Prime Minister Keir Starmer has warned the British people that the October budget is going to be “painful.” He has once again blamed the Conservative Party for reckless economic mismanagement, which has left a £22 billion black hole in the nation’s finances.

It is undoubtedly true that successive Conservative governments managed the UK economy particularly poorly, with consequences for productivity, output, and equity. But the idea that the UK government is facing some sort of fiscal black hole that will be impossible to fill without drastic cuts to public spending is simply absurd.

As economists from across the political spectrum have been pointing out for decades, government spending in a wealthy economy like the UK is not constrained over the short term by tax revenues.