The Government is transporting the UK back to the 1970s at record pace, writes Giles Sheldrick.
Ms Reeves is determined to splurge taxpayers’ cash on handouts. (Image: Getty)
If the numbers don’t lie, then Britain really has become a basket case under Labour.
After the 2024 General Election, Sir Keir Starmer told the nation his new Government was “ready to serve…ready to restore Britain to the service of working people”.
He even had the nerve to say that a weight had been lifted after years of Conservative rule and a burden removed from the shoulders of this great nation.
And he finished by promising the country would now emerge into the “sunlight of hope with the opportunity to get its future back”.
Well, 18 months into this Government’s ruinous run, the figures tell a very different story, and it should make each and every one of those toiling hard to make ends meet weep in despair.
Instead of hope, there is despair as a black cloud hangs over the prospects of those who want to work.
Under Labour, the rot has well and truly set in, just as we knew it would, but in record time.
Britain now has 8.3 million people on Universal Credit – that’s nearly one quarter of working-age people.
And of these 4 million have no requirements to work, and 1.27 million are foreign nationals (including 760,000 EU nationals).
From next year, someone who works and earns £35,000 a year will be £1,400 pa worse off, due to taxation effects.
A family on Universal Credit with five children will be £10,000 a year better off.
Starmer promised Britain hope and optimism but the country’s a mess. (Image: Getty)
Since the 2024 Budget – Labour’s first in 14 years – there are 170,000 (and counting) more unemployed, yet 62,000 more public sector jobs.
Britain has been hit with £70 billion of higher taxes, 1 million more on welfare with no requirement to look for work, 80,000 more young people not in education, employment or training, while the number of graduate jobs has almost halved and job vacancies have fallen for the fifth consecutive month.
It is a list of economic incompetence that would shame a banana republic.
The PM and Rachel Reeves, his calamitous Chancellor, scrapped the two-child benefit cap in a move that increases handouts to 560,000 families by an average of £5,310.
It means taxpayer spending on welfare is set to rise from £333 billion a year in 2025/26 to £389.4 billion in 2029/30, as this country becomes increasingly languid and apathetic under a Government that has repeatedly shown it has no clue how to govern or stimulate the economy.
As if it really needs to be said, the warning lights are flashing ever brighter as Labour transports us back to the 1970s at record pace.
As one respected financial advisor told me: “The non-working are doing well – just the way communists like it. The more they make dependent, the more votes they secure.”
If you are someone getting up each day to go to work to support a family, it really is enough to make you sick.
