So here we are again, living through the kind of headline that would make a Victorian banker choke on his claret. The British economy, against every reasonable expectation, is showing signs of life. Growth tickles the ledgers.
Unemployment dips. The Treasury mutters about 'resilience'. And yet, as every schoolboy knows, the only thing worse than a bad economy is a good one built on sand.
The sands of the Persian Gulf, to be precise. The Iran war drags on, a haemorrhage of treasure and goodwill, and inflation climbs back up the stairs it had just descended. The Chancellor is now preparing an emergency budget.
Which is Latin for 'we have no idea what we are doing'. One cannot help but think of the late Roman Empire, propping up its borders with borrowed gold and barbarian mercenaries. We are not there yet.
But we can see the gates from here. The irony is exquisite. For decades, we lectured the world on the virtues of fiscal discipline.
Now we discover that war, unlike a spreadsheet column, does not balance. The Treasury will soon discover that the price of empire is paid in printing presses. And we, the subjects, will pay in the quiet erosion of our savings.
The government will call it 'temporary'. They always do. But history teaches us that temporary measures, like temporary emperors, have a habit of becoming permanent.
The real tragedy is not that we are fighting a war. It is that we forgot how to pay for one. The Victorians knew.
They paid for their wars with thrift, with colonies, with the kind of grim determination that builds railroads and balances ledgers. We have none of that. We have only the memory of greatness and the reality of debt.
So brace yourselves. The emergency budget will be a spectacle of rhetorical gymnastics. They will blame the war, the global situation, the previous government.
They will not blame themselves. They never do. But we, the readers, know better.
We are living through the late stages of a civilisation that has grown too comfortable with its own decline. The question is not whether the economy can survive the war. It is whether we can survive the peace.
