She asserts three things here, all of which are checkable, and all of them so massively wrong it is remarkable she feels free to make them:

i) Caroline Lucas: “Trade is down 15%.” Reality: In the 12m to Nov 2023 (latest data) exports were up 14.1% from the 12m to Jan 2020; imports were up 21.4%. Check this yourself at the ONS data.

ii) Caroline Lucas: “Investment is down 13%.” Reality: In the 12m to Sept 22, gross fixed capital formation was running 9.5% higher than in Dec 2019. If you depreciate all fixed investment over 10yrs, estimated capital stock is up 8.7%. Specifically business capital stock, up only around 5%.

Of maybe she had in mind foreign direct investment (FDI) into the UK? Well, the IMF has the best data, and they report that FDI was up 5.9% in 2019, 12.4% in 2020 and 17.7% in 2022. Want to know what the global totals were doing? Globally 4.3% in 2019, 5.2% in 2020 and 2% in 2021. Britain has been massively outperforming. Check for yourself at the IMF data.

iii) Caroline Lucas: “Tax revenues are down £40bn.” Reality: In calendar 2022, the government had current revenues of £904.8bn; in calendar 2019 they were £756.6bn. They’ve not fallen £40bn, they’ve risen £148.2bn. Check it for yourself at the ONS data.

I don’t know whether Caroline Lucas is a fool or a liar. What I do know is that no-one with the slightest interest in telling the truth could lend her name to such preposterous falsehoods. And why should she? At the time I’m writing this, her idiotic tweet of calculated rubbish, checkable garbage, a slurry of falsehoods which should by all rights insult readership, has been liked by 14.3k people. She’ll get re-elected.

Fool or knave?