It’s great to see Philip Collins back in the Times: you may agree or disagree with him as a columnist but his writing is always elegant and thought-provoking. Today’s column looks at the conundrum facing Keir Starmer. ‘In all honesty I don’t think anyone involved can really say they know what it means to be a Labour government in a time in which there is no money left,’ he says. I know what he means: Tony Blair turned on the spending taps and Gordon Brown, when in power, turned them on even more. But Starmer will have more money to spend – far more – than any Labour government in history.
The tax take as a share of GDP is already at a 75-year high and state spending 20 per cent more than it was at the end of Gordon Brown’s day. And that is after adjusting for inflation. Here’s the story: tax and spending inflation-adjusted for today’s currency.
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