Labour’s spending is out of control

To borrow a phrase that was once famously used about the Pentagon, ‘a billion here, a billion there and pretty soon you are talking real money’. The Labour government has certainly been spending some ‘real money’ this week. If you tot up the total amount it has added to spending over the last five days, it comes to an extraordinary £50 billion. The British state is rapidly losing control of its finances, and it is no surprise the bond markets that will have to finance it all are getting worried. 

If the Chancellor Rachel Reeves decides, like many of us, to check her bank balance as the week ends, she will get a nasty shock. Let’s take a look at some of the debits she has chalked up since Monday. The week opened with the re-set with the EU, which, while it may or may not help trade, comes with an estimated price tag of £16 billion once all the contributions to EU programmes the UK will have to make are added up.

On Tuesday, we learnt that there was an overspend of £4 billion in April as, even with extra taxes coming in from the increase in employer’s NI announced in the Budget, the state spent far more than forecast.