Brown speech - an alternative view

TUC: Having sat through Gordon Brown’s address yesterday, but reading the accounts of the content in various newspapers today, I am convinced I did not sit through the same speech as the variations and interpretations of the content seem so far removed from the actual words used.

The cuts that were identified were such as ‘cuts in inefficiencies, cuts in unnecessary programmes’ seem to have been ignored or twisted to suit the speech some wanted him to make. Similarly, the promise that ‘Labour will not support cuts in the vital front-line services on which people depend’.

We can debate the genuineness of these promises but will not make much progress if we debate a speech we preferred he would have made, or imagine he did!