Labour's new shadow chancellor Alan Johnson has lost no time laying into the government over its economic plans: "Conservative spending cuts are worse than Thatcher's", screams a headline in the Guardian (where else?).
In March, two months before the election, of course, Labour chancellor Alistair Darling accepted that if Labour won, a Labour government's cuts would be deeper and tougher than Mrs Thatcher's: "They will be deeper and tougher - where we make the precise comparison, I think, is secondary to the fact that there is an acknowledgement that these reductions will be tough".
And he was backed up by Labour's then Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liam ('There is no money left') Byrne, who when asked on BBC One's Question Time whether the cuts would be deeper than under Margaret Thatcher, said: "Yes, they will be".
Sounds like Mr Johnson needs to start reading that economics primer.
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If Labour are proposing to cut less than Darling - or longer - or both, I wonder what the tipping point is between greater interest cancelling out those cuts. Pain but no gain, so to speak!
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