Last year, there was an area of public spending that was nearly double what we spend on defence,

and a lot more than what we spend policing our borders or policing our streets.

But it's not something you'd probably think of.

It's our national debt interest.

It's servicing the costs of what we've had to borrow in the past just to keep Britain going.

Hello and welcome to reality check.

Less spin more stats.

I'm Michael Simmons, the Spectator's economics editor.

This has real consequences for the government and all of us as taxpayers.

It means we can spend less on defending ourselves against Russia. It means we build

less schools. It means we build less hospitals. It might seem like a niche area of economics,

but as long as we have to keep spending a hundred billion pounds and more every year,

just paying our debt interest, then it really stops us developing

as a country. And worse is yet to come. Over the rest of this decade, we're going to see the

national debt pass the staggering figure of three and a half trillion pounds. That money's not about to disappear anywhere. It's a problem

that we're baking in, both for you and I, but also for our kids and their kids and the generations

to come after that. They're going to have to pay increasing amounts on servicing that debt,

when, as I've said, they could be spending

them on developing schools, developing hospitals, developing how the government uses AI.

But this problem is just not going anywhere.

But could public attitudes be about to change?

Last week, an important survey found that the highest level of

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