Please can we spared the misleading presentation of the government’s budget difficulties today. Their problem is not a shortage of money to spend, but an inability to spend the money wisely. Their numbers are damaged by no growth brought on by a confidence shattering tax raising budget.
The last budget boosted spending substantially, then put up taxes and borrowings to pay for it all. The higher taxes undermined business and led to a reduced demand for new employees.
The waste of public money is distressing. Net zero subsidies and excessive capital for carbon capture and storage are a bad idea. Allowing a million young people to avoid work, training and education is not good.High Speed Rail has become High Cost rail with plenty of delays on the line.
The Chancellor needs to revolutionise the government’s management of the public sector, and rein in its poorly performing offshoots.
March 26, 2025
Good morning.
The UK could be drinking in the Last Chance Saloon if this ‘Statement’ does not go well. Confidence needs to be installed in the Markets that the government has a firm hand on the economy and that things will improve. Signs are that it is not.
Our only hope is that the US economy booms and so too what little we now export too it. This of course assumes that President Trump does not hit us with tariffs.
March 26, 2025
This Government is drinking in the last chance saloon, shame the Landlord cannot throw them out immediately!
March 26, 2025
Landlords are evil people from whom all power must be removed. You still don’t grasp the concepts!
March 26, 2025
Are you happier with ‘tenant beer and food seller’ should throw out the troublemakers?
March 26, 2025
Whenever I go to Bath I make a point of having a drink at The Raven …. where the landlord famously threw out Two-Tier when he was supporting lockdowns and the destruction of the hospitality industry.
March 26, 2025
The political class appears to be utterly detached from the reality of the UK’s dire economic predicament. That predicament is the consequence of decades of misguided policies. It will take a generation to correct but only if a government is elected that actually understands the problems, has policies to fix them and has a clear mandate to implement them. Do not hold your breath.
Do not hold your hopes too high about exporting to the USA. MAGA policies will rule. Some UK companies may be able to export even with tariffs but others will licence, partner with US companies or set up their own operations in the USA. The post WW2 settlement is dead. The sooner the UK wakes up to the new reality the better.
March 26, 2025
I disagree. Trump will give us a ‘free trade deal’ and engineer this move back to the EU off the table. The USA is now implementing the policies which made Britain. And their leaders are British genetically and love us. They will need an ‘aircraft carrier’ off the troubled continent of Europe and I think that is going to be our saving Grace.
In the mean time ‘Rachel crashed the economy’.
March 26, 2025
I think so as well.
March 26, 2025
Trump has just announced a 25% tariffs on all cars not made in the USA. The USA is an important market for UK car makers such as JLR.
March 26, 2025
@Oldtimer92 – JLR is an Indian Company, many of the cars you see that you think come from the UK actually come from the EU. Their new generation vehicles are BEV’s using Chinese sourced batteries etc. Their best selling Defender and Discovery are made in Slovakia
The UK is a large component supplier to the auto industry where they fit in is unsure as that will also hit US Manufacturers supplies
March 26, 2025
@Oldtimer92 – the bit not to lose sight of here the UK as it still takes its orders from the EU imposes 400% more tax on US cars than the US does on UK ones. The UK and its EU Masters started this trade war with their protectionist racket.
Reading between the lines Trump just wants trade to be reciprocal, then all his posturing will fade. You can only take the p… out of someone for so long, so called negotiations have just things fester
March 26, 2025
The US economy won’t boom under Trump’s tariff regime, in fact their economy is already in trouble. Starmer is to be commended in not following the EU in imposing additional tariffs on USA and China.
March 27, 2025
Tariff’s are paid by the consumer and not the producer. The fees for which are collected by the government of the importing country.
Like much else, this government along with its sycophants
clearly cannot see what an opportunity tariff’s can be and the reasons why President Trump is using them.
March 26, 2025
Yes to all that. To date there has been one fundamental ommission from No 11. That is that whatever your political inclinations you need to create wealth before you spend it. Nothing she has done to date suggests she has any basic understanding of such a concept.I anticipate a suicide note.
March 26, 2025
Indeed, every time you tax and over regulate you reduce incentives and abilities of industry for wealth creation. Thus we get the doom loop economy.
“Net zero subsidies and excessive capital for carbon capture and storage are a bad idea” says JR, indeed as is the net zero scam in general but Kemi and her Con-socialists still fully support it. Just a bit more slowly the deluded Sunak agenda. Has he corrected his lie(?) to parliament that the Covid vaccines were safe and effective yet?
March 26, 2025
Mark B we expory a lot of high value goods to the USA particularly aerospace and pharmacy. The problem will be the exporting companies are finding it too expensive and may relocate. Rolls Royce has already said it’s moving some production over there
Yesterday I went to make an appointment with my GP for an injection in the knee. The receptionist said come back next week as we haven’t had the rota for whose actually in the surgery. I said that’s unusual isn’t it
No she replied only 2 come in at any one time. There’s no wonder A&E is so crowded.
March 26, 2025
GPs are a private sector monopoly provider, of course they will try to obtain the maximum amount of money for the minimum amount of work. Streeting should nationalise them and put thjem on standard staff contracts with fixed working hours.
March 26, 2025
Agree – While GPs control the issue of medicine prescription, the NHS will never work for the people, in a free market why can’t the people be allowed to buy whatever medicine they want
March 26, 2025
This is well suspected, and tends to confirm the belief that we might as well diagnose via a ‘google’ type Q&A computer based system. Only when concerns are found should a face to face GP meeting be arranged.
Imagine the reduction in those millions of callers no longer drumming their fingers waiting on the Surgery telephone system to respond.
March 26, 2025
@Ian wragg – the Rolls Royce story is lazy media reporting. RR has spent $1Billion in recent years on just one of its US facilities, that facility is already there largest producer of RR products anywhere in the World with a 50 year order book mostly from the US Defence Department. Only around 14% shares of Rolls Royce has UK ownership, just as with BAE Systems plc the majority ownership is by the US.
The UK doesn’t do defence, the UK doesn’t do Industry that was signalled many, many years ago. For the UK to have an economy needs money sloshing around in its home market – that is not allowed. The UK to have an export capability it needs and Industrial base – that has been banned. The so-called service Industry is just a shadow industry easily replaced with AI
The ‘Great Reset’ as decreed and agreed with by Two Tier Kier one of its most ardent disciples would now seem to be unstoppable
March 26, 2025
If they are anything like my doctors, you will find they only do a 16 hour week each. They get so much money now they can afford to be semi retired. My sister was in her surgery yesterday and asked for an appointment to be made. No, said the receptionist, go home and phone in tomorrow. This is typical and suggests why the NHS is in such a state. They should be paid on appointments seen, not how many people are on the books, especially with the thousands of new houses going up everywhere – money for nothing in effect. They are laughing all the way to the bank whilst shoving their work on to colleagues in the hospitals.
March 27, 2025
A high proporton of GPs are taking the P, pushing their tasks down the heirachy of surgery staff, its been going on for years. WFH taken to the ultimate.
March 26, 2025
My Council Tax Bill came in the post yesterday. Up 4.99% from last year. Apparently the increase is due to the rise in ‘adult care’ and homelessness. Two thirds of its budget. With library’s, bin collection and parks making up the other third.
Why do I have to pay for other peoples care ? Should that not be the responsibility of their family members ?
March 27, 2025
But the NHS doesn’t do much else for the funding the workers have contributed over their lives. Healthcare is becoming private care or nothing.
March 26, 2025
We are seeing the delivery of socialism, red in tooth and claw. The funding given to the feckless the lazy and the unproductive via government handout has now become unsustainable. Businesses needed to generate wealth are closing due to state costs. Others are simply calling it a day because the crime rates/theft of stock is unsustainable. The pain of employing staff maintaining state reporting, accounting and maintenance of plant property and records has destroyed profits, and destroyed the reason to be in business.
Wealth flight is happening. The impoverishing of the nation is happening. The mystery s why the international measures are holding up in this cascade of negativity delivered by Rachel from accounts. Truss was pitched out in weeks by the markets and the BoE pressure. How and why is Reeves still there destroying the economy?
Is it because she can turn round and say, “you think I am bad wait till you see what my colleague Ed Miliband will cost you in living costs and shuttered businesses”….
Miliband believe it r not is the darling pf the Party with the highest approval records in a recent survey of cabinet competence. He is the most popular minister with the highest positive rating of the entire Labour front bench?
That is the scale of the public delusion we are up against.
March 26, 2025
Whatever happened to the “fun” of running a business?
March 26, 2025
Fun like humour is not allowed in socialist totalitarian governments. Welcome to Starmer’s idea of utopia, a joyless hell without profit and without excitement.
March 26, 2025
RE : “Miliband……is the most popular minister with the highest positive rating of the entire Labour front bench? That is the scale of the public delusion we are up against.”
Note, however, this was a rating for Labour Party members/supporters and not the general population. So in this group will be 1) Turkeys voting for Christmas who read/watch nothing else but the Guardian and the BBC and have succumbed to the “telling a big enough lie often enough and people will believe it” tactic, 2) Renewable energy/Net Zero grifters who are paid/earning very large salaries to keep them loyal (as the EU does) and 3) Traitors/hostile foreign activists.
March 26, 2025
This government is not Labour but Marxist.
March 27, 2025
and the electorate is starting to wake up.
March 26, 2025
The frogs in the apocryphal cauldron don’t jump out of the warming water until it’s too late, because they don’t recognise the danger.
In our case a majority of the population recognise things are wrong but we have nowhere to jump. There is no escape. Only the super-rich “nowheres” can move themselves and their assets elsewhere and watch the disaster unfurl from afar.
March 26, 2025
Oh the ordinary British have been jumping for years. Many will be able to afford the US gold card @ £3.8 million.
Starmer is looking down the barrel of the gun. Interesting to see what he does – he had no idea that MAGA policies would be so popular with Democrat voters! But they are!
If he saves the Labour Party with this insight, and we manage to expel FIDO (Farage) so that a proper Conservative Party can be established, it will need heavyweights JR. You.
Those proposing remain good hearted and well meaning, but they need to lean on people like you. (And me – Andrew Bridgen has the Conservative oak overlaid in the Ukrainian flag. – I have been right about Farage and I have been right about Russia/Ukraine – I’m right about Israel too – informed Witkoff says so!)
March 27, 2025
Our saviour, hail Lynn.
March 26, 2025
In my opinion, the first thing we need to do is to decide precisely what we want our government to do and what we don’t want them to do for us. It seems to me the tentacles of government are now encroaching into every aspect of our lives. Personally I feel that our government should concentrate on our country and our people rather than interfering in other nation’s problems.
March 26, 2025
Whatever the rights and wrongs of the new Labour government so far, one thing is obvious – Reeves is severely constrained by the ginormous national debt. Now £2.4TRILLION and 100% of GDP, the annual interest payments are over £150 billion, which are currently financed by further borrowings. These are then added to the debt. We have been living beyond our means for generations and Reeves has the bond vigilantes watching her every move
Whichever way you look at it, unless a huge and unlikely level of “growth” is achieved, spending cuts and/or tax rises are inevitable. Sir John has indicated many sensible ideas to reduce borrowings, such as preventing the BoE selling QE debt at a loss and scrapping the fossil fuel industry’s carbon capture and storage scam. To which I would add that discarding a lot more useless and obscure QUANGO’s would be effective in reducing government spending
March 26, 2025
Re last sentence. Indeed. Shame the Tory/LibDem party that professes to claim sound money, small government did precisely the opposite for umpteen years previously.
March 26, 2025
As I switched on Talk radio this morning, Mike Graham was saying that Rachel Reeves is going to be announcing the next stage of the total destruction of our economy.
Looking on, that’s certainly what it seems like; everything she’s announced so far has been detrimental to Britain and her people. Some say its incompetence, but is it?
March 26, 2025
The American economy is now showing signs of stress. Job losses, credit tightening and collapsing consumer demand are already reshaping the economy, with economic fundamentals showing that a downturn is well underway.
Full-time private-sector employment peaked in April 2022 and there has been a continued string of downward revisions to payrolls throughout 2024. Job losses began last year with layoff data showing 172,000 cuts in February alone, most of which were in the private sector. Americans are already changing their lifestyles – cutting back on dining out, skipping vacations, delaying white goods purchases.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s most recent survey of consumer expectations showed that the mortgage refinance rejection rate rose to 25.6% in Q4 2024, the highest level since the survey began in 2013. The same survey also reported a sharp rise in application denials for credit cards and auto loans. This may be the start of a classic credit crunch.
The recent tariff-related 10% market correction may be the start of a deeper market pullback. Those with pensions in drawdown should take note. The smart money is selling.
March 26, 2025
The UK is rapidly becoming a Failed State.
The failure has been caused by the entire Establishment, not just this appalling Government. Two-Tier and Reeves are simply carrying on the process they inherited from the last appalling Government and the ones before that.
The last hope this country had was Mrs Thatcher and she was destroyed by the Establishment for daring to offer an alternative future than the one planned.
Liz Truss tried to rescue the situation and the Establishment stopped her.
It isn’t just the waste of public money which is distressing. Watching the Traitors Within deliberately destroy a nation is far worse.
March 26, 2025
All true although we should not overlook that Wrecker Reeves is merely the latest in a too long line of failing Chancellors, lacking visions and grip.
There were some very sound and welcome measures in the budget proposals you made here several years ago now, not least removing VAT from electricity, that remain to be adopted.
How long will we have to wait to get an adroit Chancellor?
March 26, 2025
Who would actually want to start a business in the UK at the moment ?
Not many for sure, for the simple reason it is not worth the effort, because risk-reward is totally out of balance with the cost of risk being far, far too high, against any possible and eventual reward.
March 26, 2025
How can you achieve the ‘Great Reset’ without destroying the very fabric of Society? Destroying the ability to respond to events, destroying resilience, destroying self-reliance?
The Chancellor or more correctly Starmer and the collective responsibility Cabinet will do nothing to change course it is clearly part of the plan, their collective power, with full support of Parliament. Ideological Terrorism hasn’t reached its peak yet
March 26, 2025
It’s a national disaster that too few recognize, and just one side of the coin. The other side, the destruction, is just as painful.
More than 200,000 businesses have closed in the last year because of Starmer’s policies
How much longer are we going to put up with this rogue government doing all it can to eradicate our culture, our economy and our ability to provide for ourselves?
With the Spring offensive upon us for which we have no defence against we know things will only get worse.
Where is the plan to save Britain?
March 26, 2025
To sum up.
Net zero, DEI, ESG, #BeKind
Capital should move to profitable activity, not mandated “schemes”. We should be able to call out idleness and favouritism when we see it (including nepotism).
March 26, 2025
Ironically, the current government has a better chance of making the public sector more efficient than the previous government.
Despite the previous government being socialist in nearly all aspects, it was still labelled as Conservative and that was enough to prevent any meaningful attempts at reforming the civil service.
We saw previously how such attempts were defeated by leaked accusations of bullying by ministers and other measures to discredit the government. Socialist media was happy to feature these stories prominently.
The BBC and other socialist media are much more tuned into the Labour Party and will allow them more room to get these things done.
March 26, 2025
I wonder if the chancellors statement will include the full cost net-zero
March 26, 2025
Once again I have to depart from the “It’s all Rachel Reeve’s fault” line because while she has undoubtedly made the problems worse the core of them long predate her coming into office, and they also long predate the Ukraine war and the Covid pandemic and the Brexit referendum and George Osborne’s “austerity”, and they go right back to 2008 when the Labour party was last in power. Something happened then, as Sir Jonathan Portes remarked in his contribution to a conference held in January 2024. mentioned here:
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2025/02/24/paying-for-better-defence/#comment-1500779
and another contributor, Stephen Hunsaker, said the same thing, page 8 here:
https://purehost.bath.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/313094908/UKICE-The-State-of-the-UK-Economy-2024-Report.pdf
“The UK’s economic performance since the 2008 financial crisis has been extremely poor in historical terms, although in relative terms it is not that different from other large European economies, which have also seen relatively slow growth. It is therefore likely to be driven by a combination of UK-specific factors and broader European trends. By contrast, the gap between the US and advanced European economies, including the UK, has widened sharply.”
But while they see the global financial crisis as the pivotal event in 2008 which is still acting as a drag on our economy sixteen years later I’m now inclined to pin it on the near unanimous decision by MPs that preventing the planet overheating is a more important mission for the UK government than growing the UK economy.
March 26, 2025
US intelligence has released its annual threat assessment report: it has a major impact on the British Government priorities and therefore spending decisions. I think there will be peace created by Trump and Putin – maybe worldwide. I don’t believe there will be a traditional hot inter-country war.
Key points:
– Russia has seized the initiative on the front lines in the past year and can therefore extract the concessions it wants on the terms of a settlement in the talks to end the war, although it will not be able to get all of its terms met;
– A war of attrition plays to Russia’s advantage and will lead to a gradual but steady weakening of Kiev’s position on the battlefield, regardless of any attempts by the US or its allies to impose new and higher costs on Moscow;
– Continuing the war in Ukraine increases the strategic risks for the US of inadvertent escalation to a large-scale war and the use of nuclear weapons, increased instability among NATO allies, especially in Central, Eastern, and Northern Europe, and a more emboldened China and North Korea;
– Russia has so far been able to recruit enough new troops and will be able to maintain its advantage in firepower over Ukraine;
– Putin and Zelensky are interested in negotiations to end the war, but the Russian president is likely to be attuned to the potential for a protracted conflict that the Russian economy can sustain, and Zelensky probably understands that his position is weakening, the future of Western aid is uncertain, and a ceasefire may ultimately be necessary;
– Zelensky and Putin both believe that the risks of a longer war are less than the risks of an unsatisfactory settlement.
– For Ukraine, ceding territory to Russia without significant security guarantees from the West could cause an internal backlash and future uncertainty.
No comment, just text.
March 26, 2025
Apart from an incompetent PM and Chancellor, an ineffective and misguided Foreign Secretary, and an utterly delusional Energy Secretary, this government has no sensible PMs sitting behind it on the green benches.
2TK is making some of the right noises but even if he wanted to follow very sensible policies, he is hamstrung by several hundred very left wing MPs sitting behind him. That is the reason why Miliband is their most popular minister !
What Starmer needs to do to get the economy moving is to postpone net zero for at least a decade, or ideally scrap it altogether, get the car industry back building clean diesel and petrol cars, and make us energy secure by using our own oil and gas to the full. At the same time he should trust our own own industrial companies by immediately placing an order for the first five or ten SMRs with Rolls-Royce. This will create a whole new industry which will bring in billions in export orders. Get the first few working and we can build dozens more.
Nobody talks about the balance of payments any more, (why not ?) but it will be devastated if we continue to import increasing amounts of gas and oil rather than produce it ourselves, Then, of course, there is the huge amount of lost tax income if we leave our own oil and gas in the ground.
We do not need any more wind or solar farms because we need 100% reliable energy, and the equipment is manufactured in China. Changing track will save billions in upgrading the grid, which is impossible on Miliband’s proposed timescale, anyway. Because the SMRs can be built where the power is needed, rather than hundreds of miles away, it won’t be necessary to run hundreds of miles of pylons across our green and pleasant land.
It won’t happen, of course, because the Marxists and green loonies are now calling the shots and the ministers in charge, from the top down, are just not up to the job.
March 27, 2025
Two-Tier is a “very left wing MP.” What makes you think he is otherwise?
March 27, 2025
We’ve always know that Starmer has been keeping his leftie credentials well hidden, but he certainly isn’t as far left as many of his MPs, who would much rather have McDonald, Long-Bailey or Corbyn as PM.
That is his biggest problem and why he will find it very difficult to abandon Net Zero and fire Miliband who, amazingly, we know to be the most popular minister amongst back benchers. Indeed, if there was a vote, Red Ed would probably beat Starmer to the leadership.
March 26, 2025
Here are a series of Ghost Suggestions as to what the U.K. requires.
1. A complete rewrite of the tax book from 20,000 pages and7 volumes to only twice Singaporean size of a reputed 500 pages.
2. The total abolition of all Nett Zero requirements.
3. The removal of all DEI requirements.
4. An employment contract for all civil servants national and local.
5. All civil servants national and local to be responsible for their own pension provision, just as are the self employed.
6. An industrial tax regime that incentivises industry. For example, a tax reduction to to make ICE vehicles Euro7 or 10% better than Euro6, while not destroying their market desirability’s
7. A total rethink of the welfare budget to concentrate better welfare on those in real need. The rest work or starve.
7. Entering the UK illegally is a crime. Set up POW style military prisons to incarcerate such criminals offering chain gang labour or return to country of origen. Aimed to be a disincentive.
8. No legal aid to criminals in 7 and the predatory legal profession who suck the teat.
9. An end to the ECHR judgements in the U.K.
10. Abolition of the Supreme Court and judges reverted to the supremacy of Parliament.
11. Removal of all EU law from our statute book and the return of NI to full U.K. membership.
12. The U.K. educational curriculum requirement to be legally enforceable.
13. Only English and Scottish law allowed to operate within the U.K.
14. The English language and Christianity to be the only pillars of English culture.
15. The referendum to become an accepted tool of U.K. governance. Parliamentarians cannot be trusted with major subjects like Nett Zero, HS2 or the Chagos Islands future. They have demonstrated such.
16. Immediate reversion to our own energy sources with a business plan for end users that at least delivers energy at 75% lower cost. Kick off a Rolls Royce SMR programme for 2030 onwards.
That should make a difference to our personal GDP and position in the real world, but don’t expect a word of it from Rachael in accounts.
March 26, 2025
This is from September 2022:
https://niesr.ac.uk/blog/why-uk-productivity-low-and-how-can-it-improve
“The United Kingdom’s economy has been plagued by anaemic productivity growth since the 2008-09 global financial crisis. Between 1974 and 2008, the UK’s productivity grew at an average rate of 2.3% a year, a much higher rate than the growth rate between 2008 and 2020 at around 0.5%. This is a substantial slowdown, unparalleled in the period of the country’s economic history for which we have decent measures of economic aggregates (from the mid-18th century onwards).”
But then we have never before decided to shut down productive activities simply because they involve the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and by one theory that might cause the planet to get too hot.
March 26, 2025
Today’s spring statement shows this government’s inability to grasp the nettle. Most of the claimed savings are waffle and will not happen. No serious attempt to cut government spending, and the forecast surpluses are a joke.
Utterly incompetent Socialists whom will bankrupt the UK.
No cut in Net Zero spending, and happy to buy solar panels made with slave labour. No interest in supporting UK manufacturers, even if that meant waiting a bit longer to buy UK-made solar panels!
A government which is an utter shambles in less than a year.
March 26, 2025
129 criminals arrived in the UK yesterday; from the safe country of France …UK government policy and benefits is the pull factor
March 26, 2025
GC : “…UK government policy and benefits is the pull factor”
That’s why it’s in place.
March 27, 2025
This is why it’s in place: UN Agenda 2030. This UN pro-immigration film explains the policy in language an 8 yr old could understand.
The British Government is fully signed up to Agenda 2030 and is implementing the immigration policy against the wishes of the British people, as stated in several General Elections. So is the EU, which is why Ireland is currently being overwhelmed by economic migrants. Trump has called a halt to it in the USA.
https://migrationnetwork.un.org/videos/migration-and-2030-agenda
March 27, 2025
Thanks for the link Donna