Brown vs Osborne on Spending - People vs Policy

By Jonathan Walker on Sep 15, 09 06:18 PM in Politics

Both the major parties delivered important speeches on the economy today.

As we report in tomorrow's paper, Gordon Brown told the TUC that some cuts in public spending will be needed, saying: "Labour will cut costs, cut inefficiencies, cut unnecessary programmes and cut lower priority budgets.

"But when our plans are published in the coming months people will see that Labour will not sup port cuts in the vital front line services on which people depend."

Meanwhile, Conservative Shadow Chancellor George Osborne told a conference organised by magazine The Spectator that a Conservative government would deliver "monetary activism to keep interest rates low and stimulate the economy [and] fiscal responsibility to restore confidence and rebuild our battered public finances."

Fiscal responsibility, in Mr Osborne's speech, includes spending cuts, as he made clear later on.

But if both parties are saying similar things, they have different ways of expressing themselves.

I have used a website called Wordle to create images which illustrate the two speeches and the language used.

The words used most often by each speaker appear in larger typeface in their respective images.

This does not, I suggest, tell you much about their policies but it does perhaps tell us something about the language used by the two parties to communicate with the public.

Gordon Brown's speech to the TUC