The Mail on Sunday’s frontpage reports that the Ed Balls has come up with a plan to plug Brown’s black hole in unfunded public spending. Issue Sharia Law compliant “sukuks” designed to allow the government’s Debt Management Office to raise money from the Saudis:

Britain is to become the first Western nation to issue bonds approved by Muslim clerics in line with Sharia law, which bans conventional loans involving interest payments as ’sinful’.

The scheme would mark one of the most significant economic advances of Sharia law in the non-Muslim world.

It will lead to the ownership of Government buildings and other assets currently belonging to British taxpayers being switched wholesale to wealthy Middle-Eastern businessmen and banks.

Such is the parlous state of the public finances that the Treasury can no longer rely on the centuries old method of financing government debt, demand for Gilt edged securities. No Western nation has ever relied on Sharia financing and the U.S. Treasury bans banks from engaging in the practise because of potential links to Middle Eastern terror financing. Ed Balls first came up with the Sharia sukuk strategy when he was Gordon Brown’s Treasury SpAd and final consultation on the plan closes this Thursday. Alistair Darling is expected to give full approval for H.M. Sharia Treasury issues before the March budget…