With official National Debt around 100% of the economy (GDP) and government seemingly not able to curtail spending will the bond markets push interest on the debt to unaffordable levels?
It is worth noting that last year, we spent £104.9bn servicing our national debt, and ran a £137bn deficit. That means that even if we managed to wipe our debt, we would still be running a deficit.
From the same source, about 45% of GDP is from public spending. The two biggest budget items are welfare, at £313.5bn a year, and the NHS at £190.1bn.
I guess it is worth noting that both of these are greater than the national deficit…
To me, I would do two things to bring this down. Firstly, the abolition of the NHS and making it like how dentists are now. Currently, it is already pseudo-privatised, with individual trusts acting as separate service providers, all of which have nominal oversight by HQ. With this system, and having only life-saving treatment be tax-payer funded, we can reduce that NHS budget (and make a windfall from the sale of all of the GP surgeries and hospitals to the new independent companies)
Secondly, yes, the welfare budget needs to come down. We cannot afford to keep robbing our children and grandchildren to pay for luxuries today.
In addition to all of this, reducing civil service staffing costs is a must. We need to forcibly change their pension to a defined contribution one, and pass legislation allowing the PM to sack everyone who strikes in protest of this. Further, we need to end deferred spending (because our debt is much higher than it nominally is). One horrifying example of this is student loans. Currently, £250bn is owed in student loan debt, which is about 10% of GDP and growing. A significant amount of this will never be repaid and the government will have to settle this debt when it comes due. Depending on the exact structure of the SLC, this may not need to be physically paid, I don’t fully know, but to me this seems like the government of the day not wanting to fund things properly and instead passing the buck to future generations to pay for their indulgences.
Dr_Taspher, you make some excellent points.
For me even the national debt figure itself is a massive under estimate of what is owed. No accounting for the liabilities from the unfunded public pensions and nothing on PFI which if included would add trillions more to national debt.
All smore and mirrors designed to keep most people in the dark.
The government has kept on borrowing as its only solution. Adding to the money supply and with a finite amount of goods and serivices, thereby creating inflation.
Surely this trick cannot be continued indefinitely? There will surely be a day of reckoning when the bond markets do no believe they will get their interest and will raise the cost of borrowing substantially. Are we heading for a 1970’s moment when the Chancellor had to go to the IMF for a loan?
Government could ‘cut its cloth’ and drastically cut its spending. As you say Welfare, NHS and civil service spending is out of control and could be cut substantially.I would go much further. Why on earth do we have a Department for Culture, Media and Sport? There are plenty of other government departments that could also be cut. A proper ‘bonfire of the quangos’ that Dave Cameron promised. In short we would need a British, Department of Government Efficiency. The Taxpayer Alliance has done some great work on this.
Another area to look at would be the wasteful and devicive DEI.How much is spent of the by public and private entities and what does this do for productivity? For this area to be tackled the repealing of several Acts of Parliament would be required.
All areas for any future government to look at, rather than the managed deline we have at the moment.
These are some of the things on my wish list.
Whilst I agree with most of that, I will push back on DCMS.
For centuries, noble families across Europe have been patrons of the arts, it is an important way to increase one’s prestige among one’s contemporaries. Furthermore, reinforcing a positive British culture that our populous can invest in is, to me, paramount to our movement succeeding. I think that the fact that many native Brits do not feel proud to be British or do not know and understand the deep and rich cultural heritage that they are the heirs to has created a country where politics can become more transactional and people find it hard to stand up for their country and their fellow countrymen. As such, I think that whilst DCMS in its current guise is broken, any truly small-c conservative movement to save the country needs to invest in culture and in sports, as much as it needs to balance the books.
DCMS has been around for a while and in that time our history taught in schools has been denigrated and pupils taught to be ashamed of some of the great achievements our country has been responsible for. Statues taken down, roads and buildings renamed, what has the DCMS ever done for us?
I totally agree with your asertion ‘reinforcing a positive British culture that our populous can invest in’
This is why I say “DCMS in its current guise is broken”. I agree that it needs sorting, but I fear that many of the tech-bro types who care about economics and not culture would scrap it and not replace it. We can call the new thing the “Department for Reinvigorating British Culture” (DRBC) or something, as long as we agree that we are still investing in culture and sport, but just in positive versions of it.
