Eighteen months ago a new government was elected. They swept in to office full of the joys of growth. Growth is all you need, they sang.The new government won by telling everyone they were going to go for faster growth. If they could grow faster there would be more jobs and better paid jobs. Many more people would be better off. Many more would come to like them and want to vote for them. It was a great big idea.
How stupid the last government had been, they said. They had gone for austerity, depressing growth. They had not paid people enough leading to strikes and too little improvement in living standards. How easy it would be. Just spend some more and more people could be better off. If people were paid more they would spend more. If they spent more companies would have more business. They would create more jobs . Growth is all you need.
It feels like years ago as the government soon managed to double inflation, get unemployment up with public borrowing costs through the roof. The government won a huge majority because voters were very fed up with the old government they replaced. It was always a loveless win, with the government sweeping the board but only getting a third of the votes. After a year their poll ratings had halved. People wanted all that growth and happiness they had been promised. Instead they were lectured on how they had voted the wrong way on Brexit, had too much money which they should give to the state, and should understand it was all the fault of the last government and of the rich.
They were warned that they could not simply spend lots more. They told the jeremiahs that was old thinking. Of course they could spend more, as their friends in the Treasury and Bank would fix it for them. All that lovely extra public spending would magic the health waiting lists away, let workers spend more in the shops, and give us a boost from wonderful public investments. The rich would have to pay a little bit more tax in carefully set out ways, but that was only fair.
There were some nasty fiscal rules left over from the age of austerity. They would fix those. And so they did. The officials obligingly said they could get away with a bit more spending and borrowing, as long as the spending was for investments. The bond dealers would not like it if they simply borrowed more for day to day bills.
The government busied itself with finding investments it could make. They wanted to be builders, not blockers. They proposed loads of new social homes, carbon capture and storage projects and plenty of renewable energy. They decided to press on with the huge public investment they inherited for a new railway line from London to Birmingham which had become a by word for waste and incompetence. They decided to take on all the losses of the Scunthorpe steel industry, speed up the compensation for the badly run Post office and to complete the nationalisation of the railways. Spending the money was the easy bit. Other people’s money would fix it. Growth was all you need.
As they had promised to settle all the strikes in the public sector they made big pay awards. They thought these would buy them peace with their friends in the Unions. Instead the Unions came back for more. Ministers had forgotten to ask for any improvements in working practices and quality for all the extra pay. The Unions were in no mood to help them grow or to modernise.
So when they got into office they told people everything was broken and needed to be changed. They told everyone it was worse than they thought so it would cost more to fix than they had said. They would tax the rich and spend some more so all could be transformed.
They spent weeks trying out all sorts of ways of taxing people more. Instead of them becoming more popular and growing faster, people were afraid. Businesses stopped investing and hiring. People saved more.Growth stopped and confidence was low.
In the run up to their first budget they set out a whole range of possible tax rises,. They realised early if they wanted to spend more even with their laxer rules they would need more tax revenue. They promised this would be a one and done set of tax rises. They said it would not break their popular Manifesto promise not to put up Income Tax, VAT and National Insurance, the three taxes that raise most of the money. Unfortunately all the talk of tax rises to come over a long run up to a late budget hit the economy. Savers saved more. Businesses cancelled or delayed investments and new jobs. People put off buying new homes and cars. The economy sank. Instead of their bold investment led plans leading to confidence and growth the economy fell into a stupor of fear.
The budget itself was worse than people expected. The tax on working farms led to big protests and to people withdrawing from growing food. Food prices were rising too fast and less food was going to be available. Businesses stopped creating new jobs and let their workforces decline as people left, as they could not afford the big rise in the tax on jobs. The big rise in National Insurance to be paid for by employers looked like a break in the promise, and was for the self employed who had to pay more anyway. Small businesses were clobbered. Private schools were hit with VAT leading to 50 closing.
After the budget unemployment went on rising month after month. Job vacancies plunged and businesses held off investing. Some companies announced they were cancelling their investment plans and going elsewhere with their money. Richer people left the country in large numbers to go an live with a government elsewhere who would let them keep more of their own money. It is leading directly to a second Groundhog budget.
It is not possible to tax your way to growth and prosperity. The public sector is not productive enough and lets the country down with the gross mismanagement of HS2, the Post Office and many others. If another budget shifts more money from private to public sectors, it will continue the transfer from more productive to less productive with a negative impact on real incomes and jobs.
November 21, 2025
Good morning
Political party makes promises in its manifesto and, once in office, goes and does the opposite. This is not news. In fact, it is really old news.
The direction of travel is obvious – To engineer crisis’s by which unpopular and undemocratic policies can be implemented. In this case, closer ties to the EU. Rejoin in all but name.
No one can be this bad and this stupid given all the numerous historical examples that Socialist economic policies do not work.
As stated here recently and by myself years before – It is the 1970’s all over again. Only this time there will be no, Mrs.T to save us.
November 21, 2025
A growth, growth, growth rain dance yet all Reeves policies are clearly antigrowth. More government, more red tape, rip off net zero energy, more taxes, more benefits so work does not pay…
Meanwhile for nearly 1/4 of a £billion pounds we get the moronic Hallett inquiry. “We should have locked down earlier” she absurdly says. How dim can she be? All the lockdowns could ever do was delay a few deaths in the very elderly by a months or three. But for the healthy and young they also delayed free far earlier natural “vaccinations” (ones that worked) the overall effect was this hugely negative. This even before the vast cost of lockdowns and other negative effects. Sweden had the right approach and better figures that even they fell for the net harm “unsafe and ineffective vaccines”. We know this from the stats where these are bing released. In the UK they are hiding them (by vaccination status) as they almost certainly know just how damning they are.
Hallett may be a pleasant old lass but an appalling choice by Boris for this job. She was a court of appeal judge before this job. We know that six court of appeal judges have twice refused Lucy Letby her appeal despite her 15 convictions all being clearly unsafe to say the least.
When charges they hide any previous record (and proven convictions) from the jury and yet they can charge Letby with 15 offences at one trial? How can this be fair the jury surely often conclude they have charged her with 15 murders or attempted murders must surely be something in it? The convictions are very clearly unsafe for all who read about them. Alas not the deluded six appeal court judges who will not even give her an appeal!
November 21, 2025
“All the lockdowns could ever do was delay a few deaths in the very elderly by a months or three.”
The average age of death from Covid was 83. “Follow The Science”, they said and this was pushed by our agitprop MSM. It was swallowed whole despite it being only modelling and since it was called “The Science” no other views were allowed and hence clearly it wasn’t science. It was yet another false socialist driven “Follow The Science” destructive ideology we have seen from Lysenkoism to CAGW (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming). There is no climate crisis caused by burning the cheap, abundant and reliable source of energy which has brought about the Industrial Revolution and, for those countries and cultures who embraced it, massively improved health and wealth.
November 22, 2025
A lot of those deaths were “hurried along” … DNRs and a cocktail of morphine and midazolam were used extensively … and the invasive artificial respirators did far more harm than good for many people.
November 21, 2025
Yesterday Lee Anderson published a quizzes.
Bangladeshi couple living in Tower Hamlets given ILR. Man cannot work due to bad back claims attendance allowance, wife also not working claims carers allowance to look after him.
How much do they get annually in benefits
£30,000
£40,000
£50,000
Ten points if you guessed the highest figure.
Then liebour and the uniparty tells us the Triple Lock is unsustainable. My pension is £11,500pa after a full 47 years paying NI.
There’s plenty of low hanging fruit ready for picking in the welfare system. It seems a certain cohort are exempt from contributing.
November 21, 2025
On the first full day of winter as I type wind generation has dropped from 14gw to 5gw and falling. We will be importing the shortfall as we don’t have enough capacity installed. CCGT and nuclear are generating 72% and imports are a staggering £188 per mwh. This is what happens when you go all out on a failed technology with a full on communist incharge of energy policy. We’re teetering on the edge of rolling power cuts.
Welcome to 21st century Britain.
November 21, 2025
Later on today when the sun goes down and solar stops will be the test. Demand will be high and the wind farms will be becalmed.
November 21, 2025
As at 5:30pm – solar 0%, wind 24%, nuclear other 17%, interconnectors 8% and gas 51% …..god bless fossil fuels
November 21, 2025
Perhaps the Telegraph (or even better the Sun) might publish these numbers each day.
It’s the only way to educate.
November 21, 2025
Perhaps the BBC can put up a little stage for the Pm to come and read the daily figures to us and tell us to ‘switch off to save the State’.
November 21, 2025
+1 on both postings Ian.
November 21, 2025
Importing energy is a national disgrace
November 21, 2025
+1
November 21, 2025
@Ian Wragg – What! you cant live on £221 per week?
The trouble is the Conservatives took away your earn’t right to your pension, no matter what you were forced to pay in, what you get out is the Government discretionary benefit payment. This removal was retrospective 47 years of payment down the drain. If there was an once of honesty they could have at least returned your payments with interest.
If only National Insurance was just that and not more tax take by despots
November 21, 2025
It’s Keynsian economics applied by a government that doesn’t really understand it. They don’t realise that it’s about inflation and the difference between nominal and Real wages. Just classical economics.
November 21, 2025
@ MarkB: Perhaps they are “that bad and that stupid”. Even the New Statesman more or less suggested it recently in a recent article, and a supporting YouTube video, about bond vigilantes. Among other things they report that as recently as last September a special adviser in No 10 asked “What are gilt yields?”. The NS quotes one bond market investor as calculating that each Labour MP who voted against fiscal consolidation, such as by limiting welfare payments, cost the country £1 billion by pushing up bond yields. In the NS article another describes the government as like children playing with a nuclear reactor. In short: clueless, useless and hopeless.
November 21, 2025
And very dangerous.
November 21, 2025
@Oldtimer92 – have you thought they could also be the ones playing the market, playing it for personal profit. Its a bit like the profits being made from those buying BoE bonds in the BoE’s sell off’s.
November 21, 2025
I agree; this isn’t a mistake. It’s the Remainers and the Treasury / Bank of England / OBR etc determined to “prove” that Brexit ruined the economy, as they erroneously predicted it would.
We already see Two-Tier attempting to effectively reverse Brexit by dragging us closer and closer to the corrupt Brussels Empire …. nicely set up for him by Sunak’s Windsor Treachery.
November 21, 2025
Of course they are stupid enough to think that this time their policies will win through, prove successful and therefore popular. They had to trap us into voting for them , but it was for our own good. These are really stupid people and their relationship with ‘the elite’ is a long distance one.
Actually I am begining to think that there is a Mr L to save us.
He is building support from the ground up. He is displaying his politics for all to see, nailing his colours to the mast. Whistleblowers are going to him in droves. He is asking for support. When he has many ‘members’ I believe he will call for candidates and launch a party.
Indeed we need to coalesce around something and I can se no spark of hope anywhere else. Long ago he phoned me about the BDI.
Mr Lowe has taken one of the core BDI ideas stolen from Edward Heath ‘on critical issues for a cross party majority’. Constitutional issues and upholding the sovereign independence and supremacy of the native population in their own country should NOT divide us.
I believe the second of the core BDI strategies, ‘let candidates identify themselves by signing up to the principles on pain of taking the Chiltern Hundreds if they renege – and the contract is with their own electorate NOT the King In Parliament’. (Because the people can sack them and although the king in Parliament means the People, neither the People or the MP seem to know this).
Great movements are built brick by brick, hard and thankless work, over decades. Not by slick TV appearances and the slick and shallow words of Narcissists.
But there is hope.
November 21, 2025
They take us for fools ….we’re just their minions
November 21, 2025
Your site is failibg to register posted comments and the suggests my posting is too fast.
November 21, 2025
The simple solution to the Governments problems was to spend less, but more wisely, to reduce waste and inefficiency in the various government systems/departments so as to get more bang for your Buck !
Any sensible family or company in financial trouble seeks to reduce their fixed overheads where they can, whilst retaining existing or increasing productivity. Variable overheads can be allowed to increase if productivity rises.
Overtime rates paid for extra hours worked will actually cost a Company less per hour, because the fixed costs remain the same, and are covered within the normal working week.
Thus it is better financially to have your workers being paid more per hour for doing overtime (if you have enough extra work), than to employ more people, and increase your fixed costs.
Those workers also benefit, as they get a better hourly rate for any overtime worked, which also increases their ability to spend more on the things they need or want for their family.
Unfortunately Governments tend to do the opposite of the above, and simply employ more and more people which tends to make it less productive, which raises its fixed costs.
Thus because not a single cabinet Minister has ever run their own business, with their own money at stake, they do not have a clue what they are doing financially.
November 21, 2025
@Berkshire Alan. – you live in a family, a community, a neighbourhood, like the rest of the majority of UK households, that understand the simplest basic maths. You budget, you spend what your budgeting allows.
How the education system in the UK fails its students
November 21, 2025
The government is doing an awful job and most people know it, which is reflected in their approval ratings. Most people are split on how to fix it. While 30% (rising) reckon Reform is the answer, 66% don’t. 19% think Labour will somehow solve its own problems (or keep giving them money), 18% prefer the Tories, 17% Libdems, and 12% (rising) Greens.
November 21, 2025
Wanderer. I listened to the speech given by the Green Party leader Polanski. He speaks absolute nonesense and is a fully paid up communist. It’s amazing that the18 to 24year old think he’s some sort of Messiah.
We really are circling the drain.
I do believe Farage and Tice have most of the answers but defeating the Blob will be difficult.
November 21, 2025
Those same 18 to 24 years olds (although a different cohort) think Farage is the answer. Read into that what you will.
November 21, 2025
I just hope the 18 to 24 year olds recognise the continuous shambles of Governments, and will vote for a real change, not moving deckchairs.
November 21, 2025
We will have 4 grandchildren in the 18 -24 age range in 3 years time.
I don’t have the courage to ask them yet of their voting intentions, I might be totally depressed at the response, the most likely answer ‘I won’t bother to vote’.
November 21, 2025
With 12% rising for Greens, that just proves to me that far too many think that there is such a thing as a ‘free lunch’.
A free lunch, and free leisure drugs of your choice to tune out and live in fantasy land while everything around you sinks even further into the mire. All of course, paid for by the rich we are told.
The Greens are the people who are going to save our environment, but will have virtual open borders!!
I presume slapping ‘green/sustainable’ on the masses of concrete poured into the earth for housing the world will be enough?
November 21, 2025
If every billionaire in the country had their entire wealth stolen from them by the state it would not pay for the NHS for more than 9 months.
November 21, 2025
The NHS spend just this year expected to be > £200bn. Do we have 200 billionaires, even the ones that several £billions.?
November 21, 2025
But they are not targeting the billionaires but the strivers, savers, investors and everyone else who cannot afford the financial advisors, keep rich schemes and/or to jump to another country.
November 21, 2025
dixie
And they do it because they can, but our kids have learnt that lesson, at our expense, and have said why now bother to plan to live within your means, save, invest, and strive to purchase a decent house, if the Government are going to eventually legally steal it from you !
November 21, 2025
The only solution is growth. So far less government, far less red tape, cheap on demand non net zero energy, ditch net zero and have incentives to work rather than, as now, incentives to do nothing, life off benefits or leave! Reeves, Kier, Milibraim, Lammas need huge U turns in every area from the current Labour lunacy.
November 21, 2025
You can also go to the other side of the balance sheet and reduce the ‘eaters’. Last in first out!
November 21, 2025
These figures tell us that nobody knows what to do. These are drowning men clutching at straw men.
November 21, 2025
The only growth Labour has ever been interested in, is the growth of the state and the growth of people’s dependency on it.
I get fed up with hearing or reading about the creation of better jobs, with better pay.
It just seems like another buzz phrase and most jobs will likely go to people from elsewhere anyway, especially if many companies are foreign owned.
The refusal to train our own people in key areas is yet another false economy and serves a double purpose of ensuring we can no longer be self reliant but needing a never ending supply of foreign workers. So they get to smash the nation as it was that they’ve always despised, win-win and growth in the direction they desire.
Creating an underclass of the heritage population and a rising middle class population of foreign workers who can and will leave whenever the grass looks greener elsewhere.
The only person in politics I’ve ever heard point this out in a round about way is Suella Braverman
November 21, 2025
All clear observations Sir John, you forgot one area where the current government was also long on talk but short on action. They were going to smash the gags remember? The ongoing scandal of illegal migrants crossing the Channel has been allowed to continue without any slow down. The costs now impacting the nation to accommodate and deal with the invasive number of mostly young fit men, is dragging the social services down and creating tensions across the country.
The growth we were endlessly promised has been delivered when it comes to cost of illegal immigration.
November 21, 2025
Labour’s handling of the economy with their public sector pay increases, benefits handouts and increased taxes is more like a growth, feeding off a healthy body than growth.
November 21, 2025
They were living on capital, but that has run out so now they are living on credit.
You know what comes next. The sooner the Government is crippled the better for the rest of us.
November 21, 2025
There’s a lot to be said for bringing in technocrats from the IMF or somewhere else to run things for us as it’s obvious we have lost our way and may need some help to get us out of this one – it looks like taking back control hasn’t worked
November 21, 2025
Worked for Covid! The experts very nearly broke Britain.
Let’s give the experts, with their narrow perspective another bash.
Who wants a homeland anyway….
November 21, 2025
Twas the night before budget, when all through the land Not a business was investing, not even a benefits charity; The taxes were collected from companies with zeal In hopes that national debt soon would not be there;
The befits recipients and sick were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of free money danced in their heads; And Rachel in her kerchief, and Kier on his knee, Had just settled on how to take more from me,
November 21, 2025
If they really wanted growth, they would not have done everything they possibly could to ensure we didn’t get it and the economy would tank. What they actually did was implement policies which could have been designed to cause Stagflation (and probably were).
Ignore what they say and watch what they do.
I’m prepared to believe that Rachel from Complaints didn’t really understand the impact “her” policies would have since she’s massively under-qualified and under-experienced for the job of Chancellor. But the uniformly Remainer, left-wing, “Gordon Brown” approved goons in the Treasury, B of E, OBR etc did understand. And they pushed policies which even a succession of lefty Not-a-Conservative-Chancellors rejected..
The Treasury / Establishment wants us back in the EU. They have, and are, deliberately orchestrating the policies which they think will achieve it.
November 21, 2025
Forget the EU. It’s finished! Ursula made a speech to an empty ‘parliamentary’ chamber last week. Everyone in the EU knows it’s finished. Germany is kaput. It will leave NATO. Thank God it has no energy to manufacture and sustain the biggest standing Army in Europe!
They face the internationalised intafada shortly and they will be defeated.
Let’s save the U.K.
November 21, 2025
France and Germany the two that fund the EU are in serious financial trouble, the EU want us back because they want our money, and when I say ours I mean you, me and the rest of the population, because the Government is banckrupt of both money and ideas.
November 21, 2025
was it ever thus?
November 21, 2025
Big secret, we (you and me) have no money either….
Personally I will burn all my fixed assets to the ground rather than give them to the globalists.
November 22, 2025
You don’t need to tell me Lynn. It’s the Establishment which wants us back in … and the EU which is desperate for our money and determined to stop us competing.
November 21, 2025
A free lunch is free to those who don’t pay for it. Many over-indulge at others’ expense for decades. Those who generate money by their own efforts find Government snatches in tax whatever it wants, then gives much of it to scroungers.
People in the UK do care and most are generous in helping others, voluntarily. Charity should be the responsibility of dedicated organisations and individuals willing to help others: those they recognise as being in need and worth caring for.
Government is increasingly becoming an international charity and demanding money with menaces from UK folk to pay for its waste and inefficient spending. They act like beggars holding a large bowl in one hand and a Zombie knife in the other.
November 21, 2025
No Charity should employ anybody. All should be volunteers. If you don’t have volunteers there is no enthusiasm for your charity and therefore it will and should not exist.
November 21, 2025
Agree Lynn
Those of us in Lions Clubs, Rotary Clubs, Round table and the like, actually pay annual membership fees to volunteer, we also pay our own expenses out of our own taxed income.
The true meaning of charitable work.
Been a Lions member for 35 years, spend about 500 hours a year doing voluntary work in the community.
Unfortunately Government and Local Authority regulations, Insurance requirements, and Health and Safety will kill volunteering.
November 21, 2025
Well done Alan. The professional Charity class hate you. You show them up. You are the ‘control’.
Maybe what is good for the Charities is good for political parties too. No employed individuals whatsoever. If you can’t attract volunteers nobody wants your party.
I’m beginning to agree with the Chartists too – no payment for MPs. You have to have been successful to be able to afford to be an MP. Of course you have to think of the young Redwoods, but part time politicians is the answer there. The brilliant can always earn their way.
November 21, 2025
very true..hundreds of £100k +salaried managers of charities don’t want you pointing out 95+% of the workforce do it for free!
November 21, 2025
There is a long queue of lemmings moving toward the cliff edge. On the 26th I predict the front one will do the leap of faith quickly followed by a stream of the doomed.
November 21, 2025
The pre 26th doom has already started …in the past 2 weeks the pound against the dollar has dropped 3p and our banking sector has dropped 5%+ on the stock exchange share price ….more doom coming
November 21, 2025
Zelensky is in front and running fast ….
November 21, 2025
I think Donald has said jump or I’ll push you all over!
November 22, 2025
No that’s Putin. ‘Surrender or we will crush what is left of you’.
November 21, 2025
I watched Allister Heath discussing his Sunday Telegraph article about ‘Banana Republics’ (and the UK fast becoming one). I’m afraid it filled me with forebodng. I think everyone (on this Forum at least) assumes that things will (must) change at the next election but he is right to urge caution.
“Populist parties require a counter-elite to implement their agenda, or else they are destroyed on contact with reality…”
This has been a concern of mine for some time and I don’t see enough being done to resolve it. Farage and Bandenoch need to come to some agreement and find a meeting of minds (and talent). Quite apart from the lunatic Greens (more Red than Green) and useless (“Be Kind”) Lib Dems, we now have both a religious and ‘dependancy’ element to our politics. Large numbers of people will vote based on events elsewhere in the world and others based on the fact that they like their (welfare funded) lifestyle. In four years time these constituents will have likely grown larger, not smaller. So Mr Heath has a very valid point. A return to any kind of fiscal sanity is not a given but one the Right of Centre in this country work much (much) hard to make happen in reality.
November 21, 2025
There is no elite in either party. Whether they come together or not is irrelevant.
Mr Heath himself seemed not to understand the difference between capitalism and corporatism, he fails to see that ‘threatening an exit tax’ stopped inward investment, the money leaving quickly is dwarfed by that because of liquidity problems (inertia).
In addition we don’t want a ‘right wing’ government but we actually want radical democratic capitalist government.
The country is awash with talented, competent and many brilliant people. They will flock to a true standard. I believe they are already doing so.🤞🏻Restore Britain.
November 21, 2025
“The country is awash with talented, competent and many brilliant people”
Agreed Lynn, except that some of these people are now leaving the UK and of those that remain, how many will want to become politicians or their advisors? Not too many I’d hazard a guess. It’s a thankless task and there are easier ways to make a living. Whilst Rupert Lowe has some ideas I’d support, I don’t see how he is going to change the status quo in practice?
November 22, 2025
I don’t really believe politicians should have ‘advisors’. If they need them perhaps we elected the wrong person.
When there is a proper job – running the country – the best will volunteer because it’s in their interest (as well as ours) to have the country properly run.
I know of more fantastically gifted people who were kept out of Parliament (although they would have served) than the tiny number who got in.
If we can’t be bothered to rectify this, we have no right to complain of the consequences.
November 22, 2025
As I said, I believe Rupert Lowe is taking a business attitude to building a party.
Starting from the bottom up. Creating a demand, then launching a party.
The reverse of Reform which set up the Corporate headquarters and then told us we have Hobson’s Choice. In other words they just joined the established parties.
The Conservatives now telling us that they are better than Labour, which is correct.
They will also kill us but they are offering to do it more kindly because they are a better shot. One between the eyes or the salami slicing by Labour/Green/Lib Dem butchers.
Actually I prefer to live and thrive thank you, ergo Conservatives on 14%. 😱
November 21, 2025
That’s a lesson the labour will never learn.
Actually, it’s not possible to believe that labour want sustainable growth and prosperity for all. They still have their target envy groups that they attack at every possibility; anybody with a pot of money, OAP’s, the middle class.
Labour were never going to give us affluence, they are too inclined to ideological causes, like getting us back into the EU or persecuting army veterans.
Labour got into power by default – Let’s make sure they never repeat this success ever again, for they have shown themselves not just incapable but destructive of our way of life and very careless of our resources not to mention our future.
November 21, 2025
@Harry MacMillon – its ego and self-gratification when people actually believe in politics you can win elections. With only one in five of the electorate in support of this shower that could never be classed as a win. The other crowd lost the election, a massive majority in Parliament and they threw it away. They had 14 years to correct the failures of Labour/Blair and they blew it – now those that were in the cabinet with the collective responsibility of its direction think we should trust them
November 22, 2025
If less than 50% vote there should be no mandate.
November 21, 2025
The only possible thing in favour of Keir and Rachel is that I find it impossible to think of any one else in the Labour party who would be likely to be anything other than worse, and if they tried to do anything that might improve things, their back benchers would probably sink them.
November 21, 2025
Excellent Sir John.
Labour’s PR spin machine seems to have been using a primitive AI model based on shaky foundations when it has no idea about basic economics.
November 21, 2025
Yannis Varofakis, the leftwing but surprisingly sensible Greek former finance minister, has taken up your argument that the BoE must be prevented from selling its bond portfolio at a loss. Perhaps the idea will eventually gain traction and force the blob to respond.
Separately, Sir John Major, your former cabinet colleague, has made a ferocious denunciation of Brexit in a speech. It would be interesting to read a response from you to the claims he makes if you can be bothered and have the time.
November 21, 2025
once a clown always a clown.
November 21, 2025
John Major has a devastating track record of failures batting for Britain and doesn’t recognise how much we have given up for the gruel given in return. He is in no position to judge Brexit let alone advise how we should have voted.
Appalling lack of awareness and no wonder the grey man was replaced by Blair in a landslide vote.
He was more interested in cricket and caving into the EU.
November 21, 2025
Yeah, so how do we get rid of this stupid government which a tiny handful of voters voted in?? And is anyone actually ready to take it’s place???!!
Does Nigel Farage read this blog?!
November 21, 2025
Growth in the economy, ’causes’ growth in the tax take – simples. Just taking tax removes the seed corn of the economy. Basic kindergarten maths ramping up expenditure on frivolous ideology then needing to take tax kills the economy, the result of poor and inappropriate education. Basic maths is all that is needed to balance the books, the majority of UK households practice this daily – you can only spend what you can earn. The continuous threats of more tax. The continuous contriving of new taxes. All cause the average household to restrict itself, slow and stop spending – so money doesn’t enter the economy, the economy dies
Our 650 MPs are not causing the spend of tax to create a county that is earnings, to create the county’s wealth, growing framework for a future. They are spending the tax on political ideology that is focused on personal ego and personal self-esteem. A practice that is corrupting, and destructive.
Not that it is easy to absolve the previous crowed they created a 70-year record high of tax take and borrowing, they deindustrialised the Country, the means to earn – focusing on an import only future. So, today’s incompetents are just keeping to the trend that was handed to them, with ideology thrown in. The worry would be those in the team of collective responsibility for the country’s woes then want back in, looking for continuation and continuity. Labour never won the last election the other crowed lost from stupidity and still haven’t apologised or learnt a thing.
As everyone but this UK Parliament of 650 MPs knows ‘it’s the economy stupid’. They all own the failure they are overseeing. I say it is our 650 MPs that are the problem because they are there to hold the Executive (the Government if you want to call it that) to account. They manage and have the responsibility for what the Executive does. All failure are owned by them collectively
November 21, 2025
Growth, according to our Labour Government.
G hastly, R ubbish, O pinionated, W asteful, T oxic, H orrible.
It is like having a bunch of stupid children who think they are clever enough to rule the UK.
There is no S in growth or I would have added – Shambles!
November 21, 2025
Don’t worry about ‘growth’, our PM attending the G20 in Johannesburg has it all covered
November 21, 2025
edit – ‘Undemocratic G20’
November 21, 2025
More Air miles ?
Does he ever know what time Zone he is in ?
November 21, 2025
He doesn’t seem to know what century nor country he’s in!
November 21, 2025
Well he’s just gone back a couple of hundred years so the hour is not relevant.
November 21, 2025
Excessive public spending has never improved the economic well-being of the UK. During the last few socialist governments, why wasn’t the mainstream media pointing out: “hey, this never worked before so why should it work next time?”.
A large enough minority fell for the propaganda from the BBC and its friends to enable several useless governments to rule us culminating the current one, the most useless of all.
November 21, 2025
The irony is that they put these extra taxes and costs onto businesses that employ people via PAYE, and at the other end, they took away contracts when you put up the charges to pay for it, and give the work to companies that don’t employ people and only use contractors, thus getting zero employers’ NI back. This results in more people getting laid off, reduced profits and difficulty finding replacement work. So anti-growth for employers, more growth for contractors.
Next, she will have to hit contractors who regularly contract for the same business over several years, especially if it’s their main body of work, tackling umbrella companies and personal service contractors.
I’m still wondering whether she’ll bring VAT thresholds in line with those of larger European countries, around £35,000 for the most generous, to drag more contractors into charging VAT. €22,000 Germany, €25,000 Belgium, €34,400 France.
November 21, 2025
So a bit of rain-dancing about growth, growth, growth.
Isn’t it strange that a country that was in the ‘80s at the forefront of liberalising the Stock Exchange has only 6% of its adults with a Stocks&Funds ISA? And what about the British public’s £610 bn potentially available for savings (according to Treasury) (above emergency savings) with (in 2023/24) £360 bn going to cash ISAs.
Has Sid been killed by 40 years of privatisation of British companies, more often than not being taken over later by non-British entities?
Is the future only made of HMO and BtL properties?
ft.com 21/11/2025 ‘Lessons from Japan’s investing drive for fellow cash-loving Britons’.
November 21, 2025
Hefner we have had to sell everything to pay for funding the disastrous EU and the calamitous Commonwealth, which although independent clings to the U.K. with desperation.
Of only we had escaped the ‘Common Market’ and the shortsighted, bigoted continental system reflected in our worst political class, well, we all know what Britain would be, exactly as she was in the Victorian era.
The most successful and happy, generous and magnanimous country on earth.
November 22, 2025
I have a Stocks n Shares ISA. Last week I cashed in a considerable amount and gifted it to my two sons several years earlier than I had planned, in response to Theeve’s constant threats to change IHT and Gifting rules. As much as possible has gone into their Cash ISAs and the rest into savings accounts.
Lesson for Theeves (not that she’ll learn it): If you want people to invest in Stocks n Shares ISAs don’t attack those who have the money to do it.
November 21, 2025
Varofakis Is quite dangerous because he is rational and then slips a gear, like Weddgie Benn. Draws the diametrically opposite conclusion from the one his rational arguments point to.
Major is and always was a disaster. Every time he opens his mouth he proves it.
November 21, 2025
One of your best Sir John. More of the same I fear come November 26th from this doctrinaire Chancellor. Let’s see how the markets respond…
November 21, 2025
Hi John l hear what you are saying it is a shame the last government never committed their promises. Why do the people who get into government with their parties then self distruct by contradicting their own party policies when in office. Do you think we should adopt the USA method where the leader of the country has the casting vote on policy ie return illegal immigration’s without lawyers objections and pay their own cost if they try to appeal?
November 21, 2025
This may well be a momentous day:
– Trump’s EGO threatens to abandon Ukraine and let Russia overthrow before moving on to the next victim. Donald desperately wants to say he stopped the war.
– The UK government is expected to approve China’s plans for a new mega embassy in central London.
– An Afghan national has admitted raping a 12-year-old girl in Nuneaton. Ahmad Mulakhil pleaded guilty at Warwick Crown Court to one count of raping a child under the age of 13. He had previously denied the charge.
Mulakhil, 23 and of no fixed abode, also denied abducting a child, three counts of rape of a child under 13 and two counts of sexual assault of a child under 13.
– All mention of fossil fuels, by far the largest contributor to climate change, has been dropped from the draft deal under negotiation as the COP30 UN climate talks in Belém, Brazil enter their final stretch.
– From 10 December, social media companies will have to take “reasonable steps” to ensure that under-16s in Australia cannot set up accounts on their platforms and that existing accounts are deactivated or removed.
– Millions of households will see a slight rise in energy prices in the depths of winter, after regulator Ofgem outlined its next price cap. The 0.2% increase from the current cap will take effect at the start of January, and affect those on variable tariffs in England, Wales and Scotland. The rise was a surprise after forecasters suggested the cap may fall at the start of the year. Government policy is primarily behind the shift.
– Former cabinet minister Lord Michael Gove has apologised on behalf of the then-government and Conservative Party for “mistakes made” during the coronavirus pandemic. In her long-awaited report published,, external Baroness Hallett says Boris Johnson, the prime minister at the time, oversaw a “toxic and chaotic” culture in No 10 during Covid.
November 21, 2025
On your first headline, I could never see Trump (during WW2) surrendering Hawaii to Japan to end the war in the pacific ….but he’s expecting Ukraine to do just that
November 21, 2025
Ukraine does not need to agree the proposed, leaked, deal (which is not finalised).
It can fight on until it is completely flattened.
70% of Ukrainians want the war to end.
Russian is now the most openly spoken language in Ukraine. It’s their version of ‘raise the flags’.
The USA knows the real Ukrainian losses. Kellogg, who has been misleading the President has gone.
Nobody ducks reality.
Be grateful that Russia has no interest in western Ukraine much less European countries.
November 21, 2025
Seems Russia cannot agree the proposed deal.
Zelensky will not need to reject it.
Russia is unstoppable, and it has spent blood. It will not be distracted to save the face of the USA or NATO much less the EU or Zelensky.
November 21, 2025
Appeasement led to ww2
November 21, 2025
Does Russia have Trump in hoc to them because he defaults to capitulation so often?
November 22, 2025
Above all, taxation needs to be fair. I am not at all wealthy myself, but a multi-millionaire friend, an entrepreneur who has been successful in life, confided to me a few years ago that he very much wanted to make a fair tax contribution which reflected his position, but he felt he was treated unfairly. He now lives outside the UK, and I feel that we have lost a very good citizen. We should embrace such people, not view them as targets for revenge. That is divisive.
November 22, 2025
Why did he not just write a cheque? He could have salved his conscience in minutes.
But he has gone and taken his wealth with him? Perhaps he was all talk and no trousers….