BY September 5 we will know who is to be our next Prime Minister.
We can breathe a sigh of relief and thank goodness it’s all over.
In reality, it will have only just begun.
Whoever moves into No 10 will have their work cut out fighting wildfires on multiple fronts.
The cost-of-living crisis is, of course, top priority.
We cannot have people struggling to choose this winter between heating and eating.
Then there is the disintegrating National Health Service, which threatens to betray its sacred duty to deliver care from cradle to grave.
Third is the threat on all fronts, from train drivers, postmen and dockworkers, to bring the stricken economy to its knees.
Now a Fourth Horseman of this Apocalypse has begun to emerge in full focus — the staggering size of public sector liabilities, ballooning like a mushroom cloud thanks to inflation.
Our sister paper The Times last week carried a bombshell report by John Ralfe, perhaps the greatest expert on the subject.
I expected this to become front-page news. Instead it was like a tree falling in a forest.
Ralfe’s analysis of the vast sums due to millions of civil servants past and present makes the cost of oil, gas and food seem almost like temporary setbacks which will ease sooner or later.
He blames politicians of every government since Tony Blair, together with the Treasury and the official regulators, for setting this monster loose.
The national public sector debt, he said,…
