It's lucky for the Tories that voters are economically illiterate

The one thing the Tories - and the rest of the coalition government - have got going for them with voters is the conviction that they are the ones who will sort out the economy.

How could anyone believe that after today's figures.These show not just that public-sector debt has topped £1 trillion for the first time - a headline-grabbing statistic - but that the coalition has added £225 billion to the £779 billion debt it inherited. Far more than Alistair Darling forecast for a Labour government.

And by the time of the next election it is projected to soar by another £390 billion.

This is failure by any standards but when you consider it is happening while public-sector jobs are being slashed and huge sums taken out of public spending, it is a monumental disaster. The international financial institutions which have smiled kindly on coalition policy so far will surely turn nasty eventually. We could even join France in losing our triple A status.

At what point will voters wake up and realise that this government's economic policies are not just a failure but a catastrophe? At the moment, the Tories are unbelievably ahead in the polls.

Surely it can't last.  Can it?


PS at 15.40: The Government has been dealt a blow this afternoon as the IMF confirmed it was lowering its projected growth target for the UK from 1.6% to 0.6% (from P0liticsHome). What a bad, bad day for them.