For the first time ever the national debt is increasing by over £500 million per day. £5,904 per second…
The complete figure – on the TaxPayers’ Alliance Debt Clock tracker – now sits at £510,136,704. Despite BBC spin about last month’s borrowing coming in below expectations government borrowing exceeded even the OBR’s expectations in 2025 at a total of £140.4 billion. The moron premium also taking effect on yields…
The latest Adam Smith Institute research now predicts that public debt will reach 330% of GDP by 2075. Borrowing is taxation deferred…
Maybe this is something Rachel Reeves can look at now she has been taken off the PM’s China trip at the last minute. Only Peter Kyle and City minister Lucy Rigby will be joining Starmer…
Rachel Reeves has, now that she’s arrived in Washington, confirmed she’s rewriting the calculation of UK debt to borrow more money. This will be done by including government assets in the debt measurement. Reeves is giving herself space to borrow something like £50 billion and still claim that debt is falling in five years…
Meanwhile companies are liquidating themselves at a high rate and 10-year gilt yields have hit their highest level since Labour came to power. Maybe that’s because Reeves last year specifically ruled out changing the Tory government’s latest debt metric:
“I’m not going to try to fiddle the figures or make something different to get better results. We will use the same models the government uses.”
The “Iron Chancellor” strikes again. All eyes on the markets now…
Sunak has been pressing Starmer at PMQs on two specific Labour commitments: 1) not raising National Insurance, and 2) not fiddling with debt rules. Both of which are expected at the Budget…
Starmer dodged the question of debt-metric tweaking twice and attacked Sunak instead:
“This is literally the man who was in charge of the economy. For 14 years they crashed the economy and what did what did they leave? A £22 billion pound black hole…”
Reeves last year specifically ruled out changing the Tory government’s latest debt metric:
“I’m not going to try to fiddle the figures or make something different to get better results. We will use the same models the government uses.”
Yesterday Reeves told Cabinet that she was pressing ahead with changing the metric to allow borrowing of anything from £10 billion to £60 billion extra. Typical Brownite skullduggery could include counting state assets like roads, schools, and hospitals against debt, or excluding borrowing for “public institutions” and losses from the Bank of England from the calculation altogether. Reeves was looking worried as Starmer buried another of her pledges…
New figures from the Office for National Statistics show that public debt has hit 100% of GDP for the first time since the 1960s, landing a major headache for the Chancellor ahead of her October 30th fiscal showdown. Borrowing has blown past expectations, hitting £13.7 billion in August. The ONS says that’s thanks to ballooning public service spending on pay and benefits….
The ONS says debt now matches the entire economy, with the government £6.2 billion over its borrowing target this year. With a £22 billion black hole looming, analysts say a rosier economic outlook might give the Chancellor some breathing room – or force her to shift the goalposts. Don’t say the Taxpayers’ Alliance didn’t warn you…
Lord Khan in the Telegraph: “I hope, and I say this in a non-pompous way, that the public service I do will bring rewards in this world and the hereafter,” he says. “I’m hoping the work I do is earning me Brownie points.”