This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday column

For anyone who can count, the constant claims that Britain has recovered from its economic woes are almost physically painful.

For years I’ve had to listen to people saying from public platforms that George Osborne is a successful Chancellor, and being applauded for it – when the truth is that Mr Osborne is actually deepening Britain’s debt every second.

Claims of falling unemployment and industrial recovery are much the same. As so often in modern Britain – and especially in education and crime –the statistics are the only things that are getting better.

But the truth can’t be concealed from everybody for ever. Last week, when the rest of the media were chasing after Ed Miliband like a flock of mad sheep, the Financial Times published the real national accounts.

Safe in the knowledge that very few people read the Pink Paper, our governing elite held their breath and hoped that nobody would notice until after the next Election (when it will be too late).

Here is what the figures said. Whoever is Chancellor at the end of next May must make budget cuts at double the present rate, to meet existing austerity targets.

The utter absurdity of Mr Cameron’s talk of tax cuts, when in reality taxes are bound to rise while spending is massacred, is here revealed.

If the Government continues to protect spending on the NHS, schools and foreign aid from cuts, all other government departments face reductions of one third in their budgets.

Such cuts would devastate what is left of the Armed Forces, the police, transport, pensions and other welfare. They would also be very bad news for crisis-stricken and collapsing parts of the State such as the prisons and border control.

On past performance, the response would be to free more prisoners far too early, and relax our frontiers even further.

As the Financial Times said: ‘Short of an economic miracle in which Britain embarks on sustainably faster economic growth than expected for many years, whichever party wins the next Election will have to implement these spending cuts or something similar.’

All thinking and informed people in Parliament, the media and the Civil Service are broadly aware of this state of affairs.

And while far too many in our supposed elite don’t think and are astoundingly ignorant and gullible, that doesn’t excuse the general silence about this grave prospect. Nor will it excuse the way in which they will reveal it, in tones of pretended shock, about ten minutes after the new government is sworn in next May.

Here’s my theory. Every few years, our new ruling class decides whose turn it is to enjoy the fruits of office. That person is then pretty much spared all criticism. You will never see pictures of him eating messily, or walking through a door marked ‘Exit’. For a decade, that person was the Blair Creature.

Now, all those who fawned over him when he was in power agree that he was a ghastly disaster. But then, he could govern as badly as he liked and no scandal or failure would ever hurt him, even one of the most ill-judged wars in human history.

Now, the heir to Blair is David Cameron, who must be protected against his many bungles and flops by a bodyguard of flatterers. In a few years’ time, when Labour once again has a suitably Blairish leader, everyone will admit that the Cameron years were a buffoonish disaster.

These people haven’t a clue. A cabinet of garden gnomes would have more idea how to fix the nation’s problems. Why wait till after the next Election to punish them all for it?

A sacred moment of history...defiled to sell us chocolate

To me, the Christmas truce between British and German soldiers in 1914 is, literally, sacred. It was the last hour of Christian Europe, a tragic failure.

If only they had continued it by throwing down their guns and walking away in their thousands to their homes and families, their proper work and their peaceful, happy lives, we would have been spared so much loss and ruin.

The more I study that war, the more I am convinced we should not have taken part in it, and that it destroyed European civilisation, which has never recovered and never will.

So I am revolted by the use of this tragic moment by a supermarket chain in a Christmas advertisement. The Sainsbury’s short film is beautifully made and initially very moving.

But as the swelling music sought to seduce me into buying bars of chocolate, my gorge rose.

Some things are too solemn to be turned into commercials, even under the cover of charity.

Another 'drugs tragedy' ignored

Still no answers about whether the killer of Leeds teacher Ann Maguire was a user of mind-altering drugs. But there is a fascinating new sidelight on the death of the actor Robin Williams, which came as a great shock to those close to him.

Mainstream reports of the autopsy said Mr Williams had no alcohol or illicit drugs in his system when he died. Some accounts incorrectly said there were no drugs at all. Actually, his body contained ‘therapeutic’ levels of the ‘antidepressant’ Mirtazapine.

In the USA, this drug carries a ‘black box’ warning that it can promote suicidal thoughts in those who use it. Could this possibly be significant? We won’t find out if we don’t look.

You might also have noticed reports last week that the obviously unhinged Deyan Deyanov was ‘inappropriately’ diagnosed as feigning his mental illness and released from a Welsh psychiatric unit, after which he went to Tenerife and beheaded British grandmother Jennifer Mills-Westley.

Deyanov, like the killers of Drummer Lee Rigby, was a long-term heavy user of supposedly ‘soft’ cannabis. Why won’t we have a proper inquiry into the dangers of mind-altering drugs, legal and illegal?

Quite possibly, the biggest medical scandal since Thalidomide is incubating in our midst. Do we always have to wait for the tragedy before we seek the remedy?

The Blair creature, along with all other ex-Premiers, is allowed to claim a special allowance of £115,000 a year, mainly for office expenses. Receipts are required, and the payments are all above board.

But given the giant income which he receives from private sources, should the Victor of Baghdad really expect taxpayers to keep him in staples and printer cartridges?

I’m glad to see they’re going to bury a tiny few of those hideous high-tension cables whose pylons spoil so many of our loveliest landscapes.

Too little, too late. And, alas, you can’t really bury wind turbines, though, come to think of it, they wouldn’t be much more useless if we did.

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