Approval confidence in Starmer has collapsed. It’s been bigger than that of any Prime Minister after 100 days.
He peaked just after the election at plus 11 per cent, and he’s fallen by 49 points to -38 per cent ahead of tomorrow’s budget.
But more importantly, the real measure of confidence is in the Government bond market. Yesterday, the ten-year Government bond yields surpassed that of the Truss-Kwarteng mini-Budget, which Labour claimed was evidence of the Tories crashing the economy.
This was in spite of similar trends globally, whereas this time the value of British government debt is falling while that of other major nations is rising. So while confidence in other country’s economies is improving, ours is getting worse.
Jacob Rees Mogg shared his views ahead of tomorrows budget
GB News
It is possible that the Prime Minister knows absolutely nothing about the bond markets.
They are quite complicated. He’s a lawyer, not a banker. If what he’s interested in is stability, that is not what the bond markets have been showing recently.
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And this is at least in part because the Chancellor has decided to change the fiscal rules, which she promised not to change, to grant herself £50billion more in borrowing of money that, ultimately, you will have to pay back.
This has made the bond markets nervous. So the cost of borrowing is increasing, indicating the markets lack confidence in the Government. It is the opposite of stability.
What Starmer was saying yesterday just wasn’t true. it has an effect because it means borrowing will be more expensive, leading to higher taxes in future. But any long-term borrowing for mortgages and so on will also be more expensive, making individuals less well-off more directly so.
In the financial year ending March 2024, the UK government borrowed £122.1billion. But perhaps more revealingly was how much we spent on the debt interest repayments about £100billion.
Now, you may not be a great fan of Rishi Sunak and his premiership, I certainly had my criticisms of him, but one thing he did understand was the need to reduce the debt.
Indeed, despite £122billion being borrowed last year, this was a decrease from the year before. Read Rachel’s entire economic doctrine, known rather creatively as secure genomics, which roughly translates to economic paralysis, was a reaction to what happened at the Truss, quoting mini-Budget.
But her plan to borrow at least another £20billion with her new changed rules contradicts what she said about fiscal responsibility.
So the plans to borrow more with increased borrowing costs, dare I ask, is it Rachel Reeves who is crashing the economy rather than Liz Truss?
