The government behaves as if UK taxes and public spending are too low. It complains about past government austerity. It sets bizarre fiscal rules based around OBR forecasts of five years hence that are bound to be wrong. It puts up taxes on jobs and assets that were bound to destroy growth and lead to an exodus of wealth and talent. The media helps them frame a debate about this illusory world of past austerity and present false choices.
The truth is the last six years have seen an explosion of public spending, up 55% in cash terms and up strongly in real terms. Inflation was around 25% so the real increase was around 30%. There has been a major expansion of the civil service, of NHS staff and of employees in the wide public sector. There has been no shortage of cash or people. There has been a collapse in productivity.
At the same time there has been a large increase in low income and no income legal migrants, and in illegal migrants who get to stay. This has driven up demand for subsidised housing, utilities and a wide range of public services.
The way to control public spending is to put an end to mass migration , and to engage urgently and purposefully with the need to get productivity above 2019 levels again. The state should not be spending more but spending better, It should not be inviting in hundreds of thousands to add to housing and NHS waiting lists.
March 24, 2025
We now have a command economy, the private sector is being squeezed out. Remember Boris f…business well 2TK and Rachel from complaints are doing precisely that.
March 24, 2025
@Ian wragg – 100% agreed
Not forgetting the gravy train of disasters from Blair, Brown, the ridiculous Cameron, then May!
Many people have come and gone all with the option of undoing the mess of their predecessors all refusing any such thing instead adding to the tyranny.
As suggested and sums things up @Donna – To all intents and purposes, we live in a one-party State: not so very dissimilar to the Xi’s Chinese one,
March 24, 2025
Couldn’t agree more !
March 24, 2025
Your analysis overlooks the imposition of HS2. A huge public financial investment that had no profit stream. The private sector would only feed on its creation, seeing no profit in it as a completed businness.
It omits the predatory nature of government over the discovery of our own energy resources, their extraction and grotesque cost of delivery to all end users.
You also avoid mention of the consocialist conception of Nett Zero now being run with a mad zealot in charge. A lie that has guaranteed the deindustrialisation of the UK, increasingly impoverished the population, and achieved nothing for World CO2 reduction. In fact quite the opposite, but is it the great Satan threatening our very existence anyway. Nett Zero is a more likely Satan.
Our return from the brink requires a rethink in every aspect of government, necessitating a whole party of Sir Keith Josephs ably assisted by an embryonic army of Redwoods. Government need to be extracted from our lives, for the rotting and dangerous molar it is, before scepticemea takes its toll.
March 24, 2025
Spot on Agricola.
March 24, 2025
I don’t see anyone capable of stepping outside of the box and undertaking the neccessary radical thinking and action required AG. Nor do I think things are bad enough to allow such a person to emerge. Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Man (or Woman) may still hold true but how bad do things have to get before this can happen?
March 24, 2025
If this government carries on as it started, we will be in even more serious financial trouble far sooner than everybody thinks. They spent more than £40bn within weeks of coming to power, much of it inflationary and unnecessary. The way over-generous pay settlements for Doctors and train drivers are some of the worst examples.
In the meantime, BCP council near where we live has just been given an extra £3.4m by the government to pay for even more cycle lanes. This is so wasteful and unnecessary because they slow down traffic flow and nobody uses the many that have already been built !
March 24, 2025
@agricola – agreed
March 24, 2025
Like the governments of the 1970s this political generation have no concept of political economy. They don’t understand the machine they are trying to direct. They grind the gears and burn out the clutch plate. They have one foot on the accelerator and the other on the break. They can’t see out the windshield and they think the mirrors are there to help then adjust their lipstick.
I read a letter from Zimabawe from Cathy Buckle this morning ‘whispers in the street’ – you can search for her 25 year tale of tragedy. The Zimbabwean government is in the same type of vehicle and has the same driving style, theirs is an older model.
Everyone in the U.K. should read it, look out and see the road that we are on.
March 24, 2025
On the mass migration aspect I notice the Bank of England agrees with you John.
As per the 19th December 2024 MPC Minutes (page 4), link below:
‘Supply, costs and prices’
‘… In its latest reweighting of key LFS variables, the ONS had incorporated upward revisions to the estimated population of around half a million people. Separately, the ONS had revised up its estimates of net inward migration by over 400,000 people, although that would not be reflected in the LFS for some time… The corollary of these upward revisions to employment would be more pronounced weakness in labour productivity’
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/monetary-policy-summary-and-minutes/2024/monetary-policy-summary-and-minutes-december-2024.pdf
Therefore increasing net immigration by 400k to 500k leads to ‘pronounced’ weakness in labour productivity.
March 24, 2025
I don’t know why the BoE were surprised ….any GCSE economics student could’ve told them the same !
March 24, 2025
It isn’t the government (ie the current government) which does this; it’s the entire Establishment.
To all intents and purposes, we live in a one-party State: not so very dissimilar to the Xi’s Chinese one, except the level of control isn’t quite so obvious …… yet.
March 24, 2025
When David Cameron won power, replacing Gordon Brown, I foolishly thought we would see the country taking a different direction, more like the Thatcher period we remember so well.
Instead, almost nothing changed, I know that the first Cameron administration was hamstrung by having the Lib-Dims on board but it didn’t change very much during the whole of the last 14 years.
Like many people I talk to, I strongly suspect this was down to the influence of the deeply left-of-centre civil service and weak and ineffective ministers. There were exceptions : Amber Rudd, Priti Patel and Suella at the Home Office, did their best to get a grip of that notorious department but were swiftly seen off by their officials by foul means.
Other ministers that tried to make a difference were also seen off with false allegations of bullying, a recent addition to the civil service playbook.
Our host is in a far better position to tell us exactly how the civil service keeps an iron grip on policy, ensuring that governments adhere to the civil service favoured social democratic policies which have done so much damage and prevented Conservative policies from being implemented. Could you do a piece on this subject ?
March 24, 2025
@Donna – agreed 100%
March 24, 2025
The problem is that idealistic politicians, with no skin in the game (so nothing to lose) think they know better than proven commercial industrialists, and private investors.
Hence it always ends in failure, crocodile tears, excuses, and a higher and higher tax bill for the population.
Until the Public fully understand that the Government cannot fund everyone’s chosen lifestyle, and solve all of their own problems, we will continue to get the Government we deserve, hence the reason Politicians always promise more than can possibly be delivered, simply to get elected.
Thus the depressing downward cycle will continue.
March 24, 2025
Without mass immigration we would have experienced several recessions over the last 10 years. Which suggests that while mass immigration is indeed a drain on public resources, something else is holding back our economy and preventing it from growing.
You mention productivity which is part of the problem but you neglect to mention the costs of gas and electricity and out reticence to produce our own fossil fuels. Net Zero out on proud, along with DEI initiatives, and just as efficient.
March 24, 2025
One million neets!
Welfare claimants ballooning.
Ex-nationalised industries and public sector pensions crippling the State purse, plus all the pension credits.
March 24, 2025
To use a line above – There has been no shortage of cash or people ….. so it seems. A good report today from the facts4eu site which shows some interesting facts & figures: ” 5 years post-Brexit, EU’s ‘free movement’ into UK is still letting big numbers apply to settlement under EU rules”
What will Labour’s EU Reset bring to this fiasco as the EU appears adamant in its continual demands for free movement of the 18-30 yrs age bracket. Another angle to consider, the EU having a number of countries in the queue awaiting future EU accession.
March 24, 2025
I would suggest that the debate is distorted as it’s main forum is not parliament or local council chambers but on the BBC.
The BBC frames the subject matter, decides who will debate, decides on the rules of debate and decides the venue. The BBC asks most of the questions and carefully avoids asking some of the most important questions.
Most news media is in poverty. Job-insecure employees of non-BBC organisations are careful to toe the BBC’s political line as they may need a job there one day. Let’s face it, no-one from the Daily Mail or GB News is likely to be invited to take employment at the BBC. Thus, the BBC’s influence casts a dark shadow across most other media.
The internet has blunted the BBC’s dominance but it is still the richest news organisation around and therefore has the greatest political influence on the country, even more so than the government and the King.
That, in my opinion, is why the debate is distorted.
March 24, 2025
Because there is no real honest debate going on. HMG don’t want to be shown up as the charlatans they are so the deep state media put a shine on everything the government does to hoodwink those that can’t work out for themselves what is really going on.
HMG is following a plan, not to control public spending, not to reduce demands on the public purse by returning under-used public servants to the job pool, and certainly not to reel in excessive and wasteful spending – the plan requires that all of these get worse.
We no longer need to ask why these bad things are happening, we should be asking how we can stop them or even survive them, but more vital even, how the heck can we change the direction now imposed on us.
March 24, 2025
In a nutshell – idealogical terrorism for the promotion of ‘personal’ self-esteem appears to be the only reason.
We have a major gap in our democracy, our free-loading parliament have got it into their head they are not the UK’s Legislators they weren’t elected and paid to serve the Country and its People. 40 odd years of taking orders from foreign unaccountable unelected masters had removed that notion from Parliament.
All we need is a bunch of people to arrive in Parliament wanting and needing to work with the Country and its People. There is not an inkling of that happening they are all still fighting old wars, wars against the people. To that end there is no desire to manage, get a grip with the job.
The first thing any Parliament does is get to grips with expenditure, then the safety & security of the Country and its People making sure it is resilient and self-reliant. The UK Parliament and its Government’s(you cant separate them)direction has been a 100% reversal of all its duties.
Its hard to comprehend that 650 people that stood on a platform to serve the Country and it People once in power have chosen instead to fight to the death for old wars
March 24, 2025
The economy debate is distorted because we do not have intelligent experienced political leaders to the fore – we can’t blame it on the people most of whom are just getting on with their ordinary lives – the people didn’t sell off the family silver in the 70’s and then advise us to vote for brexit. It was Tony Blair who invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and it was Cameron with Nato who bombed Libya and set the whole migration thing off. Politicians messed it up politicians should fix it – it might be time now to get non-party technocrats in instead to run things – enough of the debate
March 24, 2025
SirJ it worse than you describe, rather than using the term ‘distort’ I’d describe it as government ‘smoke & mirror’ ….to lie to the people …..and its not just economic’s, its with net-zero, police, immigration, defence & culture ….and I don’t just mean the normal ‘spin’ in a message; they’re now hiding the message
March 24, 2025
What we have had and still have is a series of governments with no vision. They should have been looking 25 years ahead, not simply to the next GE. Also, governments that seem determined to impoverish the UK via Net Zero, much too high taxation and massive over-government via Quangos, Bureaucrats, the Civil Service and the so-called Elite.
This is a sad reflection of our education system from top to bottom.
The Conservatives and Reform both need to set up policy committees with individuals who know what they are talking about because, by the next GE, the UK will be effectively bankrupt!
March 24, 2025
A great deal of the reason for the distortion you set out, must lie with the absence of any proper debate on the economy over the past fifteen years: both ‘Major’ parties, and the Liberal Democrats, have followed the same dreary path, with only the very brief interruption of Liz Truss. To make anything change we need to hear a great deal more about the much more attractive alternatives, which as you so clearly say, are there, staring us in the face. I am afraid though, I do not think that the current shadow Chancellor is the man to give the message.
March 24, 2025
335 criminals arrived in the UK yesterday; from the safe country of France …’’stopping the boats’’, ‘’smashing the gangs’’ …my arse
March 24, 2025
Dear Mr. Redwood,
The truth is that our political class (with notable exceptions) is useless. They lack belief, understanding and conviction. Thus we have:
The utter failure of both Labour and Conservatives to stop the small boats.
The establishment’s refusal to admit, let alone investigate, the cultural and racial implications of the grooming gangs scandal.
Record levels of immigration on which voters were never consulted except at election times and then ignored.
The advance of racist and misogynist woke ideologies throughout our public institutions.
Millions on benefits.
Broken infrastructure, pothole-strewn roads, calamitous NHS and the British people’s gradual impoverishment.
A not fit for purpose Army, Navy and Air Force (that is not to denigrate the individuals who serve in the Forces).
A broken economy and a broken Britain.
The British people are furious about all these things and I fervently hope will show their fury and disgust at the next general election for our venal, self-serving political class.
Rant over.
March 24, 2025
Dear Mr. Redwood,
If anyone wanted a finer example of how devious our politicians are, take the Prime Minister and his about-turn on migrant hotels just this morning.
Before the election he castigated the Conservative government in Parliament for the grotesque waste of taxpayer’s money on these hotels and promised it would end under Labour. Now, he admits that asylum-seeker hotels will be needed for years to come. It was a lie.
The claim that he would end the small boats by ‘smashing the gangs’ was another lie. It was merely an electoral ruse; a cover for the scrapping of the Rwanda scheme. Something, anything, to put in place to hoodwink the British people into voting for them.
March 24, 2025
Dear Mr. Redwood,
…and just to be fair to both Labour and the Conservatives, consider this headline this morning.
‘EU fishermen are catching hundreds of tonnes of British fish and sending it off to the EU without any inspections, British fisherman have revealed.’
Boris Johnson in October 2019: “We will take back 100% control of the spectacular marine wealth of this country.”
Michael Gove: “We will not link access to our waters to access to EU markets.”
March 24, 2025
I’m sure you would have advised Boris, Sunak, and Truss, so why did they refuse to listen while piling on these extra employees and consultants in non-front-line jobs?
It is much easier for Reform as they have no record and can claim all sorts that they would achieve if only elected, like the Lib Dems and their promise to have no tuition fees, targets that evaporate in power.
However, Boris had a big enough majority, just as Starmer has now, he could have made the changes. How do we know the people who advised him aren’t still leading the party?
Usually, when someone buys a business, they buy all the liabilities, too. However, not all of these nationalisations left their pension liabilities to the state. Those who transferred liabilities to private companies are trying to put taxpayers back on the hook. Back in 2010, BT was seeking a ruling on taxpayers’ obligations.
Reply Yes of course I advised them . Often Ministers were unaware of the big recruitment and cost build up, and their requests to cut posts and raise productivity did not but through with a bloated state.