THE recent comment by A Edwards in the Warrington Guardian’s letters page (January 21) that Gordon Brown left the country with a £180 billion deficit simply highlights the levels that the extreme right will stoop to when propagating myths and muddying the waters in order to hide the truth.

Having had the ‘Labour left us in debt’ myth busted by virtually every leading economist and economic organisation including our own office for budget responsibility it seems that it’s easier to create a new myth than face the truth and ‘the deficit’ is a good subject.

This is because not everybody understands the difference between debt and deficit; that includes the grossly under-qualified Chancellor Osborne and, I suspect, A Edwards.

As for the debt it is interesting to look at it as a proportion of gross national product which is used to determine the UK’s economic performance.

National debt was lower as a proportion of GDP at the start of the financial crisis in 2008 (36 per cent) than in 1997, the last year of John Major’s Conservative government (42 per cent) and in 2010, the UK’s national debt as a proportion of GDP (52 per cent) was the second lowest of the G7 countries.

This was the time Osborne made a pre-election promise to borrow ‘even more’ money than Labour had.

Ironically it was the only promise he kept.

However not wishing to be accused of ‘muddying the waters’ the simple fact is that the UK National debt in 2010 was £0.811 trillion it is now over £1.5 trillion.

In a society that has suffered savage cuts everywhere, with the exception of MPs pay/expenses and bankers’ bonuse,s it may now be pertinent to ask the Government where has all that money gone?

GRAHAM BRINKSMAN Warrington