godlike personality that has grown around him, that is not seen as invincible any more. russia has faced repeated rounds of western sanctions, but its economy has continued to grow thanks to help from china. it means the mood at russia s equivalent of davos welcome to newsnight. our political panel tonight philip collins, who was tony blair s speech writer and worked alongside sir keir starmer on his 2021 conference speech, and mercy muroki, who is a former policy adviser to the conservative s kemi badenoch. today has been very much about the fall out from last night s tv debate when mr sunak claimed housesholds would be paying £2,000 more in tax if labour win. we questioned energy secretary clare coutinho on newsnight last night straight after the itv debate. clare coutinho, where did you get this £2,000 figure from? because it is not an impartial independent figure, is it, it is your own tory special advisers who have added this up and come up with the sums? no, no, n
question, is because it s true. i mean, victoria, you put rubbish in, you get rubbish out and that s what this is. that s independent civil servants in the treasury. i am going to pull you up on that, clare coutinho, i am going to pull you on that. they re not independent, they re not impartial, the assumptions on which the calculations are based have been made by tory special advisers, they are political appointees. they are very strict. hang on a second. no, hang on, and that is misleading to voters, and therefore very disrespectful. so can ijust say, those numbers are created by the treasury, and there s very strict rules on how youcando opposition costings. if you think that the treasury would just add up anything that tory special advisers gave, no matter what it was, and come up with a figure, which is backed by the treasury, then you are sorely mistaken. so nick is here, and the conservatives have doubled down on this today and keir starmer has called the prime minister a liar w