Ahead of Rachel Reeves's Spending Review tomorrow, my latest "When the Facts Change" post asks: "Who Will Stand Up For Reality?" All the major UK parties are now loudly championing big government spending and yet more state borrowing, as they no doubt will during tomorrow’s Spending Review. This despite the now screamingly obvious financial dangers of this strategy – and a debt interest bill that is already twice what the UK spends on defence, more than the state spends on schools and transport combined. Yes, I know that when you ask voters if they want more public spending now, then lots of them say “of course”. Almost everyone will say that when asked by a pollster if they want more “free stuff”. But the majority of people also know in their bones that at some point the music will stop and ultimately they want to be led by someone who gets that. And, of course, the public will be absolutely furious when the music does indeed stop, and there is major turbulence on government bond markets resulting in serious economic and financial fall-out – fall-out during which it will be the least well-off who suffer the most. Meanwhile the same politicians and pundits who ignored reality and drove us over the edge will opine: “Why did nobody see this coming”? While firm fiscal management isn’t politically popular, most voters understand that when it’s needed it’s needed – that's the lesson of the late-1970s, after the UK was bailed-out by the International Monetary Fund, or the early 2010s, following the global financial crisis. These were times when there was widespread clamour for grown-up financial management to rescue the country from chaos. So who WILL stand up for reality? That reality is that a situation that is unsustainable will ultimately not be sustained – and the UK's public finances are wholly unsustainable. My fear is that we’re now at the point that it may take yet another “proper crisis” to shift the political dial, for that lesson to be learnt once more. Link to post in next X message - please share