The fake “fork in the road”. Balls, like Brown, specialises in drawing dividing lines. He claims there is a fundamental difference between Labour’s plans, and the course Osborne has adopted. As he says: “There was a choice. On the one hand, to continue with Labour’s economic plan: maintain the emphasis on jobs and growth, while continuing a steady and balanced approach to halve the deficit in four years. On the other, a political decision to eliminate the structural deficit in a Parliament — a fiscal tightening of such scale and severity that it would have to begin immediately.” Demonstrable junk. Osborne has simply adopted the Brown/Darling deficit reduction plan (slow cuts spread over four years), and yanked it up a notch. In total, he’s cutting less than 1 per cent a year more than Brown/Darling’s published plans. But Balls makes this sound far more dramatic saying Labour would have “halved the deficit” over the parliament and Osborne would have “eliminated the structural deficit”. This makes it sound as if Osborne is going twice as fast. In fact, the “deficit” and the “structural deficit” are two different things. This is the “false comparator” device beloved of the Brown era. The “deficit” is straightforward: the difference between spending and taxes. The “structural deficit” is an estimate of what the deficit would be if the economy had recovered. The first is fact, the second is opinion. But the OBR has published its estimate of the structural deficit. Seeing as Darling published his five-year plan, we can compare it with what Osborne proposes: So, the honest comparison? Labour’s economic plan was to cut the deficit by 61 per cent over five years, and Osborne now proposes to cut it by 74 per cent. Or Labour would have cut the structural deficit by 66 per cent against Osborne’s 87 per cent. This is the only honest way of quantifying the difference between the two. Balls intends to mislead — hoping no one will make the above calculation. He later tries this fake comparison again: nice and simple, so broadcasters can understand it. “George Osborne is trying to eliminate the deficit rather than halve it”. It’s rubbish. There was no fork in the road. Osborne is heading only slightly faster in the same direction.