The Government is preparing to loosen the rules that limit its own borrowing, and the rules will let it, because the Government writes the rules.
Crossbencher · 06 August 2026
The Government is preparing to loosen the rules that limit its own borrowing, and the rules will let it, because the Government writes the rules. Chancellor after chancellor has arrived with a borrowing rule and left with a different one. The rule always loses. That isn't a run of bad luck. It's what these rules are.
For most of modern history the pound needed no such promises, because it was tied to gold. A government couldn't simply will more money into being; the metal didn't care what ministers wanted. That discipline was brutal, and in the end Britain chose not to bear it: the pound left the gold standard in 1931, and from that day the currency rested on nothing harder than belief - belief that the state wouldn't abuse the printing press or the debt markets.
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