Listening to the radio yesterday I heard another minister try to explain how the Government isn’t planning to cut public spending. The argument, which goes something like this: “Because of the recession we’ve brought forward Capital investment intended for 2011 to 2008 which means that we’re still increasing investment by the same amount overall”

Everyone else’s argument is “They’re cutting investment by 10%! It’s right there in their figures!”

Who’s going to win? If in doubt, the simplest argument is usually the one that convinces the most people – this doesn’t bode well for Labour. The complexity of their argument looks far more like they’re doing little more than spreading a bit of  fear, uncertainty and doubt about what the opposition is saying – knowing full well that only a tiny minority are going to look at the actual Budget report then do the maths themselves.

It’s worth remembering Labour has form on this sort of thing – the 10p tax removal turned out to hurt rather a lot of people, a fact that Brown refused to accept for month. In that case their argument was, again, a complex explanation of benefits and tax credits whereas the opposition said, “these people will be worse off by X.” The simplest argument won there, too.