Simon Heffer spells it out

A quote from this morning's column which may be read from here:

On how the tax cut is paid for hangs the answer to the question of how bad things will get. Whatever happens, we are in for two or three years of gruesomeness. If a tax cut is funded by borrowing - and this year's extra debt could now be a destabilising £120 billion - then the pain will not be immediately so bad, but the long-term consequences will be shocking. They will start with the final implosion of our currency. We shall then be mired for decades in debt so deep that our ability to function as a serious economy will be paralysed. Yet, again, we lack an opposition with the credibility to make these points and to cause the appropriate level of public outrage.

At almost every turn the economy is being dealt blows it cannot sustain. Yesterday the Treasury select committee chairman was effectively calling for the nationalisation of banks to be completed; he seems oblivious to the fact that banks aren't lending because they still lack the resources to do so safely, and there has been a collapse in demand for loans because of the loss of confidence. Then, as we reported yesterday, 50,000 people have been recruited to the public sector in the last six months at a time when 300,000 in the private sector have lost their jobs. Do you get it, Mr Brown? When are you going to call an end to this party?

While worldwide economic turmoil rages the danger that the enslaving Lisbon Treaty will be finally ratified daily grows with much bullying of the Irish underway. Only they and the Czechs (plus possibly the Polish President) now stand in the way. An article here is worth a look.