Every day brings new shame for Labour. The economy flatlines. Productivity slips. Consumer spending dries up. Tax receipts disappoint. Keir Starmer embarrasses himself. A cabinet member resigns. Someone else resigns. The PM embarrasses himself again. And again.
Things are particularly bad for Rachel Reeves. Today she was hit with another barrage of bad news, and with the Budget looming in November, there’s no end in sight.
This morning, we learned that the jobs market has tanked, with unemployment hitting a four-year high.
We also discovered that UK inflation is now the highest in the G7 group of nations. That’s largely down to Reeves herself.
The bumper public sector pay rises she waved through last year pushed up wages, while employers passed her National Insurance hikes onto the public through higher prices. Both are inflationary.
In another blow, we also learned today that private sector wage growth is falling.
That’s three pieces of rotten news in a single day.
Now comes something even more humiliating. A new report from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) shows the UK faces the worst living standards growth in the Western world.
The IMF warned British living standards will improve at the slowest rate in the G7 next year. GDP growth per person is expected to be a miserable 0.5%.
That’s less than a third of the 1.8% the US can expect in 2026. Even the ailing eurozone will outpace us at 0.9%.
It’s yet more confirmation that 15 months of Rachel Reeves have been disastrous for the UK economy.
And this is before she launches her next tax raid, where she’ll squeeze another £30billion out of struggling businesses and consumers. By the time she’s done, growth per head could fall even further.
Worse, the cost-of-living crisis isn’t over yet. Instead of falling, inflation will head higher next year. While other countries get control of price growth, ours is running out of control.
Even smaller nations in Africa and Latin America are holding down prices better than we are. Including Peru.
Brits used to joke about “deepest, darkest Peru” and consider Paddington Bear lucky to have shipped up at a mainland station in London.
We’re not laughing now. A modern Paddington would probably have stayed in Latin America, taking advantage of the lower inflation rate.
Incredibly, Peru isn’t the only country outperforming us. Finance ministers in Morocco, Ivory Coast and Senegal have done better at curbing inflation than Reeves. got prices under control. This is serious. Our economy’s turning into a joke.
We like to think we’re the sixth richest nation in the world, but that’s misleading. Based on wealth per person, which is what really matters, we’re languishing in 26th place.
At least we’re ahead of Guyana, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Lithuania and Peru. For now.
Labour’s idea that it could deliver prosperity has completely backfired. So has Ed Miliband’s madcap net zero crusade, which has given us the highest energy bills in the West, driving British businesses to the wall.
Our influence on the world stage is shrinking with the economy, as shown by the humiliations Starmer suffers whenever he slinks abroad to take credit for things he hasn’t actually done.
Britain may be sinking fast, but we have one consolation. While we may have higher inflation than Peru, our economy’s still bigger. But Reeves is no doubt working on that too.
