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| The Times spells out the stark news |
The alarm bells are ringing loud and clear. Britain’s economic emergency has just begun.
‘Lasting damage to the economy’
'Economy contracts 11.3 percent in a year’
'The biggest shock for 300 years’
‘The spending is unsustainable’
Those are some of the quotes from a sombre sitting of parliament yesterday.
The Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, spelled out the catalogue of problems and the misery ahead.
They include:
- A pay freeze for 1.8 million public sector workers although the lowest paid will get a rise,
- Two and a half million will be unemployed next year,
- Output will not get back to pre-pandemic days until late 2022,
- Borrowing will reach £394bn this year,
- People will be £12,000 a year worse off.
And on and on went the gloomy news.
Then Mr Sunak announced he would still be finding over £20bn, for saving and creating jobs, for the NHS, councils, mental health.
Savings on overseas aid would be dwarfed by a huge increase in defence spending - a controversial issue denounced by four former prime ministers and over which a minister has resigned.
The nation’s spirits, raised by the vaccine news, Christmas and the prospect of spring seeing life getting back to normal, has been overshadowed by reality..
2020 will indeed go down as one of Britain’s worst years for centuries.
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