https://www.turbulenttimes.co.uk/news/front-page/politics-a-choice-of-disasters/

Reviewing today’s press confirms something about British politics that is rarely acknowledged – that, as a nation, we tend to be staggeringly parochial (except when it comes to sounding off about Donald Trump and, in some quarters, Israel).

This is adequately illustrated by scenes in Madrid yesterday (pictured above) where, at a conservative estimate, 50,000 people turned out to protest about the Sánchez government’s handling of the migrant invasion of the Spanish enclave of Ceuta.

There were significant turnouts in Barcelona, Valencia and Seville as well, with crowds waving a storm of Spanish flags. Demonstrators shouted: “A united Ceuta will never be defeated”, accusing prime minister Pedro Sánchez of deserting the people of Ceuta, calling on him to resign.

Apart from the BBC website, though, I can find no reports in today’s British media, despite multiple agency reports and widespread coverage in the European media and even in US publications.

The most recent report I’ve seen here is in the Telegraph dated from yesterday afternoon, but this only deals with the situation in Ceuta, with an account of some of the frustrations and tensions there.

Later reports on social media have Spanish riot police charging the crowds in Madrid, firing pepper spray at them, with commentators close to the ground suggesting that the strength of the protests might force Sánchez out of office.

Possibly, the British media will catch up, but one cannot help but wonder whether the absence of reports does represent our innate parochialism or something more sinister.

After all, these are effectively protests against the Spanish government’s failure to check illegal immigration, and the British media has a habit of downplaying issues which are embarrassing to the establishment.

As for what we are being told is important, domestic politics centred around Burn’em seems to be taking the lead in most papers, although each paper has chosen its own take.

The Times, for instance, leads on Tan Dhesi, the chairman of the defence select committee telling Burnham to commit to the Nato expenditure target, while we also get to know that the Tories are prepared to cut welfare spending in order to fund an increased defence budget.

The paper also gives a nod to the growing bond crisis, but this is something to which the Guardian gives pride of place with an item which tells us: “Burnham tries to calm bond market fears as sell-off threatens crucial first budget”.

From this source we learn that investors across world markets have been dumping government bonds amid fears about rising inflation, runaway deficits and competing demand for capital from tech companies on a debt-fuelled AI spending spree.

As many people are aware by now, the sell-off has driven up yields, or interest rates, including in the UK. At one point on Wednesday, the cost of 10-year borrowing for the government hit its highest level since 2008, at 5.29 percent, although it has eased slightly.

The immediate significance of this is that this is the period that the Office for Budget Responsibility is watching closely, preparatory to basing its projection for bond yields over the coming financial period. High yields will represent increased borrowing costs, reducing the government’s spending power and adding to the pressure for higher taxation.

Not to be outdone, the Telegraph pitches in with a magisterial editorial, warning that “Andy Burnham can’t beat the bond market”.

It chides our novice prime minister for implying that the reason the market has reacted is “partly because of Brexit and partly a legacy of the Tories’ period in office”.

This was his line in his first outing at PMQs, but is not something that the Telegraph accepts. The cause, it says, is more straightforward. The people who lend the UK money are concerned that it is doing nothing to curb the apparent inexorable rise in public spending.

It concedes that the same is true across the West, where successive governments have been content to watch welfare spending rise to placate voters, loading the costs on to future generations, but adds that the markets are only reflecting that reality.

This is not a conspiracy to undermine socialism, or a reaction to Brexit, it declares, but a response to the profligacy of the modern state which seems no longer willing or able to rein in its social spending programmes.

Until party leaders come up with some answers on how to curtail spending, it says, the bond market is likely to continue to demand higher payments, pushing up interest rates and the cost of financing the national debt. And Burnham is finding this out the hard way.

How deep this runs we have yet to see, but at least one person thinks it’s terminal. This is Allister Heath, who writes under the title: “Andy Burnham’s premiership is already dead in the water”, with his sub-head stating: “The bond market crisis is the start of a new economic era and the PM is precisely the wrong person to lead us through it”.

Heath doesn’t mince his words, telling us to “brace for impact”. A financial tsunami is heading for Britain, threatening to sweep away Andy Burnham’s premiership before it even gets started, he says, warning that, if our fair-weather PM isn’t careful, the first Budget he is preparing with John Healey could well be their last.

In Heath’s view, the crisis is that grave and it’s a miracle it didn’t happen sooner, But, over the last few days, the markets have finally lost confidence in the British state’s ability to balance its books and to keep control of inflation. They are demanding sharply higher interest rates to keep lending us the £252 billion-worth of gilts we hope to borrow this year alone (including redemptions).

As a result, all the old assumptions have been demolished. An even greater share of tax receipts will have to go towards paying debt interest, and the cost of loans and mortgages will also rise, accelerating the real-terms decline in house prices.

The black hole in the public finances has jumped over the past few days and could rise uncontrollably if sentiment continues to turn against Britain, requiring emergency action to slash spending and raise revenue. At best, Healey has just lost £6 billion of Budget firepower, and that is even before any negative developments from the Middle East.

The word of the moment is “febrile”: gilt yields are already much higher than they were at the time of Liz Truss’s Budget; the UK-specific “moron premium” is also substantially greater than it was then, says Heath.

Combined with the impact of higher diesel and gas prices, it should be clear – if not yet to the PM himself – that Burnham’s entire agenda is dead in the water, his cost of living promises obsolete, his Big Government delusions unaffordable, and his gimmicky “triple helix” and devolution-led “growth” model hopelessly inadequate.

The question is how the public will react when it realises it has been promised the unaffordable, with the added quandary of how Labour MPs will respond. It now begins to look as if Starmer got out just in time.

Says Heath, there can be no free buses, no free social care, no cost of living handouts, and, catastrophically, no meaningful path to spending 3 percent of GDP on defence. Tax rises and spending cuts will be required merely to cling to the status quo ante.

To deal with this, we have an indecisive PM obsessed with gimmicks, image and spending other people’s money. He will now need to choose between making his central mission staving off a full-blown financial crisis, and falling out in the process with Labour MPs and the progressive movement, or facing obliteration à la Liz Truss.

We actually need an historic leader to navigate the Great Disintegration and the bond market crisis but, says Heath, Burnham is the wrong man at the wrong time. For all his black T-shirts, he is an old-fashioned politician, a prisoner of Brownite orthodoxy, the product of a long-forgotten goldilocks economy. As the crisis develops, he will soon be just as unpopular as Starmer

I suppose, given what we are facing, the media could be forgiven for its lack of coverage of Spain. But it’s a close-run thing. If the economy doesn’t get Burnham, immigration will. But at least we have the luxury of a choice of disasters.