Kelly’s Eye

ALONG with “lessons will be learned”, and “too little, too late” – the latter of which often follows it – there is no more repetitive refrain than “the Government needs to do more.” Scarcely a day passes without it being uttered on your TV or radio news, and never more so than over the past two years.

Indeed our reaction to Covid saw the culmination of a doctrine that has gradually ensnared our political debate like bindweed: that the state must be involved in everything. Our political leaders can hardly be surprised at the childish notion taken root that the Government can magic up money for every eventuality, when they have done most to foster it.

The consequences – always inevitable for those minded to see it – are now apparent. In a speech last week, the chief secretary to the Treasury Simon Clarke, Rishi Sunak’s No.2, revealed the cost of just paying the interest on our national debt: £83 billion. I repeat: finding that sum will merely cover the interest payments; it won’t clear a penny of the debt.

To put that in some sort of perspective, that recent much discussed rise in national insurance contributions to pay for the Government’s social care plans will raise a comparatively paltry £12 billion.

Only the NHS, the state pension and our education system now cost more than the interest on that national debt.Though it can never be repeated enough that we are also currently burning through £100 billion to fund a vanity project that will cut train times between London and Birmingham by no more than half an hour.

They say that if you hang around long enough, you live to see everything come around again. I remember the pain and unrest the country endured when Margaret Thatcher was elected to tackle a dismally familiar set of economic circumstances.

And due to the profligacy with your money of politicians, because – more than anything – they desperately want to be liked, we are ultimately going to have to go through something similar all over again.