Prime Minister Theresa May tried to call out Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn for getting his facts wrong at yesterday’s PMQs – and then proceeded to spurt out a massive lie about the economy.
The mainstream media has completely ignored May’s lie – and instead chosen to focus on a minor mix up of acronyms by Corbyn.
Unlike May’s completely false claim – Corbyn’s has been proven to be accurate by an independent fact checking organisation. Illustrating once again, that the mainstream media has absolutely no interest in telling people the truth, and is only concerned with smearing Corbyn.
Responding to a grilling by Corbyn about the “abject failure of this Government’s economic strategy” – as revealed by last week’s Autumn Statement – May said:
I will give the Right hon. Gentleman some facts. The IMF says that this will be the fastest-growing advanced economy in the world this year.
Corbyn responded to May:
Since she quotes the Institute of Fiscal Studies, I think she’s been a little bit selective, because they also went on to say that the prospect for workers over the next six years was ‘dreadful’ and went on say “the worst decade for living standards since the last war and probably since the 1920s.
May then went to mock Corbyn for the mix up saying:
Given that the right hon. Gentleman cannot differentiate between the IMF and the IFS, it is probably a good job that he is sitting there and I am standing here.
However, it seems that May is the one who needs help understanding facts. Following yesterday’s PMQs, Full Fact, a leading UK independent fact checking charity, has investigated the statements given by Corbyn and May.
Regarding May’s comments Full Fact says that:
The International Monetary Fund publishes a closely watched set of economic forecasts, including a prediction of growth by country. It expects the UK economy to grow by 1.8% in 2016.
And:
That’s a higher forecast than any of the other countries in the G7 group, which includes the likes of the US, Germany and Japan. But it’s nowhere near the highest among the 39 countries and territories that the IMF considers ‘advanced economies’. The UK sits 18th in this ranking.
May’s statement is simply not true – the IMF hasn’t predicted that the UK will have the fastest growing advanced economy in the world this year – they have predicted that UK growth will be in the middle for the 39 IMF advanced economies.
With regards to Corbyn’s response Full Fact say that:
Mr Corbyn responded by quoting the Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Paul Johnson.
Mr Johnson said last week that according to official projections “real wages will, remarkably, still be below their 2008 levels in 2021. One cannot stress enough how dreadful that is—more than a decade without real earnings growth”.
He also told the BBC that “this has, for sure, been the worst decade for living standards certainly since the last war and probably since the 1920s”.
To be clear, Mr Johnson is referring to the rate of growth in wages compared to growth in previous eras—not suggesting that wages are actually lower now than they were in the 1920s.
Full Fact concludes:
As the Prime Minister went on to point out, Mr Corbyn misheard or confused the source of her claim, which was the IMF rather than the IFS. But he was more accurate in quoting the latter than Mrs May was in quoting the former.
Although Corbyn has mixed up the IMF, and IFS, he is telling the truth – May, on the other hand, is clearly lying, or at best not aware of the facts herself. The mainstream media, however, appear to have absolutely no interest in revealing May’s lie. Instead, they have chosen to focus on Corbyn’s mix-up.
As usual, they’ve ignored the ineptitude and verifiable lies of May – and attempted to paint Corbyn as a complete moron instead.
There is a huge difference between a Prime Minster that is actively lying and an opposition leader who makes a simple mix-up.
Corbyn’s mix up may have been slightly embarrassing – but May’s lie is downright shocking. If the mainstream media treated May in the same way they treat Corbyn, then she would probably be forced to resign over this.
But what more do we expect from a media that continually acts as a government propaganda machine?
