Government borrowing soars to second highest level on record
https://news.sky.com/story/government-borrowing-soars-to-second-highest-level-on-record-13399928?dcmp=snt-sf-twitter
Posted by ThatchersDirtyTaint
Government borrowing soars to second highest level on record
https://news.sky.com/story/government-borrowing-soars-to-second-highest-level-on-record-13399928?dcmp=snt-sf-twitter
Posted by ThatchersDirtyTaint
30 Comments
So since they came to power, that puts us around £14.5 billion more borrowed than forecasted.
They’re not allowed to cut anything, and they won’t put up income tax. Not a big shock. We’ll just make life harder for ourselves later
Nearly 50% more than the same month last year. £6.6 billion more than expected. £20.7 billion borrowed in one month.
>The ONS said interest payments on government debt rose to £16.4bn in June 2025, which was nearly double the amount paid at the same point last year.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwygq5plz04o
So we borrowed £20.7 billion and most of that went on paying the interest on our gigantic national debt.
Hands up who thinks this is sustainable, no me neither.
Couldn’t possibly tax the wealthy so we better keep borrowing money to pay them for outsourced public services instead.
What could go wrong.
I think Rachel and Keir forgot just how left wing some pockets of Labour are. Cutting costs isn’t easy when your own party won’t allow it.
Damned if they do and damned if they don’t.
They are blocked at every turn from making cuts, they cannot raise taxes or people get pissed. But then people want better services, lower NHS wait times etc.
Something has to give at some point because none of this is sustainable. We cannot be borrowing to pay for the triple lock, so a wealthy generation can live even easier than they are.
You need about 20bn more per year every year to keep up with the triple lock. That’s about 650 quid per worker.
That’s why we had a big tax rise in October/April.
That’s why we needed to make big cuts this year.
Now those cuts have failed, we will need another huge tax rise and we will need it announced by October (not that long given the summer).
So what will it be?
For the last 45 years people have voted for a succession of low tax governments.
In the 80s and early 90s the government sold off our national assets (energy, water, strategic industries such as steel) and used that money to subsidise low taxes.
When there were no assets left, governments started to run an annual deficit and this happened most years throughout the late 90s, early 00s right up to the present day.
As a result the government now has almost £3 trillion of debt, which costs £100 billion per year in interest alone and the annual deficit is still in the region of £120 billion.
This means every year the total debt increases, as does the interest costs.
We, the taxpayer, are now spending around 8% of total annual government spending on debt interest alone. This is almost the same as the entire education budget and nearly double what we spend on defence.
The simple fact is, taxes are too low. Everyone needs to pay a bit more, going from the lowest earner to the richest billionaire. And before people start shouting about asylum seekers etc. the cost of asylum seekers is around £5 billion per year and foreign aid is £15 billion, which while not trivial amounts, won’t even cover 20% of the deficit if those costs were eliminated completely.
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.” – Alexander Fraser Tytler (Maybe)
The government if they want to could cut £50 + billion but they don’t have the will to do it!
It’s to political incorrect… so the country faces the real situation of not being able to afford it’s bills because they want to virtue signal to others
We’re fucked, aren’t we? Choo choo – all aboard the train to IMF debt ‘relief’ and turbo austerity.
Labour needs to grow a spine and just do something and stick to it. Compromising at every possibly turn is just as bad as sticking to a plan that you know won’t work.
They need to accept that they will have to break their “fiscal rules” it was a fucking stupid idea to start with as it put them in a corner before they even got started. Anyone who lives in the UK has been watching a slow moving train crash since 2007……. There are very few levers left to pull at this point and increasing taxes or getting rid of the triple lock are the 2 bigs ones.
The problem with either of these options is that you are looking at political suicide given that these would be deeply unpopular, add in the cost of living crisis and you’ve got yourself an unworkable situation. The situation we find ourselves in is the result of 15+ years of mismangement and youre dreaming if you can think any government can fix this in 1 or 2 terms of office.
I’ve said it for ages but housing is the achilles heel of the UK and if you cant fix housing costs youve got ZERO chance of fixing everything else. It has to big of an impact on peoples finances and I personally know people who cant afford to put into their workplace pension as paying for their house, bills, food etc leaves them with nothing to invest into a pension or maybe enough to enjoy life a little bit.
Given the recent news about pensions and how little people are paying in or not paying in at all, it comes as no surprise to me given that people have been squeezed to death on their monthly finances. It’s very hard to convince people to save for their future when the present has so little hope for the youth of today.
Can’t wait to hear all the idiots telling everyone else how taxing wealth more fairly and efficiently is out of the question and we’re all stupid for even suggesting such a ridiculous idea like *taxing the people who have all the money*.
People need to accept we’re going to have to cut a lot of services. The welfare state is over.
As long as the biggest voting block gets their WFA and their triple lock, screw everyone else it seems.
Triple lock is costing an absolute fortune and is just unsustainable, making WFA means tests was perfect way to eliminate some additional spending without really affecting the people that still needed it.
Folding on WFA because biggest voting block who won’t be voting for you in their majority anyways but giving into their pressure of saying they won’t be voting is such a step down, yeah it wasn’t going to save billions but it was a start in saying wanting to remove excess spending from the system for people who didn’t need it.
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Yes, like it or not, we are probably going to need real austerity this time round. Cuts to all sectors, enough that we’re able to start paying off debt down to a reasonable level
Thye are are definitely going to have to raise taxes in Autumn on the PAYE piggies and quite substantially because they have made the political choice to keep welfare and spending payment up.
Love going into debt! We are already in huge debt? Let’s borrow some more!
We need something radical if anything is going to improve, instead we will just bury our heads in the sand until one day it all breaks and we are the new 3rd world countries.
The Government borrowed £20.7B extra in ONE month?!
That’s wild. The UK is living well beyond it’s means
Debt to GDP is over 100% and the weighted average cost of borrowing exceeds the GDP growth rate.
If this were a company it would be considered distressed
Labour are so incompetent, not even funny. I guess that is my vote down the toilet. GDP down, unemployment up, taxes up, borrowing up,… any other macro news that I have missed?
Chancellor will need another pair of tissues.
I can’t wait for all this can-kicking to cause everything to collapse JUST when it will affect Millennials the most. You can feel it coming.
In order to pay for a cost that sees little if any return and increases by a *minimum* of 2.5% every year.
Only beaten during Covid. This Government really hasn’t got a clue. Tax rises for all, incoming
Just add another tax bracket, anything above 500k a year is taxed at 60%. If that doesn’t work put it higher, 500k is more than enough for a comfortable life.
The state pension (full) is now just over £500 off the personal tax allowance. So soon we will have state pensions being paid and at the same time recovering part of it in tax.
This does not touch on the Pension Credit issue that if you are paid less than the full state pension you are eligible for Pension Credit. So we could have a scenario that someone on means tested benefits would be liable to pay tax on them!
Awesome. Cripple the country with even more debt, waste more billions just paying off the interest and then get the general public to hate greedy pensioners and the faker disabled because that’s the real problem
The weekly reminder that borrowing isn’t bad, the economy isn’t a household budget and a deficit is an indication of under taxation and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.