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Britain ‘heading towards IMF bailout’
The Telegraph ^ | 23 August 2025 | Emma Taggart. Nick Gutteridge

Posted on 08/25/2025 3:59:03 AM PDT by fluorescence

Rachel Reeves’ tax-and-spend gamble is driving Britain towards a 1970s-style debt crisis and bailout from the International Monetary Fund, leading economists have warned.

They have said the Chancellor’s handling of the economy risks a return to the years of high inflation and borrowing that ended with Britain being forced to borrow billions from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) 50 years ago.

It came as leading retailers sounded the alarm over the rising cost of taxes and red tape, which is pushing the country into an era of “stagflation”.

On Saturday night, Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader aid the economic situation was like “the 1970s all over again”, while Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative Party leader, said that the surging cost of government borrowing was “the price” of Labour’s “economic mismanagement”.

Ms Reeves is under huge pressure ahead of the autumn Budget, with forecasts showing rampant borrowing has created a £50bn black hole.

She is widely expected to put up taxes again to cover the shortfall despite warnings that doing so will only further stunt Britain’s anaemic growth.

Prof Jagjit Chadha, who recently stepped down as the head of the National Institute for Economic and Social Research, claimed the economy was at risk of “collapse”.

He said the financial situation was “as perilous the period leading up to the IMF loan of 1976”, when Britain had to be bailed out by the global banking body.

He told the When the Facts Change Substack, written by the Telegraph columnist Liam Halligan: “I’m in a world in which I could imagine it [an IMF bailout] happening, and we’ll be bereft in that case.

“We will not be able to roll over debt, we will not be able to meet pensions payments, benefits will be hard to pay out.”

(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; United Kingdom
KEYWORDS: uk
The socialists ruining the UK are running out of other people's money.
1 posted on 08/25/2025 3:59:03 AM PDT by fluorescence
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To: fluorescence
tax-and-spend gamble is driving Britain towards a 1970s-style debt crisis

THey could not have foreseen that problem. We aren't a cautionary tale, because we get seigniorage on the world's reserve currency.

2 posted on 08/25/2025 4:01:58 AM PDT by AndyJackson
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To: fluorescence

https://www.imf.org/en/About/Factsheets/Where-the-IMF-Gets-Its-Money

It’s a trillion dollar slush fund...

🤬


3 posted on 08/25/2025 4:05:11 AM PDT by mewzilla (Swing away, Mr. President, swing away!)
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To: fluorescence

UK: what happens when you kill masculinity.


4 posted on 08/25/2025 4:25:06 AM PDT by lurk (u)
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To: mewzilla
I was curious about how much the United States was contributing to this slush fund and found the following:

Top 10 IMF Member Nations by Quota Share

I was actually expecting it was going to be much worse.

5 posted on 08/25/2025 4:31:33 AM PDT by JoeVortex (I did not vote for Trump to get us into any more Forever Wars)
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To: JoeVortex

FWIW, I’m not sure I’d trust those numbers.

And I bet it IS much worse.


6 posted on 08/25/2025 4:38:56 AM PDT by mewzilla (Swing away, Mr. President, swing away!)
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To: fluorescence

But didn’t they say that importing millions of unskilled welfare seekers was going to grow their economy in the long term and was in fact the answer to the future pension crisis?


7 posted on 08/25/2025 5:08:12 AM PDT by The Free Engineer
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To: fluorescence

There’s no mention of Starmer in the excerpt. Surely, he is relevant.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump is reluctant to bail out britain.


8 posted on 08/25/2025 5:17:21 AM PDT by ChessExpert (Infidels of the world unite against the evil that is Islam.)
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To: The Free Engineer

“But didn’t they say that importing millions of unskilled welfare seekers was going to grow their economy in the long term and was in fact the answer to the future pension crisis?”

They based it on the fact that “British Values” (whatever the hell they are) would ‘rub-off’ on the migrants and thus they’d work for near-slave wages. But like one clearly-identifiable minority group in the US, their attitude is that working in the UK shows that you’ve accepted your defeat.


9 posted on 08/25/2025 5:48:37 AM PDT by BobL
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To: fluorescence

Could that be the plan. The liberal countries run themselves into the ground with their liberal policies thinking they will be “re-energized” with loans from a very liberal global entity.

How about some more Kool-Aid, chaps?


10 posted on 08/25/2025 6:08:41 AM PDT by Racketeer
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To: fluorescence

As horrible as Starmer is, he’s only been in office a year. The rot that resulted in the UK headed toward a humiliating IMF bailout started under the decade of “Conservative” rule. The Conservatives allowed the rot. Starmer’s Labour Party just put it in overdrive.


11 posted on 08/25/2025 6:16:44 AM PDT by Opinionated Blowhard (When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.)
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To: Opinionated Blowhard

.
What happens when the USA ops out of the IMF.


12 posted on 08/25/2025 7:34:24 AM PDT by CoastWatcher
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To: fluorescence

The English people should call on the Windsor family to use their fortune to payoff the country’s debt.


13 posted on 08/25/2025 8:07:23 AM PDT by drypowder
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