The Muttering Idiot

Cameron had a great line in the Commons at Prime Minister's Questions today when he called Ed Balls that 'muttering idiot sitting opposite me'. He had to withdraw the word 'idiot' as the Speaker unsurprisingly ruled the word unparliamentary. Cameron replaced it with 'the man who left us this enormous deficit and this financial crisis.' It seemed to me that for once Cameron did not lose his temper and came across all the better for it. The muttering idiot phrase will live in history. Ed Balls is wholly unprincipled since even he must know that spending money we do not have and thereby piling on more debt is going to make us all poorer even if the debt is used to finance capital projects. Balls calls for more debt in the hope it makes him popular but he is deceiving others if not himself by pretending it will gives us real growth. Every pound spent on public works either has to be borrowed and repaid or paid directly out of taxes and thus reduces the amount available for the private sector to use. More debt will not give us growth though a reduction in taxes by leaving more in our pockets to spend will certainly do so. The more money individuals have the greater the amount paid in taxes will be. The  more money individuals have the more they will spend thereby creating more jobs to service the greater demand. Rocket science it isn't and yet why can't our Government see it? It is this which the Chancellor should concentrate on and it is this Cameron should be banging on about at this evening's EU summit meeting. Cameron should also bang on  about the euro's basic design fault (that no currency can survive without a common economy) and that if the eurozone is unable to sort it out then it must be dismantled quickly and in an orderly fashion. I remember meeting someone from the Treasury shortly after the euro was introduced who said they predicted that the euro would collapse in around ten years. A better prediction than they normally make.