In an otherwise low-key PMQs today, there was an excellent question from my colleague Shailesh Vara, reminding us of Brown's speech as Shadow Chancellor to Labour Pary Conference in 1995, when he said that "we cannot build a new Jerusalem on a mountain of debt".
Harman told us in response that "we need debt to rise".
Now, I think one might be able to make an argument that debt tends to rise in a recession, or that one could follow a Keynesian approach (which I and most readers would strongly disagree with) that a rise in debt is a consequence of a fiscal stimulus or growth in public spending or both.
But I had yet to hear anyone suggest that a rise in debt is in itself a virtue. Given that Harman, on matters economic, tends to parrot the words of her boss, I can only assume that these words are likely to be straight from the horse's mouth. We have had a national debt for 350 years or so now - I doubt if any monarch or government in that time has made its increase a deliberate act of policy. Or maybe what she really meant to say is this: "we need debt to rise to make life as difficult as possible for David Cameron's incoming government."
