Don’t let Boris Johnson’s fantasy economics and climate change bankrupt Britain – Bernard Ingham

TALK about Dennis the Menace, he’s got nowt on Boris the Bounder.
There are reports of a rift between Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Chancellor Rishi Sunak.There are reports of a rift between Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Chancellor Rishi Sunak.
There are reports of a rift between Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Chancellor Rishi Sunak.

Our Prime Minister thinks big, talks big, spends big and leaves a big bill in his wake.

He may go down in history as the man who got Brexit done.

But as things stand his legacy will be a hefty charge on future generations as reports continue to emerge of a rift with Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Richmond MP.

Boris Johnson's financial realism is being increasingly called into question.Boris Johnson's financial realism is being increasingly called into question.
Boris Johnson's financial realism is being increasingly called into question.
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To be fair, he cannot be blamed for Covid’s costs, although the eventual inquiry will no doubt identify lots of waste, notably on protective equipment and Test and Trace.

Nor are all those who still clamour for him to spend even more entitled to complain.

His spending has kept many businesses alive, ready to swell the expected post-Covid economic surge.

But the fact remains that, so far, Covid has cost the UK around £400bn, leaving a budget deficit of £300bn and a soaring national debt of over £2 trillion (thousand billion).

Reports have emerged of a rift between Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, over spending.Reports have emerged of a rift between Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, over spending.
Reports have emerged of a rift between Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, over spending.
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In naval terms we are listing badly and it will take a load of ballast to get us back on an even keel.

That ballast has only one source: you and me as taxpayers.

The Left, of course, see no problem. Just tax the rich, they say, either 
oblivious of the fact that the rich and their money are highly mobile or revealing their itch to restrict the movement of capital.

So, Boris Johnson’s problem is how to keep them down on the farm when they’ve seen Paree.

Alok Sharma is the Cabinet minister in charge of the COP26 climate change summit.Alok Sharma is the Cabinet minister in charge of the COP26 climate change summit.
Alok Sharma is the Cabinet minister in charge of the COP26 climate change summit.

The answer is not to tax them, in the words of former Labour Chancellor, Denis Healey, “until the pips squeak”.

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But how will he progressively close the gap between revenue and spending, bearing in mind that the Tories had still not balanced the books 10 years after Gordon Brown’s massive budget deficit of £153bn?

The answer is that there is not one.

We have not the slightest idea how the ship of state is to be financially righted, other than by tinkering with pensions which seems to be politically just about the daftest thing to do in view of the bills in the pipeline, including higher energy costs this winter.

First, forecasts suggest that inflation could nearly double from the current 2.5 per cent (which is above the Bank of England’s target of two per cent a year) while we are still paid next to nothing for our savings.

Households are reported to have £240bn in savings accounts that pay little or no interest.

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And the Bank is still printing money to help the economy – and prices – along.

All this adds up to future trouble with a capital T.

But wait for it.

I have not yet mentioned climate change.

Yet those two words are the source of more big bills to come. Worse still, we are presidents of this autumn’s UN climate change conference (COP26) in Glasgow and Boris, no doubt prodded by this week’s UN report, is determined to set a good example.

One way of doing that would be to make this the last COP since a crowd of 30,000 Ministers, officials and environmentalist campaigners is expected to leave behind them infinitely more tonnes of CO2 than of our COP26 Minister, Alok Sharma, in visiting 30 countries trying to stitch up a Glasgow agreement.

You might reasonably think we have long set an example to the world, now reinforced by phase-out targets for gas boilers and fossil-fuelled cars, especially when China, for example, is busy building coal-fired power stations.

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Indeed, the Office for Budget Responsibility estimates it will cost £1.4 trillion – to repeat, a thousand billion – to make the UK a zero-carbon economy by 2050.

That would add an estimated £469bn to our pile of debt.

It would matter a little less if we had an energy policy worthy of the name.

Instead, it can only be described as a hope and pray strategy since it simply does not ensure secure supplies of energy.

Boris Johnson recently revealed his naivete in this field, or, as some would say, his culpable ignorance on a visit to Scotland.

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He forecast that every home in the UK could be powered by wind alone by 2030. Not if the wind doesn’t blow, it won’t.

Instead, the lights will go out, given the undeveloped state of substitute technology.

Incidentally, Boris was also up the pole about Margaret Thatcher giving us a head start in the environmental stakes by closing pits.

Arthur Scargill’s intransigence closed more uneconomic pits than she would ever have dared.

Let’s get real, Boris, or you will bankrupt us all.

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