𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Liam Halligan has spent a lifetime focused on the greatest economic threats and opportunities facing Britain but now finds himself fielding questions from showbiz reporters. His romance with Good Morning Britain’s Kate Garraway has propelled the financial commentator into the pages of celebrity magazines.

“I’m used to being on television and so on, but this is another level of scrutiny,” he says.

The 57-year-old admits their busy lives mean the duo do not get to see each other very much but they recently grabbed their first weekend away, stepping out at the Misano racetrack near Rimini for the 100th anniversary celebrations of Italy’s iconic Ducati motorcycles.

“We’ve got a huge amount in common,” he says. “Not least shared nostalgia for 1970s TV shows, 1980s music and the same zany sense of humour.”

Mr Halligan discusses economics and politics with the passion other people reserve for talking about football. This is not surprising – he played for the fabled amateur football team Demon Eyes, whose members included the likes of Ed Balls, David Miliband, James Purnell and a young Everton fan named Andy Burnham.

“He is a genuine football fan,” he says of the new Prime Minister, “and he’s not a bad footballer.”

Describing Mr Burnham’s approach to the game, he says: “Was he a bit of a goal-hanger? Yeah, probably. He liked those of us in midfield to do the hard work so he could he could tap it in.

“Like any good centre-forward, and a politician I guess, he was good at being in the right place at the right time.”

He fears Mr Burnham will prove a “very vibes-based, empathetic people-pleasing PM, when what we actually need is a grown-up who can make really hard-nosed, tough decisions to put us on the fiscal straight and narrow”.

Mr Halligan has a history of crossing paths with people who will go on to shape the future of the country. He spent time in Russia in the aftermath of the Cold War as the country opened up to the West, and a young graduate called Dominic Cummings slept on his sofa.

He remembers the “boundless curiosity” of the future Brexit strategist who would become Boris Johnson’s top aide – and, yes, he did the washing up. Mr Halligan told him why the euro would prove unstable and made the case for Britain staying out.

Looking at how history took its course, he quips: “Maybe I’m to blame?”

Mr Halligan has no fear of the spotlight. He plays guitar in the Irish folk band The Hooligans with his daughter, Maeve.

Now he is about to turn up the volume even higher on the economy when he takes the reins of the venerable Centre for Policy Studies – a think-tank founded in 1974 by Margaret Thatcher and Sir Keith Joseph.

“It’s absolutely imperative that we do everything we can to drag Britain back from the fiscal cliff edge where it currently is,” he says.

The new Chancellor, John Healey, has a personal responsibility to face up to the financial dangers facing the nation, he argues. The latest figures show public sector net debt has reached nearly £3trillion, with the Government paying £11.8billion in interest payments in June.

Mr Healey helped bring Sir Keir Starmer’s time as prime minister to an end when he resigned in protest at underfunding of the armed forces. Mr Halligan warns that going insolvent will “destroy our defences”.

“What could weaken our country more than going cap in hand again to the International Monetary Fund?” he asks. “That’s a real danger.”

He suspects Mr Healey is a “stop-gap Chancellor”, chosen by a PM who wanted to avoid angering different tribes in his party by appointing Ed Miliband or Shabana Mahmood, who are seen as standard bearers for the soft Left and the Right, respectively.

With Mr Healey in the Treasury, he argues, the PM can “keep all factions of the Labour Party guessing where he’s going”.

However, he is unconvinced that “keeping financial markets guessing about your direction of economic travel” will help steer Britain away from “catastrophe”.

He details a “nightmare scenario” where borrowing costs spike, the Government “racks up more debt”, inflation increases, the value of the pound falls sharply and the cost of energy and food imports shoot up.

Mr Halligan insists he is “not talking Britain down” but “standing up for reality”.

He has simple advice for the Chancellor: “Put ideology to one side and understand that there’s nothing progressive or kind about driving the economy over a cliff… Nothing else matters.”

While he warns against launching a “neurotic class war” with a wealth tax, this London-raised son of an Irish builder is a passionate champion of housebuilding, claiming “there’s nothing better for an economy than building homes”.

Mr Burnham has made tackling the high cost of living a priority for his premiership.

The economist is in no doubt about how to help ordinary Britons: “Lower taxation and let them keep more of their own money.”

Appalled at the low rate of growth, he says: “The best way to fund public services, the best way to fund defence, is to get the economy moving.”

In contrast, “more borrowing and taxation to fund more welfare” risks triggering a “proper financial crisis in which the poor, as they always do, will suffer most”.

His passion for economics, which he studied at Warwick, was fuelled by seeing the “madness of the economy in the 1970s and the 1980s” and the “human fallout from the absolute domestic carnage”.

Relatives in the construction industry fled the country for better prospects abroad and the schoolboy was left thinking: “There must be a better way.”

Mr Hallligan has no nostalgia for the days when Britain was an EU member state and is ready to go head to head with anyone who argues it is time to rejoin.

“I don’t accept that going through the absolute trauma of trying to rejoin the European Union is going to help us economically in any way at all,” he says. “I think it will hinder us, because it will just ensnare us in ever more regulation, which is the opposite of what we need.”

He argues the UK is “miles away from taking advantage of the freedoms that Brexit gives us – absolutely miles away”. And he takes a dig at middle-class voters with homes in Tuscany who are “absolutely desperate to get back in the European Union”.

“There’s a consensus that leaving the European Union has been bad for our economy,” he says. “I absolutely don’t accept that.”

From his new base at the Centre for Policy Studies, he longs for another “policy revolution” in Britain – but he fears the Left could tighten its grip on the country.

He warns: “The danger is that the centre-Right is so busy squabbling that we allow through some kind of traffic light coalition of Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens [and] we go even further to the Left. Now, if we haven’t already had some kind of bond market meltdown by then, then that will cause a bond market meltdown. It’s complete fantasy that we can keep borrowing and spending at the rate we are.”

In the months ahead we can expect to see Thatcher’s ideas-factory pumping out policies to unlock a better future and, despite the enormity of the challenges facing the UK, he insists the nation can avoid disaster.

“It’s not too late,” he says. “We can do it.”