The Chancellor kicked off her Spending Review speech by stating that her “choice” is not only hers, but “also the choice of the British people”. But what a peculiar choice it is, one less the product of democratic will than of a government determined to spend and borrow as if the laws of economic gravity no longer apply. The spectacle is familiar: a parade of promises, a flourish of figures, and a solemn assurance that this time, the state’s largesse will finally deliver prosperity. Yet behind the rhetoric lies a simple, unyielding truth: the national debt, now a colossus towering over us at £2.8 trillion, is the inevitable consequence of a government that has mistaken ambition for ability and wishful thinking for wisdom.
We are told that the increases — £190 billion more for public services, a £29 billion real-terms boost for the NHS, defence spending ratcheted up to 2.6 per cent of GDP — are not only necessary but virtuous. The Chancellor, with the air of a conjurer, insists that these are the priorities of “working people,” as if the act of spending itself were a moral good, and the only thing required to heal the nation’s wounds is a sufficiently large cheque.
But the arithmetic is unforgiving. Tax revenues have plateaued, borrowing remains stubbornly high, and the cost of servicing the debt (already at record levels) will only rise as interest rates climb and the Bank of England tightens the screws. The Chancellor’s “fiscal rules,” so often invoked as evidence of prudence, are now little more than a fig leaf: arbitrary, malleable, and designed to reassure only those who wish to be deceived.
The government’s refusal to confront the limits of what the state can do flies in the face of historic experience
This is not the choice of the British people. It is the choice of a government that has lost faith in the creative energies of its citizens and instead seeks salvation in the machinery of the state. The NHS, that perennial recipient of political affection, is once again showered with funds, its budget swelling to £226 billion by 2028-29, making it the biggest winner in the budget allocation. And yet, as ever, the outcomes remain dismal: waiting lists persist, patient satisfaction languishes, and the system remains insulated from the bracing winds of competition and innovation. The government’s answer is always more: more money, more bureaucracy, more promises. Reform is whispered, but never truly attempted. The cycle repeats, the debt mounts.
Defence, too, is offered up as a symbol of national renewal, with spending increases presented as a bulwark against an uncertain world. But even here, the reality is less stirring than the rhetoric: the new money is, in truth, a reallocation within a fixed envelope, and the government still falls short of NATO’s calls for “hard defence” spending. The gesture is grand, the substance thin.
And so, the national debt swells. Not as a temporary expedient, but as a structural feature of a state that now consumes over 40 per cent of national output, a figure that would have appalled the architects of Britain’s post-war recovery.
The relationship between citizen and state continues to be quietly yet inexorably transformed: the state promises everything, delivers little, and leaves the bill for future generations. This is the thesis of the Chancellor’s much-vaunted “Securonomics” in action. It amounts to little more than a confused blend of protectionism, state activism, and the hope that growth can be conjured by government fiat. It is a doctrine that mistakes activity for achievement, and so-called security for prosperity.
Yet the consequences are not abstract. As the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee has warned, our debt is now more sensitive to economic shocks than ever before, its sustainability dependent on growth and borrowing costs that are both moving in the wrong direction. The government’s refusal to confront the limits of what the state can do, its insistence that prosperity can be legislated into existence, flies in the face of both economic theory and historic experience. The productivity crisis in the public sector is the inevitable result: more money buys less and less, and the private sector is crowded out, stifled by the dead hand of officialdom.
This is the true legacy of the Chancellor’s “choice.” It is not the choice of the British people, but the choice of a political class determined to avoid hard decisions, to postpone the reckoning, and to cloak its failures in the language of renewal. The danger of Securonomics is not merely that it is misguided, but that it is seductive; a comforting illusion that the state can provide security without sacrifice, growth without risk, prosperity without effort.
But illusions cannot pay the bills. The debt will have its due. And when the reckoning comes, as it must, the British people will discover that the real choice was never theirs to make. It was made for them, by those who preferred wishful thinking over hard truth, and borrowed against the future to buy applause in the present.
