No independent sovereign stress-testing or fiscal-crisis contingency capability

The OBR identifies fiscal risks, projecting debt at 274 per cent of GDP by 2071 on its 2025 baseline, and is statutorily barred from recommending policy; it publishes no crisis playbooks. Treasury and Bank contingency planning is internal and unpublished, and the 2022 LDI episode showed it can be caught out. IFS, NIESR, the Resolution Foundation and the Lords Economic Affairs Committee produce commentary and inquiries. Nobody runs the sovereign equivalent of a bank stress test: publicly war-gamed scenarios covering a gilt buyers' strike, a failed auction, a ratings cascade, or an inflation shock hitting the roughly 25 per cent index-linked stock, with pre-agreed response options. Goldman Sachs and other private analysts fill some of the space, with obvious conflicts.

The UK borrows around £300bn gross a year into a market where term premia run at double historic norms and the marginal buyer is a leveraged hedge fund. Crisis options are best designed before the crisis. The 2022 experience showed improvisation costs billions, and it nearly broke the pension system.

A standing, independent fiscal-crisis simulation programme publishing periodic sovereign stress scenarios with response playbooks, run by a consortium of former officials and institutes or a purpose-built unit. Foundations could fund it at £1-3m a year as a natural extension of an existing institute.

// Build now: First artefact: published sovereign stress scenario with response playbook, run by institute consortium; foundation-fundable at £1-3m/year.

Nobody publicly war-games a gilt crisis after 2022 nearly broke pensions, the watchdog is barred from advising, and a buildable programme sits wholly unfunded.