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Szu Ping Chan and Tim Wallace |
The morning of Thursday, Sept 10, will begin like any other. Financial markets will open, commuters will head to work and daily life will continue as normal.
Despite that normality, a quiet threshold will have been crossed. According to official projections, for the first time, the UK’s national debt will have risen above £3tn.
Three trillion pounds is a figure so large and remote from everyday life that it becomes meaningless as a measure of Britain’s ability to pay its way.
On that same day, the UK Debt Management Office (DMO), which sells Britain’s debt, is due to auction a new gilt, maturing in May 2030. Investors have so far shown solid demand, with roughly three buyers for every bond on offer.
This milestone represents a long accumulation of crises, borrowing, policy reversals and repeated failures to fix the roof when the sun was shining.
Of course, the British weather has not always obliged, but the broader pattern has been inaction once shocks subsided.
The consequences are real: higher debt-servicing costs, reduced fiscal room for manoeuvre and a weaker ability to respond to the next crisis. For years, economists warned that Britain’s public finances were drifting onto an unsustainable path. Those warnings went largely unheeded.
Now, after decades of rising borrowing, the reckoning is moving from theory to reality, pushing Britain into a precarious fiscal position.
Two top economists now argue there is an increasing risk that Britain may need to be rescued by the International Monetary Fund.
This analysis is exclusive to Telegraph subscribers.
Continue reading ➤
Labour ‘may need IMF’ to rescue the economy ➤ |
Valdo Calocane and his victims |
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Cameron Henderson |
Doctors across the country are facing pressure not to section psychotic black patients to avoid appearing racist, The Telegraph can reveal.
The fact that black people are 3.5 times more likely to be detained under the Mental Health Act has long prompted allegations of NHS racism, and numerous policies designed to redress the balance.
Nine current and former NHS psychiatrists have dismissed such efforts as “scientific illiteracy”, recounting repeated instances of having their clinical assessments challenged when it comes to sectioning black patients.
While the root causes of psychiatric disorders remain unclear, they argued that varying rates were not the result of racial prejudice, but linked to risk factors such as family breakdown, school exclusion, absent fatherhood, social deprivation and cannabis use, among other causes.
In the case of Valdo Calocane, a paranoid schizophrenic who killed three people in 2023, mental health workers failed to section him after a previous violent incident, citing the “overrepresentation of black men” in custody.
Now, as the inquiry into the Nottingham stabbings draws to a close, doctors have warned that this is not an isolated example and that squeamishness about sectioning mentally ill black patients not only deprives them of the care they need, but also increases the risk to themselves and the public.
Continue reading ➤ |
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Daniel Hannan The more the public understands the benefits of Brexit, the more they like it. That is why a new campaign is launching Continue reading ➤
Janet Daley White guilt is a pathology that afflicts the West. Henry Nowak is its latest victim Continue reading ➤
Michael Vaughan The Lord’s pitch is a shocker – MCC must dig up the square Continue reading ➤ |
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Kane, left, gives England the lead in Tampa |
Ismara Mercedes Vargas Walter, the Cuban ambassador to the UK, at the Caribbean island’s embassy in London |
Donald Trump has turned his attention back to Cuba as his war in Iran drags on, moving an aircraft carrier to the Caribbean and hinting he might topple its leader. However, Cubans remain defiant. The island’s ambassador to the UK sat down with Lily Shanagher and vowed that her people would fight to the death to defend their homeland. Continue reading ➤ |
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Building a seven-figure retirement pot is a pipe dream for most pension savers. However, new research shows that if you want European holidays, regular meals out and enough cash to spend on your grandchildren, you’ll now need more than £1m to fund your twilight years. The brutal reality is that rising living costs and lengthening lifespans mean the perfect retirement is moving further out of reach. Joe Wright reports.
Continue reading ➤ |
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Peter and Harriet Phillips married at All Saints’ Church in Kemble |
The King, Queen, Prince and Princess of Wales, and the wider Royal family gathered to celebrate the wedding of Peter Phillips and Harriet Sperling, Hannah Furness writes. The bride looked radiantly happy, the groom chivalrously held an umbrella in pouring rain, and their daughters made picture-perfect bridesmaids. Among happy scenes of a family that has been under the spotlight this week, there were a few amusements: the King and Queen dashed off before the reception to make the Epsom Derby, and Princess Anne wore a hat that she has owned for at least 45 years.
Continue reading ➤
Operation Derby: How the King dashed from royal wedding to Epsom ➤ |
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Rob Priestley, 53, switched careers and trained as a barista in London earlier this year |
After a 28-year career in investment banking, I was made redundant at 53, writes Rob Priestley. Eager to get back on my feet, I applied for around 100 roles and was met with deafening silence. Then, one advert stopped me dead in my tracks. I’m now back in the City – serving coffee to barristers. Although it sounds like a drastic change in circumstances, my new role has transformed my confidence. Continue reading ➤ |
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Half a century ago, punk burst onto Britain’s stages and into our collective consciousness. Loud, angry and with music often consisting of two chords, it nevertheless spawned many classic albums. Here, Ian Winwood counts them down. Expect entries from The Clash, The Sex Pistols and The Ramones, as well as some of the more recent bands they inspired. Continue reading ➤
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Spare me performative grief
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Ben Lawrence Culture Editor |
A few weeks ago, I found myself severely chastened. A close friend’s sister died of cancer and I suddenly turned into a character from a dodgy daytime soap opera.
“We must meet,” I told said friend over the phone. “You really need people around you at times like these.”
At times like these? Who the hell did I think I was? The Archbishop of Canterbury?
In any case, we met for lunch. My friend looked a bit tired, but otherwise he was in good spirits. I, on the other hand, failed to notice the mood music.
“It must be so hard,” I offered, before continuing with such pearls as: “I’m here for you.” “Lucy [not her real name] was so brave. Such a warrior.” “You really need time to process this. Time to grieve.”
As I rolled out these textbook clichés, my friend began to look annoyed, before bursting out: “Ben, will you stop being such a t---.”
Almost immediately, I realised my mistake. People who have suffered the death of a loved one don’t want performative support. They don’t want meaningless words, or that official sad face that people do. You know the one. Where you stick your lips out a bit and turn your mouth downwards.
(By the way, never use the word battle when talking about cancer: someone who is seriously ill does not want to be told that they are on some sort of medieval quest.)
Later on, I began to think about what I had said, and cast my mind back to times in my life when a close friend or family member had died. I realised that you don’t want people around you because they just lure you into a gaudy, tacky carnival known as grief.
I have come to realise that I hate that word. I remember when my father died about a decade ago, I felt I had to “grieve”. In private, that meant putting on Vaughan Williams’s Mass in G Minor and staring into the middle distance like Alain Delon. In public, it felt worse. It meant behaving in a way that seems appropriate to other people: dignified, solemn, a bit vulnerable. If grieving must happen, and I suppose it is a natural state, then it is something that should be private and really quite isolating.
I realise this is not how you are meant to feel. In this age of emotional incontinence we are meant to gush, to overshare and, if we have the means, to make a podcast about it. The broadcasting of your feelings is why grief has become such a horrible word, a slippery thing that is ultimately connected to other people’s expectations of how you should behave. I often see the phrase “tsunami of grief” and that illustrates just how hyperbolic and naff the word has become.
My friend and I ended our lunch on good terms, with a crème brûlée and a shot of tequila. I think we would both agree that that is what “Lucy” would have wanted – not my half-baked theatrics.
Do you agree with Ben? Send your replies here, and the best of the bunch will feature in a future edition of this newsletter. Please confirm in your reply that you are happy to be featured and that we have your permission to use your name. |
Balon at the Coach and Horses, circa 2006 |
Norman Balon, who has died aged 99, was for more than 60 years the landlord of the Coach and Horses in Soho, writes Andrew M Brown, Obituaries Editor.
He was made famous by Jeffrey Bernard, the legendary roué, in his Low Life columns in The Spectator. “[Norman’s] egomania and what passes for his wit has all but emptied the pub,” Bernard complained in one column. Balon also featured in Michael Heath’s cartoon strip in Private Eye, The Regulars, invariably screaming: “You’re barred” at semi-comatose customers.
Balon with Gaston Berlemont, landlord of the French House in Dean Street, in 1992 |
Tall, stooped and smartly dressed, Balon relished his reputation as “London’s rudest landlord” and there was a limitless fund of anecdotes about what our obituary describes as his unique approach to customer relations. “I just can’t be bothered with bores,” Balon confessed. “If I say to you, ‘Shut up’ and you don’t, then I sling you out.”
He had a kinder side, however, and no shortage of female admirers. He was perhaps at his happiest when escorting a well-dressed lady to a first night. He also prided himself on being a world expert on mint chocolates.
Read the full obituary here ➤ |
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1753 | The British Museum is founded
1982 | Graceland, Elvis Presley’s shrine, opens to the public
2001 | Tony Blair wins a landslide general election (which led our 4am edition the following day, seen below)
Birthdays: Damien Hirst (61), Mike Pence (67), Liam Neeson (74)
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Find as many words as you can in today’s Panagram, including the nine-letter solution. Visit Telegraph Puzzles to play a range of head-scratching games, including The 1% Club, Cogs, and Quick, Mini or Cryptic Crosswords.
Yesterday’s Panagram was PURGATORY. Come back tomorrow for the solution to today’s puzzle. |
Thank you for reading. Allister Heath, Sunday Telegraph Editor
P.S. Please share your thoughts on the newsletter here. |
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