U.K. 30-Year Yield Tops U.S. as Pressure Mounts on Government Borrowing

No. You're exposing poor reportage and sloppy editing. CoinDesk isn't exactly Bloomberg.

Are you sure about this? If you scroll down to the pie chart on the following page, health is not the largest chunk of expenditure (that’s social security) and interest on debt is fifth.

https://ifs.org.uk/taxlab/taxlab-key-questions/what-does-gov...

It's like the family drowning in debt who decides to cut mom and dad's weekly trip for Starbuck's Latte at the Farmer's Market. Yet won't look at the two car payments, the USD500000 mortgage, or the private school tuition for the kids. Maybe in their hearts they believe it truly is the way out? But a good financial advisor would probably tell them not to worry about the fly on their toe when there are 4 or 5 elephants stacked on their chests.

And it can be hard to receive those kinds of messages. As hard for individual families as it is for nations.

1) 150 billion per year net new borrowing

2) 115 billion per year interest payments

Conclusion: the effect on the budget of stopping this whole debt thing would be a net cost of either 150 or 265 billion per year (because you "lose" the new debt, but you still have to pay the interest payments), or about triple the current budget cost of debt, or 12% to 21% of the total government budget.

The cost of making the debt fall as fast as it was rising would be 150b + 150b + 115b = 415 billion per year, call it 33% of the government budget.

In contrast, making the problem worse at the current rate has a 3% positive effect on the budget. This will not change in the near future. It's exponential and it itself rises at about 8% per year, in other words, next year it'll be 3.2% (and the government could choose to force the banks' hands to get that down)

In other words: the government will do the opposite of what everyone's suggesting here, regardless of labour vs conservatives. Either party will increase lending and make the problem worse, faster. Why? Simple: they sure as hell aren't about to give up a quarter of the budget, especially when worsening the problem actually still has a positive effect on the budget (and a strong negative effect on the problem). Note that the interest payments are actually the smaller part of this. Not borrowing fresh money is between 60% and 70% of the "cost".

Which also shows that the problem is not the rich. Well, unless you count the government. And yes, I count organizations that spend 10% more than they "can" as rich. If spending more than your fair share isn't being rich, I don't know what is.

Furthermore the "reduce debt" is a trap argument. It ignores forget ... we die. Most of UK government expenditure is labor. In other words, reducing the debt, even just stopping the rise in debt, is effectively asking us to work harder now, in trade for the country being in a (let's be honest - slightly) better position in 10 years. So you're expected to give a lot up now, in trade for giving the rich more money now (and less in the future). But you'll die, and if you're 40 or above, the calculus will show that you'll get more government services before you die at 72 if we let the situation become worse, rather than fix it.

It's still years away from the next election so it's hard to know what economic angle Reform will run on. But it will probably have to be one similar to the 2010 coalition, where the need for spending cuts was explicitly advertised and voted for.

(for context, review the leave vs stay votes by age cohort: https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/15796-how-britain-vot... ; roughly ~500k voters 65+ die every year in the UK: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...)

Leaving the EU has actually helped that, because the membership payments can now be spent on general costs, and it didn't worsen trade or the economy in any noticeable way.

While many in the EU may be sympathetic and forgiving, I sense countries like Germany and France want to ensure the UK rejoins as a far more integrated and dedicated member state than they were before. It doesn’t seem like the UK has much bargaining power in any potential application to rejoin.

If I had to pick one obvious economic problem with the UK it would be the vast economic disparity between London and most of the rest of the country and the unwillingness of successive governments to invest any significant amount of money in tackling it.

There is no cheap solution. Cutting taxes on the rich won’t magically grow the economy. That requires actual investment. However, as Liz Truss showed while trying to do something different, it’s very hard for the government to invest when any increase in borrowing leads to panic and a crash in the markets.

The workforce and legible but only occasionally officially perverted legal system are valuable, sure, but it's the 2020s. Plenty of places can offer that. As for the pivot to the right, it's a net gain for all UK citizens who don't outwardly present as a minority or can hide it, since they can suck up to one of the few big petroleum and food exporters at a discount.

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* footnote: It should go without saying, but Trumpism is just an expression of pre-existing vast sociocultural forces.

No it is not highly likely at all.

People who say this simply do not understand the depth of the structural challenge involved in getting from four MPs to 326 (or 325 or so if you delete the odd non-active MP).

Even if they get close but no cigar and secure a coalition it would be with the Conservatives, whose failures will not be forgotten soon.

I think it is wholly possible, alas, that Reform will see a hundred or so MPs and be the official opposition. But it should not be overstated that the Liberal Democrats will sooner offer to be in a coalition with Labour, and the country tolerate that again from them, than allow Reform the chance to undo Labour's work.

And that is before you consider that, ahem, the shine is off Reform's chums in the USA already and that situation is not going to get better soon. Reform would need a massive amount of money -- Musk money and sketchy crypto money, basically -- to get anywhere, and Trump's orange thumb on the scale with US social media firms. And we don't like that stuff. I cannot stress enough how badly that kind of intervention would go for them.

There are not many people in the UK who would say that Starmer's win was a "huge win for the left". Especially Labour voters. The "left" doesn't have much to do with it. Centrism, sanity, and the hope for an end to grift and stupidity and cruelty do. The failings of the right -- of idiots like Liz Truss and Brexit -- have more.

Reform fielded a candidate in essentially every constituency in 2024 and got five elected. One of them is sitting as an independent already because he's under investigation for corruption.

Yes, Reform got a huge swing in the local (council) elections, and some people think that is predictive. But historically it's nowhere near as predictive as Reform voters would like.