Many of us forecast a rise in unemployment.Three months of undermining confidence last year was followed by a tax raising budget. Telling us all the UK economy was in a dire state and nothing worked was followed by a swingeing tax on jobs and a large hike in the minimum wage.No wonder job vacancies tumbled and companies decreased their workforces.
When you are in government you own the government actions and administration you inherit. Talking it down depresses staff and annoys the voters who want government to manage it better and be positive about what they manage.The government has had plenty of time to change things that were not working well Pity they changed them for the worse.
One of the reasons there is a new black hole in the finances is the big rise in unemployment, now up by a quarter from the low in summer 2024. Two of the big successes of the previous government was the near halving of unemployment during their time in office, and the introduction of Universal Credit to make it more worthwhile to work . This governments failure to extend this to disabled and to help more people into work has led to more public spending on benefits . Granting too many sick notes for life, benefits without the need to look for work, is ballooning the costs.
The government should worry about the self employed, hit by IR35, higher National Insurance and more regulations. They should be concerned about small business, put off employing people by higher taxes and the new Employment legislation .Government says it wants cheaper energy, so why press ahead with the extremely expensive renewables and more grid plans?
We still need a growth plan. We need a productivity boost in the public sector, and policies for cheaper energy and less migration that work. more unemployment is the last thing we needed, but it was baked into the disastrous first budget and into much of the preparation for the second.
November 12, 2025
Good morning.
Everything is going to plan. Remember the slogan used by Alexander Johnson of, “Build back better” ? Usually its takes a violent revolution to achieve such goals, now you use damaging policies.
The plan is to destroy the middleclass and private capital. It is not outright Communism, more something along the lines of large corporate ownership in partnership with government. And we all know what that is ? 😉
November 12, 2025
I don’t think they have a plan Mark, just dogma. They see themselves as the Faithful, who if they only observe the ‘Word’ will defeat the forces of darkness and bring paradise to an otherwise decadent society. Anyone who doesn’t follow the Word is a heretic and therefore must be denounced and stripped of all worldly goods and made to serve the cause.
Then of course, there are also the usual charlatans, conmen and hangers on – who believe in nothing and know even less.
November 12, 2025
Spot on IanT
November 12, 2025
There’s 405 men & women I would love to make unemployed to add to that figure
November 12, 2025
The last Budget could have been designed to result in Stagflation. Perhaps it was, since Two-Tier’s mission is to get us back in the EU and the easiest way to achieve that, whilst claiming he didn’t intend to do it, is to drive the economy over a cliff so that the IMF can be called in to ride to the rescue and demand we rejoin as the price of a bailout.
Non-Doms leaving; successful entrepreneurs leaving; retirees with money leaving; young people with transferable skills leaving:
Foreign students, the unskilled, low-wage and dependants entering and thousands of criminal migrants being deliberately shipped-in EVERY week.
None of this is “a mistake.” They are deliberately wrecking the economy.
November 12, 2025
They are wrecking Britain.
November 12, 2025
@Donna +1 I was going to say similar. Its part of the project, the more people moan is just seen as the project working. These guys don’t represent their constituents, the electorate, they are just doing the bidding of their foreign masters
November 12, 2025
That, dramatic as it sounds, is the only convincing explanation of what is going on.
November 12, 2025
It must be very wearing having to repeat the same old arguments year in year out and watch socialist governments repeat the same mistakes decades in and decades out if not for centuries. Why do they never learn? Dogma. Socialists always blame their opponents for their own failures and looking at history they blame their predecessors for not applying the dogma more forcefully. Soxcialism has never worked anywhere, ever. It always leads to authoritariuan tyranny. Socialists should be made to watch Brecht’s Mahagonny on loop for a week before corrective training as privates in the Armed Forces, preferably on the front line, for two years before being allowed to take office in either central or local government.
November 12, 2025
Off topic if I may: there is an urgent threat to national security now with Labour’s lawfare against former members of the armed forces services being prosecuted at the behest of former terrorists for incidents in which the soldiers did their duty in Northern Ireland decades ago. Needless to say the baleful hand of lord hermer is reportedly behind this. (the same national security-threatening human rights law has also, it is reported, led to the unbelievably foolish decision to cut intelligence sharing with the US due to Trump’s robust treatment of narco-terrorists importing killer drugs into the US). Who will want to join the armed forces, still less the special forces, with this threat hanging over them?
More low hanging political fruit and a chance to do the right thing therefore. The Conservatives and Reform should state that all enabling legislation for such lawfare will be repealed immediately by a new government and a special act of parliament will overturn any ‘guilty’ verdicts brought under labour’s vexatious lawfare. Kemi should get there first.
November 12, 2025
There is no such thing as a ‘former terrorist’.
November 12, 2025
Reeves does he growth, growth growth rain dance but all her and Ed’s policies are anti-jobs and anti-growth. Net zero, rip off energy, lack of housing, net cost immigration levels the vast tax and NI increases, the new workers rights bill, the war on non doms, the VAT on school fees, the IHT on farms and small businesses, the war on employers and small businesses, the increased stamp duty and frozen allowances, the increase shop lifting and crime levels, out two tier criminal justice and policy…
November 12, 2025
The self employed and small landlords who haven’t sold up will soon be able to fill their time by filling in digital tax returns on software costing £100s every 3 months and then another in January. Those eith a very low turnover are starting in 2027. Many will just give up and retire.
November 12, 2025
Black hole, what black hole. There’s money for Mauritius, no doubt There’s money 6 billion for his reset and futhet payments into the EU budget.
We’re being taken for fools everytime he opens his mouth itsmilliond overseas for this, that and the other. Why are we paying for tax collectors in Ethiopia.
No doubt the idiot in number 10 will agree to thousands of unemployed EU youth to come over further undermining jobs and getting subsidised university places.
We cannot go on like this. Slash and burn, total destruction.
November 12, 2025
Agree Ian, it’s the Governments priorities which are wrong.
November 12, 2025
The best solution to the BBC Trump Libel is a win win as follows.
Trump orders Starmer to ditch the Chagos deal saving £30 billion, ditch net zero, to drill, frack and mine saving circa £20 billion PA, to control the borders, cut the size if government, have a bonfire of red tape, to stop his war on free speech, stop his Two Tier Kier agenda, his war on private school and Non Doms and ditch the mad employment act.
The BBC then pay Trump $1 billion say sorry and for the Libel and his excellent advice a real growth agenda. This is less than 1% of what he had saved the UK. The BBC then defunded.
If Two Tier will not play ball then 200% US tariff perhaps.
A win win for the UK, Trump and the World!
November 12, 2025
The court case for Trump is a Godsend. It will be made pellucidly clear that the Democrats unleashed violence against ordinary people who were invited into the Capitol. They were not incited by Ztrump or anybody else.
This Court case is a win win for Trump.
He trashes the evil BBC which incited hatred against him in the U.K., against Israel, and he trashes the Democrats who are criminals.
Oh, and he gets another billion …. or more.
November 12, 2025
Separate and in addition to the unemployment numbers are more than 4 million people who are claiming Universal Credit with no requirement to seek work. I wonder what the true rate of youth unemployment is adding together both figures for that demographic.
November 12, 2025
North Yorkshire Labour mayor backs a tourist tax and says this will enable her “to invest in the area”. But can she not see that a tourist tax will give hotels etc. less money and less reason to invest in the area so less investment not more.
Then the authority will was perhaps waste 30% of the tax in admin and collection costs and they they will almost certainly invest it in something daft or negative like £14 billion plan for a major rail investment in Yorkshire. The dire (now Lord) Blunkett who had to “resign” twice in disgrace with his reputation in tatters is also a fan of this mad train “investment” too it seems.
It seems she was an actress and played a clumsy waitress Sandra opposite David Jason in A Bit of a Do and Tricia Armstrong in Coronation Street!
November 12, 2025
It’s not just the BBC self-immolating.
The globalists are in territory that they should never have reached, their avowed nirvana.
They find it’s too hot to handle.
Let’s hope there is something of the British people still standing when we come through the fire.
November 12, 2025
Labour MPs are described as planning a coup to oust Sir Keir Starmer and replace him with someone sensible, either immediately after the budget or Council elections in May. Why wait? The longer he remains in control, the worse matters will become.
November 12, 2025
And they would be better with Raynor or Milliband as PM?
November 12, 2025
The front runners are Angela Rayner and Ed Miliband. Which is your preference?
November 12, 2025
Indeed already having that with VAT for three small companies!
November 12, 2025
Be careful what you wish for. There are far worse options waiting to continue the destruction of this country.
November 12, 2025
There isn’t anyone sensible on the Labour benches.
November 12, 2025
…on the benches…. With the exception of Rupert Lowe.
November 12, 2025
Why would anyone sensible join the Labour Party or indeed the Libdims, SNP, the greens or Paid? Other than to try to con people?
November 12, 2025
In the meantime, government departments headcount grows, but gets more inefficient, their salaries increase, gold plated pensions remain, they have more sick days, and they chose where and when to work, so the cost increases.
The government (of all colours) have never really trusted the self employed or small business and so have hammered them with ever more regulations and taxation, so they are now also now failing.
With more and more people out of work or not willing to bother, the Benefits culture and cost rises.
Thus we have the triple lock of failure.
Now they are coming after your pension, savings and house.
The triple lock of legalised theft !
In the commercial World many of these Government employed people would not be able to survive.
November 13, 2025
And now massive redundancy pay-offs for huge numbers in the NHS. What a mess. Any large private business would not replace leavers; it would instead reinterview current staff and move people around. But it’s taxpayers’ funds, so who cares in the Government?
November 12, 2025
There used to be a poster on this site who quoted the number of vacancies available to counter arguments about the economy. I do not have the data but suspect that vacancies are down. We hear less and less about the skills shortage since Labour came to power.
Labour is trying to reduce spending on Access to work which supports adjustments for disabled employees, expecting companies to stand the cost themselves. At a time when too many are being paid by the taxpayer to be disabled that is an incredibly short sighted thing to do.
Minimum wage is too high, and benefits living is too comfortable so too many don’t work. If the unemployment figures are up it is partially because the figures have been poorly massaged. The number of economically inactive has remained the same.
Government policy is anti business, expecting it to carry the welfare state.
November 12, 2025
@Narrow shoulders. Annual take home pay of an adult full time worker on the minimum wage is £20,662.44. From the worker’s viewpoint this is almost certainly not “too high”. Some businesses may struggle to pay this, and naturally they will complain, and perhaps lay off or not hire staff. I don’t know what the answer is, does anyone?
November 13, 2025
Indeed then you have to take of the costs of getting to and from work and perhaps other work costs like work clothing. Even tube and bus fares can easily be £2000 off this.
The solution is lower benefits, lower taxes, far less government, relaxed planning, immigration reforms and thus cheaper housing… make work pay and make wwworrkk the only option for health people.
November 13, 2025
The gross cost of the minimum wage employee that nets £20,662.44 to the business is £12.21 x 37.5 = £457.875 x 52 = £23809.50 plus employer’s NI £2821.43 = £26,630.93. Plus SSP cover is soon to be from day 1 for every day, and Rayner wants it paying at 80% so you can bet it’s going up.
Meanwhile self-employed, no employers NI, no SSP, can cut when its quiet, offer clients lower rates, win more work. They are killing the goose.
November 12, 2025
When you put it like that Sir you have to say the Labour Party have really achieved something during their seventeen months in office haven’t they?
Can’t wait to hear and see what the next seventeen months brings….. roll on the 26th and then we can all use thanksgiving day on the 27th to celebrate our good fortune…..or not.
November 13, 2025
We will get another Growth, Growth, Growth rain dance from Rachael Reaves but all her actions will be anti-growth doom loop economics – then they will come back for even more blood to further weaken or kill the patient in a few months time.
She and Zealot Ed. either do not grasp even basic economics or they do really does want to destroy the UK economy.
November 12, 2025
But they are not — the socialist state they are creating doesn’t concern itself with individuals doing well – everyone get lumped into a pot and managed en masse. Individualism with separate priorities is not something socialism deals well with. If they can’t catch everyone in the same net then they will take away their prospects in other ways.
Anybody that suggests that this government is creating ever more adverse restrictions and disturbing repressive legislation for the good of the nation needs to realise they still have on the rose tinted glasses.
November 12, 2025
The desperation of labour MP’s is starting to swirl around Parliament. The plotting has begun. For now we’ll hear the false denials from those who see an opportunity.
After the manifesto betraying budget, there will be nowhere to hide. I sense another “night of the long knives” is coming.
November 12, 2025
As ever, episodes of ‘Yes Minister’ are a good guide as to what may happen next.
November 12, 2025
IR35 has been a productivity killer for SMEs directly and larger Companies indirectly for nearly 30 years now. It demotivates you and diverts attention to bureaucratic tax matters away from your core business and restricts growth.
NICs have the same effective result and discourage employers to hire and encourage no replacements when folk leave.
Labour are in their own “race to the bottom” flogging the entrepreneurial spirits grandstanding on sinking sands of their own stupidity.
If you don’t respect basic economics and understand the basic incentive drivers for the Strivers you don’t deserve their efforts to return the favour Miss Reeves. Simple.
November 12, 2025
@Ukret123
Well said!
Totally agree, and I believe our Host does too, but how do we get change?
Not just the Labour Party, but those (IDS) within the Conservative Party that believe in a Customs Union, strong EU alignment, and those that accept rejoining the EU! I.e the Single Market!
GB (Not with Devolution) is better off with a Enterprise Culture, using a Free Price Mechanism, and a Global Focus!
The Key is making the Economy Work (Open) for everyone, even if it means some Economic Nationalism on times!
November 13, 2025
Indeed the government is a vast creator of unproductive parasitic work and kills productive work. This with endless red tape and absurdly restrictive employment laws and absurdly complex tax rules!
November 12, 2025
Of course unemployment is surging. It’s part of the plan to de-industrialise, weaken the economy and make more people dependent upon the state. It is also designed, together with mass immigration, with particular emphasis on illegal immigrants distributed around the country, to eventually cause social breakdown. The Net Zero Strategy, based on the false idea that CO2 causes global temperature to rise and that in turn causes extreme weather events is designed to sabotage our energy, economy and national security with expensive and unreliable renewables which are undefendable from drone attack and supplied by a country our security services describe as “hostile”. The solar panels are made using slave labour and coal power and half the balsa wood for wind turbine blades come from illegal logging in the Amazonian rainforest. The plan is for economic and social breakdown to be so bad by 2029 that Parliament decides elections cannot be held.
November 13, 2025
You could well be right.
They are certainly – deliberately – creating and exacerbating the conditions which will lead to (more) civil unrest: a justification for imposing an Authoritarian State (Digital ID, Social Credit system etc)?
November 12, 2025
I always enjoy watching GB News when Barry Gardiner is taking a drubbing from the Reform opposite number. He gradually goes brighter pink as he struggles with the facts and figures. This week he claimed that high Street business were benefiting from Labour’s help. In my local London High Steet the Pie and Mash cafe, Poundland, the Lloyds bank, phone shop, white goods shop and various restaurants and pub are closed or on the way out. But the 4 charity shops are safe.
November 12, 2025
My high street is thriving …..thriving with foreign retail businesses employing foreign legal & illegal workers
November 12, 2025
Barry Gardiner, MP certainly struggles with facts and figures. He has quoted both in the HoC (30/04/2025) and on GB News that gas generated electricity costs £114/MWhr whilst electricity from offshore wind is £44/MWhr.
November 12, 2025
No actually, the Charity shops are not safe. Their warehouses and shops are full. Nothing is selling.
I went to the local shopping warehouse conglomerate. The shops are full. They have put the orders in but have lost the turnover.
People are afraid of what might be asked of them and are not spending.
November 13, 2025
I had the misfortune to have to visit Yeovil yesterday. The High St there resembles a war zone and has done for several years as they implement some kind of “grand plan” to prettify it. In the meantime, I estimate that 60% of the shops that were there when I first moved to the west country eight years ago have closed down. If the M & S goes, that will be the death knell.
November 13, 2025
Don’t be too sure. Some charity shops are even closing – Cancer research is closing 200 shops over two years! Scope are reducing none profitable location shops to save money 77 out of 138 shops after forecasting a £1.5m retail loss.
November 12, 2025
‘Thousands of NHS staff redundancies in England will now go ahead after a deal was reached with the Treasury’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3w9y9dpv5qo
But that worry, once they’ve paid all the redundancy payments, most will be re-hired throughout the NHS or as NHS consultants
November 12, 2025
A family member, a gynaecologist who lives in Hong Kong, and one of his sons are in the U.K. and going to work over Christmas. They will earn a years wages in these few weeks. Hong Kong is I believe second on the most expensive cities, behind Singapore and ahead of Sochi. Says something when a Dr can earn more out of the idiot NHS than in one of the richest places on earth.
November 12, 2025
Lynn
Payment for outside staff probably comes out of a different budget, so may not count against a certain Budget..
Think Bank Staff (NHS list of outside/self employed/agency and temporary staff) who are paid significantly more per hour than employed staff.
November 12, 2025
The employment plan with net-zero
1 lost job in the UK = 100 new slave jobs in the Asia
November 12, 2025
@glen cullen – you don’t have to guess who this parliament represents, its not the working people, its not their electorate, its not this nation. You start to believe they are being paid to do this wreaking by foreign powers – there can be no other logic or reason
November 12, 2025
Indeed. The best news I’ve heard all week, in fact in a long time, is that Starmer’s (China’s?) Chagos Surrender & Dowry Bill has been delayed until the New Year. There’s a chance yet it could be cancelled.
November 12, 2025
Labour will spin the rise in unemployment as a positive – a reduction in foreign work visas. Will they deport those here on work visas who are now unemployed? I doubt it.
November 12, 2025
The plan in action
“Sir Keir Starmer has surrendered leverage in future European Union negotiations with his 12-year fishing rights deal, peers have warned.
A report by the House of Lords’ European affairs committee said the Prime Minister’s reset deal with Brussels risked handing the bloc the upper hand in energy talks.
Under the deal struck by Labour in May, EU fishermen will get access to British waters until 2038.”
All the while our own fishing fleets are banned from fishing even the basics such as haddock etc in UK Territorial Waters the EU can take what it wants
November 12, 2025
Although your comment can serve to highlight an important point, to those that care about the Private Sector (the Left will twist your comment just as an attack on the Labour Party’s performance, given how bad they are), it is still a chance for reform, and you should be promoting a move to a free Price Mechanism again, including an Enterprize Culture. Especially, removing the remunerates of the Customs Union; Freedom destroying Universal Credit, etc,…
“The government should worry about the self employed, hit by IR35, higher National Insurance and more regulations” ?
As an ex-contractor, having been effected by IR35, and the resulting Investigation by HMRC, I would not start back until there is a a Business Friendly environment! So, until then, I’m not employed doing anything, not paying any Tax! Reform of PAYE is a must, PAYE is not something I would accept, I do not accept the loss of Freedom I gain doing different Contracts!
BR
RDM
November 12, 2025
Fast evolving situation No 10 is having to defend TwoTierKier as PM. It’s Parliament that needs to step up and defend the country from those maliciously tearing it appart. It’s not a left, right, or even a centre thing it’s a nations existence that needs saving from those causing all the damage – that means Parliament needs to do It’s duty
November 12, 2025
The country pays the price for the Chancellors bad decisions
Signs that the government is fragmenting
November 12, 2025
Don’t worry about unemployment – Martin McCluskey the energy security & net zero minister in todays HoC Energy Debate said that there are going to be hundreds of thousands of clean energy jobs soon ……very soon ?
November 12, 2025
Yes they will materialise just after the ‘clean, free energy does’.
November 12, 2025
Off topic but as Meldrew might say “I don’t believe it”.
The BBC, of all people, is showing a programme this evening which investigates why scientists think changes in the sun’s behaviour may have powerful effects on our climate. Who said they are not impartial?!!!. Maybe the science isn’t “settled”!!!
November 13, 2025
Authorised by Bill Gates – who recently dropped the Climate Alarmism, finally recognising that it was self-defeating when all the dire predictions that the world will end DON’T materialise?
Perhaps Charles Windsor will have a similar epiphany very soon?