The western world is facing a financial crisis which could see society collapse in slow motion.
The spending watchdog, the Office for Budgetary Responsibility, is wrong about almost everything, but today it has issued its long term financial risk projections, and the gloomy conclusion is at least worth examining.
Essentially, we are living beyond our means. Public spending is already 45 per cent of GDP, but the new projection suggests over 50 years, this will increase to 60 per cent with revenues remaining the same as they are now.
If we continue on this track, we could expect the debt to GDP ratio to go from 100 per cent to 300 per cent.
Jacob Rees-Mogg has said the UK needs to end net zero policies
GB News
We're on this financially unsustainable path for three main reasons.
The first is that since Covid, shift in public mentality has occurred, illustrated by vast increases in the numbers on welfare.
We have a sense of entitlement, expecting the state to solve all their problems. The state's presence has become ubiquitous. It means the economy is over regulated, people are not incentivised to work and that productivity is stagnating. Our annual welfare bill alone is nearly £300billion of your money.
The second is our obsession with net zero. The elite believes it can control global temperatures by modifying our carbon emissions, despite the fact that we are responsible for a mere one per cent of the global total.
This is already costing us billions of pounds. It will cost many billions more, making energy more expensive and putting thousands of jobs in industry in jeopardy.
With this financial background, when we are competing with fast growing emerging market economies with much lower welfare bills or indeed expectations of welfare, means that we simply cannot afford to pursue the policy any longer.
And the third, and arguably the most important is our demographic crisis. The first Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew once said, demography, not democracy, will be the most critical factor for security and growth in the 21st century.
The UK birth rate has been in decline since the 1960s. The Chief Secretary of the Treasury, Darren Jones, recently claimed that the only reason debt projections are soaring is because, what a surprise, of the Tory's mismanagement of the economy.
The Chairman of the OBR Richard Hughes, formerly of the left wing cradle of Labour MPs, the Resolution Foundation has rejected this claim and pointed to the fact that our debt reflects our demographic problems. Fewer children means an older population on average. An older population means fewer people in work, supporting more people receiving pensions.
All of these trends are being replicated across the democratic Western world, whether in Europe or the US or even Japan and Korea, where it's more firmly entrenched. The only way to tackle this looming crisis is to take an axe to the state, slashing costs in every nook and cranny that it has crept into.
We must roll back our welfare system, getting the 5.5 million people of working age back into work. We must draw back the net zero agenda that is incurring a cost of tens of billions of pounds to the economy every year.
And most importantly, we must increase our birth rate. I have done my bit. As the inamorato of the left, the Holy Father Pope Francis says, people ought to have more babies and fewer pets.
Failing on any of these points will see Western society sink like a ship taking on water, inch by inch. The Titanic, no less.
