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
The money tree will give for ever? That’s the belief.
January 18, 2026
Peter
Exactly!
What is it they say – a man has 2 cows
Communists – take the cows and gives you a ration of milk
Capitalist – you swap one cow for a bull, breed more cows and sell the milk
Labour – takes the cows, and charges you for them!
There are other variations but you get the idea!
January 18, 2026
“You have to understand that socialists and communists don’t think that way.“
They do not really “think” rationally at all they work by evil exploitation of emotive, irrational feeling of envy and entitlement against the rich, hardworking, landlords, the rational, Jews…
January 18, 2026
The Treasury employed ex RBS analysts to identity sources of remaining wealth which could be asset stripped by the State. This has appeared in the form of forcing private rentals to sell and charge CGT plus higher taxes and licensing with huge fines.
January 18, 2026
Indeed plus all the stamp duty too!
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
Let the voters decide! Oh dear – look what they have let us in for! Until sufficient wake up and abandon previous apathy we are stuck with the existing cabal pulling the levers.
January 18, 2026
MT
The problem with letting the voters decide is they can be bribed with more and more welfare, which is what has been happening now for decades, people have to learn that you have to look after and be responsible for yourself, government simply cannot shield you from many of the simple realities of life.
January 18, 2026
@Mark B. +1. I don’t see the Kemi-led Tories as significantly different from the Cameron/May/Boris/Sunac-led ones. The Party threw out its only leader who was different, after a month’s trial as PM.
I mostly agree with our kind host, but he is a Party loyalist. Out in the electorate many of us want to vote for policies, not Parties. The Truss episode suggests that only a continuity candidate is permitted to be nominal leader of the Conservative Party. Kemi won’t change it.
January 18, 2026
Mark. The EPR2 is new technology and largely unproven. The Chinese units have been shutdown due to corrosion in the pressure vessel and the French and Finnish have had massive delays. Unable to learn from past mistakes they intend using the same technology in Sizewell. Kow towing to the EU is paramount for these chancers.
January 18, 2026
IW:
Whilst it is true that the Finnish version of EDF’s EPR was 13 years late it is now generating electricity at £53/MWhr which is nearly half the price of offshore wind in the latest renewables auction just announced. Sir Dieter Helm, Professor of Economic Policy at the University of Oxford told the BBC in 2018 that Hinkley Point C would have been half the price if the government had borrowed the money itself at the going rate at the time of 3% rather than using Chinese finance at 9%. Use the Nationwide B.S. mortgage calculate to check this. To be fair to EDF they had to re-start a whole supply chain, train engineers and the regulator was requesting 7000 design changes to adapt to UK regulations requiring 35% more steel and 25% more concrete. Hopefully Sizewell will be cheaper. There is no doubt that nuclear reactors should be built in fleets, as the French have done, not as single, special one-offs and this is why SMRs should be much cheaper to build even though their running costs may be higher because of their smaller size.
January 18, 2026
Very good comment, rather than all the glib repetitions.
When in government, the debate in the house goes so frequently like this:
Opposition member: the state of social housing (or whatever) is a disgrace, people are living in horrible conditions..etc..
Government Minister: since coming into office we have increased expenditure on social housing by X %, and this year will be spending XXX Billion £’s, double the previous administrations…etc
The answer by all governments is to spend more…because they can, it’s the easy answer. Addressing the symptoms not fixing the problem.
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.
January 18, 2026
A very good point, PeterB.
The canals railways where built using private companies. Originally a need would be identified and a possible solution sought – eg Getting wool to Liverpool and Manchester docks for export. This was initially done by canals and they rail as that could carry more and faster.
The governments involvement around that time was simply to pass legislation. Someone would partition government for a project and get government approval, including compulsory purchasing of land and, with such a license from government to build ‘x’ those involved would go to the Markets for capital. If the Markets could see a profit they got investment.
January 18, 2026
Yes , added cost and NO benefit.
January 18, 2026
Or better still the record of Sir John James Cowperthwaite, KBE, CMG a British civil servant who served as Financial Secretary of Hong Kong from 1961 to 1971. Sensibly keeping government down to circa 10% of HK’s GDP!
January 18, 2026
Agreed – he famously required the civil servants to collect no growth statistics on the basis they would only meddle whatever the stats showed.
January 19, 2026
SA paid 10% tax. It was common throughout the British Empire.
January 18, 2026
Why?
Because those who are making the decisions which are impoverishing “the peasants” are making a very comfortable living from the status quo.
They thought it would be easy to mouth a few platitudes about “we’re all in this together” and then taking even more money off the little people to shower on the public sector; various foreign organisations/adventures; criminal migrants and the thousands of people making a very pretty penny from providing them with “free everything.”
The status quo will not change until the people who are calling the shots, and have been for a very long time, are removed.
January 18, 2026
True public sector efficiency and quality of service is low, virtuous feedback loops to iteratively improve quality without micromanaging from the top are not there, there are lots of perverse incentives for the staff. The NHS is the classic example where the left always think throwing more money at it will fix it, which is proven to be false.
But we also have the state manipulation and social engineering of the state forcing perverse inefficiency into the private sector… from the incentives to use foreign workers and bin local staff, to the anti freelancer policies, to the artificial high energy costs, to the way imports from china and India are encouraged.
why are we replacing our national bus fleet with imports from China and destroying UK production, who thinks this is a good idea? why has the state manipulation made that look sensible?
and so much more.
January 18, 2026
Off Topic.
So Trump and hence USA is doing playground bullying blocking the sweetie shop. Unless you kneel infront of the boss you are cast adrift.
No wonder nations, former allies ( for their own good) are reassessing ‘friendship’ with America.
We need to resist and agree to buy from others in the world, making it clear dependence is not for ever. In the example of 6th Gen stealth jets, countries are joining together without much contribution from USA, clearly not trusting the basis of friendship, which like water ( in some parts of UK) can be turned on and off at will.
January 18, 2026
A agreement will be reached. Trump is an old man in a hurry and this is a kick in the bums of all the relevant parties telling them to get a move on. He should also insist on Starmer respecting free speech, ditching net zero rip off energy, reducing taxes, having a bonfire of red tape, countless U turns for some real growth polices, ditching Chagos…which he is at it.
January 18, 2026
The problem is Mickey is because of the stupidity of net zero we are dependent on America for liquid gas. This is inspite of sitting on years worth under the UK. Milibrain and his cohort are making us dependent on many rogue states because it suits their ideology.
January 18, 2026
We’re also depentent on the USA for our nuclear weapons & jet fighters ….we could buy they from China for a tenth of the cost; like our net-zero products
January 18, 2026
@Mickey Taking. Yes.
We’ll also need our own nuclear deterrent, not a US-dependent one. Whether the US allowed us to develop our own weapons system is another matter…
January 18, 2026
Agree John, why can politicians not see that the problem is, them spending too much for our money for too little gain anywhere.
Simple, they do not want to trust the people, even with their own money !
Whilst Politicians always think they know best, our problems will remain, or get worse.
When you kill ambition, self determination, personal responsibility, and a work and savings/investment ethic, with ever more taxation, rules and regulations, you encourage stagnation and reliance on the State, until its eventual demise.
January 18, 2026
You have explained in this post why any politician who seriously intends to do what is necessary to get this country back on the path to lasting prosperity is going to have to be an extraordinarily determined person: another Thatcher if you like. They will have to be a great communicator and capable of uniting their Parliamentary party behind them. Do we have such a person?
January 18, 2026
You really have to ask why that is so…
It is said that those who could work and live off benefits are being deceitful, expecting ever more of taxpayer’s money to support them.
Properly enforced budgets should avoid so much of the waste in the public sector, so where are they – why are ministers allowing spending that does not produce more value?
Unfortunately we have been sleepwalking into a communist style laissez-faire attitude in our public services and nobody in authority has had the gall to change it.
January 18, 2026
It’s because the recipients vote for them and give the politicians power and money.
January 18, 2026
Non so blind and I dont expect things to change
January 18, 2026
“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?”
Correct. In fact “forcing people to buy heat pumps and battery cars” is through legislation AND subsidies which are sabotaging our economy through market rigging, increasing taxation and destroying our manufacturing. According to Professor Gordon Hughes of the Renewable Energy Foundation the UK taxpayer has already funded £220bn in renewable subsidies (£8000/household) since 2002 (2024 prices) and is currently funding £26bn/year. NESO say their Clean Power 2030 project will cost “over £40bn annually”. For those who believe that renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels, even when ignoring all the extra system costs such as grid expansion, grid stability and back-up (gas or battery) should explain why renewables are still subsidised and see this chart of CfD payments from the government’s Low Carbon Contracts Company (LCCC) which shows that renewables have not been subsidised for only 3 quarterly periods since 2016. This was when the Ukraine war started temporarily disrupting gas supplies:
https://www.lowcarboncontracts.uk/resources/scheme-dashboards/cfd-historical-data-dashboard/
Net Zero is the perfect socialist vehicle to make and keep people poor.
January 18, 2026
PS:
The socialists have so far succeeded in making our electricity the most expensive in the industrialised world by driving us towards becoming the Saudi Arabia of Wind. The next task is to make it unreliable by forcing through the transition to 100% renewables. To quote the energy consultant Kathryn Porter from her recent report ‘Electrification – can the grid cope?’:
“An analysis of the system pressures, combined with experience to date of significantly low wind output leads to a conclusion that even without increases in demand, there is a 65-85% probability of regional electricity rationing or blackouts by 2030 and a baseline risk of 5-10% of one of these cascading into a full grid failure. A certain level of complacency at NESO, and within the regulator, Ofgem, suggests that the response to the first such capacity crisis will be sluggish. This elevates the risk of a full system blackout by 2030 to 20-30%. The 2003 blackouts in Italy and Spain, and in the NE USA and Canada were both caused by failures of the system operators to take prompt action in response to system stress, so this elevated risk is not unprecedented.”
January 18, 2026
Spending projects costing £bns should need Commons voting, so MPs of all parties can make opinion known.
Pensioner ‘poverty’ exists even when income tax is paid by them (now at max state pension level)…and low income families on say < £20k should not pay income tax. This cost would be offset by aspects of benefits saved.
The public, indeed more educated people, do not understand the BofE losses, surely MP politicians should be drawing attention to it via media?
The hand wringing fraternity should be made clear that benefits should not exceed the living standards of low income families. And that is without the legal/illegal immigrants benefits available.
All this ought to be commonsense – why isn't it?
January 18, 2026
MT
Agree
No one I know is aware of the losses being made by the Bank of England, when I mention it occasionally they simply say, that can’t be right, or are you sure, because i have not seen that mentioned anywhere else.
I an also amazed no media outlet publishes it given the Huge sums involved, which dwarf most other losses and expenditure
January 18, 2026
Agree – Huge sums; and only discussed on this site
January 18, 2026
One of the pernicious aspects of the benefits system is that someone on them is deducted payments if they earn more, so it’s not worth it. Change the system so benefits come in the form of a higher personal allowance.
Young people should get a higher personal allowance if they have a mortgage or children. Currently to be able to afford children you either have to be on benefits, or a train driver.
January 18, 2026
Agree – I’d also like to see the government website showing clear progress on project ….in the main, our government current webites are there to stow confusion
January 18, 2026
I believe that the UK has a relatively high number of MPs as compared to most large democracies. There is then the H o L.
Presumably, some savings can be made ?
Fortunately we no longer contribute to the protection racket that is the EU ….. do we ?
January 18, 2026
”The UK’s payments to the EU in 2025 are part of the ongoing Brexit Financial Settlement, obligations of £8.1 billion. Additionally, the UK rejoined the Horizon research programme, adding roughly £2bn” google
And we thought we had left
January 19, 2026
Diminishing numbers think we have left. The reality appears most days of the week.
January 18, 2026
‘The UK pays the Council of Europe (CoE) through mandatory contributions based on its population and Gross National Income (GNI), alongside voluntary payments, with funds supporting the CoE’s human rights, democracy, and rule of law activities, including the European Court of Human Rights’ google
January 18, 2026
The UK’s contribution to the Council of Europe (CoE) is a fixed percentage of its budget, which for 2026 amounts to approximately £41.7 million
January 18, 2026
The Social Contract which the (real) British people signed up to 80-odd decades ago, has been completely shattered. This one story explains it:
A Bulgarian convicted fraudster, who participated in a scam which stole £54 million from British taxpayers via the open-to-all welfare system, having been released from prison, is now claiming and receiving welfare.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/01/12/bulgarian-welfare-fraudster-back-on-benefits/?recomm_id=f6ebc00d-20fe-457a-b4c5-3a201676ec66
You can have a welfare state, or you can have mass immigration. You can’t have both. The Establishment and the Uni-Party have tested that to destruction over the past 50 years ….. particularly the last 10.
The British people voted against mass immigration for decades – and were ignored and defied by the arrogant Prize Pigs of the Animal Farm Variety.
January 18, 2026
I think that the level of benefits is too high and that being on benefits should be a safety net and not an option.
Other than that I have great inspiration and enjoyment in this post Sir John. I would like to hear this as a stump speech.
January 18, 2026
317 ‘illegal immigrants’ invaded the UK yesterday 17th Jan 2026 ….
January 18, 2026
‘invaded?’ – I thought they were welcomed as in the bible ‘The Second Coming’.
January 18, 2026
I’ll alter ‘invaded’ to ‘never-refused’
January 18, 2026
It all went pear-shaped after Adam and Eve eat the apple (the eating of the apple is metaphorical like in William Blake’s Songs of Experience). Which is why world history and the world today is littered with mediocre / bad politicians. Adam who once ruled with his wife over the world (metaporically-speaking) with perfect dominion (and who also enjoyed the most amazing s-x) which is why it is heretical and wrong to see power, money and s-x as inherently wrong – these aren’t the problem but the wrong type of spirit that governs them)
How many politicians know of, let alone have studied, one of the greatest benovolent political leaders in history – Cyrus the Great – probably less than 1% .. the great life of Cyrus is sadly overshadowed by people such as Hitler, Stalin, Machiavelli, Lord and Lady Macbeth and others.
January 18, 2026
To continue its negative existence, this Labour government must keep the unions and its Marxist element in Parliament happy. It cannot ergo govern for the benefit of the country as a whole. For confirmation just look at its record to date.
What it needs to do, like running mad red Ed out of town and Nett Zero with him, tackling the gross over payment of welfare, overseas aid, HS2 and railways plus underground systems that need fully automating, the traitorous flirtation with the EU, the creation of a coherent energy policy, the removal of all residual EU industrial, banking , and individual heart blockers. All beyond the present governments wish list. So we are where we are until they go.
Were I to steal files from MI6 and make them available to a foreign power I would be inside for a very long time. That is exactly what Starmer is doing by enabling the Chinese embassy. He and his collaborators should find themselves in court charged with offences under the Official Secrets Act.
When Labour government it will be a painful event and the prelude to a long overdue great reset.
January 18, 2026
You have your finger on the pulse. Governments, Civil Servants and Quangos never see an opportunity to cut spending, only increase it. It is a mindset that is sinking the UK financially and will end in bankruptcy.
Even you objected, Sir John, when I said last year that you need to make 450,000 Civil Servants redundant, saving £17 billion each year, less about a quarter to pay for the minimum legal redundancy payments in the first year.
But that is the kind of drastic action needed. If the government can’t govern with the 150,000 Civil Servants left, it has to stop doing so much. Likewise, cut all Quango budgets by 50%, saving about £150 billion, cut all welfare payments by 20%, and allow no one on welfare to have more than the minimum wage. It will take really tough action to stop spending, so we can reduce taxes and repay at least £100 billion a year of our debt.
January 18, 2026
There’s no accountability.
Failed MPs are often given nice little sinecures such as a quango, Hospital Trust Chair, Regulator or similar positions and civil servants and high earning public sector workers can look forward to a lucrative payoff and substantial pension. Why, then, bother trying to make things better?
January 18, 2026
one can post ’til the cows come home.Sad fact is nowt will change until a majority of Labour MPs
will pull the rug from under Starmer and Co.Since when did turkeys vote for Christmas and New year?
January 18, 2026
Our government is determined to spend £billions giving away the Chagos Island, but preparing to go to war over Greenland
January 18, 2026
And they still dont get it..
“A Conservative Party source accuse Rosindell of stabbing his ” friends, colleagues and activists in the back”…
No… it’s the Tories that stabbed the British People in their backs… with their constant Betrayals and Lies…the list of Treachery is very long over 14 years, including setting in motion giving away the Chagos Isles.”
British Conservatives were and are still disenfranchised
January 18, 2026
Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund and the Kremlin’s envoy in talks with Washington, suggested the Prime Minister’s response to the threatened trade levies had been panicked.
“Panicking Starmer calls Daddy’s tariffs ‘completely wrong’,” the Russian wrote on X in response to Sir Keir’s statement on the tariffs.
Putin’s right-hand man also claimed the levies illustrated that the “Leftist, globalist EU/UK elites failed”.
He went on to say the UK had interfered in the US 2016 and 2024 US presidential elections, suggesting that had resulted in the tariffs.
January 19, 2026
+ 1
And El Fattah.
And secretly importing tens of thousands of unvetted, unknown Afghans …. and preventing the electorate from knowing via a Super Injunction. If that information had been made available before the 2024 election, the Treacherous Tories returned to Parliament would have been down to single-figures. That Super Injunction prevented the electorate from holding the Government to account – and was intended to do just that.
Unbelievable …. or should be. And they wonder why we say “we’ll never trust them again.”
January 19, 2026
A Telegraph article yesterday referred to the National Wealth Fund proposing to invest in Oxbotica, a UK autonomous vehicle (AV) technology business. I recently attended a presentation by Wayve, another UK AV technology business – whilst it mentioned companies like Waymo and Tesla as competitors, there was no mention of Oxbotica. I think that if the investment is made in Oxbotica it will end up demonstrating that the public sector is poor at picking winners – might you be able to enquire why Oxbotica was selected?