UK debt ‘hits £3 trillion’ milestone August 6, 2026 The size of the UK’s national debt has now risen above £3 trillion, analysis has suggested, reflecting the burden facing taxpayers across the country. A tracker by a rightwing campaign group and think tank has suggested that national debt had reached the long-awaited milestone after an explosion in spending since 2020. The Taxpayers’ Alliance based [...]
Andy Burnham is on course to rack up the second highest debt interest bill on record August 6, 2026 Britain’s national debt has reached £3 trillion. We can’t go on like this, says Anne Strickland Andy Burnham has been Prime Minister for just over a fortnight and in that time, Britain’s national debt crossed the unimaginable £3 trillion mark, according to the Taxpayers’ Alliance Debt Clock. It took us 11 years to go from [...]
‘Moron premium’ – Westminster turmoil has ‘cost taxpayers £35bn’ since 2022 July 28, 2026 Secretive plotters and vengeful strategists in Westminster have cost taxpayers around £35bn since 2020, new research by one of the world’s top insurance companies has found. In a study into the costs of political fragility facing European governments, researchers at Allianz Trade found that the UK government continued to pay a “distinct political premium” due [...]
Iwoca closes bumper debt facility as sale speculation mounts July 27, 2026 Small business lender Iwoca has inked a new £250m debt facility that will help it ramp up its lending power just days after it emerged it had instructed bankers to launch a sale process valuing it at north of £1bn. The fintech closed the credit line from a household name bank and private credit giant [...]
Tesco Mobile breaches £600m debt facility after reporting failure July 23, 2026 The UK’s biggest virtual mobile network operator has breached the terms of its debt facility after a reporting shortfall, City AM can reveal. Tesco Mobile, which has more than 5m customers and is owned by Virgin Media O2 and Tesco, identified a breach in covenants in the funding agreement it has with the Royal Bank [...]
Manchester was Burnham’s rehearsal – now get ready to pay the bill July 22, 2026 Burnham has asked to be judged on Manchester – where his record is more spending, more borrowing and higher taxes, says Gareth Davies Andy Burnham walks into Downing Street with a simple pitch: judge me on Manchester. I am happy to take him up on it. Start with tax. In 2018, Mr Burnham created a [...]
Warning for John Healey as key fiscal target missed July 21, 2026 A key fiscal target has been missed on John Healey’s first morning as Chancellor, in a reminder of the poor state of public finances. Official data on Tuesday showed that the current budget deficit, which is critical to the current fiscal rules, surpassed forecasts set by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). The Office for [...]
The pensions triple lock is a travesty. Our politicians must fess up July 16, 2026 We report this week that the OECD has added itself to a growing list of institutions warning over the sustainability of Britain’s triple lock pensions system, the policy that guarantees the state pension rises annually by the highest of inflation, earnings growth or 2.5 per cent. The triple lock, the Paris-based OECD warns, is “unusually [...]
OECD sounds alarm on pension triple lock in challenge to Burnham July 15, 2026 The world’s leading independent economic organisation has warned that reform of the triple lock on state pensions is “necessary to reduce fiscal risks”, in a challenge to Andy Burnham as he prepares to take over as Prime Minister. The OECD, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, described the triple lock guarantee as “unusually generous [...]
The devastating prognosis for the UK’s public finances July 11, 2026 While much of the media obsesses over Nigel Farage’s fight with a man dressed as a bin, I have something more sobering to discuss as we kick off the weekend. The Office for Budget Responsibility’s report into fiscal risks and sustainability, published this week, is comfortably the most alarming yet. This is an annual review [...]