Bernard Dineen: What tells you Brown is lying? His lips move

Now we see that this was the exact reverse of the truth. John Major, with a tiny majority, unlike Blair-Brown's massive majority, did a good job. He was badgered by a group of anti-Europe fanatics who actually conspired with Labour to defeat their own Government, but he kept the show on the road.

When he left, he handed over, with Chancellor Ken Clarke, a healthy economy. You don't have to believe the Tories: Tony Blair's own

economic adviser said that Blair inherited "a better economy than

any incoming government in living memory".

As for Black Wednesday, Brown was the biggest fan of the ERM: in fact, he criticised the Tories for not going in sooner.

For a few months, the economy stayed on course – for a simple reason. In order to get themselves elected, Labour had promised to keep to Tory spending plans. But when the barrier was lifted, Brown and his acolyte Ed Balls went berserk with taxpayers' money, building the biggest deficit in political history.

They tried to blame the "global recession", and in particular the United States, but Britain's crisis was home-grown.

As John Major himself asks, who ignored the debt spiral as it built up? Who weakened regulation and allowed Northern Rock to offer 125 per cent mortgages? Who weakened the Bank of England's control over the banking system? Who wrecked final-salary pensions with a 5bn-a-year tax levy? Who ignored the risks of a house price and share boom? Brown and Balls. As for honesty, where do you start?

Brown embarked on a regime of deceit and deception that was

almost unparalleled. He lied

about the way he had starved the Armed Forces of funds. He

disguised the effect of his 10p tax band. He exaggerated the cost of Black Wednesday. His two "attack dogs", spin doctors Damian

McBride and Charlie Whelan, specialised in smearing Brown's opponents, while he remained ostensibly aloof.

Immigration saw the greatest campaign of disinformation, to disguise the fact that Labour's dismantled borders have let in three million immigrants since 1987. The Labour MP Frank Field says it has put enormous burdens on health and housing – immigration now

accounts for 40 per cent of new households.

Brown distorts this in typical fashion. He says immigrants from Eastern Europe are 50 per cent less likely than British people to receive benefits or tax credits, and 40 per cent less likely to live in social housing. The complication is that the burden

is exaggerated.

But two-thirds of immigration is from outside Europe, mainly Asia and Africa. How do they measure up? Forty per cent of Somalis are on income support; only 19 per cent are employed, and 80 per cent live in social

housing. The same is true for 49 per cent of Turks and Bangladeshis. Pakistanis, too, are heavily welfare dependent.

As the old joke goes, how do you know when Brown isn't telling the truth? His lips are moving.

NEWS that an NHS hospital has staff from 75 countries on its payroll has been causing concern. They range from Antigua to Ghana, and Hungary to Zimbabwe.

The Patients' Voice campaign reports near-disaster incidents because of language problems.

They include a porter delivering a meal to a patient because he did not understand that "nil by mouth" meant "no food".

A columnist defends this wholesale importing of foreign workers and says that complaining about their English "plays into the hands of the BNP" – a familiar refrain.

No one should doubt the contribution they make: without them the NHS would collapse. But there are two things wrong with the policy. First, many small countries, particularly in Africa, spend money they can ill afford on training nurses, only to see them bribed to come

to Britain.

Second, it is wrong that Britain has between one and two million, mostly young, people living on benefit. It is mad to bring in foreigners because the British are too lazy to take the jobs.

The columnist trots out the familiar line that Enoch Powell as Health Minister invited foreigners to come to Britain to work in the NHS, and even visited the West Indies to recruit them.

This is untrue on two counts. First, NHS recruitment between 1960 and 1963 was the responsibility of health authorities, not the Minister. Secondly, Powell never visited the West Indies in his life. But that will not stop this canard being trotted out again and again.