ONE question asked repeatedly by the BBC to the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, gets to the heart of the Budget debate: eight times he was asked how much a Labour government would spend on interest on their extra borrowing, and eight times he avoided answering the question.

There are other important questions that John McDonnell, Jeremy Corbyn, and their colleagues will be rather reluctant to answer. For example, how much would they borrow, how big a deficit are they prepared to run, and how long before Britain defaulted on its sovereign debt?

But the really difficult one that they can’t answer is: has there ever been an economically successful socialist government, or do they, as Margaret Thatcher famously said, always run out of other people’s money?

And so we are left with the depressing choice between a dismal Tory chancellor and a suicidally disastrous Labour alternative.
Otto Inglis
Edinburgh