By Blake Stephenson MP

Whether from financial crises, war or disease, western economies have been stagnating for two decades.

Rachel Reeves now promises stability. What she’s delivered is a fiscal mirage—one that’s evaporating fast under the heat of reality.

The Office for Budget Responsibility’s latest Fiscal Risks and Sustainability Report makes for sobering reading: public debt is projected to hit 274% of GDP by 2073, driven by unchecked health spending, demographic pressures, and an unwillingness to confront hard truths.

This isn’t just a long-term concern. The crisis is already here.

Reeves claims she inherited a £20bn black hole – a claim the OBR refused to legitimise.

In reality the only black hole is not the one she invented but the one she has created, through a mix of wishful thinking and economic vandalism.

The OBR now warns that most borrowing is going not to fund services, but to pay the growing interest payments on our national credit card. That’s not fiscal management—it’s generational theft.

As the Shadow Chancellor reminded us recently, “sound money and responsible public spending” are not optional Conservative principles—they are the bedrock of national resilience.

He was right.........

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