Irene Hampshire

We are broke. Our national debt is over £2.9 trillion, up from £1.6 trillion a decade ago. Interest payments alone now cost far more every year than the entire defence budget. For every pound raised in tax, a huge chunk is immediately swallowed just to pay for yesterday’s ludicrous spending. It’s disgusting. This debt doesn’t just disappear. My grandson will be paying for our recklessness, and his grandson too likely. The difference between total public sector spending and income was £20.7 billion in June 2025, the interest payable on central government debt was £16.4 billion in that month. These numbers are INSANE. The problem isn’t that the British people don’t work hard enough or pay enough tax - the problem is the size of the state and the political addiction to spending money we just do not have. Governments of every colour have built an unsustainable system of endless welfare expansion, ever-growing bureaucracy, and BS vanity projects - while the fundamental basics like policing, border control and infrastructure are left to rot. We must live within our means. Like every family in the country. Every pound borrowed today is a pound our children will have to pay back tomorrow with higher taxes, lower growth, and fewer opportunities. The legacy we are leaving for our children and grandchildren is sick, all because politicians don’t have the courage to say that benefits need to be brutally slashed back because it will cost them votes. Let’s get back to basics. A state that does less, costs less, and focuses on what matters. Defending our borders, protecting our people, and creating the proper conditions for enterprise and prosperity. Spend what we little we have on the British people, not global welfare. That means cutting waste, stripping back bureaucracy, and ending the culture of unfunded spending. A painful, but necessary process. The British people live within their means every single day. They know what it’s like to budget, to make sacrifices, to plan for the future. It’s time the state was forced to do the same. No more foreign aid. No more illegal migrants. Slash benefits, drastically reduce the size of the state - and I mean drastically. Milei will look tame in comparison to what needs to happen in Britain. .. Ban QE. I proposed a bill in Parliament to do exactly that. The Government MUST be forced to only spend what it earns. If it can just print money to dig itself out of a hole, the economy will catastrophically implode. Not forgetting public sector pension liabilities, trillions on that too - unfunded and unaffordable. Stick that on the balance sheet, and it all looks even worse. Slash it, and then slash it again. It's the only way. The state should be as accountable to us as we are to them. We can’t afford to fund Motability cars for people feeling a bit down, or endless breakfast buffets for Pakistani illegal migrants. We just can’t. Scrap it all. There is no other way to put this. WE ARE BROKE. Brutal, deep, and far-reaching cuts are required. It’s about time politicians started being honest about it. It won’t win many votes, but it’s the cold truth.