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Guido will be in the Westminster Arms tomorrow Thursday morning. Bit early even for Guido you might think, this however is for a good and noble cause: the launch of the Save the Pub campaign to to promote a Great British tradition and oppose plans to increase beer tax.

Coronation Street barmaid Michelle Connor (real name Kym Marsh formerly of Hear’Say) will join publicans and CAMRA to lend her support by pulling pints for “special guests” including Guido.

As pleasurable a prospect as this is, Guido would rather it was not necessary, however the British beer and pub industry is under severe and sustained pressure from Alistair Darling:

Tax is a third of the price of a pint of beer.

Sales of beer in pubs are now at their lowest levels since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

36 pubs are closing every week.

More than 44,000 jobs have been lost from the industry between 2000 and 2005.

Economic slowdown and Darling’s announcement of yet another increase in duty yesterday – on top of plans to increase the tax on beer above inflation next year and for the next three years is piling on the pressure on pubs. Guido is single-handedly doing everything he can to help…

The Tories just packed the Commons debating chamber to win a vote to force the speaker to allow an emergency debate on the PBR tomorrow – something that Labour were resigned to, but keen to avoid since it has gone down like a plate of cold vomit with the public.

Nigel Griffiths jumped up after the vote on a point of order to the Speaker; “Is it in order for MPs to pile into chamber…” he began before being drowned out with laughter from all sides.

Yes, a Labour MP thought it might be out of order for MPs to do their job. Desperate.

The Taxpayers’ Alliance has done the research leg-work and confirms that Brown’s debt bubble is twice what it cost to defeat the Kaiser.*

Norman Tebbit? Norman Lamont? Nope, this is current. 

The exact quote is

“Even if unemployment reaches 3 million, that still leaves 90% in secure jobs. Most people will suffer not at all in this recession: on the contrary they will do well…”

Step forward friend of the down-trodden people, the Tuscan redistributionist, three house owning, multi-millionairess toff, yes, you guessed it, Polly Toynbee – here.

Jack Thurston, a former special adviser to Gordon’s enforcer Nick Brown, and one of early New Labour’s more cerebral types, writes in this morning’s Wall Street Journal of the perils of “A Permanent Bailout“. Even a perennial optimist like Guido wonders if we are finally seeing the the delayed end of the twentieth century era of Anglo-American global dominance as predicted by the CIA. The economies of the U.K. and the U.S.A. are being burdened with government debts of epic proportions, our children (and their children as well) will be indentured tax slaves.

Hyperbole? The government bond markets will enslave the citizens and subjects who pay the taxes that service their demands as surely as feudal barons demanded their lands were ploughed for their table by serfs. It is stunning that Brown’s policies have cost HM Treasury, in real terms, more than it took to defeat the Luftwaffe and the Wehrmacht. The debt obligations of the state will be £2 trillion within a few years, Gordon ignores the unfunded pensions of his bloated public sector bureaucracy and admits to “only” £1 trillion. The long term consequences of a debt burden as great as this are that Britain will have a permanently low growth economy. If, as is most likely, predominantly foreign investors hold government bonds, higher taxes will reduce the available capital which can be put to productive use in the domestic economy because the interest paid is exported. That is if they are not too worried about Britain going bust to invest at all. The chart above (click to enlarge) shows the cost of insuring in the credit default swap market against the U.K. government going bust is nearly triple the German rate. British Gilts are becoming the junk bonds of the G7.

Do people want to live in a country designed by Gordon Brown, as cheered on this morning by Polly Toynbee, Will Hutton and Roy Hattersley? Is there a prospect on the horizon of a radical government which can arrest the inevitable decline? Is there a Thatcher-like political leader who can turn around the super-taxer-tanker of state? Guido suspects a lot of internationally mobile people will be weighing up the prospects and possibly heading for the exits soon.

UPDATE : From The Times this morning; “In recent years, thousands of educated Australians have come to the UK. Immigration has been the start of a career, not a gap year, it adds. So there should be some alarm at the fact that they are heading back home in ever larger numbers: 2,700 a month compared to 1,750 a month in 2005. This is largely a vote of no confidence in the old country.”

Australia runs a budget surplus, has paid down the national debt in the good years and welcomes skilled migrants. Form an orderly queue.