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In this week's prime ministerial announcements over Net Zero,

commentators began to discern some of the battle lines for an election

that must be held within the next 16 months.

But whatever the promises,

how much real latitude will the UK's economic and financial position

for the term of any new government give to the party which wins that election?

Or, to put it crudely, is there any money?

Step inside the briefing room and together we'll find out.

Our first job is to understand the constraints that will face any government after the next election.

The timeframe we've chosen is from the beginning of 2025 onwards.

And to help us, I have with me, Paul Johnson, Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

Paul Johnson, things change all the time, obviously, but in broad terms, what do we currently

know about the projected state of public finances for, say, 2025 and the five years after that?

Borrowing over the last few years has been incredibly high as we come out of the pandemic.

Levels of borrowing are actually forecast to go down to really relatively modest levels

over the next four or five years. But there's a big problem, nevertheless. And that problem is that

the overall level of our national debt, so not the amount that we borrow each year, but the

accumulated debt, is barely set to fall over that period. It's stuck around 100% of national income,

which is the highest it's been since the early 1960s. And we know that both the

main parties are committed to getting that level down into the medium term. And that unfortunately

is really hard at the moment. It's hard for several reasons. One is that we're paying an awful

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