Moody’s downgrade of Britain’s credit rating, from AAA to AA1, is largely symbolic, akin to a sticking plaster falling off a major unhealed gash. It will have no effect on the cost of borrowing, so what does it mean, if anything?
First, it was an anomaly that America and France had been downgraded months ago, and that little bankrupt Britain could sail on merrily, as if the only boat in the race without a leak, was plainly ludicrous.
Second, the fact is that there is a major hole below the waterline in the nation’s finances that isn’t being fixed. But compare 600,000 new jobs being created in the last year by the private sector, of which half are full-time: either the figures are wrong, or thousands of jobs have been lost at the same time, by bankrupt retailers and lost manufacturing output.
Third, sterling was on the slide in the FX markets before Moody’s even blew their faint-hearted whistle. This was after Mervyn King of the BoE voted for more QE, despite the fact that he is already sitting atop one-third of the national debt, and could easily topple off this pile of irredeemable IOUs.
Fourth, the national debt, which was meant to be coming down, is now going back up again. Osborne’s cuts were too little, and now are seen to be too late. But the Cameroons are such a lot of new-drippy Old Etonians that they are increasingly seen as a generation that hasn’t got the balls to pick up a sharp axe and really wield it. No pain, no gain.
As a result of reasons one to four, number five is that the economy is going nowhere fast except down a big, black hole called the IMF. Sort it Osborne, or quit! The answer is simple: slash government expenditure and taxation on March 20, not in some mealy-mouthed way as you are currently posturing, but in a determined and dramatic way.
Slash the Gordian knot of ever-advancing EU-driven socialist-bureaucracy! Cut the chain that is holding back the UK private sector, the people who have had proper jobs all their lives! Unlike you miserable lot in government, who have never had a proper productive job at all.
After all, the only man in Britain who is going to say you are wrong to do such a thing, is the utterly stupid, pathetic and ludicrous Ed Balls. And he is the one who assiduously dug the nation over many years into this great hole in the first place! But then, I suppose, he has never had a proper job either – a kindred spirit, perhaps?
This first appeared on Spear’s.
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