Cutting the cost of government is the only solution to this crisis

A little over a year ago, The Spectator printed a cover story about the risk of inflation. Britain, we argued, was hugely vulnerable: the national debt was structured in such a way that even a small uptick in inflation followed by a rise in interest rates would inflict immense damage on public finances. The conventional wisdom was that there was no such risk, that rates would be ‘low for long’. But what if this consensus was wrong? The Financial Times took the unusual step of writing a story about our story. ‘The Spectator joins the inflation doom-mongers,’ it announced.

‘Doom’ was pushing it a bit: we simply sought to underline the complacency with which governments, central banks and many analysts viewed the economic horizon. Lack of concern about inflation was all the more dangerous because it helped justify the spending, borrowing and money-printing of the post-crash years – and the response to the pandemic.