LBC caller slams Conservative Damian Green over Boris Johnson’s lies

A furious caller proved the Conservative's Damian Green wrong on Boris Johnson's "lies" about facts and figures. Photo: LBC - Credit: Archant

A ‘furious’ caller corrected Conservative candidate Damian Green over a number of Boris Johnson’s ‘lies’ about facts and figures.

Calling into LBC’s Eddie Mair show the caller, named Mark, started by criticising the Conservative pledge in 2015 to build 200,000 starter homes.

He said: “The ONS has just reported you’ve built 200,000 starter homes – you’ve built exactly none so I think we can take that any promise you make, you tend to break.

“You claim that the cost of Labour will be £1.2 trillion [quoted in a document put forward by Sajid Javid]- that has been totally debunked by myself by reading 35 pages; by people like Full Facts who pointed out that you’ve double counted the cost of nationalisation.”

He also said they used figures which include costings that Labour haven’t committed themselves to and they’ve overpriced the 2007 Labour manifesto by £300 billion. Mark asked if Damian Green would like to disassociate himself from these lies.

Green, who was effectively Theresa May’s deputy until he resigned over a pornography cover-up, said: “I disagree flatly with a lot of what Mark has said, this idea that [the document] somehow underestimated the cost of nationalisation – actually it’s almost the other way around.”

Green also said that after Labour claimed plans to nationalise part of BT, the telecomms company said it would be at least double Labour’s estimations.

However Mark replied: “I don’t like being told my facts are wrong because I work with facts, that’s why I’m a floating voter.

He then cited Boris Johnson’s claims today that Labour would bring corporate tax to the highest in Europe which is “total nonsense.”

“Don’t tell me I have my numbers wrong,” Mark said. “It’s a total lie and it seems to me that you’re all following this new leader of yours who tends to say a lie every day.

“Your prime minister said he’s going to build 40 new hospitals, the facts: we know it actually means six. Your Prime Minister said that he’s going to spend £34 billion on the NHS, we know that in real terms that is £20 billion. He said he was going to spend £14 billion on education, we know for a fact that’s £4 million.

“The only people the country are seeing who are not telling the truth, led by a leader who consistently won’t tell us about what’s in the report – there must be at least five investigations around the prime minister at the moment! He’s still sitting there and the Conservatives are letting him and I’d be saying this if you a Liberal, a Labour or any other party.”