The Libertarian Alliance is a factory of radical and often original ideas. Running a motel—making sure the showers are kept clean, for example—means that I often miss things when they first appear. But I have now read Bryan Mercadente’s argument for outright repudiation of the British national debt, published on December 13 2025. This strikes me as not only morally justified and strategically sound—but also, in all but name, already happening. Mercadente has the clarity to see what the British political class will not admit: the entire structure of Britain’s public finances is a criminal enterprise—engineered to loot the productive classes while enriching a parasitic elite of financiers, bureaucrats, and foreign governments. What he proposes—an explicit refusal to honor illegitimate debts—is not radical. It is merely the political formalization of what is already occurring through financial subterfuge: the slow-motion default of inflation.

The system, as it stands, is built on a lie. Successive British governments have borrowed trillions without the consent of the people. Not one of the major debt expansions—the 2008 bailouts, the COVID farce, the endless funding of foreign wars and ideological programs—was ever subjected to a meaningful democratic mandate. Yet the public is expected to pay, indefinitely, through taxation and the gradual erosion of their living standards. The morality of repudiation is not in doubt. What remains is only whether it will be done with honesty and purpose—or through the coward’s route of monetary debasement.

The Western monetary regime—Britain included—has already chosen default. It has merely done so dishonestly. The slow theft of inflation is the chosen mechanism, not because it is efficient, but because it is deniable. Politicians will never stand before the British people and say, “We cannot repay this debt.” Instead, they inflate the currency—shrinking the real value of what is owed, while erasing savers and punishing anyone on a fixed income.

This is not hyperbole. It is arithmetic. As of January 2026, gold trades above $5,000 per ounce and silver has broken $100. These are not speculative blow-offs. They are signals—price alarms triggered by the silent crisis of state insolvency. The central banks pretend otherwise, but the public, at some level, understands: the pound is being debased. And so, capital flees into real assets—into gold, into silver, into anything not tied to the sinking ship of fiat.

The explosion in precious metals prices is often lazily attributed to “safe-haven demand” or “geopolitical tension.” That is part of the story, but not the core. These metals are rising because they are real, and the currencies in which they are priced are not. Western governments are no longer functioning as monetary authorities. They are functioning as debt laundries—running continuous inflation to keep their creditors paid in devalued coin.

The rise in silver, in particular, illustrates this truth. Silver has long been the suppressed cousin of gold—a small, volatile market easy to manipulate, easy to dismiss. JPMorgan didn’t merely play games in that market—they paid nearly a billion-dollar fine for manipulating it. Spoofing, paper selling, and strategic price suppression were not conspiracy theories. They were established regulatory facts.

But even the fraud can no longer contain the reckoning. Industrial demand for silver—solar, electrification, data centers—has created real physical tightness. The derivatives shell game has lost its effectiveness. And now, as both gold and silver soar, the old gold-silver ratio—a barometer of monetary sanity—is compressing violently, reflecting the crumbling faith in paper promises. This is not a market in which governments can hide forever. It is a market that punishes lies.

Mercadente correctly identifies the core dynamic: the debt is not “ours.” It was not contracted in the interests of the British public. It was conjured into being by and for a ruling class whose loyalty lies elsewhere—primarily with the financial aristocracy that treats public debt as a guaranteed income stream. These bondholders are not victims. They are parasites. And their pain from repudiation would be a moral good.

The “costs” of default, we are told, would be immense: higher borrowing rates, lost credibility, economic instability. But look around. Britain already suffers from these things. The so-called “creditworthy” British state has already produced:

• Record-high taxation with declining services;
• An NHS that cannot function;
• A police force trained to enforce ideology, not law;
• Billions funneled into foreign regimes and green grifts while domestic infrastructure crumbles.

If this is the price of “fiscal responsibility,” the case for repudiation is made.

And what of those who scream about market panic? Let them scream. The reality is that the real economy is already breaking under the strain of debt service and inflation. The only ones left to frighten are the fund managers and central bankers who live on yield and believe the state’s role is to guarantee their portfolio returns. Let them suffer.

The rise in precious metals prices is not speculative froth. It is a referendum on the entire post-1971 fiat regime. And it is delivering its verdict: guilty.

The gold–silver ratio, which ballooned to absurd levels in past decades (100:1 in 2020), is now collapsing back toward historical norms—not because the market is rediscovering Roman coinage standards, but because silver is breaking free from its paper prison. Industrial scarcity and monetary debasement are converging. And when silver finally reprices, it won’t move incrementally. It will gap, because suppressed markets always do. The lesson is this: a currency can survive dishonesty for a time, but it cannot survive arithmetic.

The British state, like others in the West, has chosen to default not by refusal, but by deceit. It is taxing more, printing more, and delivering less. Mercadente simply proposes that we replace this cowardice with clarity. Instead of continuing the lie, say the truth: this debt is not legitimate. We will not pay it.

And when that happens, let the bondholders howl. Let the foreign governments clutch their IOUs in disbelief. Let the politicians weep about “credibility.” What will remain is a country no longer shackled to its own fiscal destruction.

That is not ruin. That is rebirth.

Related posts:

Britain’s Debt is a National Scam: A Case for Repudiation The Illusion of War, the Reality of Debt: America’s Fiscal Collapse and the Implications for Britain Gold, Silver, and the Managed Demolition of Western Money Going for Gold Going for Gold: A Note of Caution to Bryan Too Soon, Not Too Wrong: Gold and the Meaning of a Fall Britain’s Debt Spiral: How the Conservatives Broke the Nation and Labour Can’t Fix It Cut, Paste, Print, Repeat: Nigel Green’s War on Economic Reality The Long Betrayal: How Modern Monetary Policy Became a Machine for Ruin Britain’s Youth Exodus: Labour’s Crime, Conservative Guilt

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