Is Britain about to be plunged into even greater economic chaos? Pundits have highlighted a remark made by the supposed prime minister in-waiting, Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, in an interview he gave to the New Statesman last year. The government, he said, had to ‘get beyond this thing of being in hock to the bond markets’. Understandably, the worry is that Burnham – who, if successful in the upcoming Makerfield by-election, will likely replace Keir Starmer as prime minister – would water down Labour’s ‘non-negotiable’ fiscal rules to finance even more public borrowing.

Burnham’s, and Labour’s, openness to further public debt needs to be defeated once and for all. Our addiction to borrowing – a near-permanent feature of British politics since the Second World War – is at the root of three issues that have led us to the financial and social abyss we find ourselves in. Borrowing has become financially destructive, it has sustained a class of weak and cowardly politicians, and it has entrenched a culture that has become increasingly dependent on handouts and subsidies. It must be ended.

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