Politics | 28 March 2009

To comprehend the scale of the sickening task awaiting George Osborne if he becomes chancellor, consider the following. If he were to raise VAT to 25 per cent, double corporation tax, close the Foreign Office, cancel all international aid, disband the army and the police, release all prisoners, close every school and abolish unemployment benefit he would still be unable to close the gulf between what the UK government spends and what it raises in taxes.

Hopes of a relatively rapid economic recovery that could conceivably fill this gap are receding every month. And there is a limit to how long the government can make up the difference with borrowed money and refer to its profligacy as a ‘stimulus’. Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, has taken the extraordinary step of warning in public that another debt binge would be unworkable. The choices awaiting a new Tory government grow narrower and uglier each month.