Britain must be saved from the financial abyss

A few months ago, Alistair Darling was asked how long he thought his government could continue to borrow £600 million a day. Might creditors one day refuse? The Chancellor gave an oblique reply. ‘When you walk over ice, you never know it is too thin — until you fall through.’ He said no more, but his message came across. If the bottom falls out of the British economy, it will do so instantly and dramatically. There will be no warning.

For some time now, Gordon Brown’s government has been walking on the thinnest of ice. But it has been helped, ironically, by the widespread expectation of its electoral annihilation. The money markets — which decide daily whether to extend the financial lifeline upon which the Prime Minister now depends — had priced in a clear Tory victory. Pension funds and foreign investors were banking on David Cameron winning, and being obliged to restore fiscal sanity.