At a recent Green Party meeting, we asked Martin Horwood MP the following question:

“Despite posting consistent budget deficits for the past two decades (racking up a “national debt” more than twice its GDP in the process), the Japanese government continues to be able to sell its bonds at low interest.  How does this square with your belief that the UK has to “balance its books” or face ever higher interest rates?”

Unsurprisingly, Martin didn’t have an answer.  He did, however, seek to reassure us that, prior to coming to his conclusions regards UK economic policy, he had sought the advice of “economic experts”, all of whom were purportedly agreed that only spending cuts could possibly stave off interest rate hikes.

Well, we have a question for these “economic experts”, and it goes a little like this:

“Despite posting consistent budget deficits for the past two decades (racking up a “national debt” more than twice its GDP in the process), the Japanese government continues to be able to sell its bonds at low interest.  How does this square with your belief that the UK has to “balance its books” or face ever higher interest rates?”

We’ll be sure to post any response we receive from the “experts” (via Martin Horwood), but in the meantime, if anyone else has a view, we’d be interested to hear from you!