Labour swept into office promising to make the U.K. the fastest growing G7. Instead in the first six months they have made us the slowest. They promised more jobs, U.K. unemployment has gone up. They promised us lower inflation. It has gone up. They implied lower interest rates than the LDI/Bank of England crisis in October 2022, only to put them up higher.
How have they done this?
1. Raised taxes on business, farms, employing people, property transactions, capital gains, creating an anti growth anti business climate.
2. Granted large wage rises to favoured public sector groups like train drivers with no productivity package to help pay for them No effort to boost public sector productivity which has fallen further.
3. Pushed up energy price cap by 10%, allowed above inflation increases in Council tax and rail fares, boosted wages through inflationary pay awards.
4. Increased public spending and borrowing, leading to higher interest rates and mortgage rates.
5.Failed to table a US/UK free trade Agreement with President elect Trump whilst giving in to EU in pursuit of improvements to the EU/UK free trade Treaty they are unlikely to grant.
December 28, 2024
Good morning.
I have stated here and with agreement from our kind host that, Employers National Insurance Contributions are a tax on jobs, which they are. I was therefore surprised to see the increase in ENIC or at least the threshold at which it is to be paid. No wonder unemployment is rising and investment is falling.
This government is not about economic change but social and constitutional. The biggest of which is the Balkanisation of England and the implementation of Regional governance akin to that of the EU’s plan.
No matter what, the EU’s plans continue regardless.
December 28, 2024
Starmer has no plans for the ukothrr than rejoining the EU
Many things they do are incompatible with the EUROPE single market or customs union such as the various FTAs we’ve signed.
If he walks away from these agreements Britain will be seen as an unreliable partner and no doubt subject to more ECJ interference.
Him, Milibrain and Thieves represent a very dangerous trio working against the interests of the taxpayer. I wish them ill in the new year.
December 28, 2024
True enough Mark. Another big factor for delivering a growing economy is investor/business confidence. The constant negativity and messages of more pain to come (e.g. workers rights bill) are making businesses flee the UK.
December 28, 2024
Agreed. And that includes the plan to drag us back into closer alignment with the EU (as an Associate Member) with the two-tier structure likely to be created shortly after the Ukraine war is ended.
I think a Budget to stall the economy was deliberately created.
December 28, 2024
I don’t think it was deliberately created. I don’t think they have a clue as to what boosts or stalls an economy.
December 28, 2024
@James1 – to rule in your own image, you first have to destroy all existing structure. Not even 12 months in and total control is nearly there – what will it be like in 5 year
December 28, 2024
Maybe the government don’t know what they’re doing, but I suggest that those behind the scenes, know exactly what they’re doing and what they’re advising!
Remember “yes, Minister”?
December 28, 2024
I agree with that, they are ignorant when it comes to the economy.
Madam Reeves is less intelligent than a fourteen year old school boy,9
December 28, 2024
There will be a cripple of an EU left after the Putin/Trump negotiations, the main war-casualty.
The negotiations will include a full defence and security plan and a lasting peace for the whole of Europe. The Russians have tabled a plan and are keen to get it agreed. War is a miserable endeavour even if you ‘win’ – surely of all countries the U.K. knows that?
After the agreement, the USA will withdraw from Europe. Much of the scaremongering platform of the globalists will be ‘in tatters’. The EU (to keep the peace in Europe) and NATO will be redundant! 🥳
There are very good things in the pipeline.
We need to return our best people to Parliament so they can place us where we have always been – the safest (4 murders a year before immigration) most honest (safe as the Bank of England) best place to innovate, to do business and to live an uneventful happy and contented life.
The personnel in this political establishment need to be REPLACED. An easy and quick task compared to reinventing our constitution, electoral system, political parties etc etc etc.
If we have the courage, we can have the happiest of New Years.
December 28, 2024
@Mark B +1
“It is good to recall how our freedom has been gained in this country—not by great abstract campaigns but through the objections of ordinary men and women to having their money taken from them by the State. In the early days, people banded together and said to the then Government, ‘You shall not take our money before you have redressed our grievances.’ It was their money, their wealth, which was the source of their independence against the Government.” Margaret Thatcher
We have an objectionable parliament that needs reforming and reminding whom it works for…
December 28, 2024
Have you sent this to Starmer/Reeves so that they can see their errors before we have anymore of their nonsense. No wonder sales on Boxing Day are down. It is not down to online shopping entirely as I have had no vans delivering. It is down to people getting scared and holding onto their money (me being one of them). Of course, it will do us no good as the Labourites will be after our homes via council tax increases we cannot afford next and any holiday homes we have (are caravans/lodges to be included too?) will be up for grabs. Immigration – still not dealt with as we will just continue to pay up, or will we? Make sure this goes on Bruges Group facebook. I will give you a plug.
December 28, 2024
150,000 channel paddlers in seven years and the uniparty does nothing to stop them.
Migration Watch research finds 70% unemployed or working in the gig economy.
No solution from any of the uniparty only commandeer more hotels.
How long before they come for our spare rooms.
December 28, 2024
Indeed.
Many working in the gig economy or worse the black economy or on benefits but in full on crime shop lifting, drugs, phone thefts & mugging, frauds…
So £billion of tax payers money for other tax payers to install Solar Panels great plan Ed Milibrain. Just what we need a tiny bit more of electricity in summer (mainly around lunch times) when not needed. But virtually nothing on the short winter days and nights like today when it is needed!
Plus they might need replacing every couple of years due to storm damage or hail as we saw in Anglesey recently. This when payback is likely to be more like 15 years at best and that is without any storm damage!
December 28, 2024
I think that’s what Rayner let slip when she said there was ‘plenty of housing in the UK.’
December 28, 2024
@Ian wragg – its not in the interest of the uniparty to govern for all of the UK
December 28, 2024
Did you take a look at the dross that was on sale?
Even in these consumerist times there was little worth purchasing especially as most of it has been on sale before.
There is plenty of money swilling about, benefits claimants are among the most cash rich people in society, but little worth buying.
December 28, 2024
6. Talked down the economy and deterred investment
7. Attached landlords and thus reduced supply and job mobility
8. Continued the mad rip off energy Tory Net Zero lunacy but in spades.
9. Pushed more woke lunacy and employment laws.
10. Undercut wages with open door illegal and legal immigration and this every higher tax rates too.
In short nothing is the right direction at all (other than relaxing planning)!
December 28, 2024
He tax increases VAT on school fees, NI increases, Non Dom attacks, IHT thefts…will not even raise much tax in the end. Just more blackmarket, investments deterred, the hard workers and the wealth leaves, working deterred…
December 28, 2024
Investments are less efficient when you hold on to them because of the CGT take. The certainty of paying more tax overtakes the marginal of holding longer, pending a change to a common sense CGT rate.
December 28, 2024
Indeed the tax can be well over 100% of real profits. Buy a property for X it goes up with inflation over say ten years to 1.5X but you have to pay CGT on this 50% increase (which is not a real profit at all) plus all that stamp duty, legal fees, agents fees… why bother?
December 28, 2024
@Lifelogic – you have identified the plan, started under Blair and forwarded ever since by all his successors
December 28, 2024
Tightening planning regulation would always be trumped by providing for incomers.
December 28, 2024
7 is a real concern. Carrying on the Conservative discouragement of being a private landlord. Under the Conservatives rents increased over 50% in three years. They show no sign of slowing down.
December 28, 2024
Labour are the antithisist of good UK government. They govern for their own narrow interests only, so ensuring their inevitable demise. The real question is, what can be done to speed their departure. Slaughter them at the next local elections that they cannot cancel. Block and harass them at every opportunity, metaphorically put leaves on their line.
Through the abject failure of the previous consocialist government and their establishment friends to harness and encourage the entrepreneurial of the UK, we now have a rabid dog in the kennels. Westminster created this with their conventions to maintain a two party circus and failed catastrophically when the electorate realised they had become one party for an alien establishment view. The swamp had been rumbled, but in denying one part support, the most toxic part were given the freedom to govern. That is what we are currently enjoying. The ultimate question, is how long can it be tolerated.
December 28, 2024
Not just Labour. They were most blatant at offering the reverse of their real plan at the election though.
They are a very consistent bell-weather. Whatever they do, without knowing anything else, if you do the opposite you will not go far wrong.
December 28, 2024
@agricola – two party, in a one party state? Both side of the house mirror one and other. The Party that was kicked out due to its failures to listen chose as its way froward ‘continuity’ by having those they chose to lead mainly coming from those that were mutely culpable of creating the failure
December 28, 2024
I’m afraid they cannot be dislodged legally AG but I suspect that their demise will roughly follow that of the Conservative Party (but much more quickly). An implosion, a result of internal conflict and pressures that are already building beneath the surface. The Granny Harmer is clearly ruthless but seemingly not nearly as politically astute. Looking at the front bench (at PMQs) recently, it seemed to me that the strains are already showing. I certainly didn’t see too many happy faces sitting there.
The incompetent Conservatives were clearly hamstrung financially by Covid & Ukraine. Who knows what further horrors are lurking in 2025 (and beyond) to haunt this crowd of dogmatic losers? We have no resilience left to manage either a financial meltdown or any defense ‘challenges’. Where does Reeves go when she needs to raise taxes again (as she will have to). “We inherited a £22B Black Hole” was cringe worthy this year but people will openly laugh out loud at this excuse very soon and then the ‘long knives’ will start to flash. Boris had a generous 80 seat majority and it didn’t save him.
December 28, 2024
Sir John, it is all so depressingly true, with Lifelogic’s additional points, that the correction in 2029 is likely to be painful.
December 28, 2024
Leave now perhaps – no guarantee of any sensible government that will be able to do the right things. This even in 4.5 years time – very likely not.
December 28, 2024
Let us pray that the government will resign before 2029.
December 28, 2024
They’re not errors. We are seeing a malicious assault on the private sector to finance an authoritarian, woke fascist state whose purpose is beyond sinister. It would help if commentator stopped talking crap and expose this cancerous development before it’s too late
The game has changed. This is not conventional political activity. The fascist left don’t do debate. If they can destroy you they will.
December 28, 2024
It was so obvious that these actions would cause stagflation that even a reasonably experienced Complaints Manager should have realised what the consequences would be before it was implemented – so the experienced (Gordon Brown trained) Tax and Squander Civil Service goons in The Treasury certainly should.
When a “mistake” is so obvious I tend to wonder whether it really was a mistake or whether it was intentional. And if it was intentional, what they aimed to achieve.
Shortly after Reeves-from Complaints delivered the Stagflation Budget, Keir-Ching! announced the creation of his “Drag us back to the EU Unit” staffed with 100 Civil Servants. A badly struggling economy would provide some justification to implement the Establishment’s desire for closer alignment with the EU, whereas one going gangbusters wouldn’t.
I think they have deliberately stalled the economy; just like they deliberately scuppered Liz Truss’ attempt to go for growth.
December 28, 2024
@Donna – Intentional, writ large. Along with 5 years open field to complete the project, We haven’t even had 12 months yet
December 28, 2024
I agree with you Sir John and with LL’s additions. Anyone wishing to destroy their country could use the list as a blueprint.
I still feel that the Labour government wants to get the UK back into the EU ‘s fold even though we no longer meet the entry criteria. I suspect the EU will be prepared to move the goalposts to get their yoke around our necks again.
Labour need to read the fable about The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg. Business and citizens will only take so much before they will bite back. Taxation is far too high under Labour and was too high under Sunak. What motivation will business have to invest if such a big slice goes in taxes of so called fines? Why would people slave for peanuts… It’s one thing to be poor, but it’s another thing to work all month to still be poor on payday because the Gangster State has taken it all from you in tax. How does such an arrangement motivate young people to start earning and planning a future for themselves?
We’ve all struggled when starting out and I can remember worrying about my mortgage when it was at a level that would be considered nothing these days,and that’s without student debt and extortionate council tax and energy prices. Where’s the motivation to do the right thing?
December 28, 2024
If Labour’s present negative aggressive ways continue, their prospect of lasting 5 years in government is increasingly unlikely.
December 28, 2024
+1 🍾
December 28, 2024
They are destroying the private education sector and family owned farms. With them will go their supporting eco systems, their export earnings and much of the UK as we know it. This is deliberate policy. Like earlier Labour tax raids on industrial businesses and on final salary pension schemes they are wholly destructive, leaving behind a wasteland.
December 28, 2024
They plan to take the family-owned farms and sell them off to foreign corporations, charitable foundations and billionaires who don’t have to pay inheritance tax. Control the food supply and you control the people. Inheritance Tax is their vehicle for stripping wealth from the Indigenous British population and giving it to the foreign-born population. They have to somehow fund their Universal Basic Income and level the playing field. This is communism in all its misguided glory.
December 28, 2024
Those are Labour’s economic errors but for most people the political errors, ending the winter fuel allowance for ten million pensioners and their leadership receiving expensive clothes as a gift, are even worse. The result will be that Labour M.P.s will replace Starmer as Prime Minister, probably with somebody even worse (maybe Lammy or even Rayner) well before the next General Election. Starmer has even less chance than even Badenoch of surviving as Leader until the next General Election and her chances are not good.
December 28, 2024
These people sitting in Parliament are not true representatives of the people of the United Kingdom. They are unworthy. We MUST replace them.
When the party machines are excluded the people select Andrew Bridgen, Christopher Gill, John Redwood. There are more of these gems available and we must SELECT them and tell the party machines to take a hike.
December 28, 2024
Lammy? My goodness that’s a real stretch Geoffrey! It will be Rayner or Streeting I suspect (and to be honest I don’t think Rayner would win that race…)
December 28, 2024
Every Labour Gov. in living memory has trashed the economy, what’s new?
December 28, 2024
Yep, people have short memories, but was Sunak (look at the failures) really any better ?
Only hope now is Reform if they can get enough competent and sensible candidates, politically we really are in a mess.
December 28, 2024
Every socialist government – we have to include a few Tory ones.
December 28, 2024
Yeah, but none has done it as quickly as this lot !
The only person on the Labour front bench that could make even a half-hearted job as leader would be Streeting and the Unions would prevent him from taking over.
December 28, 2024
In six months the Labour Party have shown they are incapable of running a successful economy. This does not surprise anyone. What is equally shocking is the 14 years the Tory administration took to convey into public awareness, their own incompetence and desire to hand all national decision making to undemocratic none governmental agencies.
The internationalisation of all policy decisions destroyed the Tory Party and will destroy the feeble though previously solid support for Labour.
We are entering a phase of political change that will not include the traditional political parties.
Sectarian voting that we saw at the general election in our major cities, (now fully diversified) plus the emergence of a real alternative to the mainstream traditional parties is happening.
December 28, 2024
We shouldn’t be surprised at any of this – labour have never understood economics, but their deceitful promises to get elected, that some believed in, shows how expert they are at double-speak!
They say one thing and mean another.
It’s a mistake to label labour’s actions as mistakes, for it is clear they were all deliberate. They imagined, with a Tory party so far down in the polls, that they could say anything in their manifesto and still get elected.
I don’t know how far back it was that labour started to fail us. It must have been around the Wilson era when trade unions started to make the decisions for the labour government. Hard to say who currently runs this labour government but they are no friends of the British people, nor those of other western countries who suffer as we do.
If we thought we had a rogue parliament, at times, over the last decade, then we sure must be right in calling this government rogue – they are doing nothing the people want while inflicting one horror on us after another!
December 28, 2024
Yesterday Andrew Lilico had an article in the Telegraph blaming the Bank of England rather than Rachel Reeves.
Here is the comment that I posted, with opening words which apply just as much to this blog article as well:
“This article does not go back far enough; it needs to start with Gordon Brown when he was Chancellor and then Prime Minister in the last Labour government, and flattered himself that his policies may have permanently increased our trend rate of economic growth. The confident expectation of continued high growth underpinned excessive expansion of public spending – “The money is there”, I recall some Labour MPs saying – until the global financial crisis struck and it swung around to “There is no money left”, with the government borrowing a quarter of all the money it was spending and having to get the Bank of England to rig the market in its own government bonds, “gilts”.
Our economy has never fully recovered from that crisis; if it had done we would now have per capita GDP maybe 30% higher than it is, as shown very clearly in this chart:
https://globalbritain.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Ewen-Stewart-Chart-1-UK-GDP-per-capita.jpg
It was a global crisis and to that extent Labour cannot be held to blame, equally the Tories inherited the problem that it had left our economy crippled, with greatly reduced growth potential. The two of them blaming each other – or blaming Brexit or the pandemic or the war in Ukraine or the Bank – does not help, the opposite.”
December 28, 2024
https://www.bestforbritain.org/pm_writes_to_regulators_but_brexit_deal_remains_the_real_barrier_to_growth
“PM writes to regulators but Brexit deal remains the real barrier to growth”
As shown in the chart given above, the real problem actually started in 2008 and was nothing to do with Brexit.
December 28, 2024
This is also political game playing (ideology over practical management). Going forward if Labour does nothing or keeps thing aligned to inflation, in a years time the media and commentators will be able to say things have improved, there will be an up-tick in the economy and people will have more money to spend.
It will all be relative, the UK will still be further behind than it competing nations, but as things would have improved compared to today there will be happiness and gleeful spin. ‘A week is a long time in Politics’ the spin pronounced by one of the previous Socialist leaders as the UK headed from one crisis to another.
December 28, 2024
Within this dictatorships anti democratic 5 year term, the UK will become unrecognisable to the generations that have gone before. 2TK who already has says publicly in interviews he will listen to the WEF before Parliament, will have crippled the country with more of WEF’s doctrine, the EU unelected unaccountable bureaucrats will have assumed greater powers than before. The ECHR and it Judges will become the UK’s legislators not the pseudo representatives of the people in the UK Parliament.
An exaggeration? Just reflect on the ‘2 tier’ view of what this Parliament thinks of ‘government for the people by the people’. The 2 tier meaning of law and justice already in place and we haven’t even got through the first year of this Parliament. Ask the question, why the need to move regular elections for lower levels of governance until after the Socialists reforms of democracy are in place. Then ask why is it OK for some to arrive in positions of power using false embellishments of their abilities, why are gifts(beyond party donations) by those wishing to influence the countries direction are not seen as ‘bribes’ A 2 tier universe for a them and us 2 tier 3rd World dictatorship.
No opposition, or an opposition that is still lead by those mutually culpable for today’s situation by forcing today’s situation on us. There is a feeling that the Socialist if not Communist aspirations of a UK Parliament that is out to fight the people of the Country into submission and accept Rule by the new ‘master race’
December 28, 2024
This is not a sprint but a marathon and you would have had to deal with a black hole that you were in denial about so the realty is no one will know until 3/4 years downstream.
Whilst I have sympathy for your views the reality is we are in this position because of umpteen years of Tory economic failure. You were in hock to the ‘Keynesian’ treasury, high taxes and a massive increase in public expenditure with zero commensurate efficiency savings and a resulting hike in inflation.
You keep mentioning Brexit, you failed to diverge on corporation tax, indeed increased it, kept VAT rate so totally ignoring Laffer and completely failed on deregulation despite myriad promises..
Sunak made a token effort on NI for political reasons when it was far too late,
The Labour Party has to deal with the same Treasury albeit they are soul mates plus putting even more money into public hands which is in their genes. Plus the same public sector (poor) performance you did nothing about.
From my perspective you are/were both as bad as each other.
Reply If you mean the former Conservative government then say so. I did not support their Brexit failures nor did I vote for the Hunt tax raising budget.
December 28, 2024
Sir John
I agree with all you and added to by LL have said. The however, these things are just a continuation of similar projects by the rejected faction – the faux Conservatives.
Hunt/Sunak raised taxes on business, as now, for no reason other than knowing that after 12 months they could pretend things have got better because of ‘their’ actions. Then that would win them the election
Energy prices and fudges were in the gift other the previous crowd to rectify – they refused. Just as their predecessors knew they were unnecessary and would damage the UK
Leaving the EU was a power given to the whole of Parliament by the People – they refused. It seems that the preferred laws and rules handed down by unelected unaccountable bureaucrats that they couldn’t amend or repeal was preferable to being the UK’s Legislators. It was never about trade but who ‘governed’ and Parliament sent us their message loud and clear
It would appear to the majority of us that the last shower who think they have a chance next time around wanted the same as Starmer and his cronies so they retained EU Law in preference to UK Law.
It is more than just the acts of terrorism and ideology being imposed on us by a faction which has less than 1 in 5 of the electorate support that is at fault here, it is Parliament in all it complexions, all 650 members. At best it appears that there are only 10 MP’s not signed up Socialist dogma, the WEF Governance. Just 10 are inclined to represent the People, and support the Country
December 28, 2024
305 criminals arrived in the UK yesterday; from the safe country of France
December 28, 2024
The important question is not how but why. Although the list includes a 10% increase in the cost of electricity it fails to include Net Zero a policy followed by the Uniparty which will not only destroy our economy but also our national security. Shula and Ott have demonstrated on the Tom Nelson ‘Missing Link’ YT video that there is no greenhouse gas effect at the planet’s surface. Both theoretically and experimentally. So burning hydrocarbons and increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has absolutely no greenhouse effect on global temperatures because of thermalisation also known as quenching. Heat loss from the surface is mainly through convection and latent heat (weather) and since these processes are slower than the incoming heat from the sun through radiation there is a natural warming effect.
December 28, 2024
You are right, Sir John, but how do we change things? The last Conservative government stopped listening to its members and the public; the new Labour government is precisely the same. We urgently need a recall system for MPs so they can’t just ignore voters for 4 to 5 years.
No one voted for Net Zero, pensioners to lose their WFA, the new IHT on farmers, the increase in employer’s NI, the rise in flight taxes, frozen personal allowances, and all the rest.
Yes, we can kick them out in 4.5 years, but how much damage will be done by then?
Show us how we can influence and change things and we will!
Reply The public have just kicked out hundreds of MPs. What we need to do is win the arguments over growth, tax an£ net zero.The OBR, Bank of England, Climate Change Committee do not change.
December 28, 2024
Reply to Reply : Sorry, but all the voters did at the last GE was to replace one set of Net Zero, mass immigration. high spending and consequently high taxation supporting MPs with another set with the same policies. We need a series of referendums.
Reply Yes, but they could have insisted on anti net zero candidates. Pro net zero MPs will not allow a referendum!
December 28, 2024
Sir John, your masterpiece in today’s Daily Mail is also a masterstroke in my humble opinion giving every key idea distilled into one page and the opportunity to Labour on a plate to save the economy and themselves.
New Year resolutions are basically written for them so no excuses in future.
They may read it but I fear they won’t need it, as Labour don’t listen, especially when on holiday and out of the country.
I think it is the best business plan for the country I have ever seen as previous plans have been seriously lacking. See
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-14230623/former-Tory-minister-Rachel-Reeves-inflation-taxes-brave.html
December 28, 2024
They may read it but I fear they won’t Heed it