Opinion: We are in the midst of a Lost Decade for Britain

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

77% : Welfare Spending Set to Soar to £406bn in Five Years The scale of welfare spending is under-appreciated.
60% : But it's what you have to do if you want to sustain public spending at its new high level.
56% : The fastest rising tax burden in the G7.
55% : Economic Watershed as Tax Burden Reaches Historic Levels The result is a very different country from the one we were in between 1980 and 2020, under Conservative and Labour governments.
54% : Public spending, which was once under 40 per cent of GDP, is now heading for 45 per cent, perhaps more.
54% : The welfare bill, currently £314billion, will increase by £73billion to £406billion over the next five years.
53% : The overall tax burden, which used to be just above 30 per cent of GDP, is now heading for over 38 per cent - and destined to stay at that level for the foreseeable future.
53% : Welfare spending is out of control and, far from Labour getting a grip, it is pouring petrol on the fire.
51% : Over almost 10 years, workers will pay a cumulative extra £100billion in income tax as a result of the freeze alone.
51% : They are also paying for the £9billion extra in welfare as a result of Labour chickening out of welfare reform.
50% : At a time when the ravages of inflation are allowed for a decade to force working people into tax brackets never designed for them, the Budget continues to index-link benefit payments and lavishes even more money on the welfare system.
48% : The highest borrowing costs in the G7, even before the bond markets (where governments go to borrow) have worked out that Reeves' so-called smorgasbord of multiple tax rises will not deliver the predicted revenues - and that when it comes to Budgets, smorgasbord is a Swedish word for omnishambles.
47% : We remain awash in a sea of debt and deficits which only magically starts to come right towards the end of the decade when the Budget's backloaded tax rises click in.
44% : During that period over 5million low-paid workers who previously had not paid income tax will have been dragged into the 20 per cent bracket.
41% : The Tories froze income tax thresholds in 2022-23 to repair the damage done to the nation's finances by the pandemic.
38% : The Labour Party should rename itself the Welfare Party - or risk being prosecuted under the trade descriptions act.
37% : In the end it was the depressingly old-fashioned Labour tax-and-spend Budget that all the leaks and kite-flying had indicated it would be.
37% : UK Trails G7 on Inflation, Taxes, and Borrowing Costs This government is on the wrong side of almost every economic indicator.
33% : In essence, Chancellor Rachel Reeves ' two Budgets have baked into our economy all the tax rises and public spending increases forced on the country during the pandemic - and then added even more taxes and extra spending.
32% : UK Faces Biggest Tax Hike Since the 1970s Taxes will rise another £26billion by the end of the decade on top of the £40billion the Chancellor levied in her first Budget last autumn - taken together it is the biggest tax rise any government has inflicted since Labour was last in thrall to tax-and-spend economics in the 1970s, the most miserable decade in Britain's post-war history.

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