Alan Johnson has a rival economics genius in the upper echelons of the Labour party

Jon Trickett, Shadow Cabinet Office minister, told a Unite rally…

“The idea that cuts in spending produces a reduction in the deficit is a myth.”

Thanks to Guido Fawkes for the quotation spot and the Labour Party for providing us with another economics expert to show us why they should never be elected as a government again.

Jon Trickett's background is interesting and may help to explain why he is not to be believed (all from Wikipedia):

Formed politically in the anti-Vietnam war movement,.. active on the Labour Left in Leeds from the late 1960s...; PPS to Peter Mandelson after Labour was elected to power and worked in the Cabinet office and subsequently the DTI. After leaving the government at the time of Mandelson's fall from grace, Trickett was chair of the Compass pressure group... He rebelled on a number of occasions against Tony Blair's attempts to bring about marketisation of public services. He led the demands for a recall of Parliament at the time of the Israeli attacks on the Lebanon...He was a leading figure in the campaign to prevent a decision to replace the Trident nuclear weapons system in 2007. He was Jon Cruddas's campaign manager during the 2007 Labour Party deputy leadership election... appointed by the trades unions as acting Chair of the Tribune newspaper Board in 2007, Trickett ceased in this role when the paper was taken over by a private proprietor. Following the cabinet reshuffle of 3 October 2008, Trickett became the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. In October 2010, Trickett was appointed Shadow Minister of State for the Cabinet Office by new Labour leader Ed Miliband, attending Shadow Cabinet but not being a full member of it'

Apart from learning that Jon Trickett served both Peter 'Lord of Darkness' Mandelson and Gordon 'Economic Disaster' Brown, roles that may help to explain his seemingly tenuous grasp on economics and reality, what struck me in the above piece is that phrase 'at the time of Mandelson's fall from grace'. 'Fall from grace', 'fall from grace'; surely that should read 'at the time of Mandelson's forced resignation for not declaring a loan from the millionaire Labour MP, Geoffrey Robinson, who was subject to an inquiry into his business dealings by Peter Mandelson's then department.