The Spectator Podcast

First: an economic reckoning is looming ‘Britain’s numbers… don’t add up’, says economics editor Michael Simmons. We are ‘an ageing population with too few taxpayers’. ‘If the picture looks bad now,’ he warns, ‘the next few years will be disastrous.’ Governments have consistently spent more than they raised; Britain’s debt costs ‘are the worst in the developed world’, with markets fearful about Rachel Reeves’s Budget plans. A market meltdown, a delayed crash, or prolonged stagnation looms. The third scenario, he warns, would be the bleakest, keeping politicians from confronting Britain’s spendthrift state. We need ‘austerity shock therapy’ – but voters don’t want it. To discuss further, we include an excerpt from a discussion Michael had with our deputy editor Freddy Gray and economist Paul Johnson for Spectator TV. Next: can the foster system survive? ‘The foster system in this country is collapsing,’ Mary Wakefield warns. There around 80,000 children who need homes, but ‘a catastrophic l