Roger Lee

speaker

221 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 3 Jul

Roger Lee’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Merryn Talks Money · What Is 'Manchesterism'— And Will It Boost Britain's Economy? · 3 Jul 2026 podcast

and so if you then just you basically do some very rude arithmetic and just multiply that up by two months is 7.7 if you multiply that up by for the 12 months then you get the fiscal deficit in the uk is around 160 billion that's just doing them very simple arithmetic there are a lot of other moving parts i have to stress tax takes could be etc etc whether the economy slows if the economy slows further welfare payments goes up but i'm just

merely extrapolating the first two months of the public sector net borrowing over the course of the remainder of the year.

Now that £160 billion, that translates, if we do the maths, over £3 trillion of GDP, that translates to about 5.5% deficit.

That is what France is currently experiencing.

The danger zone is said to be six.

And, you know, there are a lot of moving parts in this.

What happens if the economy slows because of this increased burden of regulatory and tax burdens?

The Employer Rights Act hasn't really fed through yet into corporate profitability and behaviours.

Maybe that will slow it.

The UK unemployment is sadly rising at the moment.

We've seen this in almost every single month since the general election.

If unemployment goes up, then the cost of welfare goes up and the tax take from those unemployed people goes down.

Simple arithmetic.

If the economy starts to slow, we purchase less goods.

VAT, which is one of the largest tax rises, tax generators in the UK, that comes down.

So this is the reality that Andy Burnham is inheriting.

People talk about it as a fiscal vice.

It is a fiscal vice because he's stuck between one side of the vice is the bond market that seems very reluctant to allow more borrowing.

And the other side of the vice is a parliamentary Labour Party that seems very reluctant to allow spending cuts.

And he is caught in the middle of that vice.

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