One of the great themes of the past 15 months has been accidental savings: the amount people in the UK have “saved” by the simple expedient of not being able to go out and spend. “Thrifty Brits stash the cash in lockdown” has been a typical headline, quickly followed by an estimate of how much cash we might have “stashed” through not going to the pub, eating out or buying new clothes. One estimate put the figure at £160bn, with the Bank of England suggesting that up to 5% of

Government borrowing is at its highest level since the Second World War. According to the Office for National Statistics it reached £303.1bn in the year to March – nearly £250bn higher than in the previous year. Borrowing in March was £28bn – the latest month to set an unwelcome record. Borrowing in the year to March was 14.5% of Gross Domestic Product: at the end of the War it was 15.2%. Many pundits are expecting a spending boom: depending on which article you read, we “acc