Morning Star Editorial: The long economic crisis Britain’s not talking about

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/long-economic-crisis-britains-not-talking-about

ANDY BURNHAM’S visit to Wales coincided with today’s announcement of current youth unemployment. In Wales 17 per cent of young people available for employment are without work. Figures are worse in London and north-east England. Overall they are higher by 30,000 than the same figures this time last year.

Earlier in the week the Prime Minister announced he was convening the National Economic Council this October, bringing together the first ministers of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to discuss economic development. This council, re-established shortly after Burnham took over as prime minister, was originally set up by Gordon Brown in 2008 in the face of global financial crisis.

We are not yet in such a crisis. But omens are not good. Values in the London stock exchange are up over a third on where they were a decade ago — for a period when there has been virtually no growth in Britain’s economy. And this is not mentioning Elon Musk, the AI speculators, arms spending and Trump’s wars.

However, for the young people in Wales, and all other places, what really matters will not be what happens next year but during their working lives: the next 40 years. Here three reports published over the last month by the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) are of particular importance.

The first, by William Ellis and Carsten Young, is on “Why We Need a Better Fiscal Framework.” They calculate that, on current projections, interest payments on government debt, will increase from the current 7.6 per cent of tax income to anything between 21 and 47 per cent over the next 40 years — the money going to the very wealthy who hold the bonds and crushing anything that remains of the welfare state.

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/long-economic-crisis-britains-not-talking-about