Why does Trump still loom so large over so much in the UK? | The News Agents

He signified that there were three things out there in the global economy that are having an effect on what is happening in Britain. And one of them is the war in Ukraine, the other is the war in Iran, and the other is the more hostile trading environment which he spoke about. What links all three of those is Donald Trump. I mean, the hostile trading environment is tariffs, that's what they're talking about, making it much more difficult for British exporters. That's Donald Trump's policy. The war in Iran, and you look at the figures and the projections for the way the oil and gas price is going to go up next year against what was anticipated back in March when Rachel Reeves was the chancellor. It's massive, massive increase. The downgrading of growth for next year, again, and the upgrading of inflation, all down to the war in Iran. And then you've got the war in Ukraine where Donald Trump has decided that he is going to lift the sanctions against Russia that he signed into law a month ago and also resume diesel imports from Russia to try and help him in the midterms. I thought, my God, the shadow of Donald Trump over this budget is immense. Leave aside kind of, you know, welfare reform in this country. Leave aside the manifesto commitments. It is a very big presence in the present economic outlook for the United Kingdom. The sort of unspoken truth of this budget and every budget we're going to have for quite a long time now is we have got to get used to, economically, being a country, at least for the short to medium term, with roughly 100% of debt to GDP. I.e., we owe every single pound that we generate in our entire economy every year. If we were to pay off all our debt, we'd all have to give up all of the money that the country generates in one year to the people to whom we owe it. And that is a big difference of, say, 15 years ago, when the financial crisis started, when we were the sort of country with roughly 40% debt to GDP. What it means is, is that every move you make is watched by the bond markets. It was fine in the Conservative years, or most of the Conservative years, because we had a period of ultra-low interest rates. We no longer have that. If this government had a department of debt interest, it would be the third biggest government department in terms of spending. This government potentially does have quite a radical programme. We heard it outlined by Andy Burnham at the Labour Party conference. Electoral reform, closer relationship with Europe, big changes in terms of fiscal devolution problem is there's no mandate for it there's no political mandate for it he can't turn to his Labour MPs and say right we're going to do this on Brexit or we're going to do this on electoral reform because they'll say well we didn't stand on so it feels to me that something has got to give and i think if the polling is right i think that the logic of what we saw today or the polling sustained i think that the logic of what we saw today i think they'll suggest an election sooner rather than later