The real threat to our hard-won recovery

ALMOST ten years to the day since the fall of Lehman Brothers bank triggered the deepest global recession since the 1920s, a slew of new economic figures provides testimony to the UK’s remarkable recovery.

It’s worth remembering how close the whole financial system came to collapse in those dark days of late 2008 and 2009. Stock markets plunged by a third, house prices by 16 per cent and credit froze solid as the banks struggled desperately to keep their heads above water. Some, like Northern Rock, sank, spreading panic among savers and investors.

Growth fell by a vertiginous 5 per cent, with constant predictions of double and even triple-dip recessions.

But fast forward a decade and Britain is in a far happier place. Employment continues to surge, with wage rises now outstripping inflation. Youth unemployment – so rampant across most of the eurozone – has fallen 45 per cent since 2010 and is at its lowest for nearly 30 years.

And the economy is also growing at its fastest for two years, with manufacturing benefiting hugely from the fall in the pound and export books bulging.

There are caveats of course. The deficit is almost cleared, but national debt remains a terrifying £1.78trillion – costing £50billion a year to service.

Minuscule interest rates and Quantitative Easing (aka printing money) have seen returns on savings cut to almost nothing.

And the banks – saved from oblivion by the taxpayer – have shown little gratitude. They have closed more than 3,300 local branches since 2008 and shamelessly refuse to pass on interest rate rises to savers.

However, through austerity and the sacrifice of millions of ordinary workers whose incomes have remained almost static for a decade, the worst effects of the crash have been averted.

But we must never be complacent. All that progress could be instantly reversed by a single act of folly – the election of a Labour government.

Yesterday, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell reminded us why. He repeated his pledge to splurge an extra £500billion in a massive public spending spree – and hinted that this would just be the start.

He also wants to raise personal and corporate taxes to ruinous levels and spend further billions on scrapping student debt and renationalising key industries for the benefit of his trade union paymasters.

The result of this tax, borrow and spend lunacy would be to put Britain in the poor house. (For a taste of how bad that could be, just look at Jeremy Corbyn’s Marxist utopia of Venezuela).

We have travelled a long, hard journey since the crash – but the future looks bright. We must not let these class-war fanatics simply throw it all away.