The Tories are highlighting the terrible debt burden being foisted on Britain’s children. Guido was recently chatting to the economist Tim Congdon about the gilt market and the historically unprecedented taxpayer liabilities in terms of the government’s admitted debts, the unfunded public sector pension liabilities and the PSBR trajectory even if the Tories win the next election. We also discussed on the prospects for the U.S. and Ireland.

The conclusion was that if Guido wants his daughters to grow up in an English speaking economic powerhouse in the coming century, unburdened by high taxes servicing government debt, perhaps it is time to look to India. The external debts of Britain amount to approximately $166,000 per person, the equivalent figure for India is some 1% of that, which combined with their better growth prospects suggests that economic opportunities in India might be greater in the future. When it comes to bonded slavery, Britons will be worse off than Indians in the future.

Gordon Brown’s Job Summit at the Science Museum in London will announce plans to pay employers “golden hellos” of up to £2,500 for recruiting jobless people. What does the DWP’s Jobs Minister, Tony McNulty, say about the plan?

The sharper among you will point out that this is a Tory plan he is criticising as a “complete fantasy” and “desperate stuff”. So what will McNulty say about the plan now the government has lifted it lock, stock and barrel? McNulty’s Shadow, Chris Grayling, welcomed the chance to implement his policy by proxy “I think it is the right step to take. But it is ironic ministers are walking around saying the Conservatives are a do nothing party, then adopting our policies.” Ouch!

UPDATE : Some bloggers copy party press releases, some blogs are copied by party press offices… CCHQ at 10.38 sent out a press release quoting McNulty’s above November attack on what is now government policy. Wonder where they got that idea?

Bank of England cuts rates half point to 1.5%, the lowest rate in over 300 years. Is it because we have the economy best placed in the world to weather the recession?

UPDATE : Am particularly impressed with the insight of Edmund Conway, the Telegraph’s economics editor, with the base rate now at 1.5% he sagely tells us “Interest rates are now nearing their bottom”. Well spotted Ed.

As it is in the U.S. of A. so it is in the U.K., borrowing is how Gordon will save the economy. Our children will be truly in Gordon’s debt.

Alex Barker in the FT yesterday drew our attention to Gordon’s hubristic 2005 speech to the Labour Party conference where he claimed to dealt with the house price bubble:

Why has it been that at every point since 1997 faced with the Asian crisis, the IT collapse, a stock exchange crash, an American recession, last year a house price bubble, this year rising world oil prices, why has it been that at every point since 1997 Britain uniquely has continued to grow?

In any other decade, a house price bubble would have pushed Britain from boom to bust….

I tell you, it is because with Bank of England independence, cutting debt, fiscal discipline and the New Deal this Labour government has shown the strength to take the tough long-term decisions, that inflation is low, interest rates are low, growth has been sustained in every year, and we are closer than ever to the goal which drives us forward: the goal of full employment for our generation.

Labour, the natural party for economic strength in our country today.

The hubris and the lies – fiscal discipline is a joke, Gordon has presided over fiscal incontinence on an unprecedented scale, the too low interest rates because he excluded house prices from inflation targeting will prove to have been the key determinant of Gordon’s bubble. Inflation was not so low if you included house prices. Gordon can’t blame that on anyone else, it wasn’t an American finance minister who made that policy choice…

UPDATE : Unemployment is now higher than when Labour came into office. It is a fact that unemployment has always ended up higher when Labour is voted out than when it is voted in. Just as every Labour government has ended in financial crisis.

Tessa Jowell went wildly off message yesterday and said that Britain is facing a recession “deeper than any that we have known”. Another significant admission from Chancellor Darling suggests we are perhaps not best placed to weather the global financial turbulence: “We are going to be affected more substantially in relation to the loss of revenues that we are now experiencing because of the lack of profitability in the financial services sector. London is the major financial services sector in the world… Of course we are more likely to be more severely affected as a result [of] profitability being reduced… We are also affected by the downturn in the housing market because of reduced revenues in relation to stamp duty”.