Making debt a real, human issue

Superb poster by the Tories which makes debt into a real, human issue (just as Coffee House urged him to in November) – a picture of a baby with the words “Dad’s nose, Mum’s eyes, Gordon Brown’s debt”. It calculates that a baby born today will owe £17,000 – and there is no exaggeration here. Brown repeatedly claims to have reduced debt, such a whopper that he’s seldom contradicted by interviewers. The truth: in 1996-97 the UK debt was £347bn. By the end of the boom in 2007-08 it had soared to £527bn and is forecast to  hit £1.02 trillion in 2012-13. And this is using Brown’s method: ie, not including the nationalised banks or the debt hidden in PFI contracts. Brown has so far got away with this because debt is viewed as a technical matter, an accounting thing. Yet the effect will be that the next generation will pay higher taxes for worse public services.