You can see two upticks in debt: first was the steady rise after the 2008 crisis (which austerity clearly failed to stem) and the second around 2020 which may be pure Covid or may be also due to a bit of Brexit.
When the UK government talks about "growth", it really means "growth in tax revenues". This means they want you and me to spend more because transactions are the drivers of revenue.
Inflation is generally painful for the public but very useful for a government up to its ears in debt because debt payments do not rise with inflation but revenues do.
And public services are highly toxic to an economy which requires 4-5% growth just to meet its debt payments. Why provide services for free when you can collect VAT receipts for basic essentials like clean water, energy, and medication? Why spend millions on regulatory oversight when the inevitable health issues downstream will result in more private spending and GDP growth?
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxe...
You can see two upticks in debt: first was the steady rise after the 2008 crisis (which austerity clearly failed to stem) and the second around 2020 which may be pure Covid or may be also due to a bit of Brexit.
When the UK government talks about "growth", it really means "growth in tax revenues". This means they want you and me to spend more because transactions are the drivers of revenue.
Inflation is generally painful for the public but very useful for a government up to its ears in debt because debt payments do not rise with inflation but revenues do.
And public services are highly toxic to an economy which requires 4-5% growth just to meet its debt payments. Why provide services for free when you can collect VAT receipts for basic essentials like clean water, energy, and medication? Why spend millions on regulatory oversight when the inevitable health issues downstream will result in more private spending and GDP growth?