Do you remember Rachel Reeves and issues as mundane as how badly she is managing the UK economy? I almost look on moaning about such things with a slight sense of nostalgia. If only that were all we had to worry about now.
Except we have, of course, to still worry about such things. This is from The Guardian this morning, based on the latest announcement on employment data from the Office for National Statistics, out this morning:
The number of employed people in the UK has fallen again, particularly in shops, restaurants and hotels, reflecting weak hiring, while private sector wages grew at the slowest rate in five years, official figures show.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed the number of employees on payrolls fell by 184,000 in December compared with a year earlier, to 30.2 million.
Three thoughts.
First, the economy is very clearly weakening.
Second, there is no reason to think this is going to change.
Third, no wonder Labout has the poll ratings it has. This unemployment is the deliberate consequence of a combination of both fiscal and monetary policy that is intended to keep unemployment high so that inflation can, supposedly, be kept low, as if there is an obvious relationship between the two when, as a matter of fact, there is not.
We can, and should, condemn Trump and all he is doing. But let's not pretend there is benevolent government going on here in the UK, because there is not. We still have people running this country who think that having one in twenty people unemployed (and one in ten young people) unemployed is a price worth paying for low inflation, when it is glaringly obvious that they have not the slightest idea what is causing the inflation they are supposedly tackling.
We are a long way from being out of a mess of our own creation, in other words. The only reason we are not noticing it so much right now is that so much else is going on, but we should not ignore that Reeves, Bailey & Co are still furiously furrowing the fields for fascism to grow in right here, right now, and nor should we stop worrying about that.
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Agreed, Professor. A critical mass of angry unemployed people, combined with apparent indifference from government, is a fertile recruiting ground for fascist snake oil salesmen.
Prescient.
We plough the fields and scatter the bad seed on the land…..
Rachel Reeves seems bereft of ideas and clearly has no basic grasp of economics. The fact that tax has shifted to labour from capital would appear to be – yet another – demonstration that maintaining a level of pressure on employment and working salaries to control inflation is fundamentally flawed.
Her fascination and focus on capital and the financial markets is perverse. In a good article by Heather Stewart in the Guardian as she heads for Davos ‘Why Rachel Reeves should give bankers more of the cold shoulder at Davos 2026’ https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/jan/18/rachel-reeves-bankers-cold-shoulder-davos-2026?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other. In summary, “ As contributors to a timely conference at the London School of Economics (LSE) made clear last week, once a country’s financial industry reaches a certain size – which the UK’s sector has long surpassed – it stops boosting growth and starts to become a brake, a result reinforced in a string of academic papers spread over more than a decade.”
In today’s Guardian – in one of the most direct comments against neoliberal economics – Ingrid Robeyns’ article ‘In Davos, the rich talk about ‘global threats’. Here’s why they’re silent about the biggest of them all’. “ All forms of capitalism are characterised by extensive private ownership of companies as well as the primacy of the profit motive. But the specific neoliberal form of capitalism that has risen to dominance from the late 1970s onwards has additional features: the privatisation of companies previously in public ownership; a shift in power from workers to capital owners; and reduced taxes on entrepreneurs and the richest.”
“ The transition from mixed economies under social democracies to neoliberal capitalism has led to a notable increase of wealth concentration at the top, which is now eroding (and in some places even destroying) our democracies. ”
The fact that the UK government – Rachel Reeves in particular – don’t seem to understand (and possibly don’t care to understand) these fundamentals surely demands that the UKG be pressurised to change…or be changed out. Their incompetence is simply astonishing. Would appear they want to join the neoliberal clown club/oligarchy (I refuse to recognise them as elite).
Thanks.
“private sector wages grew at the slowest rate in five years, official figures show”
How do people “feel” in employment. Probably very very unhappy as increasingly they can’t afford stuff.
LINO was/is functionally incapable of delivering on the economy & wages (a cursory glance at their “crew” shows why).
You are correct: this failure fertilises the electoral ground for fascism/Fart-rage & his private company. The key now is the elections later this year.
Regardless of the result, I expect Starmer to hang on – because leaving/resigning opens the possiblity of a trip to the Hague (for him, his chief of staff and a large part of the cabinet).
I doubt he will do electoral reform. So..????
To use one of his phrases, I think everything might be on the table, except him: he will be gone.
Aside from unemployment, there is another factor that enables fascism; the media. The usual suspects( Mail, Express, Telegraph, Sun) are largely silent on Trump’s madness, but I expect them to start trying to rationalise this madness shortly. Within a few weeks, they are likely, on past form, to start supporting him, albeit with some reservation, before proclaiming him as the great ubermensch that he believes himself to be.
They would only be repeating past behaviour in favouring extreme right-wing demagogues and their ruinous actions.