🚨 The latest public sector finance stats for June just dropped from @ONS and they're a fiscal horror show. Borrowing up, debt interest up, deficit up, spending up and taxes up.
Here's what you need to know about how the government's finances are spiralling🧵
"Inflation rise takes the UK closer to debt-crisis cliff edge" – my latest @Telegraph column
Britain is heading for a very serious fiscal crisis – not unlike the 1976 fiasco which saw this country go "cap in hand" to the International Monetary Fund for a bail-out.
Government borrowing costs are now higher than they were in 1998 - but the national debt is some 3-times bigger as a share of GDP than it was back then.
That's why the government's debt interest bill is now so massive – twice what we spend on defence each year, more than we spend on schools.
PLUS: Over two-thirds of the money the government is borrowing each year is now being spent on interest payments on already outstanding debt.
AND: The UK's uniquely high share of "index-linked" debt – with interest payments that go up with RPI inflation – means that as inflation rises, our already crippling debt service costs rise even more.
The vast majority of our political and media class are either incapable of understanding the now brightly-flashing warning signs - signs I have outlined in the Telegraph and elsewhere many, many times – or are determined to ignore them if they do.
What I am saying isn't party political, nor about left and right or who has the right "values".
It's about trying to avert a major fiscal meltdown and related systemic crisis - which will cause huge economic and societal damage, and during which the least well off will suffer most.
Please read and share this thread
🧵1/11
https://t.co/13L00elAw4
Here's a much better way of looking at the GDP data👇
If economic growth had kept growing as it had before the 2008 crisis the economy would be 23% bigger than it is today.
This is our big problem: years of sub-par growth and economic disappointment vs what we were once used to
BREAKING:
Reform UK has overtaken Labour in a national opinion poll for the first time, new YouGov poll finds
Reform: 25% (+2)
Labour: 24% (-3)
Conservative: 21% (-1)
Lib Dems: 14%
Green 9%
Only 60% of those who backed Labour in July said they would do so now
https://t.co/5BKcfIcvl0
Times weekend read:
Number 10’s increasing concern about the threat posed by Reform and how it plans to deal with it. But is Keir Starmer part of the problem?
* Internal research suggests those backing Reform are so disaffected with main parties that they have switched off entirely
* But the concerns of these voters - the NHS, cost of living and migration - are the very ones Labour is trying to address. It hopes to ‘govern away’ concerns
* Labour also plans to go for jugular with Nigel Farage on three fronts - depicting him as a cheerleader for Putin, highlighting support for Liz Truss’s mini-budget and putting his past comments on privatisation and NHS up in lights
* Farage welcomes challenge - he says Labour and Tories ‘are all the same’ and have a record of failure on mass migration, illegal migration and net zero. He says attacks won’t change that
* But is Starmer part of the problem? Some in Labour think voters are defecting to Reform because of him. Starmer’s personal poll ratings are dire. His net favourability rating is -41 and those on the right have an almost entirely negative view of him
https://t.co/mllm9xsHrk
AMERICA IS BACK. 🇺🇸
Every single day I will be fighting for you with every breath in my body. I will not rest until we have delivered the strong, safe and prosperous America that our children deserve and that you deserve. This will truly be the golden age of America.