All Labour budgets are essentially works of deception, and Alistair Darling’s speech on Wednesday was no exception. Once again, the Chancellor deployed the normal, tiresome formula: pyrotechnics intended to distract voters from an ugly truth lurking in the small print. Except this time, the distractions were obvious fakes. No one seriously believes the British economy will be helped by a bribe for buying an imported car. And the truth was the ugliest Britain has been told in its peacetime history: that the nation’s finances are in freefall.
By the time you have finished reading this sentence, the national debt will have increased by some £14,000 — rising by £175 billion this year and £173 billion next. It is a bowel-loosening sum, and will be followed by comparable figures in subsequent years. Gordon Brown has no intention of suddenly abstaining from the state spending he worked so hard to drive up. The Budget protects government from any serious cuts, and proposes to saddle us with a collective debt of £1.3 trillion. This will be the Prime Minister’s leaving present to a miserable public.
And make no mistake: it is a leaving present that will transform Britain. Mr Brown’s legacy is to have taken charge of a low-debt economy and turned it into a debtors’ hell. As the small print of the Budget makes clear, interest payments alone will soon overtake the costs of educating our children or defending the realm. Within a few years, debt repayments will be the biggest single cost to the British government — aside from the National Health Service. This Budget may have taken 50 minutes to read, but it will take decades to pay off.
Mr Brown inadvertently explained this in the Commons just before the Budget.
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