UK government policies have put up youth unemployment and made it more difficult to buy a first home. EU re set would make that worse.,
Their Jobs tax and extra employment regulations have destroyed job opportunities for many young people and pushed up Youth unemployment
Their over spending and over borrowing have put up longer term interest rates hitting housebuying.
Their failure to curb illegal migration and to build more homes makes it difficult for young people to get even a rented home of their own.
Their new Renting laws are reducing rented housing supply more, pushing up rents
Now they want to make this all worse by inviting in many more young from the EU needing jobs, grants, homes and public services when these are all in short supply . Why? The UK is not short of unemployed young people looking for a first home they can afford.
They are also taking away the opportunity through Turing for young Brits to study in non EU universities in the US, Australia etc.Going back into Erasmus will land taxpayers with an extra £700 m of cost mainly to help EU students get places at UK universities!
The government seems to forget there are six times as many people in the EU as the UK so any EU/UK scheme is bound to help many more Europeans than Brits, at our expense.
May 11, 2026
Just another stepping stone towards the integration with the EU. Baby steps with no thought or logic.
We just need it to be made clear that all these moves detrimental to the UK will be cancelled by an incoming right wing government.
May 11, 2026
With support for Brexit running at about 34% of the voters I wouldn’t hold your breath on any incoming right wing government winning power by promising to tear up the economic benefits of closer ties to the EU. Your Brexit’s been tried, tested and failed
May 11, 2026
There are no economic benefits of closer ties to the EU, only costs.
May 11, 2026
Amongst the shambles of UK government, the trivial detail of Brexit is lost in the noise.
May 11, 2026
What are the economic benefits of closer ties to the EU? There are well known £bns of cost to become 2nd division ‘members’ and then the required integration of military capability which is a disaster among the current members. The FCAS program, a 6th-generation jet fighter initiative France and Spain aiming for a 2040+ operational date. The GCAP program, a trilateral initiative with the UK, Italy and Japan to develop a 6th-generation stealth fighter jet, aiming for operational service by 2035. Both as alternatives to the USA Airforce NGAD or the Navy F/A-XX programs replacing the F22.
May 11, 2026
Joan,
Are you any relation to the journalist Andrew who shares you surname and probably your views ?
Or the guitarist Johnny?
Heaven knows I’m miserable now !
May 11, 2026
John’s Brexit hasn’t been tried, tested or failed. It wasn’t implemented. If you’d been here for a while, you’d know that. He consistently advocated for a clean, hard Brexit prioritising national sovereignty. We would have full control over our laws and borders and the freedom to set independent economic policies. He generally opposed staying in the EU single market or customers union in order to develop global trade freedoms and links are are coming to fruition (which is why the EU want to close those down and Starmer is busy realigning up with EU restrictions to our free trade).
He wanted to end the jurisdiction of the ECJ and wanted supremacy of UK law. He specifically aimed to boost domestic food production and restore the UK fishing industry.
I think it says it all today when a Tory Brexit rebel David Gauke is being handed a peerage from Starmer. I’m sure other arch remainers like Ollie Robbins are getting their just rewards when they should be getting just desserts.
May 11, 2026
For dessert Ollie should be getting a heap of excessively hot sticky toffee pudding lining his throat.
May 11, 2026
JM :
What “economic benefits”? We had a £100bn/YEAR trading deficit with the EU. We gave away our fishing grounds. The contributions we made to the EU budget built the new infrastructure from which other EU countries benefited. So large and unfair was this contribution that Maggie Thatcher obtained a rebate. Based upon our current PM’s wish to throw away our money over the Chagos Island’s give-away and our fishing grounds to the EU for another 12 years we can expect that he will ask the EU to give us the worst possible deal that they both feel they can get away with. The EU even subsidised Ford to move a production plant out of the UK and into a non-EU country, Turkey. The EU got us embroiled in the Russia/Ukraine war as a result of their insatiable desire to expand eastwards as the French and the Germans have already tried. We were caught up with this EU craving when members of the EU with PM, Cameron, the self-styled “heir to Blair”, making a speech in Kazakhstan in 2013 declaring that the EU should extend further into the former USSR and reach from the Atlantic to the Urals. How much has this cost us?
May 11, 2026
Same polls as were trotted out before June 2016?
Ask Rachel Reeves, she has a Brexit Constituency and says the vote to remain out has hardened and widened.
May 11, 2026
They will doubtless make is hard and expensive to undo this EU alignment vandalism.
“Why does Labour have it in for our young people?” Not just our young people, but everyone other than benefit claimants, state sector workers, shop lifters and criminals and illegal migrants it seems. Fewer and fewer tax payers and more and more claiming benefits, higher and higher net zero energy costs – so how will this end do you think – doom loop Rayner, Net Zero Miliband and two Tier.
Starmer just now full government ownership of British Steel (which is being strangled by Miliband’s mad energy policies) who will pay for this?. A total betrayal of Brexit with re-entry in all but name, a youth experience scheme so even more open door low skilled immigration, every child will get a guaranteed offer of a job, training or work placement in the stronger fairer Britain!
Kier your doom loop agenda has increase youth unemployment and unemployment in general what did you expect with vast increases employer NI and the minimum wage?
Just go man, almost anyone would be better and more honest than Sir Two Tier.
May 11, 2026
Two Tier Kier just now summary “I take responsibility, I am listening, I will not resign and I will go harder and faster with my Doom Loop, Net Zero, (pro EU and China) and totally anti-British vandalism!
Sir Sadiq Kahn says Trump was against him for the colour of his skin (he looks rather white to me) and his religion. What an evil man Sir Sadiq is. Not at all Trumps is a against your appalling policies and your evil agenda which has wrecked London and turned it into an Anti-Semitic, crime ridden disaster area.
May 11, 2026
Sad Dick’s surname is spelt Khan – not Kahn.
May 11, 2026
Who cares?
May 11, 2026
Trump prefers the orange skinned look.
May 11, 2026
None of it is the answer. EU youngsters is just one element.
Starmers’s advisors have told him how to deliver a speech and instructed him to appear without a tie in shirtsleeves to suggest he is ready for work.
Unfortunately his words demonstrate a complete failure to address the issues.
May 11, 2026
Starmer got elected by keeping quiet and not being the Conservatives.
Now he has come clean about all this aligning with the EU nonsense and he is trying to blame his poor performance on Brexit.
May 11, 2026
Never mind about the EU the Chinese are pushing ahead at great pace with their new fast road/ rail project through Asia and on to Europe because they understand the value of trade travel and communication in the world – the need for better networking.
May 11, 2026
You mean they have progressed to the thinking that the Silk Road is a good idea?
Wow revolutionary and blue skythinking 😂🤣
May 11, 2026
Yes, madness. No doubt pushed by the higher education lobby. Another wicked, grasping lobby that distorts markets and loves big government.
The EU students often want to improve their English, whereas Brts aren’t so generally keen on perfecting a forign language.
May 11, 2026
@Wanderer – maybe these people should be made to pay the £5.8 billion of foreign student debt from the previous cancelled experiment.
May 11, 2026
It’s much higher than that now.
May 11, 2026
Why does Labour have it in for our young people?
They don’t because these British young people are given lifetime payments to stay on the dole, so hopefully they are future labour voters and industry don’t have to implement training programs for our young and get enlist supply of foreign workers on the cheap a win win for the employers and more workers to sign up to trade unions
May 11, 2026
Tax payers money will not last a life time it is already nearly all gone. Look at bond rates 6% long term.
May 11, 2026
As the leading British and leading American Universities are the best in the world (and don’t operate in a foreign language) only seldom would there be a good reason for British students to study elsewhere. Furthermore foreign study should only be for postgraduates and only when time abroad would ensure they are talking with people at the forefront of their field. So £70 million pounds total cost a year to support British students abroad seems to be on the high side, let alone an extra £700 million pounds. Come to think of it how much are taxpayers here having to pay to fund the numerous foreign students studying here that the British Council pays for?
May 11, 2026
@Geoffrey Berg, last time around the left student loan debt of £5.8 billion that are still unpaid, other than by the UK taxpayer
May 11, 2026
Indeed Kier’s Erasmus policy is yet more economic insanity even worse than giving your fishing rights away! Is he working for China and EU it seems so.
May 11, 2026
Why do Brexiters have it in for our young people? They used to be able to live and work and study anywhere in Europe. Now those opportunities are denied them. Why do Brexiters hate freedom so much?
And by the way re-joining Erasmus has no effect on the Turing scheme at all. None. They are totally unconnected.
Reply Young people. under Turing can go to an EU university if they wish. Many prefer an English speaking option.
May 11, 2026
Colleges have been running down and closing their foreign language departments. British young people don’t want to go to Europe, they want to go places where they don’t need to learn another language.
May 11, 2026
My experience was different. About 15 years ago, I arranged for students to do part of their course at a German university where the lectures were given in English. My students were not keen. A large group said they wanted to go to a university in Spain. I pointed out that the lectures there might well not be given in English. That didn’t seem to bother them: they said they wanted warm weather and sunshine.
May 11, 2026
Scholars!
May 11, 2026
@Freedom lover – obviously a joke handle when you clearly hate the idea of freedom. Based on your premise the whole World hates freedom.
May 11, 2026
I lived and worked in France before we even joined the Common Market. I was not ‘denied that opportunity’.
May 11, 2026
especially when Bulgaria, Romania, etc are part of the EU.
free movement may have worked with France, Belgium, Germany (before their immigration was out of control). with the current EU no way.
May 11, 2026
I’m afraid we are dealing with bigoted closed minds. They just can’t consider any of the facts you set out because if their ‘politics’ is derailed they can’t think for themselves.
Starmer has said he needs rules to follow.
We need to make some rules for him.
May 11, 2026
Yes I agree Starmer is unable to prioritise and has no leadership skills
For the sake of the country he must go
May 11, 2026
@Lynn Atkinson – the concept of releasing people to achieve the best they can, is not accepted by this Parliament, after all it still hasn’t recognised its own purpose. They can’t get passed the need to mould others in their own personal image. Forgetting they themselves have no experience and lack the wherewithal to get things done.
May 11, 2026
EU students coming here must be offered student loans which will never be repaid.
You point about non-housed and unemployed youngsters is spot on. We don’t need more coming in and taking opportunities.
This at present applies to all immigrants. There are plenty of people in this country who are being paid to sit at home doing nothing without incurring the infrastructure costs and increased prices that extra demand creates. When these are gainfully employed then we can look afar. Change the benefits system so that working is necessary before inviting anyone else in.
May 11, 2026
What will compel the UK to offer UK student loans? Especially now we are out of Europe?
It is one thing to offer heavily discounted tuition from international fee levels but it’s quite another for British taxpayers to provide funds for that tuition with little chance of recovery.
May 12, 2026
Any agreement that Sir Two Tier agrees to will involve equal treatment / level playing field.
May 11, 2026
Another step in the dilution of our nation. It’s what Starmer wants, he hates the British.
May 11, 2026
Old Albion agree, that is certainly how it appears, Always puts UK interest last, as he does with working people and pensioners who are doing their best to be self reliant.
He seems to need the majority on welfare to keep voting for him, so no hope for anyone else.
May 11, 2026
Seem so he seems to prefer China and the EU plus generating ever more largely unproductive work for Lawyers, tax consultants, HR consultants, tenancy consultants, benefit consultants…
May 11, 2026
Of course he does, he is so inferior to the average British person that he hates us all.
May 11, 2026
“They” (starting with Blair) have turned the degree factories into one of our major export businesses. The mantra of 50% “Degree Educated” has not only left many of our young buried in debt but the rest of us bereft of skilled manual workers. We have allowed a business model that churns out highly educated but unemployable young Brits but is still dependent upon large flows of foreign students to break even. It has opened another back door to legal migration and aids the loss of our intellectual propery to places like China. It has also led to the indocrination of our young by left-leaning academics.
In summary, we appear to have too many low grade Universities, not enough Trade schools, too many asylum seeking (or secret sucking) students, too many unemployable, indebted, Green voting Graduates and far too few skilled & hard working Trades people. Apart from that our University system is fine.
May 11, 2026
Did you see how Oxford voted in last week’s elections?
Mainly Green, some red, some yellow.
How stupid are these Oxbridge students and University staff?
Some way below the citizens of Consett I can tell you!
May 11, 2026
EU Student debt still unpaid is £5.8 billion, with no way to collect. More dumped on the UK taxpayer.
This would now increase – just so there is a minor hope of contamination by the extreme ‘left’ to mould a country in ones personal image.
A delusional Parliament seemingly led by similar entities from another worl, another planet.
Isn’t there something a UK Parliament should be doing besides fighting the people of this Country?
May 11, 2026
Spain’s leader has just given 500,000 illegals Spanish nationality, so I suppose they will now have the right to decamp to here.
May 11, 2026
We are OUT of the EU.
May 11, 2026
Youth Mobility scheme
May 11, 2026
It should always be recognised these press releases are just deflection. Deflecting away from the ‘Plan’ to create a people in one’s image that is always compliant and is pleased to be beholden to the State.
In perspective 54% of the UK Population is now receiving benefits. The Works & Pensions crowd has in the last week suggested that close of 1 million child/minors are anticipated to be on disability benefits. Then from the same source for last year the DWP suggest the norm is for payouts to be more than full time work. 600,000 households received £32,200, 267,000 households get more than £40,000 and over 16,000 receive more than £60,000.
Add in all the other debts this Parliament is running up it shows they are paralysed, devoid of thought and don’t understand what they should be doing themselves let alone run a Country.
Someone needs to get a grip rather than announce giveaways on top of giveaways, how about a focus in releasing the good and great people of this nation so they can reach their full potential, create earnings for themselves and the nation. Then there would be a picture of the income stream to pay for what this shower in Parliament has already given away.
To much emphasis is on greater ways to tax and run up costs, with no thought to the first part of the process the nations wealth creation to fund the taxes
May 11, 2026
From the media today
“Taxpayer spending on housing support for benefits claimants will rise by £913m to £38.8bn in 2026-27, according to projections from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
This will mark the highest total in today’s prices since comparable data began in 1970. It represents a 40pc increase on 2018-19 levels.”
Add that to the £58 billion owed by foreign student the £30billion give away for Chagos, the £Billions we already just give the EU. This Parliament must have some magic money tree
May 11, 2026
Labour could choose to take actions that are better for the UK.
Instead they choose the opposite.
In many ways they act as if they prefer what a UK enemy would want.
May 11, 2026
So it seems we’re allowing everyone access to the UK and our facilities but we don’t get reciprocal rights for our own people.
The UK should take a leaf out of Trump’s book; you don’t get something for nothing and if you give something you want something equally good if not better in return.
We’ve just renewed the agreement with the French to stop the small boats bringing illegal immigrants to the UK.This has cost over £750 million so far and what have we got to show for it; it was a failed scheme from the outset which had no conditions attached to it and which we’ve chosen to now renew for another year.The same goes for the Rwanda scheme.
The Labour government want a reset on the EU;The immediate response from the EU is it will cost us £1 billion just for the reset whatever that means?
A few months ago we were giving away the Chagos islands until Trump told us not to.Why not sell them to the highest bidder.They must be worth at least £40 billion to the USA to keep an airbase there.Or maybe bargain with them;We’ll give them to the USA in return for no tariffs on our goods.
Why are we housing foreign and war criminals in our gaols like Radovan Karadzic when we should be repatriating them to their own country to serve their time at their own countries cost.
If other countries are permitted to drill our gas and oil from the North Sea why are we paying inflated prices to buy it back off them.
The Erasmus scheme will again cost us £700 million denying our own people places at Universities in favour of non UK residents who will most likely be allowed to stay in the UK and get jobs.
You don’t get something for nothing in this world and it’s about time the UK woke up to that and started to be seen by the rest of the world as tough negotiators and not a soft option;
May 11, 2026
They say travel broadens the mind and it works both ways also I doubt very much if No10 is sitting up all night plotting the downfall of our young people as described – such thinking only comes from an ideological europhobic myopia but fortunately it is a condition that will pass as there is a new generation coming that will call it out – politics is in a state of flux and the young people will not be bound by what happened in 2016.
May 11, 2026
Blair specifically said they would make it very hard for white people to get work, education, a home etc., and make it very easy for the immigrants to achieve same.
The young have most to enjoy, or endure. Their choice.
May 11, 2026
We hear the government are now paying out £39billion/year in housing benefits.
That is why housing is increasingly unaffordable. The state is artificially maintaining housing prices and rental values by throwing tax payers money into the hands of landlords and subsidising council. If state funding was removed housing prices would naturally fall back into affordable ranges. The market would operate as it should and people who can’t afford to live in properties they can nor afford wouldn’t.
As for entitling EU ‘students’ to come to the UK and for the tax payer to again provide support that is another area we have tried and failed to see the unexpected consequences. Why does the Boris wave come to mind?
May 11, 2026
I used to think left leaning people were misguided but well meaning, because they misinterpreted human behaviour and what drives human enterprise. Increasingly, their actions have resulted in the exact opposite to their stated intentions on the economy, unemployment, net zero, housing and so on. Now I think they have gone mad and lost any ability to analyse cause and effect, as so well illustrated in these columns.
May 11, 2026
Left-leaning is one thing. After all, is it anything to complain about that there is an NHS that treats people who couldn’t afford their own care, or the provision of primary and secondary education to the children of those who can’t necessarily afford private schooling?
It’s the loony left that’s the problem. Those who want to take money from those who have earned it out of envy, so they can give it to people who just don’t bother. See the problem with the current lot in parliament, they can’t make their minds up whether they want to encourage entrepreneurship, or treat them as if they are evil because they obviously have to gain wealth by trampling on others.
May 11, 2026
Globalist Socialists doing what Globalist Socialists want. They don’t give a 4X about this country or its young people.
Their ideology is all that matters.
May 11, 2026
Before questioning my data, the following is from the official Student Loans in England Financial Year 2024-25 document:
“EU borrowers’ balance has increased from £0.7 billion in 2013-14, to £5.8 billion by 2024-25. This is 6.0% higher (+ £0.3 billion) than the 2023-24 financial year-end figure of £5.5 billion. Although the EU loan balance has increased, the rate of increase continues to slow (down from 39.7% in 2014-15).
Tuition fee funding for new EU students in England (without a ‘settled’ or ‘pre-settled status’) ceased in academic year 2021/22. However, those continuing a course remain eligible for financial support for the duration of their course.”
So we can see that post-Brexit and Erasmus, the cost of EU student loans started to go down from the highest 39.7% increase in 2014-15. Maybe Starmer hasn’t read this report, or maybe he is just wilfully continuing with his wrecking ball policies.
Also, the Telegraph reported in February: The £4bn a year bill for foreign student loans Taxpayers on the hook for unpaid debt as borrowing from non-British and non-EU students jumps 40pc.
So some foreigners were getting free education in the UK at British taxpayers’ expense because they didn’t repay their student loans. Starmer wants to reintroduce free education for EU citizens. Yet again, he puts foreigners’ needs above those of the British.
May 11, 2026
Sadiq Khan has done an interview with ex-New Statesman hack George Eaton’s new magazine. Khan has laid out his personal platform:
Rejoin the EU: “A general election victory would give us a mandate to rejoin the European Union, we should have it on the ballot paper: a vote for Labour is a vote to rejoin.”
No referendum needed to rejoin EU: UK is a “parliamentary democracy” and dismissing the first vote as a “wheeze by David Cameron to try and keep his right flank united.“
Its called the ‘Plan’, the only plan all along
May 11, 2026
The country the people never voted to join the EU, the UK Parliament without a mandate no manifesto just took us in. Since 2016 the UK Parliament and the Blob have stopped us leaving, fought against the UK Leaving the Block. Now 2TK in his lecture says we are weak because we are not fully under the EU’s control, we need to give them more money accept more of their produce, accept the UK cant be a democracy. We are weak because he is ensuring we are weak.
2TK back in 2016 wanted and has been contriving for full submission, its the sole reason why he has orchestrated the decline in the Country to make us weak so as surrender becomes the only option.
The UK Parliament owns the state of the UK economy, the decline of the UK, they refused to let us just leave the control of their unelected unaccountable masters in the EU.
Well people he will get us all to submit and he has 3 years left to contrive and orchestrate it. Judging by his tone, his seemingly secret meetings we could be fully under the EU yoke by Christmas. Think not? just look at the last 2 years
May 11, 2026
Why are Starmer, his Ministers and MPs so thick? Reading Angela Rayner’s takedown of Starmer in the paper today shows how utterly stupid she is. Rayner’s solution is more left wing policies, more regulation, a higher minimum wage and to help young people into employment. But a higher minimum wage and more regulations will do the exact opposite! The UK needs the exact opposite of her approach.
People bitterly resent the frozen tax allowances, disgracefully started by a “conservative” government, are fed up with Starmer’s we must get closer to the EU and general in competence. Letting in more people, even young people will increase all our current problems of housing, jobs, welfare, the NHS, GPs, Dentists etc. We don’t have a housing shortage, we have too many immigrants. Stop immigration and all our p[roblems will reduce.
May 11, 2026
KfL,
There is ignorance in depth – not just cabinet ministers.
If you thought ‘Mastermind’ Lammy was not the sharpest tool in the box, I suggest Cambridge graduate Richard Burgon MP as evidence.
In defence on Rayner she has at least held a traditional inworking class job and grew up in the school of hard knocks.
May 11, 2026
The socialist government of Spain has just naturalised half a million African immigrants. How many will end up here under Labour’s plans?
May 11, 2026
Just a thought about Starmer/Labour’s reset. They will do anything except reduce spending and lower taxes!
May 11, 2026
Or scrap the echr or control the borders or do sensible growth policies.
May 11, 2026
I am very concerned about the whereabouts of the $7billion of small arms provided by Trump to the Persians which has gone astray.
May 11, 2026
Iain M, John K: Not naturalised but producing a plan for granting them legal residency status, which would allow them to stay in Spain. They are not all ‘Africans’ coming by boat, two thirds come from Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, and other South American countries or are Spanish-speaking Moroccans.
Unemployment rate in Spain fell below 10% by the end of 2025 (despite this immigration) whereas it was more than 13% before the pandemic.
So the picture is more complex than reported here.
May 11, 2026
In another twenty years many ov us who were around in 2016 will be gone and it will be up to the next generation to pick up the baton and carry on. The very least we can do to help is to not close down avenues that might impede their choice of way to progress.
May 11, 2026
calm down everyone.The golden road to Samarkand is already mapped out.Scotland an independent country ditto
Wales.NIreland fully integrated with Eire and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland no longer
exists.Only England stands proud.Has England the economic and security resources to control our borders,our
defence and enhance our ties with USA and our Commonwealth of Nations.The European Union no longer our
problem?
May 11, 2026
England so proud that local authorities are spending council tax money to de-flag roads bearing the Union and/or St.George.
May 11, 2026
The god forsaken Commonwealth needs to give us our independence! They suck the life from us and vote against us at every opportunity in the UN.
May 11, 2026
A lot yet to be sorted out on this. The EU has been very and annoyingly persistent in getting this agreement.
The UK proposed a cap on numbers for this scheme which so far I believe the EU has rejected. We do have a cap in place for other countries we deal with so why not the EU. They want it based on unlimited numbers but very kindly offered to let us have an “emergency brake” on numbers if they send too many….. Also, as the years progress and likely several new EU states emerge from the current accession list and as EU states give citizenship to their own migrants this scheme could be even more popular.
The ‘youth’ age range appears to be currently 18 to 30 years of age and the permitted duration of stay I think is proposed as 4 years.
In the case of students, the EU seems to be insistent in having the same course fees status as our own students What happens about EU student loans or will students come on the basis that they wholly fund themselves ? And as others have pointed out, as have I previously, the unbelievable debt we are left with from the past is
unforgiveable. It’s only £5 or 6 billion after all, why should we be concerned, peanuts it seems.
In the case of those coming for jobs – will we demand that they have a job offer before they arrive and have somewhere to live ?
On a general note – EU citizens / EU passport holders excl. settled status people, coming to the UK are allowed 180 days per visit ( so long as not working and just visiting ) UK citizens / passport holders allowed 90 days in 180 days so that agreement is not reciprocal – going back to Brexit of course.
Question to all of this – Control ??