Gordon Clown .Com

Gordon’s forecasts in his past budgets have been exposed as a sham today, the lies laid bare for all to see by Liam Halligan.  Gordon has borrowed from the future simply to buy his way into Number 10, and seeming has got away with it so far.  But the true cost will only become clear several years after he has departed from the Treasury.

I worry that the Chancellor is heavily relying on our “future” to secure his “future”. He is chalking up massive, multi-billion-pound liabilities, the vast majority of them hidden from the national accounts, which taxpayers will have to meet only once Brown has disappeared from the political scene, his prime ministerial ambitions fulfilled.

In 2003, when we went into deficit, the Chancellor said we would be out of the red by 2004. When 2004 arrived, and the deficit had deepened, he said a surplus would be achieved, instead, by 2006. Well, here in 2007, we are still in deficit. And - surprise, surprise - Brown again predicts a swift turnaround.

This Chancellor often declares that he has “proved independent forecasters wrong”. It is true that the economy has grown quite strongly in recent years - and often by more than non-Treasury economists have predicted.

When growth is stronger than expected, though, tax receipts should be higher and spending lower, meaning that Brown’s fiscal forecasts should also be better than expected. But in each of the past seven years the Chancellor has ended up with a bigger-than-forecast fiscal hole - meaning higher borrowing too.

In this year’s Budget, Brown said he would need to borrow £118bn between 2007/08 and 2010/11. In his 2006 budget, he forecast borrowing of only £102bn during the same period.

So, in a single year, Brown has quietly increased taxpayers’ future liabilities by £16bn. Paying that off will cost us the equivalent of an extra penny on income tax over the four years during which the extra borrowing will take place.

Peer into Brown’s “off-balance-sheet” liabilities and the numbers get scarier still. Chief among these is the future bill for the final salary pensions of state workers.

The Chancellor’s public sector recruitment campaign means the eventual cost of these pensions - all of which will be met by taxpayers - has ballooned in recent years. The latest official figures, relating to March 2005, put the bill at £530bn - bigger than the entire national debt.

Given all those extra state workers, such pension costs reached an estimated £640bn in 2006 and £685bn today. So again, Brown has jacked up taxpayers’ liabilities over the last year - this time by £45bn.

Then there is the controversial Private Finance Initiative - much of which, again, is not on the Government’s books. Brown has approved a slew of new PFI deals over the past 12 months, increasing our future liabilities by no less than £24bn.

So, a chancellor who last month claimed - amid much fanfare - that his fiscal rules had “once again been met” has, in one year, added a total of at least £85bn to the bill we taxpayers face.

In recent years, Brown has used our money in a crude attempt to spend his way to popularity. In my view, it is a popularity he will never achieve - not least because he consistently tries to fool us.

He tells us a tax rise is a tax cut. He tells us a deficit is a surplus. The British public are not stupid. Yet, as his final Budget shows, this Chancellor treats us as such.

Lies upon lies from Gordon, year after year.  And yet it seems some people still believe he is a prudent chancellor and a viable option for future prime minister!  But as we have seen recently, it seems that none of Gordons lies can remain uncovered forever.