Perhaps it is a reflection on the narrowness of my acquaintanceship that I know no one who fails to understand that government hyper-indebtedness is a dangerous thing—even those who hardly give a moment’s thought to economic questions. I do not, for example, know personally any Modern Monetary Theorists (who seem to have gone up and come down like a rocket), or even Martin Wolf, the commentator in the Financial Times whom I ceased to read when he more than once suggested that the British government should borrow more, while interest rates were low, in order to invest—as if sound and productive investment were what recent British governments had mostly used money for. 

　　The problem with excessive borrowing is easy to see but difficult to solve, and not in one country alone. The former prime minister of Luxembourg, Jean-Claude Juncker, put it best when he said, We all know what to do, but we don’t know how to get re-elected once we have done it. (Not that Luxembourg has the indebtedness problem, for tax havens will always attract money as jam attracts wasps). 

　　If one takes Juncker’s remark seriously, which I think that one should, it points to a problem with the current form of democracy itself, and perhaps even of human character. Bribery of the population has become a powerful political argument or tool. By borrowing, politicians can offer electorates seemingly free benefits, or benefits that are free for now: and a present benefit is more persuasive to many people than any warning, however cogent, that it will have eventually to be paid for, and with interest. Moreover, politicians can manipulate the disbursement of benefits, both direct and indirect, such that there are more beneficiaries than there are those who are to pay for them (the beneficiaries may include many nominally private entrepreneurs). Where everyone’s vote counts the same, belt-tightening for multitudes in the name of financial prudence or rectitude is not a winning slogan. Now and then someone dares to propose it and, in a severe crisis brought about by the economic crisis that inevitably follows from the system of electoral bribery, actually gets elected. But even these few find it much more difficult than expected to alter the finances of the ship of state. Debt is easy to contract—at least until lenders lose confidence in the willingness or ability of debtors to service the debt—but difficult to pay back. 

　　Populism is often assumed to be a phenomenon of the right, but left populism is much more successful.

　　For example, in Britain, the most bankrupt of the G7 countries, just the interest on the national debt is $2,000 per person per annum and rising fast, at three to four times the rate of economic growth. But more than half of the population receives more in benefits paid by the government than it pays in taxes, so any serious cut in expenditure (half of which is on health and social care) is unlikely to be popular, especially in a population into whom the lesson has been drummed that government expenditure is the prerequisite and sole guarantor of what is called social justice. A spiral into widespread impoverishment seems a likely result, but in such circumstances people are usually more concerned to hang on to their crumbs than demand or even hope for a bigger cake. Moreover, impoverishment for everyone is a great consolation to the impoverished. One of the reasons the British public was for so long so deeply attached to its National Health Service (the former chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson, once said that it was the nearest thing the country had to a national religion) was that, if it was often second-rate or worse by comparison with elsewhere, it was at least perceived as second-rate or worse for everyone, and therefore just—which, incidentally, it never was, but in the struggle between perception and reality, the former usually emerges the victor.

　　Reducing a vast national debt unrelated to a true national emergency such as the Second World War, the temporary necessity for which the citizenry may understand, is difficult for electoral reasons. But politicians are reluctant to address government indebtedness for another reason also, namely that it is a boon to them irrespective of their political stripe. It acts as a guarantee of their vital importance, and if there is one thing more than another that politicians fear, it is unimportance or insignificance. You don’t struggle to the top of the greasy pole to be unimportant.

　　Here, Switzerland, by far the most truly democratic country in the world, acts as a terrible warning to all politicians: for in Switzerland, politicians are less important than anywhere else in the world. Most of the Swiss struggle to name many, or even one. The position of head of state rotates annually among seven members of a council of state, equally anonymous, so that the role is of no great importance—less well-known than an eminent professor or businessman. The modesty of Swiss politicians is not a merely personal virtue, for anything else would be simply ridiculous. 

　　The Swiss central government’s debt is only 16 percent of GDP. Nevertheless, Switzerland has a powerful system of defence, that any invader would be most unwise to test.

　　I do not claim that Switzerland is paradise in all respects, let alone that it is paradise because it is so democratic. The rule of the majority in small things can be tiresome or even oppressive. But the number of countries whose populations would not gladly swap their own problems with those of the Swiss population must surely be small.

　　Be that as it may, a large government debt assures the necessity of a busy political class, the class that created it in the first place and caused so large a proportion of the population to be dependent upon it for its livelihood and continued comfort and even wealth.

　　Populism is often assumed to be a phenomenon of the right, but left populism is much more successful. Because of the electoral system in countries like Britain or France, it does not even have to win the adherence of a majority of the population to win power; and having once won power, it binds its successors to at most minor variations of its policies. We do not live in one-party states, but in one policy-state. 

　　The policy in Britain and France has been to bind the population to the state, directed by the political class. The former country, Britain, has just had a man foisted upon it (who might nevertheless win an election if called) who might be called the Hugo Chávez of the North Sea: a man who thinks that increased government control is the solution to economic stagnation, low productivity, and manifest social problems. The predictable consequence will be deeper debt, and an ever more providential role for the political class.