In 2010, Liam Byrne left a note to his successor as Chief Secretary to the Treasury which famously read “I’m afraid there is no money”. After all, annual borrowing had just peaked at a record £158 billion, and the stock of debt was about to top £1,000 billion for the first time.
Roll forward a little over a decade and you can now more than double these numbers. The independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) expects the government to borrow around £355 billion this year and debt has already blasted through £2,000 billion – or £2 trillion.
