Here’s a bit of Friday fun from the Resolution Foundation: Could Taylor Swift’s swear box pay for Tory spending splurges?

The government wants to increase defence spending by 0.5 per cent, but with defence cash having traditionally gone to fund the NHS – and the health service struggling because of spending cuts and the funnelling of cash to private companies as profit, there’s no obvious pot of cash from which to take this extra spending.

Not only that, but Jeremy Hunt wants to knock another 2p off National Insurance before the election – costing twice as much as the extra defence spending.

Both of these plans are funded by nothing more than wishful thinking, according to Resolution boss Torsten Bell.

And in an election year, the government was always likely to slash taxes and boost spending, and the opposition was always going to promise to do the same. So the Treasury, in its Fiscal Monitor blog, is reminding us that “deficits in election years tend to exceed forecasts by 0.4 percentage points of GDP, compared to non-election years”.

“How shall we pay for all the government splurging going on?” asks Bell.

“We’ve got a new, innovative, answer for governments around the world.

“Ms Swift has become increasingly potty-mouthed in recent years. We haven’t seen this kind of exponential growth since Chris Whitty terrified the nation with his ‘next slide please’.

“Will it be possible to still discern all the wistful warblings of heartbreak on her next album, or will they be lost in a wave of cussing?

“Now, we wouldn’t be a cutting edge think-tank if we didn’t explore the macro drivers behind Ms Swift’s bad language.

“While we await funding for such a project, which will obviously require tickets for all Resolution staff to attend the UK leg of her Eras tour, our initial analysis has found a clear causal link weak correlation with falling life satisfaction in the US.

“So, not only does Taylor Swift speak for a nation, she swears for one too…”

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