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. Stock markets plunged by a third, house prices by 16 per cent and credit froze as the banks struggled.

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

Fast forward a decade and Britain is in a far happier place. Employment has surged to a high, with wage rises outstripping inflation for the sixth month in a row.

Youth unemployment – rampant across most of the Eurozone – has fallen 45 per cent since 2010.

And the UK 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. 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 savings rates reduced to almost nothing.

And the banks – which taxpayer bail-outs saved from oblivion – have shown little gratitude. They have shut branches and refuse to pass on rate rises to savers.

However, through austerity and the sacrifice of workers whose incomes have remained near static for a decade, the worst of the crash has been averted. But we must never be complacent. Progress could be reversed by an act of folly – the election of a Labour government. Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell reminded us why. He repeated his pledge to borrow an extra £500billion for 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 billions renationalising key industries for the benefit of his trade union paymasters.

The result of this lunacy would be to put Britain in the poor house.

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