What the ignorant paranoiac says:
The threat [of Terribly Bad Things if the Tories don’t abolish all public services, taxes, etc] is abstract, but needs to be made real.
What this means:
There isn’t actually a disastrous crisis that means we’ll need to abolish all public services, taxes, etc, but if we lie that there is one then we might get away with doing so anyway.
Aw jeez, John, you're making me defend a tory here, but I think you may be misreading that statement. Having read the piece, it's clear that Mr. Nelson believes that there is, in reality, a disastrous crisis that can only be solved with massive cuts in public spending.
He's not suggesting that the tories "lie" about there being a threat, but in essence that they stop lying about there not being one.
Whether or not the policy he's suggesting is sound (I think it's barking mad, but I think Tony Benn's a wee bit centrist, so that's no surprise), I don't think he's proposing dishonesty. He's lambasting people for pretending the threat isn't there. I think.
I happen to think he's right about how few people are acknowledging the seriousness of what's going on. I think this is going to be a long and painful recession followed by a very shallow recovery followed rapidly by a far bigger crash. But I think his proposed solution is wrongheaded in the extreme and will accelerate the process. The question for me isn't what to do about this recession, but how to avoid the subsequent crash.
All of which is getting off-topic, but it's 3am on a Saturday morning, so whaddya expect?
It's simple. They want to call in the IMF, so it will order them to do all the things they want anyway.
Has he expressed himself on the subject of yesterday's twice-oversubscribed long gilts auction?