The UK national debt 3 trillion line has been crossed. The figure now sits at a level that stretches back through the financial crisis, the Covid surge and the long run of borrowing that followed.
Alistair Darling told the House on Monday 24 November 2008 that his pre-Budget statement was being made against a background of economic uncertainty not seen for generations. He also said the government had taken on an unprecedented £500bn bank bailout package seven weeks earlier, and that borrowing would rise to £78bn this year and £118bn next year, or 8 per cent of GDP.
George Osborne and the debt climb
George Osborne answered that the Chancellor had announced the largest amount of borrowing ever undertaken by a British Government in the entire history of this country. He said the national debt was going to double, to £1 trillion, in just five years, and later described some MPs’ reaction by saying they did not understand what the Chancellor had just announced.
That warning did not stop the debt from climbing further. By the time Osborne left office, the national debt had increased by another £500bn on top of Darling’s £1tn, and it had reached £1.8tn on the eve of Covid.
Harry Cole and the Osborne speech
Harry Cole matters here because he remixed the speech with a Tiesto track, and it was still being played at house parties when Osborne moved into the Treasury in 2010. The line has lasted because the debt did not flatten out after the first shock; it kept rising through the next set of choices.
Another £1tn has been added in the last six years alone. Osborne is described as having reduced the deficit, but he did not eliminate it, which is why John Healey is on the front page now: the debt has fallen on his watch, and the £3tn mark is the latest proof of how much ground has already been covered.
John Healey and £3tn
The headline number does not break the debt down into neat slices between the financial crisis period and the Covid period, so the cleanest reading is the scale of the climb itself. From £1tn in 2008 to £3tn now, the UK has added two trillion pounds of debt while the political arguments over borrowing, deficit reduction and spending discipline kept changing around it.
