Oh I agree that this is only relatively good, not great. By this time in the cycle we should be paying down debt, not adding to it. But the fear and expectation was that with the economy slowing down a bit and the uncertainties of Brexit the deficit would start to creep up again. That is not happening. It is still coming down and by reasonably large chunks. This is very encouraging.
Unfortunately we're also hearing the siren calls from the usual suspects that the Chancellor has "room for manoeuvre" which translates as "please cut my taxes". I'd much prefer Hammond to rule out tax cuts and insist the deficit is turned into a surplus and we start making inroads into reducing the debt interest (which we have to pay each year as an item of public expenditure and stops us spending on other things).
We're going to pay £43 billion to service our debt this year. If we didn't have that albatross round our neck, we could have the best funded (as a proportion of GDP) health service in the world, bar the USA. Of course, it still wouldn't be enough to stop the sucking maw that is health care, but it would go a long way to shutting Labour up.
Not sure that is a real figure. About 1/3 of our debt is now owned by the BoE who don't get interest so my guess is the interest actually paid by the government is nearer £30bn. Still a hell of a lot of money of course.
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