Who's The Daddy: Gazing into the crystal ball reveals a tough time ahead

I’m no economist, but I wouldn’t have thought it was a good idea to draw up a mini-budget during the worst cost-of-living crisis in living memory that hands out tax cuts like sweeties to the very rich.
Turbulent times lie aheadTurbulent times lie ahead
Turbulent times lie ahead

And then, once you’ve told everyone how you’re going to pay for it all (unimaginable levels of debt for decades as opposed to, say, windfall taxes on profiteering energy firms), the markets get spooked, investors pull their money out of the country and the pound tanks overnight. If you think things are expensive now, wait til we have to pay even more to import what we need.

What’s going on? You tell me. But for the first time since the early 1970s it feels like the wheels are falling off, the country’s on fire and it’s being driven off a cliff. Nothing works and everything costs a fortune.

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The Who’s The Daddy? crystal ball has been pretty accurate in recent times - it predicted right at the start of Partygate that Boris Johnson would be booted out in disgrace by his own.

And unless we’re blown to bits in a nuclear war after Vladimir Putin runs out of options in Ukraine, here’s how it sees the next few months playing out. Many old and vulnerable people will die in the UK this winter because they can’t afford to keep warm. Just read that again.

All the little strikes - rail, barristers, public sector and anyone else who feels like joining in - will join hands into one big one. And it’ll make 1979’s Winter of Discontent feel like an all-you-can eat carvery in a nice country pub.

What else? Oh yeah, as interest rates skyrocket in a bid to tackle rampant inflation, hundreds of thousands of people suddenly won’t be able to afford their mortgages and families will lose their homes.

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There’ll be a general election sooner than anyone thinks and Labour will form a coalition government with the Lib Dems and possibly the SNP. Many high profile Conservative MPs will lose their seats.

If I’m being generous I’d say the Tories have just been in power too long and have run out of steam. It happens to them all, Labour in the noughties and Johnny Major’s loose tribes of warring factions in the nineties. Landslide election victories are a bad thing, they make our leaders lazy and complacent.