THE Tory-led coalition’s public sector debt for November has shot up to £23.3 billion, £5.9 billion more than the figure for November 2009.
It is the highest monthly figure since records began, and is extremely bad news for the government, meaning that it will have to exact even more savage cuts if it is to slash the deficit in the way that the bankers and bosses are demanding.
The previous highest monthly borrowing record of £21.1 billion was in December 2009.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) says that the unprecedented £5.9 billion leap in borrowing was mainly due to government spending – up 10.8 per cent on last year. EU contributions and spending on health and defence were particularly high last month, the ONS said, while VAT receipts dipped by 0.1 per cent.
Revenues were up by 3.1 per cent from a year ago, but were outmatched by government expenditure.
Public sector net borrowing (excluding financial interventions) reached £104.4 billion in the year to date for 2010/11, down from £105.1 billion in the same period last year.
The Office of Budget Responsibility’s Economic and Fiscal Outlook (November 2010) forecast for 2010/11 is net borrowing of £149 billion.
The figures for public sector net debt were just as alarming.
Net debt (excluding financial interventions) was £863.1 billion (equivalent to 58.0 per cent of GDP) at the end of November 2010. This compares to £708.6 billion (50.0 per cent of GDP) as at the end of November 2009, an increase of £154.5 billion.
Public sector net debt (including financial interventions), expressed as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), was 65.2 per cent at the end of November 2010 compared with 59.5 per cent at the end of November 2009.
Net debt was £971.0 billion at the end of November compared with £843.6 billion a year earlier.
The National Debt is now closing in on £1 trillion.
However, just ahead is the full impact of the £81 billion package of spending cuts, the forthcoming 2.5 per cent rise in VAT, and the hundreds of thousands of sackings due to savage council and private sector job cuts.
This deadly combination will drive up benefit expenditures, including the cost of the JobSeekers Allowance, and drive down income tax and also other tax revenues as families are forced to cut back on their spending.
A spokesman for the Treasury said that ‘November’s borrowing figures show why the government has had to take decisive action to take Britain out of the financial danger zone.’
The figures show that the capitalist crisis is deepening and that much worse is to come.
The Tories and Lib Dems will be forced to step up their war against the working class, the middle class and the youth.
Nevertheless, the left wing of the trade union bureaucracy, gathering around McCluskey the Unite leader and Crow the RMT leader, are still seeking to pretend that the crisis is one of the Tories attacking the working class out of pure class hatred.
They say that the attacks are ideologically driven and the Tory ‘madmen’ can be defeated by a round of resistance, strike actions and demonstrations in the next year.
This is nonsense. The Tory onslaught is a product of the world capitalist crisis that is destroying banks and major industries all over the planet.
It is a question of the capitalists forcing the working class to pay the bill for the crisis or the system going under.
We are in a situation where only an indefinite general strike to bring down the government and bring in a workers government and socialism will do the job.
The working class desperately needs a new leadership to carry out this policy.
