Best Of

Good thread header. This is the real issue facing this government and it is one that the last government largely dodged. I would add that the increasing cost of our debt burden is another very serious challenge going forward. According to the OBR, " in 2025-26 we expect debt interest spending to total £111.2 billion. That would represent 8.3 per cent of total public spending and is equivalent to over 3.7 per cent of national income."

A lot of our current debt was borrowed at ridiculously low interest rates after the GFC. So a 10 year gilt from 2015, for example, might have had a coupon of 0.2%. When that became repayable this year we obviously did not have the money to repay it so the debt will have been rolled over but at a cost of around 4.5%. A lot of people on here criticised Osborne for not borrowing more to invest and claimed this was shortsighted. This shows how wrong they were. That 8.3% is heading in only 1 direction.

So, we urgently need to cut spending. Much easier said than done of course, especially given the pressures mentioned by Gareth and by me. We need to reduce regulatory costs, we need to reduce the head count in the public sector substantially, we need to stop wasting money on never ending inquiries which tell us the same things again and again (and which, as @Cyclefree points out, we normally ignore). Its a huge challenge for any government and politically it is a particular challenge for Labour. But it needs to be done.

I am all for a balanced budget, but be realistic on public headcount. After 15 years of austerity how much fat is there to cut in our criminal justice system for example? The way to cut costs there is to restrict what is permitted, for example greatly restricting the right to appeal.

Similarly in my line of work (my Trust is reducing headcount this year by 7% already). What treatments on the NHS do we stop?

On your latter point, IVF.

Given our low birthrate certainly not

IVF makes a negligible contribution to overall birthrate.

If people want to use IVF, fair enough, but not funded by the taxpayer.

It also makes a negligible contribution to our spending. We'd save a quid a year each if we stopped funding it.

This IVF thing is just silly. It represents 0.03% of the health budget.

Maybe we should have a look at obesity instead?

Note neither Ukraine, nor Europe are part of these negotiations.

Scoop: U.S. secretly drafting new plan to end Ukraine war
https://www.axios.com/2025/11/19/ukraine-peace-plan-trump-russia-witkoff
The Trump administration has been secretly working in consultation with Russia to draft a new plan to end the war in Ukraine, U.S. and Russian officials tell Axios...

Phillips P O'Brien has just put out a rather pessimistic substack suggesting that the Europeans will be told the US will pull out of NATO if they don't agree to the peace plan, whatever it is. We are about to see the maximum leverage available to the US President applied to Ukraine and Europe - when we've all been hoping it might be applied to Russia.

Trump really wants to pull out of NATO; previous US administrations have seen their spending on NATO as worthwhile to ensure peace and keep Europe in the US sphere of influence, but Trump's US has no allies, only marks to milked. His view is that Europe should be paying the US for their presence. Europe isn't going to do that, so no dice.

If you accept the above as fact, then threatening withdraw unless Europe and Ukraine agree to a peace plan is win-win in Trump's view. Either the plan works and Trump is hailed once again as a Great Peacemaker (at least in his own befuddled mind) or a refusal provides cover for something he wants to do anyway.

From Europe's pov, being blackmailed to accept a settlement in Ukraine which puts our future security at serious risk, is Trump effectively abandoning NATO already.

Indeed. And we have had plenty of warning that this is coming. We should call his bluff and refuse to accept his plan.