Enda Brady: UK Correspondent on the UK's finances, debt

Britain is facing a financial crisis, with the country potentially heading towards a bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). 

Economists are warning that they’re headed towards a 1970s-style debt crisis, with one saying the UK’s borrowing costs are higher than in Greece – which has the highest debt in the euro zone. 

UK Correspondent Enda Brady told Mike Hosking that financially the UK is “screwed”, and Chancellor Rachel Reeves is in significant trouble. 

He says there was a $120 billion black hole in the Government’s books last month, and an awful lot of wealthy people have left the country, concerned about high taxes. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Right over into Bradley doing the business on the other
side of the world for us this Tuesday morning into
good morning to you.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Good morning, Mike. Great to speak to you again and.

Speaker 1 (00:07):
To you too. So I've got the numbers. One hundred
and eleven thousand, I think was the number I came
to as the number of people tuning up on the
country illegally and applying for a song element in the
government also, I was hauling the system. So where are
we with that? Is anyone winning?

Speaker 2 (00:23):
No, in a word, I mean people breaking into the
UK illegally. That's what the criticism is. Everyone is up
in arms over this. The people who are coming here
appear to be winning. And my reading of it, Mike
is this is getting very dangerous for Starmer. People have
had enough, They're very very angry about what's been going

(00:43):
on here and ultimately Stammer needs to sort this out.
So you've got one hundred and eleven thousand asylum applications
in the past twelve months, fifty thousand people have come
across here on Dinghy's since he became Prime Minister, and
Nigel Farage in the next few hours in the morning
here is going to lay bare his plans to sort

(01:05):
this out, and he's given an interview at the weekend
saying that he becomes prime minister in four years time,
he will start mass deportations.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
See this is where he's going to go. Well, because
Trump's sit the gender on that particular thing. But what
about the legals. I mean, he's he addressed that. So
he wants to send them up to Afghanistan, Iraitrea, etc.
But the courts got involved the last time that idea
came up, So what's he do about that?

Speaker 2 (01:29):
So Foraj's argument is that whatever happens to someone who
gets sent to Afghanistan, that's not his problem. It's not
the UK's business. Yes, there are some poor, terrible countries
out there, but why should Britain be worried about them.
To get around the legalities of it all, what he
wants to do is take the UK out of the
European Convention on Human Rights, and he says he will

(01:50):
do that on day one as Prime minister. So Starmer
just really needs to address this, start getting serious about
stopping the boats and people coming over illegally. It's a mess.
It's a complete mess. I've been away for ten days.
I've been in Ireland and I've just driven back from Wexford,
where I'm from in Ireland, through Wales. Soon as we
got into England, I'm starting to see more and more

(02:12):
English flags hanging off motorways, off people's houses. People are
getting very very patriotic and being pushed towards right wing
speakers like farash Ah.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
Now that would be the very artical origius. Today on
the BBC national flags have started lining our streets. They
may say something more. So this apparently all began in Birmingham,
and so there's something more being that we're a bit
anti immigrant and things were a bit engsty and could
get a bit ugly. Is that the inference?

Speaker 2 (02:41):
Yeah, precisely. So we're seeing protests outside these asylum seeker hotels.
Sixteen million dollars a day of taxpayers cash is being
spent on these hotels. People are very very angry. I mean,
you can't get a hospital appointment, you can't see a doctor.
If you've got young people in your family trying to
get a unit by a house, it's very very difficult.

(03:04):
And the narrative being peddled is that these people are
coming here and being given everything. It's hard to argue
against it.

Speaker 1 (03:11):
So on one hand he's getting pulled by Farage. The
other side is Corbyn's new party. What white do you place?
The point being Corbyn's got a lot of sign ups.
This seems to be a bit of traction. He may
never win a seat, but what he potentially will do
is split the vote. So if Labour's vote gets split
by Corbin and Farage is doing the old anti immigration thing,

(03:32):
then the yacentrist parties about trouble, haven't I.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
Yeah, big time. So what we're seeing is a complete
fragmentation of UK politics right now. But let's just hold
our horses here about reform. Yeah, they're riding high now,
They're four years out from the next election. They've got
five members of Parliament. Do they have the political structure
and the roots and the infrastructure to go up against
Labor and even a much smaller Conservative party as they

(03:58):
are right now? Cor may well take some vote away,
but they will be left wing voters from the very
left wing of the Labor Party. I don't think it's
going to Dent Stammer. But we're seeing a big fragmentation.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
There's some talk this morning. I mean this has been
ongoing and it's building up to the budget coming later
in the year and some Texas and wealth Texas and
capital gowns Texas. But now we're talking about the possibility
of an IMF Baiola. How much trouble is reebs in?

Speaker 2 (04:29):
Oh huge? So financially the UK is screwed. Let's just
face facts here. There's one hundred and twenty billion dollar
of a black hole at the last month, so the
government is spending way more money than is coming in.
An awful lot of very wealthy people have left the
country concerned about taxes that are just simply too high

(04:49):
for them. They're moving to Italy, Switzerland, Dubai. They're getting
out of here. Are we quite at the level of
Ireland and Portugal and Greece and Cyprus not that long ago?
I don't think so. But she needs to get her
act together, and I think the problem she has. I'm
no economists, but I can tell you there are nine
point two million adults of working age here doing nothing,

(05:12):
not working, not in employment, not in education, not in training,
contributing nothing. And my suspicion is these are the very
same people who are outside, these asylum seekers the hotels.
They seem to have an awful lot of time on
their hands, Mike. Getting those people working and paying tax
would certainly help.

Speaker 1 (05:32):
It is always a pretty good to catch up. Let's
talk again soon into Brady out of Britain for us
this morning, just very quickly before we leave that part
of the world. If you're convicted of crimes in England
and Wales, you're going to be bad from going to
a PAPAA concert or a sports match. In other words,
they're changing the sentencing rules that would allow courts imposing
non custodials to have the power to hand out driving
and treble bands as well. So that'll be interesting to

(05:54):
see how that goes. And I was just talking about
earlier on about the jobs in Britain. Do you realize
more than half of the UK's job losses since the
last budget have been in hospital eighty nine thousand of them,
so it's in a tremendousnumber. It's one hundred and twenty
three thousand venues in Britain. The sector accounts for fifty
three percent of all job losses in the UK. So

(06:17):
they're in trouble. It's gotten angst about it Britain at
the moment, doesn't it?

Speaker 2 (06:20):
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