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The Budget

I will but may I answer the question since it has been posed? A few years ago, I visited the European Central Bank. I was asking about the chances of Hungary entering the euro, not that I am a big supporter of the euro, but if it had entered, it would have been convenient to me for personal reasons. I was told laughingly by banking officials what the problem with Hungary was. They said, ““The thing about you politicians is that you’ll make all sorts of promises before an election but you never keep them, which is a good thing. The trouble with the Hungarians is that before an election they make all sorts of promises about what they will do and, when they are elected, they try to carry them out. That is why we can’t possibly let them anywhere near the euro at the moment.”” The reason that so many people were still willing to lend Britain the money is that Britain has never defaulted on its debts in 1,000 years. The ratings agencies, when they looked at Britain in the run-up to the last general election, all agreed that all the parties at the time—Labour and Conservative certainly, one of which was likely to be the major party of Government—had both said clearly that, after the election, they would take drastic measures to prune public expenditure and get the deficit down. On that basis alone, those people were happy to lend to us, although they made it clear that our triple A rating was very close to being downgraded and that it would have been had we not taken the steps that they required after the election.