In the US, the Congressional Budget Office projects federal deficits of roughly $1.9tn in 2025 — 6.2 per cent of GDP — and expects debt to climb towards 118 per cent of GDP by 2035. France’s debt stands above 113 per cent of GDP, heading towards 118 per cent by 2026, whilst UK gilt yields have surged to multi-decade highs on debt concerns. Across the developed world, the challenge of mounting debt now falls squarely to governments.
One way to describe this – only one way – is that the right also discovered the joys of spending the shit out of everything.
Traditionally, and by and large, the left when in power spent lossa on expanding the state. Hey, it’s fun. As the political pendulum swung the right would, when in power, manage that previous increase in wastrelness down. A bit at least. So, next time the left came in there was the fical possibility of spending like shit again.
What’s changed, more than anything else – in this incomplete explanation – is that the last couple of sets of rightish govt (and this is US and UK only, don’t know about other places) didn’t manage spending down. The right had discovered the joys of spending etc.
This is, sorta, true of the US since Bush. And it’s deffo true of the UK since Blair. Cameron etc just never did reduce the spending. Which is what is causing all the confusion among Labour MPs. What do you mean there’s no money to spend?
And, obviously, is getting debt roaring toward 120% and more of GDP in both places….
Don’t worry, Tim
Money printer go Brrrr!
On a more serious note, we’re going to be heading to an IMF bailout.
Debt rising, economy stagnating at best, increasing bills from state handouts and hotels for feckless illegals.
Then the real austerity begins…
Yep, and probably raising all the worst taxes in November. Maybe inventing new bad taxes.You can get 12:1 on an election next year. I might put a tenner on.
Not even worth a punt at those odds. Unless Reform do something stupid Starmer or his successor(s) are going to cling on until the last possible moment in the hope something turns up.
Who is going to provide the money for a bailout? As the article notes, everyone else has gone down the same road as the UK.
Anyway, if the IMF did move in, you know what the prescription would be: more immigration to boost GDP, and join the EU and the single currency.
Who’s going to want to migrate to a country that’s in serious decline?
It’s not like people looked at Weimar Germany and thought “You know, that’s the place for me to go!”
People come here because our idiotic governments do nothing but increase the pull factors. Free money! Free hotels! Free lawyers to help you stay here! Preferential legal treatment in a two tier system! Woo!
When the music stops and there’s no chairs, only a massive bill that needs paying, there will be stampede for the exits. All the people who are so devoted to Britain that they describe themselves as Pakistani British will all fuck off back to Pakistan (or similar). Because there won’t be any benefits to staying here. No freebies. No handouts. We’ll be bankrupt.
It will be Weimar Germany on Thames.
>Who’s going to want to migrate to a country that’s in serious decline?
Maybe ask some of the ~1,200,000 people who came here on a visa over the last two years. They don’t seem to get any of the following
>Free money! Free hotels! Free lawyers to help you stay here! Preferential legal treatment in a two tier system! Woo!
(except maybe the free money), but they still come here anyway.
The boat people and the boat people policies are a massive distraction, and by all appearances it all seems to be working: most coverage focuses on how much each individual boat migrant is getting, and no attention seems to be paid to the fact that over the past ten years enough people arrived on legal visas and stayed that it amounts to picking up Jaipur and plonking it down between Manchester and Bradford.
To put it another way, we’re currently issuing legal visas that result in net immigration at such a rate that THE ENTIRE POPULATION OF SCOTLAND immigrates here, legally, EVERY TEN YEARS. And that’s assuming that Labour’s reduction in net migration is permanent, and not just a blip.
The boat people are a distraction.
Who bails out the IMF?
That money comes from somewhere. I think it’s generally the US.
Can the IMF bail out the US? I don’t think so.
Well you see the distinction between Right and Left is very blurry these days.
Incontinent spending really started under Reagan, who tried to have his cake and eat it by introducing lower taxes while pouring money into the industrial military complex. But the economy boomed, so no one really worried about it.
And yes since the mid 1990s GB, Germany, France and so on have had identikit managerial governments. The colour of the rosette does not matter because the policies are essentially the same with just a change of emphasis.
CD above has it right. If the central banks can print infinite amounts of money with out causing hyperinflation (10% ? Pah, kids stuff ) then who’s to worry ?
Spending on the military was intended to push the USSR over, since it was standing around dead.
The idea was then they could cut back on the military since there wasn’t as much of a threat (even a dead tree can hurt you if it falls on you).
The military had other plans and managed to get less of a cutback. Meanwhile everyone else fought for an increase. The result was they spent the “peace dividend” about six times.
People like it when they get free stuff and especially don’t like it when they got free stuff and someone is saying they shouldn’t get it anymore. This isn’t a left-right issue.
The difference is that some parts of the right actually worry about where the free stuff is coming from. The left (and the rest of the right) doesn’t worry about it, the magic money tree (let’s inflate the debt away!) will take care of it.
I wouldn’t call Cameron etc “rightish”. They might have campaigned rightish but they governed solidly to the left: mass immigration, colossal public spending, more regulation, no pushback against leftist social madness and a big fat dose of nanny statism to boot. Like all that ‘nudge’ bollocks. And lockdown, fully supported by 2TK.
Cameron was our last hope against the egregious changes by Blair and Broon. He completely failed, not least cos he’s a useless, greedy PR spiv but also cos he was a Lib Dem social democratic without a backbone to get anything remotely difficult done.
Lions.
You’re reminding me of Albo here in Oz, Marius.
“What’s changed, more than anything else – in this incomplete explanation – is that the last couple of sets of rightish govt (and this is US and UK only, don’t know about other places) didn’t manage spending down. The right had discovered the joys of spending etc.”
No, the ‘Right’ just became Left. There have been no ‘Right-ish’ governments for the last 25+ years. They might have had blue (or red in the US) rosettes, they behaved like their nominal opponents. By their fruits shall ye know them………
Yeah, Trump is a 90s Democrat. (Remember it was the left wing of the Democrats more than anybody else on the US political scene who hated NAFTA.)
We have just as many idiots on the nominal right as on the left. Look at all the trained seals who clapped over the article that cherry picked one particular month and said this proves the tariffs will bring a glorious surplus.
F*** you, cut spending doesn’t seem to be in either party’s vocabulary.
The size of the State grew under Thatcher. It’s impossible for it not to grow unless its roots are destroyed.
” . . . the last couple of sets of rightish govt (and this is US and UK only, don’t know about other places) didn’t manage spending down. The right had discovered the joys of spending etc.”
Or, arguably, ALL the voters have now discovered that the various parties will pay them for votes, and no one can win anymore without distributed largesse.
IOW, it’s the peoples’ fault.
This ^. Start with the real problem – the voters, and the crap politician problem will resolve itself.
No suffrage for net tax recipients?
Would that work?
No representation without taxation.