The summer of 2025 failed to produce much rain but still the leaks kept on coming. It seemed that every possible – and some completely impossible – way of lifting tax revenue was being floated in front of the British public in an attempt to gauge what might be most acceptable, or cause least discontent, in the forthcoming autumn Budget.  

The sheer futility of the exercise exemplifies the sense of hopelessness that now hovers over any efforts by the government to talk about the economy. The other parties of all persuasions can enjoy tormenting the administration for its wretched efforts but singularly fail to offer sound policy solutions to the country’s predicament: such is the joy of opposition.  

But while chancellor Rachel Reeves practices semantic gymnastics in trying to avoid breaking the manifesto promise not to raise taxes “on working people”, to squeeze out an extra £2 billion here or £2 billion there are simply footling around on the edges of a deep, deep problem.  

Someone is going to have to be brave enough to make the UK face up to the scale of its predicament. It looks increasingly clear that that person is not Reeves. And it is not Sir Keir Starmer. 

The prime minister has shown himself to be a capable leader on other fronts but economics is neither his interest nor in his skillset. With a strong chancellor, he might be able to build a Premier League team but, after more than a year in office, it is very clear that to have any chance of success, Downing Street needs to invest heavily in the transfer market.

Whatever her talents, and there must be some although they have been largely kept modestly under wraps, Reeves does not have the calibre and sheer clout to spell out the nature and scale of the challenge and the pain that will be inevitable in beginning to put it right.  

Talk of the black hole that needs filling has conjured the idea that this is just a one-off, albeit sizeable, deficit left by the previous administration. Originally, Reeves played along with that, contending that the figure might be as great as £22 billion. 

Growth in the economy was to be the salvation, but the growth has not materialised and the nominal black hole has deepened: the National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR) now puts it at £41 billion.  

Given that the government was estimated to spend £1,226 billion in the last financial year, the numbers might not be a cause for major alarm. But as far as the well-being of the nation is concerned, those figures are a mere pimple amidst worsening decay.  

Failure to properly invest in infrastructure over decades continues to hamper the UK. The consistently poor productivity of the nation can be attributed to a myriad of factors, ranging from a snobbish conviction that anything to do with manufacturing was a tad beneath us and historically poor management by those who did metaphorically dirty their hands to a welfare system that has made life on benefits a possible alternative to the workplace. Appalling infrastructure, though, has also inevitably held back productivity.

Reeves has made a tentative step towards addressing this by flexing the fiscal rules to allow borrowing for investment – but, however good the cause, that borrowing simply piles up the country’s massive debt bill.

The British education system is desperately in need of investment. At its best, it delivers excellent results; at its worst, it fails vast cohorts of children, failing to equip them with the very basics necessary to thrive in the modern world. The country’s top universities compete with the best in the world but too many establishments rejoicing in that illustrious label of ‘university’ have demonstrated that while they are adept at extracting money from students they are less proficient at delivering the teaching that might make their degrees a passport to a gainful career.  

Funding those students itself is generating a black hole that is more of a bottomless pit. The Student Loan Company now manages a loan book of almost £300 billion and in the last financial year alone it paid out nearly £24 billion. The SLC proudly boasts that “The loan book is a significant UK treasury asset”. But much of the money will never be returned to the Treasury coffers. 

Although the interest rates it charges are exceptionally steep, ensuring that student debt hangs heavily over the heads of many students, a few of whom have even succeeded in owing more than £200,000, repayments only begin to trickle in when earnings hit a certain level and the debt is entirely written off thirty years after the first repayments fall due. Past experience indicates that much of what is currently termed ‘loan’ will turn out to have been a gift.  

Meanwhile, many of those administering the ‘loans’ are accumulating generous pensions in a scheme which is, fittingly, unfunded. So, like so many obligations the government has to meet, these pensions, like most of the public sector’s, do not feature when chancellors talk of the country’s debts.  

Then there is the matter of local authority funding. Councils have huge obligations to meet, ranging from social care and road maintenance to dealing with waste. Such is their current financial situation that several have effectively gone bankrupt and many more are having to sell swimming pools and libraries just to provide the basics.

Housing the homeless, a crucial duty, is increasingly difficult for them as they simply do not have the accommodation. But then the lack of housing is a major national issue which successive governments have failed to address.  

Add to this depressing scenario the ever-increasing appetite of the National Health Service and the scale of the problems that need to be addressed becomes so great that it might drive most politicians to pretend they do not exist and to concentrate on the single issue of immigration. The fact that most immigrants play a useful role and make a positive contribution to the Treasury is deemed irrelevant when the not-so-small boats continue to bring illegal immigrants into the country.  

But if a strong chancellor, backed up by a respected and brave prime minister, took a deep breath and came clean with the country, people might just be prepared to listen. And they might then accept that the next few years would be tough, but, if the burden were shared, it would be bearable and there would be better times ahead.

I can’t see Rachel Reeves doing that but, at some stage, the self-delusion that the country has indulged in for so long will have to come to an end.