Labour’s policies are the antithesis of the growth Britain badly needs.
Labour’s policies are the antithesis of the growth Britain badly needs. (Image: KIN CHEUNG/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
We live in a mixed up world of contradictory ideas, moral vacuums and an absence of political conviction. Not only have the UK Labour government lied about many things, they have also failed to deliver on their promises as much through incompetence.
Far from creating the economic growth on which all else depends, they have killed it. Rather than stimulating enterprise and investment by allowing profit, the Government has taxed innovation and hard work in order to fund Trade Union demands and public sector pensions, for nothing in return. Enterprise in Britain is dying and the lifeblood of the economy, family businesses, are being crushed. Disruptors and innovators are scorned. The dead hand of the dullard state reigns supreme.
There is over-regulation in all areas and most recently in respect of employment law, business people are giving up, selling up, and retiring abroad. Labour are creating unemployment, while still utterly failing to stem the tidal wave of migration, thus making us all, on average, poorer. We are falling down the league table of GDP per capita. Now we are as low as 30th in the world.
The NHS is eating taxpayer money like it is going out of fashion. Billions poured into the wages of medics and their golden pensions. The NHS is a communist institution at the heart of a capitalist, free market economy and must be reformed before it kills the patient – Britain itself!
The government’s Net Zero policies are the antithesis of a growth agenda. They make this government look particularly stupid and misguided since there are almost no countries that matter in the world pursuing this insane agenda. The growth economies and the giant powers of the globe: China, USA, Russia , India, are all assiduously pursuing fossil fuels.
Meanwhile the UK Uniparty of left/liberal progressives is impoverishing its people with the cost of living driven by excessive energy costs and in the process, dragging down business , just at a time when a dangerous world demands we have a strong economy. Criminal madness!
Worse still the Labour Government has fallen into the same trap as the post war Atlee administration and for that matter that of the following Churchill administration after the war, that of pouring limited resources down the drain rather than stimulating enterprise.
In 1945 Britain was financially ruined having been utterly drained after defending Europe against German aggression twice in the twentieth century and indebted to the USA, who profited from Britain’s efforts and were able to usurp the British world system in accordance with their long held objective as outlined by President Wilson.
The Atlee government had a one time opportunity to reinvigorate British manufacturing and steal a dominant position in Europe and the Sterling area. Instead it invested in the bottomless pit of the NHS and welfare state as if we had been victors rather than Pyrrhic victors.
Worse still it was persuaded by the USA to divert significant resources into rearming and fighting the Korean war and of defending Europe against the Soviet Union. Meanwhile Germany avoided rearmament and relied on us and the US for its defence for decades, using new machine tools untouched by wartime bombing and safe from reparations, it invested in economic dominance boosted by the US Marshall plan.
It even charged us rent for our armed forces for the privilege of defending Europe. Ironically South Korea has, by the way, just overtaken us in terms of GDP per capita wealth.
Once again a show pony Labour government is making the mistake of ignoring economic growth and instead pouring money into the bottomless pit of the NHS and welfare and in investing in European defence. Meanwhile, Germany and the EU are still exporting to Russia.
Yes, we absolutely need to increase defence spending in order to defend Britain and our interests around the world. But why are we defending wealthy countries around the EU who are not prepared to defend themselves?
The basis of defence is a strong industrial and scientific capability. Only the beneficiaries of an overwhelming surprise attack, a short war, can rely on armaments alone. Anything else requires a strong economy, finance and a defence industry for armaments, the very things the current Labour government have failed to create. preferring instead statist measures. Just as Atlee failed and had just a single term in No10 let us hope that this current shambolic administration is thrown out and that this is not too late for our nation’s survival.
The successor Churchill government did not make a serious attempt to reverse statist policies, a recurrent theme save for the Thatcher administration, and itself missed the opportunity to boost growth favoured by then-chancellor Rab Butler. A strong lesson for future administrations. Anti growth, anti freedom policies must be rolled back with extreme prejudice.
Whatever happens, in the words of Bill Clinton, it is still the economy stupid. It is that which will determine the outcome of the next election. It remains to be seen whether any of our politicians “get it” and have the capability to boost growth, on which everything else depends.
John Longworth is Chairman of the Independent Business Network, a businessman, entrepreneur and former MEP
