Anyone sensible given the task of growing the UK economy and helping more people to prosperity would start by saying current levels of public spending and borrowing are too high. The government is in a doomloop. hiking tax rates only to get an adverse impact on growth and the deficit. It comes back for further tax rises. Its critics get this, and say it should look at the spending side, but many of them too are terrified by the establishment view. That says all current government spending is necessary, current government spending is too low, not too high, and no government that wants to get elected can afford to cut spending. Suggest spending cuts and the government and public sector immediately retaliate by wrongly asserting you want to sack nurses or remove payments from the disabled.
Looking for cuts even this government has fallen for this absurd way of managing the public sector and running the debate. They tried cutting pensioner benefits but decided the outcry was too great. They fingered disability benefits and backed off, granting many more people access to them instead. At a recent meeting I attended of conservative policy specialists (Conservative/Reform/no party) and thinkers some of them too were mired in the idea that the necessary cuts a new government will need to make have to come from making painful and unpopular choices. They were agonising over the triple lock for pensioners, the exemption of pensioners from NI and other ways of reducing the spending power of the elderly who they thought had had the better deal this century. Those policies were part of a successful strategy to reduce pensioner poverty. Why aim to make them worse off?
I find it odd that so few people concentrate on vast areas of public mismanagement and over reach where large savings can be made. Why does no-one else see that the huge Bank of England losses on selling bonds in the market and sending taxpayers the bill is a needless self harm that no other Central Bank inflicts on its sponsoring taxpayers? Why do we put up with a military procurement system that spends £6bn on developing a very conventional small tank vehicle only to find it causes harm to its users? Why do we let a nationalised railway spend £30bn a year so it can fail to complete new track from Birmingham to Leeds and Manchester and fail to put in a new line from Manchester to Leeds?
Why do we spend a fortune on trying to force people to buy heat pumps and battery cars they do not want? Why heavily subsidise wind power when it is so dear and leads to deindustrialisation and loss of jobs on a large scale? Why when looking at benefit reform do too many think the level of benefits needs cutting when the issue is why do so many people have to be on benefits. How can we make work more worthwhile and help more people into work? Core benefits are not so generous that they need cutting.
The UK public sector is brilliant at defending every last penny it wastes, and good at demanding more. Too many politicians, commentators and lobbyists miss the main point. Far too much of the money going to the public sector is wasted, leaving us with very poor value for the large sums we pay in tax. The productivity collapse is costing us another £20bn to do the same thing.
January 18, 2026
A disastrous anti-growth doom loop indeed and so much that is spend is actually doing no good and huge positive harms – net zero, the Covid “vaccines” still being pushed to some, the lockdowns, the new workers rights bills, the war on motorists, landlords, small business, the self employed, employers, private school users, non doms… total insanity even worse than the 14 years of con-socialism.
January 18, 2026
Growth is our number one priority says Starmer and Reeves. But almost everything they announce is anti-growth. Unless they mean growth in damaging red tape, growth in benefits claimants, growth in low skilled immigration, growth in crime levels, mad employments laws, market rigging, parasitic jobs, net zero lunacy, growth in energy bills, growth in taxes, growth in the rich and hard working leaving the country, growth in private schools being shut down…
January 18, 2026
John Redwood you ask why all this? The answer is (as a fringe politician, Ann Marie Waters whom I knew personally, originally from secularism used to say) because ‘we are living in insanity’.
January 18, 2026
Redwood for PM 😉
This is what I like to see
January 18, 2026
Far too rational and sensible Sir John. You have to understand that socialists and communists don’t think that way. For them is it very simple. They want money to give to X because X is one of them. Where can they get it. Aha! you’ve got money. They’ll take yours. Problem solved.
My wife once worked in London for a very intelligent but socialist woman. She worked in a government organisation. One day, in all seriousness she said to me her current project was identifying things that hadn’t been taxed before but could be taxed. This is their mindset. Their aim is not to make you wealthy but to steal your wealth if you have any.
January 18, 2026
Good morning.
We were promised by the incoming Conservative Government of 2010, a “Bonfire of the QUANGO’s”. I mention this as the figure for their combined expenditure for 2023 – 2024 (the last conservative government) was £391bn (Taxpayers Alliance), representing some 32% of the UK economy. I am now given to understand that under this Labour Government this figure is now closer to £500bn, although I do not have quotable sources.
It is the failure of the last Conservative Governments over a 14 year period and the expected bad behaviour of the current one that has led to the situation we find ourselves in. This and spending on Hinckley Point which I am led to believe is in both serious delay and, 3 times over budget. We also have HS2 which is also in delay, despite being shortened, and of course over budget.
You would think looking at the UK Accounts, the money wasted on illegal’s and legal’s alike, which is also in the tends of billions, overseas aid there is enormous scope for savings.
All it takes is one little thing. Just one. The will power to do what needs to be done and say; “No more !”
January 18, 2026
So true.
I just hope the Conservatives and Reform will respond properly.
So far the Tories have identified £47billion of savings when in fact there is at least 5 times that much that could be saved
January 18, 2026
My Lord,
Agree with your article.
The government needs to trust the people more and stop trying to interfere in their lives. We don’t need to be constantly watched and monitored. We need to trust The British to make the right choices.
We need to train more of our own people to do specialist jobs, rather than import more and more people.
We need to stop throwing borrowed money at other countries and stop funding single issue groups.
It is time for us as a country to decide just what we want the government to do for us.
January 18, 2026
Yesterday I read that the 78% tax on North Sea production was budgeted to bring in £26 billion when in fact it only brought in £9 billion. This demonstrates that the government is following ideology rather than sensible policies.
The latest round of licences for windmills has been snatched up by Siemens who are taking 78% because of the subsidies agreed.
Remember it was the tories who thought it a goid idea to double the national debt by paying people to stay at home now a large number have made staying home a lifestyle on benefits.
Socialists cannot reduce spending as it’s in their DNA to micro damage the economy. Their aim is to destroy the private sector just like Stalin.
January 18, 2026
Perhaps current Government could look at the structures of Government in the 1800’s and consider why they could not return to that model:
Home Office, Foreign Office (+ oversight of empire) , Defence (War) Department and Treasury + Revenue Department.
4 key departments that fulfil the key roles of Government. Everything beyond this was a choice which also added cost.