Despite frantic denials, the debt burden means Rachel Reeves will soon have to revisit promises she made on tax in the care-free days of opposition, says Vince Cable

The Chancellor has many competing priorities on Wednesday: a big rise in defence spending; keeping the NHS afloat; honouring promises not to raise taxes on income and spending; bailing out bankrupt councils and universities; and, not least, managing the welfare budget without imposing hardship on the disabled or raiding on pensioners’ pockets. But the number one priority is keeping our money-lenders sweet.

Like other countries, the UK – rightly – borrowed heavily to cope with the financial crisis in 2008, Covid and latterly the ‘cost of living’ crisis. The current net public sector debt to GDP of just under 100 per cent is four times the level in 1989/90, before the golden era when Blair and Brown were able to surf the waves of global and national non-inflationary growth.

The debt burden is much less than we ‘enjoyed’ after the Napoleonic and World Wars. It also looks good compared to Japan........

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