As dark financial clouds gather, Labour has to heed its past: when it chooses austerity, it loses elections | Andy Beckett

Those who insist on spending cuts are those who are never hurt by them. Time to be brave – and take a new tack

B

ritain is in danger of going bankrupt. It may happen slowly or quickly, but since Labour took office this possibility has increasingly been promoted and discussed in the press, by opposition parties and in the City of London.

What exact form will this bankruptcy take? The prophets of doom tend to be vague about the timescale, but more certain about the cause of the coming meltdown: the state spending too much, generally on people who have little.

“Rip up the benefits system and start again,” was the headline of a column by the usually measured Matthew Parris in the Times this week. The welfare state, he wrote, is “in danger of toppling the whole economy”. Unsustainable numbers of claimants are “joining the bandwagon as it careers towards the abyss”.