New Labour - Fuck the economy, rack up debt.

The pound has slumped to its lowest level in 20 months, after a "shocking" raft of figures revealed how deeply reliant the UK has become on debt.

Britain's current account has recorded its worst deficit since the late 1980s, making Britain's national balance sheet worse than the United States' for the first time since Nigel Lawson was Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Figures published by the Office for National Statistics caused a major sell-off of the pound, as experts warned that the UK currency would have to fall in value to bring the current account back into line. Sterling dropped to 98.9 on the Bank of England's comprehensive trade-weighted index, which measures it against a basket of other currencies. This is the lowest level since April 2006.

It also fell more than two cents against the dollar to $1.9813 and neared an all-time low against the euro, with the single currency worth 72.39 pence.

The pound's weakness followed ONS figures showing:

• The current account deficit almost doubled in the third quarter to £20bn. As well as being the biggest deficit ever in cash terms, at 5.7pc of gross domestic product it is now comparatively even bigger than the deficit in the US, and equals the worst-ever shortfalls in the past half-century, recorded in the 1980s.

• The domestic saving ratio, which measures how much of their incomes people are setting aside for the future, excluding pension contributions, remained deep in negative territory. At minus 1pc, it means families are borrowing in order to fund their everyday lifestyles - a highly unusual situation replicated in the late 1980s, before the last property crash.

• The amount families and businesses are having to set aside for mortgage and debt payments hit the highest level since the early 1990s, in the latest sign that the record mountain of UK lending is causing serious pain. The household debt service burden rose to 13.6pc of income - the highest level since 1991, while the equivalent measure for non-financial businesses hit 28.8pc of their profits - the highest since 1992.

• The Government's finances dipped even deeper into the red, as the Chancellor suffered a record shortfall on his budget in November. The ONS said public-sector net borrowing was £11.2bn - the biggest since comparable records began in 1993. It brings the total lending so far this financial year to £36.2bn, and raising the likelihood that Chancellor Alistair Darling will overshoot his £38bn forecast this year.

Some other figures that New Labour are not to proud of, won't be hearing the one eye'd cock Gordon Brown boasting about any of this lot:

A government that is spending on current debt figures, some £60 billion a year more than it has coming in.

Public sector pay for pensions for the public sector, some £1 trillion quid - twice the officially declared National Debt.

Where according to official figures - an we all know how accurate they are - Net debt was £511.3 billion at the end of October, compared with £480.0 billion a year earlier. The Pre-Budget forecast for net debt at the end of March 2008 is £541 billion.

Oh and all that debt racked up by the inept fucking clowns of New Labour costs money, just servicing the UK's central government debt, i.e. simply paying the interest, cost £27,424,000,000 in 2006/07 and is estimated to cost £29,100,000,000 in 2007/08 (Table 1.15: 2.1MB PDF).

Tags DEBT
Gordon Brown
Cool Britannia
Lunacy

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