Is The IMF taking Over perhaps just what the country needs

[WaitingInForMyFoodShopping]

Ok bear with me. This sounds like an idiotic thing to say because if the IMF are involved it means the country is officially in a mess and the IMF will slash spending and enforce their own budgets and rules. So anyone on benefits might lose them, NHS funding will likely go down, same for the police force etc

It just occurred to me today that the country is in a complete mess and there isn't really any end in sight.

Headlines today - I didn't read the detail but I am just getting more angry, helpless feeling and frustrated and want 'somebody' who has some balls to step in and say enough. Things change from today. Todays headlines are rising taxes, 1/10 high school kids on benefits, families of migrants can claim benefits from day 1 even if they don't speak english.

Now i will caveat this by saying the housing market does need sorted but lets be honest that's not what they are trying to do here - it's just about raising taxes. I also say there is another articles claiming ' a crackdown on bring families into Britain' - something that made me snort with derision giving the whole small boats/protests going on just now.

I mean lets just get to the point. Does ANYONE think RR/KS are able to fix this mess. I know they didn't cause it. I know they have been in office less than a year but if we give them another year are they able to fix it. I personally don't think so. It is going to need someone very tough to brave the mess and take it in hand (Maggie Thatcher where are you now).
So what are we left with - voting Reform - which I have joked about doing but i don't actually think that is the way to go. That's borne out of desperation. So who is going to fix it then.

AIBU to think a complete reset, painful as it will be by the IMF is just what the country needs?

House prices drop unexpectedly amid property tax fears - latest updates

The ‘ludicrous’ migrant family rule pushing councils to breaking point

One in 10 secondary schoolchildren on disability benefits

thanks for the tip. I will add the FT onto my reading material. I am always interested in other points of view. I do from time to time read the FT but I admit not on a regular basis.

It’s unnecessarily gloomy to say we have to borrow to pay the interest bill, as the total interest paid by the government each year is around £120 billion and yet it it collects nearer £500 billion in tax. Albeit under this government the interest bill is going up, and the crashing of the economy will cause the latter to fall…

It’s also defeatist to say we don’t produce anything. Aerospace, pharmaceutical, automotive, machinery and creative are massive sectors in terms of output. And that’s before the huge services sector. Inevitably as a developed economy we have moved away from commodities and producing high volume low value stuff to higher value services and IP based manufacturing, But we need a plan for AI and future technologies - which the government has talked about but has done more to stifle than develop.

I think I’d rather take my chances with China than the US right now ;)

You are right in that I have made some generalisations.

We do have some industries just not very much. We are not a country that can rely on exports from our industries to save us. They are just too depleted now (or owned by foreigner countries and just operate here)

That does not work though. People who have retired at 51 have done so because they are financially savy.

The mega wealthy are already moving themselves/and or their wealth.

Your comment about dead children is just silly. Dead children (and adults and old people) are a fact of life in countries that can't afford healthcare. Does that mean it's a good thing. Em of course not. Sort of missing the point of the conversation by a million miles (but of course you already know that)

Economic growth is traditionally what bails out governments when they find themselves in a hole. Unfortunately since the crash of 2008 the UK economy has pretty much flatlined, and leaving the EU has made things much worse by erecting trade barriers with our closest and largest overseas market.

@WaitingInForMyFoodShopping you mention Thatcher in your OP. She was saved by North Sea oil, that coming on stream in the early 80s dug us out of a big financial hole. Plus also privatisation brought in much needed cash. Sadly there is not much left to privatise.

I'm not missing the point at all. You may be correct that tough choices may be needed in the near future (I hope that you're not).

I just wouldn't be so sure that people will happily accept massive cuts to healthcare, to the point that their children die in front of them, whilst people who retired at 51 sit pretty and refuse to pay another penny in tax.

Like most people you only want tough choices for everyone else, whilst you remain unaffected. I do think that the proliferation of threads by people like you who think complete societal collapse is a way to protect their assets and avoid paying any more tax are quite naive. I've spent time in countries where the state has completely retreated and their is abject poverty (like children dying of preventable causes)- a woman living alone, known to have money, would be best termed a 'sitting duck' in places like that.

High debt is problematic. You can see that spending on servicing the debt means taxes not going to other services?

Plus it becomes destabilising when it’s high enough

Why are you banging on about an IMF loan? Do you have any idea how much the current US debt is? Around 37 trn. All countries are in debt.

I think the statement "national economies do not run like household economies" is often used as a shutdown to deflection discussion on the issue.

The bottom line is that national economies and household economies are both constrained by external factors - both are not fully under control of the household/government if external borrowing is entered into (and becomes necessary).

And that to me is the important fact, not the fact that governments can print money and households can't.

FTR my belief is that an economy is only at risk when it becomes "stand out". That means that in comparison to other economies of similar size, it's financial stats start to look particularly bad. In terms of debt to GDP, at the moment the UK is someway off where similar sized and developed countries such as France and Italy currently stand, but there are other factors that weigh against the UK as the bond price demonstrates.

Recent developments in the bond markets show that the external markets are policing the UKs debt levels pretty closely with sharp rises in the bond prices being linked to specific events, so it is at least to me fairly clear that the appetite for lending to the UK from international markets is at the very least constrained and definitely not unlimited. In the same way lending from a bank to a household would be.

Yes this sums it up well. I think people use that line as a way to sidestep the reality of constraints. Ie cost of borrowing.

Not by my account and I was a young adult in the 70s. Where was your anxiety when the majority of debt was being racked up by the Tories? The Telegraph was, of course, perfectly content with that.

The government has previously relied on growth and they have a role to play in creating conditions to encourage that. But growth is created by people, and when we have a smaller proportion of people working, that is a massive barrier to growth.

The government are trying to do something about the young economically inactive but 50 somethings not working is a big problem. We need the experience and skills of those people in the workforce to scaffold success.

France’s is 120% of GDP. I don’t imagine there’s a panic in Paris about a possible IMF bailout, probably just a Gallic shrug.

It would help if the government started to listen to business leaders,

Who said Brexit was a bad idea and we should get back into the SM and CU ?

I think we've all had enough of experts ...

Slightly more than a gallic shrug. The French government collapsed in December last year, and there is a further confidence vote next week

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/27/france-on-the-brink-political-crisis-economic-francois-bayrou

Still no IMF intervention. 🤷‍♀️

But still more than a 'Gallic shrug' that you suggested

Interesting that Wall Street Journal mention both UK and France

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/bail-out-france-and-britain-youll-need-a-bigger-imf-5509cf75

Is it concerning that WSJ mentions both countries because I thought we were a way away from this? France is certainly in a more precarious position than UK is.

Ffs it was a bloody throwaway line, no need to be like a terrier with a rat. The French public is famously relaxed about the economy.

As @MsVisual has pointed out, the whole debt issue is leading to a lot more than shrugs, especially since the PM wants remove two public holidays to try and improve national productivity.

IMF bailout not yet on the list of threats but it's going to be a fun few days...

https://www.politico.eu/article/france-isnt-heading-imf-ecb-christine-lagarde-says/

Pointless linking to something behind a firewall.

As others have correctly posted France is struggling with its high debt.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/27/france-on-the-brink-political-crisis-economic-francois-bayrou

It's both worrying and fascinating.

The French wedded to an unsustainable socialist budget. Which cannot be reduced by the government as the electorate will be extremely hostile.

It can only be enforced by the EU (aka the Germans) but of course that will lead to the political fallout of "the Germans telling us what to do". Alternatively the Germans can ignore it and allow the French economy to run in an evermore unsustainable way at risk of trashing the EZ at some point in the future.

Meanwhile Le Penn is waiting in the wings to capitalise on the political chaos resulting from all of this.

Maybe a good time to be out of the EZ/EU.

When you @WaitingInForMyFoodShopping say "ballsy person" is needed do you mean someone with testicles?

Equating Government debt with credit card household debt is the mistake of rookies who haven't got a clue.

It's a quandry to say the least...Bayrou's dump two bank holiday's idea isn't the worse in the world, especially given a lot of the time the date based hols such as VE day fall on a weekend so are lost anyway..but the idea gets an automatic red card from many.

As for Madame Le Penn and the RN...tbh in recent years they have adopted at least some policies that the UK Tories would think of as wet...the real problem down the road might be the charmers hiding in the wings, to the right of the RN.