Coming up on the Peston podcast, that record 400 billion pound increase in the national debt.

It's changing our economy, our politics, our way of life, our living

standards for years to come. Ken Clark, the grand old man of British politics, tells me that

in just two or three years we face an even more acute economic and financial crisis.

Worth listening to him, but also worth listening to the Chief

Secretary of the Treasury Steve Barclay, Tim Spector who designed that amazing

Zoap which tracks how much COVID there is and where. Angela Hartnett, the

Michelin starred restaurant owner and from Lester the pride of Lester Liz Kendall the Labor Front Bencher

they'll also be talking to me about why there are going to be tears before

bedtime as we end lockdown but find ourselves in new regional restrictions on the

things we can do.

First up, Ken Clark on that massive increase in the government's debts.

Ken have put that almost 400 billion deficit into some kind of historical context, for us?

Well, we are incurring debt on a scale that we haven't occurred except to the two world wars.

And bear in mind, after the two world wars, we were bankrupt and went through an extremely

difficult period, required a transformation to get it out of it.

And I think the tone of Rishley's today, Times was right.

This is a quite extraordinary unprecedented financial crisis in our lifetime.

We've never had production dropped like this for 300 years.

And running up debt of this kind would have been regarded, you know,

when I was Chancellor, by all my contemporaries in the G7 and so on,

as complete madness, the sort of thing that crazy South American dictators did.

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