The beginning of a new financial year should have offered Britain a fresh economic start.

Instead, gross domestic product fell by 0.1% in April 2026. Services contracted by 0.2%, production was flat and construction managed growth of just 0.1%.

One weak month does not mean Britain is in recession. Monthly GDP is volatile, several industries continued to grow and the wider three-month trend remains positive.

But April matters because several warning signs arrived together.

The new tax year began with income-tax thresholds still frozen. Employers faced another substantial rise in statutory wage rates. Consumer-facing activity weakened. Payroll employment continued to fall. More than one million young people were outside education, employment or training. Government borrowing began the year above forecast.

Then the conflict involving Iran pushed up energy and fuel costs.

That international shock helps explain why the economy stumbled. It does not explain why Britain was so poorly prepared to absorb it.

The Economy Went Backwards In April

Services represent around four-fifths of the UK economy, so a 0.2% fall was enough to pull overall GDP into negative territory.

Eight of the 14 service subsectors contracted. Among the most notable falls were:

• Administrative and support services: down 2.2%

• Arts, entertainment and recreation: down 4.3%

• Retail trade: down 1.3%

• Employment activities: down 2.6%

Consumer-facing services as a whole fell by 0.5%.

There were genuine areas of strength. Information and communication grew by 1.1%, manufacturing increased by 0.4% and pharmaceutical manufacturing rose by 4.2%.

Construction also remained marginally positive, although its recent improvement has been driven more by repair and maintenance than by a substantial increase in new building.

This is not an economy in freefall. It is an economy in which growth remains narrow, with technology and pharmaceuticals performing relatively well while retail, employment activity and household-facing sectors struggle.

Iran Was A Real Shock — But Not The Whole Explanation

It would be wrong to discuss April without recognising events overseas.

The Office for National Statistics reported that the Middle East conflict affected businesses in manufacturing, wholesale, transportation, accommodation and travel.

UK-based companies also lost activity following the cancellation of sporting events in the region. Output from sports activities, amusement and recreation fell by 9.1%, making it the largest individual drag on GDP during April.

Businesses reported additional pressure from energy and fuel costs. Forty per cent of trading businesses said the prices of goods they purchased had increased during April, the highest proportion since December 2022.

These effects are real. Britain imports energy and operates within global supply chains, so conflict involving Iran and pressure on oil markets will inevitably affect costs and confidence.

But external shocks reveal the resilience of an economy. Britain entered this one with taxation close to historic highs, borrowing elevated, hiring weakening and household finances already under strain.

The conflict did not create those structural weaknesses. It exposed them.

A New Tax Year Without A Tax Reset

April marked the beginning of the 2026/27 tax year.

The government introduced some measures that should help households, including support intended to reduce energy bills, a freeze in regulated rail fares in England and an extension of the temporary 5p reduction in fuel duty.

Those measures provide genuine relief and should be acknowledged.

But the new tax year did not produce a meaningful reset for taxpayers.

The personal allowance remains frozen at £12,570. As wages rise, more income is brought into taxation and more workers are pulled towards higher tax bands.

The government does not need to announce a higher income-tax rate for the tax burden to increase. Inflation and wage growth do the work automatically.

Dividend tax rates also increased, adding to the burden on company owners, entrepreneurs and investors who receive part of their income through dividends. Business rates were reset following revaluation, with transitional support protecting some firms but higher liabilities falling on others.

None of these measures alone explains a monthly GDP movement of 0.1%.

Together, however, they reveal the contradiction at the heart of the government’s approach: ministers say growth is their central mission while continuing to remove spending power from households and increase the costs faced by employers and investors.

Britain already has one of the highest tax burdens in its modern history. That means every additional rise matters.

Households have less money available to spend. Businesses have less room to invest. Employers become more cautious about recruitment. The productive economy is expected to carry more of the state while generating the growth needed to pay for it.

That is not a sustainable model.

Even Labour Ministers Have Questioned The Strategy

The most revealing criticism of Labour’s growth agenda has not come from the opposition.

It has come from inside government.

In private messages to Peter Mandelson, Wes Streeting wrote:

“No growth strategy at all.”

That does not mean the government has no individual growth policies. Ministers can point to planning reform, infrastructure proposals, investment initiatives and measures intended to improve economic stability.

But the comment matters because it came from a senior Cabinet minister. It suggests that concerns about the absence of a coherent strategy were also being expressed privately at the top of government.

Another message, this time from Pat McFadden, was even more revealing.

Discussing pressure from Labour MPs over welfare policy, he wrote:

“Every meeting I have is ‘who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others’. They’re asking the wrong questions.”

One private message should not be presented as the settled view of every Labour politician. But McFadden’s frustration points towards a deeper problem.

Too much political debate begins with the cost of government promises and asks who can be taxed to pay for them.

The better questions are how more people can become economically independent, how businesses can create more productive work, and how the private economy can generate the resources required to fund essential services.

Taxation can redistribute existing income. It does not automatically create new wealth.

A strong welfare state depends on a strong productive economy beneath it. Without growth, government is left dividing an inadequate economic pie while borrowing to cover the gaps.

Higher Wages — But At What Cost?

The National Living Wage increased from £12.21 to £12.71 an hour in April, a rise of 4.1% for workers aged 21 and over.

Younger workers received larger increases:

• Ages 18 to 20: up 8.5%, to £10.85

• Ages 16 to 17: up 6.0%, to £8.00

• Apprentice rate: up 6.0%, to £8.00

These rises were above consumer-price inflation.

For workers who retain their jobs and hours, that represents a real improvement in hourly pay.

But the employer’s cost is not measured by CPI alone. Businesses must absorb higher wages alongside employer National Insurance, pensions, rent, energy, business rates and other operating costs.

The additional cost has to appear somewhere:

• Lower profits

• Higher prices

• Fewer hours

• Reduced recruitment

• Automation

• Job losses

The effect is not evenly distributed. A profitable technology company may absorb the increase relatively easily. A pub, café, hotel, care provider or high-street shop operating on narrow margins may not.

It would be simplistic to blame every lost retail or hospitality job on the minimum wage. Weak demand, energy costs, rents and payroll taxes also matter.

But it is equally unrealistic to claim that repeatedly increasing the price of employing people has no effect on hiring.

For some workers, the policy means higher pay. For some potential workers, particularly those with little experience, it can mean the job is never created.

The Jobs Market Is Flashing Warning Signs

The unemployment rate stood at 5.0%, up by 0.5 percentage points over the year.

Vacancies fell to 705,000, the lowest level since early 2021. Payroll employment also weakened, while the provisional April estimate pointed towards another sizeable fall.

That early payroll figure should be treated cautiously because estimates around the start of a tax year can be revised substantially.

But the broader direction is difficult to dismiss:

• Vacancies are falling

• Unemployment is higher

• Payroll employment has weakened

• Private-sector wage growth has slowed

• Employment-related business activity fell in April

Businesses hire when they expect demand and revenue to grow.

When they face weaker sales alongside higher wages, National Insurance, business rates, energy costs and regulation, they become more cautious.

That caution often appears first in recruitment. Vacancies disappear before established employees are dismissed, and entry-level jobs are among the easiest positions to leave unfilled.

That is particularly damaging for the young.

Britain Is Locking Young People Out Of Work

More than one million people aged 16 to 24 were not in employment, education or training during the first quarter of 2026.

The total reached 1,012,000, equivalent to 13.5% of the age group and 89,000 more than a year earlier.

Of those young people:

• 400,000 were unemployed and actively seeking work

• 613,000 were economically inactive

The figures need careful interpretation. Many young people remain in full-time education and youth labour-market measures can be volatile.

But the scale and direction are deeply concerning.

Britain has built an education system that encourages young people to collect qualifications, often with significant debt attached, without creating a reliable route into work.

The first rung of the ladder is disappearing.

Retail, hospitality, leisure and customer services have traditionally provided young people with their first experience of employment. These are also among the sectors most exposed to rising wage costs, employer taxes, business rates, energy bills and weak consumer demand.

Government cannot claim to be concerned about youth worklessness while making entry-level employment steadily more expensive.

Government should also reduce the cost of hiring young people. Employers already receive National Insurance relief for workers under 21, but that support could be extended through a tapered system up to age 25, particularly where jobs include accredited training or apprenticeships. The principle is simple: make it cheaper for employers to take a chance on someone with little experience, rather than leaving young people outside work for years.

Borrowing Rules Out Easy Answers

The government cannot solve every problem by announcing another spending programme.

Public-sector borrowing reached £24.3 billion in April, £4.9 billion more than a year earlier, £3.4 billion above the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast and the highest April figure since 2020.

There was some better news across the previous financial year. Borrowing in the year ending March 2026 came in below both the previous year and the OBR forecast.

That deserves recognition.

But beginning the new financial year above forecast shows how little room exists for error.

High borrowing creates its own growth problem. More debt means more interest, leaving less money for infrastructure, public services or tax reductions. Inflation can raise the cost of index-linked debt, while weak growth reduces the revenues needed to stabilise the position.

That is why lower taxes must be credible.

Borrowing money to finance temporary tax cuts would risk higher interest costs and leave taxpayers with a larger bill later. The objective should be to reform and restrain spending sufficiently to allow workers and businesses to keep more of what they earn.

Energy Must Be Central To The Growth Plan

Energy cannot remain a side issue in Britain’s economic strategy.

Households and businesses face some of the highest energy costs in the developed world. That weakens consumer spending, raises production costs and makes British firms less competitive.

Every pound spent unnecessarily on electricity, heating or fuel is a pound that cannot be spent elsewhere.

For households, lower energy bills would operate much like a tax cut.

Families would have more money left to spend in shops, restaurants and local services. That would support demand across the economy without requiring another government spending programme.

For businesses, cheaper and more reliable energy would reduce costs, improve margins and create more room for investment, recruitment and lower prices.

Energy costs feed into almost everything: food production, transport, manufacturing, hospitality, retail, construction and public services.

In a country where taxes are already historically high, government cannot keep removing spending power through taxation while allowing essential energy costs to absorb more of what remains.

Short-term subsidies may soften the impact of a crisis, but they do not fix the underlying problem.

Britain needs a coherent long-term strategy built around reliable domestic supply, secure infrastructure, investment in the grid and lower prices.

That means being pragmatic about the energy mix, reducing dependence on volatile imports and judging policy by whether it delivers affordable and secure energy rather than by political slogans.

A credible growth strategy must recognise that cheaper energy is not merely an environmental or industrial policy.

It is an economic policy, a competitiveness policy and, in effect, a tax cut for every household and business.

A Credible Route Back To Growth

The government is right that stability matters.

Planning reform could eventually increase housing and infrastructure. Support with energy and transport costs helps household budgets. Higher statutory wages increase the incomes of workers who remain employed.

A balanced assessment should acknowledge all of that.

But stability is not the same as growth.

Growth comes when businesses invest, workers become more productive and households have the confidence and disposable income to spend.

Britain needs a serious programme built around those fundamentals:

• Gradually unfreeze income-tax thresholds

• Reduce the tax burden on employment

• Extend targeted employer National Insurance relief for younger workers

• Simplify business rates and reduce the penalty on physical premises

• Reward investment rather than continually finding new ways to tax it

• Accelerate planning, housing and infrastructure decisions

• Reform welfare around capability, rehabilitation and routes into work

• Improve technical education and connect it directly to employers

• Deliver cheaper, reliable domestic energy through a coherent long-term strategy

• Control day-to-day government spending

Lower taxes are not a magic wand. If financed through uncontrolled borrowing, they can create another problem. If businesses lack skilled workers, infrastructure or reliable energy, tax reductions alone will not deliver prosperity.

But the current balance has moved too far towards government extraction.

Households cannot drive consumption when increasing shares of their income are absorbed by tax, housing, utilities and debt. Businesses cannot expand confidently when every financial statement threatens another cost. Young people cannot gain experience when employers conclude that taking a chance on them is too expensive.

Britain needs stronger demand and greater productive capacity.

That means leaving people with more money to spend while removing the barriers that prevent businesses from investing, employing and building.

Labour Is Asking Who To Tax — Britain Must Ask How To Grow

April’s contraction may prove temporary.

The monthly numbers are volatile. The wider three-month trend remains positive. The conflict involving Iran had identifiable effects on energy, fuel, travel, supply chains and sporting activity.

It would be unfair to blame Rachel Reeves for every part of the monthly fall.

But governments are judged not only by the shocks they face. They are judged by the resilience they build before those shocks arrive and by the response they offer afterwards.

Britain began the new tax year with frozen tax thresholds, elevated borrowing, falling vacancies, weaker payroll employment and more than one million young people outside employment, education or training.

Against that background, the private comments attributed to two senior Labour ministers are significant.

Wes Streeting said there was “no growth strategy at all.”

Pat McFadden complained that meetings focused on who could be taxed to pay benefits rather than how people could be helped into opportunity.

Those messages identify the central problem more clearly than another Treasury slogan ever could.

Britain cannot tax and redistribute its way to prosperity.

It needs more people working, more businesses investing, more homes and infrastructure being built, cheaper and more secure energy, and households with enough money left to spend.

The defining question should not be:

Who can we tax next?

It should be:

What must change so Britain can grow again?

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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The 2026 Senedd election did not just end Labour’s dominance in Wales. It exposed the new divide shaping Welsh politics.

Young Wales went Plaid. Older Wales went Reform. Labour lost both.

For more than a century, Welsh politics had one central fact: Labour dominated. That fact no longer holds. YouGov’s post-election analysis, based on a reanalysis of its successful pre-election MRP, shows a country increasingly divided by generation, education, identity, ownership and trust.

This is not “two nations” in a constitutional sense. It is two political electorates: younger, more Plaid-leaning Wales on one side, and older, more Reform-leaning Wales on the other.

That is the real story.

The Official Result: Labour Wales Is Over

Before looking at the voter breakdown, it is worth reminding ourselves what actually happened. The 2026 Senedd election delivered one of the biggest political shocks in modern Welsh history.

The new 96-member Senedd looks like this:

• Plaid Cymru: 43 seats

• Reform UK Wales: 34 seats

• Welsh Labour: 9 seats

• Welsh Conservatives: 7 seats

• Wales Green Party: 2 seats

• Welsh Liberal Democrats: 1 seat

This was the first Senedd election since devolution where Labour did not win the most seats. Plaid Cymru became the largest party, Reform UK Wales became the second-largest party, and Welsh Labour was reduced to just nine seats.

That is the official result. But the YouGov analysis tells us something even more important: who voted for whom, and what kind of Wales is now emerging.

YouGov says it reanalysed the data behind its pre-election MRP, which successfully forecast the results of the vote, to break down how Wales voted by key demographic and political divides. The topline breakdown in the YouGov table is:

• Plaid Cymru: 35%

• Reform UK: 29%

• Labour: 11%

• Conservatives: 11%

• Greens: 7%

• Liberal Democrats: 5%

The analysis is based on 2,391 adults in Wales, with fieldwork carried out between 25 April and 4 May 2026. The table excludes those who said they did not know or would not vote.

Labour was not merely beaten. It was pushed into the pack, level with the Conservatives and far behind both Plaid Cymru and Reform UK.

For a party that once treated Wales as its safest political territory, that should be a warning siren.

Young Wales Went Plaid

Among younger voters, the result was overwhelming.

Among 16-29 year olds:

• Plaid Cymru: 60%

• Greens: 15%

• Reform UK: 14%

• Labour: 5%

• Liberal Democrats: 3%

• Conservatives: 2%

That is not a narrow youth lead. That is dominance.

There is a turnout caveat. Younger voters are often less likely to vote than older voters, so Plaid’s youth dominance does not automatically mean young Wales alone will decide elections. These figures show the preferences of voters, not every young person in Wales.

But as a signal of political direction, the number is striking.

For younger Wales, Plaid has become the main vehicle for change. That may be about Welsh identity, housing, climate, language, public services, culture or frustration with both Westminster and Cardiff Bay. It is unlikely to be one single issue.

Whatever the mix of reasons, the political outcome is clear. Labour no longer owns the future-facing vote in Wales. Plaid does.

That matters because political parties need a pipeline of support. If younger voters do not begin their political lives with Labour, Labour cannot assume they will return later out of habit.

The old Labour habit in Wales has weakened.

Older Wales Went Reform

Now look at the other end of the age scale.

Among voters aged 70 and over:

• Reform UK: 37%

• Plaid Cymru: 22%

• Conservatives: 18%

• Labour: 12%

• Liberal Democrats: 4%

• Greens: 4%

Reform also led among every age group above 50:

• 50-59: 34%

• 60-69: 36%

• 70+: 37%

Plaid’s support moved in the opposite direction, falling from 60% among 16-29s to 22% among over-70s.

This is not just a party split. It is an age split. Younger and older voters in Wales are increasingly voting as if they live in different political worlds.

One side is moving heavily towards Plaid. The other is moving heavily towards Reform.

That tells us something important about the emotional and political divide inside Wales.

Generation Or Life Stage?

There is one important caveat. Young people have often leaned left, radical or progressive. That is not new.

When people are younger, they are less likely to own homes, less likely to have accumulated assets, less likely to be paying higher levels of tax, and often more open to political movements promising change. As people get older, priorities can shift. They pay more tax, they may own property, they may have children, and they may become more focused on pensions, public order, migration, local services and whether the system rewards work.

In other words, some of this divide may be about life stage, not just generation. A 22-year-old renter and a 72-year-old homeowner are likely to see the world differently because they occupy very different positions in it.

But that caveat does not remove the significance of the YouGov figures.

Among 16-29 year olds, Plaid Cymru reached 60%. Among voters aged 70 and over, Reform UK reached 37%. Labour was stuck on 5% among 16-29s and 12% among over-70s.

That is the problem for Labour. Even if some younger voters move rightwards as they age, Labour is not currently the party they are starting with. Among older voters, Labour is not the party they are ending with either.

That is how a dominant political coalition disappears.

Labour Is Trapped In The Middle

The most brutal number for Labour is this: Labour did not lead any age group.

Its support was:

• 16-29: 5%

• 30-39: 12%

• 40-49: 12%

• 50-59: 12%

• 60-69: 12%

• 70+: 12%

That is remarkably flat. But flat is not the same as strong.

Labour appears to have become a party with residual support everywhere, but dominance nowhere. It is no longer the obvious party of younger voters, and it is no longer the obvious party of older working-class Wales.

Political dominance usually ends like this. Not all at once, but by losing different parts of the coalition to different opponents.

Plaid has taken the young, Welsh-speaking and graduate-heavy lane. Reform has taken much of the older, Leave-leaning and lower-education lane. Labour is left trying to speak to both while clearly leading neither.

The Divides Labour No Longer Bridges

The age divide is the main story, but it is not the only divide.

Look at education.

Among voters with low levels of education:

• Reform UK: 45%

• Plaid Cymru: 26%

• Labour: 9%

Among voters with high levels of education:

• Plaid Cymru: 43%

• Reform UK: 17%

• Labour: 14%

This mirrors a pattern seen across many Western democracies. Politics is no longer simply organised around class in the old industrial sense. It is increasingly shaped by education, identity, age, assets and trust.

The Brexit divide has not disappeared either.

Among Remain voters, Plaid Cymru reached 48%, while Reform UK was on 10%. Among Leave voters, Reform UK reached 53%, while Plaid Cymru was on 17% and Labour just 7%.

Again, Labour is stuck between two electorates it no longer leads. It is not the main party of Remain Wales. Plaid is. It is not the main party of Leave Wales. Reform is.

Welsh language also remains central. Among fluent Welsh speakers, Plaid Cymru reached 69%. Among those who do not speak Welsh, Reform UK was the largest party on 36%.

This is why the result feels deeper than a normal party swing. It looks like two different political identities becoming organised around two different parties.

Labour once bridged these divides in Wales. It no longer does.

The Coalition Has Broken

The scale of voter movement is remarkable.

YouGov found that only 45% of Welsh voters who voted in both 2021 and 2026 backed the same party both times.

Labour retained just 34% of its 2021 vote. Of those who voted Labour in 2021, 39% switched to Plaid Cymru, 13% switched to Reform UK, and only 34% stayed with Labour.

The Conservatives had a similar problem. More than half of their 2021 voters, 55%, switched to Reform UK.

The same pattern appears when looking back to the 2024 general election. Only 30% of 2024 Labour voters who voted in 2026 stuck with Labour. Nearly half, 45%, moved to Plaid Cymru, while one in ten moved to Reform UK.

That is not a normal electoral wobble. That is a coalition breaking apart.

It also suggests voters were not merely choosing between policy platforms. Many were choosing between competing stories about what has gone wrong in Wales and who represents change.

The Accountability Question

This should worry Labour, but it should also worry anyone interested in whether Wales is working.

Welsh voters are not changing parties for sport. They are reacting to outcomes: public services, living standards, NHS performance, housing, trust and whether they believe the political system is listening.

The old Labour offer was built on a simple assumption: Wales was Labour, and Labour was Wales. That assumption no longer holds.

The new question is harder. After decades of devolved Labour dominance, do Welsh voters believe Wales has improved enough?

The 2026 result suggests many do not.

Young voters appear to have decided that Plaid offers a better future. Older voters appear to have decided that Reform offers a louder challenge to the status quo. Labour, meanwhile, has been left defending a record that many voters no longer seem willing to reward.

That is the accountability story beneath the election result.

Conclusion

Wales has not just changed government. It has changed shape politically.

Young Wales is moving towards Plaid, while older Wales is moving towards Reform. Labour is losing both ends of the electorate.

Some of this may be life stage. Younger voters often lean left or progressive before taxes, mortgages, family costs and asset ownership shift their priorities. But that does not save Labour, because Labour is no longer the natural party of the young and it is no longer the natural party of older working-class Wales.

Labour did not just lose an election. It lost the ability to bridge Wales’ political divides.

That is the real lesson from the YouGov analysis.

The next phase of Welsh politics will not be defined simply by left versus right. It will be defined by generation, identity, education, ownership and trust.

For Labour, the message is brutal. The party that once united Wales is now being pulled apart by the divides it no longer seems able to bridge.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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We are used to assuming that every generation will be healthier than the last. Better medicine, better housing, better technology and more awareness should all mean longer, healthier lives.

But the data is starting to tell a different story.

A new review led by researchers at UCL suggests younger generations are experiencing poorer health earlier in life than previous generations. That matters because the question is no longer just how long people live. It is how many of those years are spent in poor health — and who pays the price when preventable illness starts earlier.

The Generational Health Drift

The UCL review compared national birth cohort studies involving people born in Britain from 1946 to 2002, looking at differences between baby boomers, Generation X, millennials and Generation Z.

The findings were striking:

• Childhood overweight and obesity rates were highest among Generation Z.

• Diabetes in midlife almost doubled, from 3.1% among baby boomers to 5.9% among Generation X.

• Generation Z showed higher levels of mental ill-health in adolescence than earlier born groups.

• Millennials reported lower life satisfaction than Generation X.

Researchers describe this as a “generational health drift” — younger cohorts showing worse health than earlier generations at similar stages of life.

That should worry us because if poor health arrives earlier, pressure on the NHS, welfare system and economy also arrives earlier. This is not just about old age anymore. It is about people becoming unhealthy during the years when they should be working, raising families, building careers and contributing to society.

We Are Living Longer — But Not Necessarily Better

There is an important distinction between life expectancy and healthy life expectancy. Life expectancy tells us how long people are expected to live. Healthy life expectancy tells us how many years people are expected to live in good general health.

That second number matters far more for the NHS, the benefits system and the economy.

The latest Office for National Statistics figures show healthy life expectancy in the UK has fallen to its lowest level since the current time series began. In 2022 to 2024, healthy life expectancy at birth was:

• 60.7 years for males

• 60.9 years for females

Compared with 2019 to 2021, healthy life expectancy fell by 1.8 years for males and 2.5 years for females.

So yes, people may still live into their late 70s or 80s. But if good health is ending around 60, that creates a huge problem: more years spent managing illness, more years needing treatment, more years out of the workforce and more years leaning on public services.

This is the real health crisis. Not just whether people live longer, but whether they live well.

This Is Not Just Better Diagnosis

Some will say this is simply because we diagnose more conditions now. There is some truth in that. Awareness has improved, mental health is discussed more openly and diabetes screening is better than it was decades ago.

But that does not explain everything.

You do not diagnose your way into higher obesity. The UCL researchers also point out that some of the trends cannot be dismissed as just better screening or better awareness. Obesity is measured. Diabetes can be picked up using biological markers. Mental health comparisons were based on established measures across cohort studies.

In other words, this is not just a statistical illusion. Something has changed.

Childhood Has Changed

When I was growing up in the 1980s and early 1990s, children spent far more time outside. Playing football in the street, riding bikes, walking around with friends and burning energy without calling it “exercise” were normal parts of childhood.

There were no smartphones, no Xbox Live, no endless scrolling and no algorithm designed to keep children locked onto a screen for hours. That world has largely gone.

Today, too many children are indoors, inactive, isolated and online. That matters for physical health, but it also matters for mental health. Human beings are not designed to spend their formative years staring into small screens, comparing themselves to strangers, consuming endless content and socialising less in the real world.

Children need movement, sunlight, face-to-face contact, competition, challenge, boredom, friendship, resilience and routine. Strip too many of those things out of childhood and we should not be surprised when mental and physical health deteriorates.

Resilience does not mean ignoring genuine mental illness. It means giving children the habits, confidence and support that help ordinary setbacks stay as setbacks — instead of becoming crises.

The Food Environment Has Changed Too

This is not only about screens. Food has changed as well.

Home cooking has declined. Busy parents have less time. Children are surrounded by fast food, snacks, delivery apps and ultra-processed products designed for convenience, shelf life and repeat consumption.

The basic meal cooked from fresh ingredients has been replaced too often by something from a packet, a freezer, a microwave or a delivery driver. That is not progress if it leaves people less healthy, less active and more dependent on systems that treat the symptoms later.

This is where the health debate often becomes too narrow. We talk about calories, body mass index and personal responsibility. All of that matters, but people make choices within an environment.

The problem is not one product label or one diet trend. It is the wider shift away from basic ingredients and towards highly processed convenience food. Britain has built an environment where the unhealthy choice is often easy, cheap, normal and constant.

Then we act surprised when poor health rises.

The NHS Has Become A Repair Shop For A Broken Society

This is the point politicians do not want to confront.

The NHS is not just under pressure because there are too few doctors, too few beds or too many waiting lists. Those things matter, but the deeper issue is that the NHS is increasingly being asked to repair the consequences of a society producing illness earlier.

Poor diet, obesity, diabetes, mental ill-health, inactivity, social isolation, screen addiction, loss of routine and reduced resilience are not problems the NHS can solve on its own.

The NHS was built to treat illness. It was not built to compensate for every failure in family life, food culture, education, work, community, housing and personal responsibility.

But that is what it is increasingly being asked to do.

This is why simply saying “fund the NHS more” is not enough. You can pour more money into the repair shop, but if society keeps sending more broken people through the door, the queue will keep growing.

That is the brutal truth.

Poor Health Is Now An Economic Problem

Poor health is not just a personal tragedy. It is an economic cost.

The labour market already shows this. The latest ONS labour market figures estimate the UK economic inactivity rate for people aged 16 to 64 at 20.9% in January to March 2026. Long-term sickness remains one of the major reasons people are outside the labour force.

That should be a national alarm bell.

If more people become unhealthy earlier in life, more people will need treatment sooner. More people may leave work. More people may claim sickness or disability benefits. More people may need support from family members who then reduce their own working hours.

That means lower productivity, higher welfare spending, more NHS demand and more pressure on taxpayers.

We often talk about economic growth as if it only depends on tax rates, interest rates and business investment. But the health of the workforce matters too.

A sick nation becomes an expensive nation.

And Britain is already expensive enough.

Prevention Has To Start Earlier

The answer is not to lecture people after they become ill. Prevention has to start much earlier.

That means taking childhood seriously again. Children need to move more. Schools need to protect sport and physical education. Communities need safe spaces for outdoor play. Parents need support to rebuild routines around food, sleep and activity.

We also need to be honest about phones. A child spending hours every evening online is not the same as a child spending hours outside with friends. One builds fitness, confidence, social skills and resilience. The other can too easily produce anxiety, comparison, isolation and inactivity.

This does not mean banning technology from modern life, but it does mean admitting the obvious: the smartphone has changed childhood, and not all of that change has been good.

The same applies to food. We need to get back to basics: simple ingredients, home cooking, proper meals, better routines and less reliance on ultra-processed convenience food pretending to be healthy because the packaging says so.

The country does not need more health gimmicks. It needs fewer broken habits.

The Real Question

This is not about blaming young people. It is not about pretending everything was perfect in the past. And it is not about saying every case of poor health is the result of personal failure.

But we do need to be honest.

A society that keeps children indoors, feeds them poorly, removes too much competition, weakens resilience, normalises inactivity and then hands the consequences to the NHS is not a serious society. It is a society avoiding reality.

The UCL findings should be treated as a warning. Younger generations may not simply inherit longer lives. They may inherit longer periods of poor health.

That is bad for them, bad for families, bad for the NHS, bad for taxpayers and bad for the economy.

The NHS cannot repair a broken society on its own.

If Britain wants better health, prevention has to start long before someone joins a waiting list — in childhood, in schools, in homes and in the everyday habits that shape a nation.

Because the question is not just whether Britain can afford the NHS.

It is whether Britain can afford to keep producing preventable illness — and then asking the NHS to fix it.✍️ Jamie Jenkins

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The latest ONS workless household tables should set alarm bells ringing.

For this analysis, I have excluded student households throughout. That gives a cleaner picture of worklessness among non-student working-age households, rather than counting young people who may simply be studying before entering the labour market.

On that basis, 298,000 working-age households are now made up entirely of people who have never worked — up 39,000 in a year and the highest level on record in the non-student series.

But this is not just a household count. It is people.

Those households contain around 429,000 people, excluding student households — up 69,000 in a year.

Let that sink in. Nearly 300,000 households. Around 429,000 people. Not students. Not people between jobs. Not a temporary blip.

Households where work has never been present.

That is not just an economic warning light. It is a national one.

Worklessness Is Bigger Than Unemployment

Politicians like talking about unemployment because it sounds manageable. Someone does not have a job, but they are looking for one.

Worklessness is much deeper.

Even excluding student households, there are around 3.1 million working-age households where nobody is in work. These are homes where employment is absent altogether. Some will include people who have worked before. Some may include people who genuinely want to work. Others will include people facing real barriers such as sickness, disability, caring responsibilities or poor skills.

But the wider picture is impossible to ignore: millions of households have no adult in employment.

This is why the standard unemployment rate no longer tells the full story. It only counts people actively looking for work. It does not tell us whether work exists inside the household. It does not tell us whether children are growing up seeing adults leave the house to earn a living. It does not tell us whether whole households have drifted outside the labour market altogether.

And that is the real problem. Britain does not just need more jobs. It needs to rebuild the route into work.

Why This Should Worry Us

Workless households matter for three reasons.

First, they increase pressure on the taxpayer. When fewer adults are in work, fewer people are paying into the system and more people are likely to need support from it. That is not sustainable.

Second, they weaken growth. Britain cannot build a strong economy while millions of working-age households are outside employment.

Third, they shape what children grow up thinking is normal. A household where nobody works is not just a household with lower income. It is a household where the routines, networks and expectations that come with employment may be missing.

That does not mean everyone in a workless household is to blame. Some people are genuinely too sick to work. Some are disabled. Some are caring for others. Some face barriers that cannot be fixed with a slogan.

But it does mean we should stop pretending worklessness is just another category in an ONS table.

If work is absent from the household, it can become absent from expectations too. And once that happens, the problem becomes much harder to reverse.

That is why the nearly 300,000 non-student households where nobody has ever worked should worry us. It is not just about today’s welfare bill. It is about whether Britain still has a culture that expects, rewards and supports work.

The Real Story Is Inactivity

The most important point in the tables is that this is not mainly an unemployment story.

Of the roughly 3.08 million workless non-student households, around 2.55 million are households where all adults are economically inactive. That means they are not in work, not counted as unemployed, and not actively looking for a job.

That distinction matters.

If someone is unemployed, they are still attached to the labour market. They are looking for work. They may need vacancies, training, confidence, childcare, transport, or a better route into employment.

Economic inactivity is harder. It means people have moved outside the labour market altogether. They may be sick, disabled, caring for family, retired early, lacking skills, lacking confidence, or trapped in a system where work does not feel worthwhile.

This is why “creating jobs” is not enough. Jobs matter, but they do not solve the problem if millions of people are not even looking for one.

The real question is tougher: how do you reconnect people to work when the system has allowed whole households to drift away from it?

The 50 To 64 Problem

The age breakdown changes the story.

When people think about worklessness, they often think about young people. And yes, Britain has a serious youth problem, with more than 1 million 16 to 24-year-olds not in education, employment or training.

But among working-age people living in workless non-student households, the largest group is not the young.

It is older working-age adults.

Around 2.0 million people aged 50 to 64 live in workless non-student households. That is almost half of all working-age people living in these households.

These are people approaching retirement age, but not yet at state pension age. If they leave the labour market early and never return, the consequences are huge: lower tax receipts, higher welfare pressure, reduced household income, and a smaller workforce supporting an ageing population.

The wider labour market data helps explain what is going on. Among economically inactive people aged 50 to 64, the most common reason for inactivity is being sick, injured or disabled, accounting for around 44.7% of economically inactive people in this age group. A further 29.2% say they are retired, 13.8% are looking after home or family, and 12.2% give other reasons.

So this is not simply about people refusing available jobs. It is a mix of ill health, disability, early retirement, caring responsibilities and long-term detachment from work.

That makes the policy challenge much harder. You cannot solve this by pointing at vacancies. You need to ask why people left work, whether they can return, whether the NHS is helping people recover, whether employers are willing to hire older workers, and whether the welfare system supports people back into work or quietly parks them outside it.

Children Are Growing Up Where Work Is Absent

The most worrying part of this story is not just the adults. It is the children.

Excluding student households, around 1.51 million children live in households where nobody works. That is up nearly 78,000 in a year.

Around 1.23 million children live in households where all adults are economically inactive.

And there is an even sharper figure: around 221,000 children live in households where all members have never worked. That is up 34,00 in a year.

These numbers should cut through the political noise.

Children do not just grow up around income levels. They grow up around examples. They absorb routines, expectations and assumptions about adult life.

A child who grows up in a home where work is part of everyday life sees something very different from a child growing up in a home where no adult works.

That does not mean every child in a workless household is destined to repeat the pattern. People can and do break cycles.

But it does mean worklessness is not just an economic issue. It becomes a generational issue.

If work disappears from the household, it can disappear from expectations too

Britain Needs A Work Strategy

This is where the politics becomes unavoidable.

Britain cannot talk seriously about growth while millions of working-age households remain detached from employment.

Labour talks about growth, but you cannot tax your way to prosperity if too many people are outside the labour market. You cannot keep raising the cost of hiring and then wonder why people on the margins struggle to get a foot on the ladder.

Rachel Reeves’ jobs tax makes hiring more expensive. That is the last thing Britain needs when the country already has millions outside employment.

A serious growth strategy has to be a work strategy.

That means helping people with long-term sickness or disability return to work where possible. It means supporting older workers aged 50 to 64 before they drift permanently out of the labour market. It means making childcare and flexible work realistic for parents who face barriers to work. It means fixing the school-to-work pipeline for young people. It means ensuring welfare supports movement into work rather than trapping people outside it. And it means making entry-level hiring easier, not harder.

This is not about pretending everyone can work. Some people genuinely cannot.

But it is also not compassionate to ignore large-scale detachment from the labour market and call it normal.

A country that rewards idleness more than effort will not grow stronger. A country that taxes work, punishes hiring, and expands dependency should not be surprised when work disappears from too many households.

Work matters. Not just for the Treasury, GDP, or politicians chasing growth forecasts. Work matters because it gives people structure, income, purpose, independence and a stake in society.

Conclusion

Britain’s worklessness crisis is deeper than the headline unemployment rate.

Nearly 300,000 non-student working-age households are made up entirely of people who have never worked — the highest level on record in the non-student series. More than 3 million non-student working-age households have nobody in work. Around 1.5 million children live in workless households. And almost half of working-age people living in workless non-student households are aged 50 to 64.

This is not just unemployment. It is inactivity, long-term detachment from work, and in some households, work never having been present at all.

That should be a national alarm bell.

Because if work disappears from the household, it can disappear from expectations too.

And once that happens, the cost is not just economic. It is generational.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
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In my latest chat with Mike Graham, we covered Britain’s youth jobs crisis, Labour’s jobs tax, university debt, welfare, small boats, falling birth rates and the political chaos now facing the country. Britain’s problems are no longer isolated. They are connected.

The latest figures show 1,012,000 young people aged 16 to 24 are now not in education, employment or training. That is 13.5% of all young people in that age group. Even more worrying, 613,000 are economically inactive — not working, not looking for work, and not available to start.

That is not just another labour market statistic. It is a warning sign that Britain’s school-to-work pipeline is breaking down.

For years, young people were told the route to success was simple: stay in education, get qualifications, go to university, take on debt, and the opportunities would follow. But too many are now leaving school or university with debt, weak job prospects, hundreds of job applications going nowhere, and no clear first step into working life.

This is not a “lazy generation” problem. It is a system problem.

Watch the full interview below.

What We Covered

The first issue was the youth jobs crisis. The first rung of the ladder is disappearing. Employers are being asked to take on inexperienced young workers at a time when the cost of hiring is going up. Labour’s jobs tax does not fall on a spreadsheet. It falls on the young person who never gets the interview.

We also discussed the university route. For some young people, university is absolutely the right choice. But too many are being pushed into degrees with weak links to the jobs market, taking on large debts, then entering an economy where AI is already threatening entry-level white-collar roles. The question is no longer just “should I go to university?” It is: what job will this lead to, what skills will I have, and will that job still exist in five or ten years?

Welfare, Borders And The Cost Of Failure

The welfare system came up too. It should be a safety net, not a holding pen. When young people spend months or years outside work, they lose more than income. They lose routine, confidence, experience and momentum. Compassion is not writing people off in their teens or twenties. It is helping them back into work before long-term dependency becomes normal.

We also covered small boats. 1,128 people crossed the Channel in just five days. That is not border control. It is a system reacting to the weather. More deals, more money and more announcements have not changed the basic incentive. The boats keep coming and the taxpayer keeps paying.

Birth Rates And Political Drift

Then there is the birth rate. England and Wales had 585,396 live births in 2025, while the fertility rate fell to 1.39 children per woman. That is well below replacement level. If young people cannot get secure work, afford homes, start families or feel confident about the future, falling birth rates should not surprise anyone.

And politically, this is why voters are restless. Labour promised change, but people see higher taxes, higher employment costs, weak growth and no sense of grip. The Conservatives lost trust after years of failure. Reform has gained from that collapse, while others are now trying to claim the anti-establishment space.

The Real Point

These issues are not separate. Youth unemployment, university debt, welfare dependency, small boats, falling birth rates and demographic change all point to the same deeper failure: Britain is not giving enough people a clear route into a secure and productive life.

The real test for any government is simple. Can young people get started? Can businesses afford to hire them? Is education connected to work? Is welfare moving people into employment? Is the border controlled? Can families afford children?

Right now, Britain is failing too many of those tests.

Britain is not short of young people with potential. It is short of a system that gives them a proper chance.

And the first step is admitting the system is broken.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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Some statistics quietly tell you a country is changing.

The latest births data from the Office for National Statistics is one of them.

In 2025, there were 585,396 live births in England and Wales, down 1.6% from 594,677 in 2024. The provisional total fertility rate fell from 1.41 to 1.39 children per woman. In plain English, the fertility rate is the average number of children women are expected to have over their lifetime if current patterns continue.

A population normally needs a fertility rate of around 2.1 children per woman to replace itself naturally over time, before migration is taken into account. At 1.39, England and Wales are nowhere near that level.

But the deeper story is not simply that births are falling. It is that the country being born is changing.

Britain Is Not Replacing Itself

A fertility rate of 1.39 children per woman is not just a statistic. It is a warning about the future.

Fewer babies today means fewer workers tomorrow. Fewer workers means more pressure on the tax base, pensions, the NHS, social care and the working-age population expected to fund it all. Politicians can talk endlessly about growth, productivity, public services and debt, but underneath it all sits a basic demographic question: who is going to pay for the country in 20 or 30 years’ time?

Britain is not producing enough children to sustain itself naturally over the long term. Migration can change the population picture, but that means the future is increasingly shaped by who comes here, who settles here, and who has children here.

More Than 4 In 10 Births Now Involve A Parent Born Abroad

The ONS says the share of live births where one or both parents were born outside the UK increased from 39.5% in 2024 to 40.2% in 2025.

Behind that headline figure, the breakdown is even more revealing.

In 2025, 160,016 births were to two non-UK-born parents. Another 37,465 were to a non-UK-born mother and UK-born father, while 32,653 were to a UK-born mother and non-UK-born father.

Only 330,040 births were recorded as being to two UK-born parents, equal to 56.4% of all births.

That is a powerful demographic marker. It does not mean those children are “foreign” — they are children born in England and Wales. But it does show how much of the next generation is now being shaped by migration and by the children of migrants.

This is how a country changes without most people noticing — not in one dramatic moment, but birth certificate by birth certificate.

The Births Story Is Now A Migration Story

The country-of-birth data shows that births to UK-born mothers fell again in 2025, while births to non-UK-born mothers rose slightly.

There were 382,732 births to UK-born mothers, down from 392,984 in 2024. There were 202,612 births to non-UK-born mothers, up slightly from 201,660. Non-UK-born mothers accounted for 34.6% of all live births.

The top non-UK countries of birth for mothers were:

• India: 27,601 births

• Pakistan: 22,058 births

• Nigeria: 15,509 births

• Romania: 10,649 births

• Bangladesh: 10,334 births

This matters because the migration story has changed. It is no longer mainly an Eastern Europe story. Romania and Poland are falling from their earlier peaks, while the bigger growth is increasingly linked to South Asia, Africa and parts of the Middle East.

Overall births are falling, but they are not falling evenly.

The Pressures Are Not Spread Evenly

The latest detailed fertility breakdown by mother’s country of birth is for 2021, not 2025, so it should not be treated as the exact fertility pattern today. But it does show how fertility differed between groups.

In 2021, the total fertility rate was 1.49 for UK-born mothers and 1.68 for non-UK-born mothers overall. Within that, the differences were much larger: Pakistan 2.92, Bangladesh 2.71, Afghanistan 3.09, Iraq 3.15, and Nigeria 2.15. By contrast, mothers born in Poland had a TFR of 1.28.

So this is not a simple story of “foreign-born mothers have high fertility”. Some groups are much higher, some are closer to the average, and some are lower. But the pattern matters: some of the groups contributing large numbers of births also had fertility rates above the UK-born rate.

Country of birth is not the same as ethnicity, and it should not be treated as if it tells us everything about identity, nationality or integration. But if different communities have different fertility rates over time, then the ethnic, cultural and religious profile of the next generation changes. That is not a conspiracy theory. It is arithmetic.

It also has practical consequences. Children need public services long before they become future taxpayers: maternity care, health visitors, GP appointments, nursery places, school places, teachers, SEND support where needed, housing and local services. Families may also be eligible for Child Benefit and other forms of support.

That is true of all children. But if births are increasingly concentrated among groups with higher fertility, and if those groups are more concentrated in particular towns, cities or local authorities, then pressure on the state is not evenly distributed either. It shows up in schools, NHS maternity demand, housing need, local authority budgets and the welfare system.

This is not about blaming children. Children born here are part of Britain’s future. But a serious country should be able to say something obvious: birth patterns shape the future population, and population change has costs, pressures and trade-offs.

Britain’s Demographic Vicious Circle

The question is not just why some communities are still having children. The bigger question is why so many others feel they cannot afford to.

For many young people in Britain, the economics of starting a family have become brutal. Homes are too expensive, rents are too high, mortgages are harder to afford, childcare can feel like a second mortgage, and wages have not kept up with the cost of building a stable family life.

So people delay children. Then they have fewer children. Or they do not have children at all. That is how a country ends up with a fertility rate of 1.39.

Once domestic fertility falls this low, the state has a choice: accept population ageing and decline, make it easier for its own citizens to start families, or rely increasingly on migration to sustain population growth.

Britain has drifted into the third option without ever having an honest national debate. But that creates a vicious circle.

If young people cannot afford homes, childcare and family life, they have fewer children. Government then leans on migration to keep the population and workforce growing. But without enough new housing and infrastructure, more people means more pressure on rents, house prices, schools, GP surgeries and local services.

That makes starting a family even harder for the next generation.

So Britain ends up using migration to compensate for a fertility crisis, while the pressure created by population growth helps make that fertility crisis worse.

The 2025 births data tells a clear story: births are falling, fertility is falling, parents are getting older, and more than 4 in 10 births now involve at least one parent born outside the UK. The next generation is being shaped increasingly by migration, while many UK-born families appear to be having fewer children than they might have wanted in a more affordable country.

If that is the model politicians want, they should be honest about it. If it is not, they need to explain why Britain has become such a difficult place for its own young people to start a family.

Because no serious country can build its future on low fertility, unaffordable family life, rising population pressure, and a migration policy nobody wants to debate honestly.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
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Warm weather, calm seas, and a bank holiday weekend. As night follows day, the small boats return.

From Friday to Monday, official figures recorded 989 people crossing the Channel in 14 boats: 394 on Friday, 287 on Saturday, 231 on Sunday and 77 on Monday. With further arrivals on Tuesday, the five-day total has now passed 1,000 people.

The published data describes these as people attempting to cross the Channel in small boats “without permission to enter the UK.”

That means more than 1,000 people have arrived through an illegal route in just five days. Once they arrive, the cost does not disappear. It moves onto the British taxpayer through Border Force, processing, accommodation, legal appeals, enforcement, removals and the wider asylum system.

The boats launch. Britain receives. The taxpayer pays.

And the question the public are entitled to ask is simple: who exactly has just entered the country?

The Calm Weather Warning Nobody Wants To Give

The latest surge should surprise nobody. Official statistics note that small boat numbers fluctuate daily, often because of weather conditions, with warmer summer months typically seeing higher numbers due to more favourable crossing conditions.

So let’s not pretend this is unforeseeable. The weather improves, the Channel calms, the smugglers move, and Britain is left to process the consequences afterwards.

We are used to public warnings when the weather turns hot. The public are told to take care, check on vulnerable people and prepare for the risks that come with high temperatures. But there is another predictable consequence of calm, settled weather that does not get treated with the same urgency: the small boats start moving.

When the Channel calms, the smugglers know it. The authorities know it. Ministers know it. And the British public knows what comes next.

If the state can warn people about the risks of hot weather, it can also be honest about the risks created when large numbers arrive through an illegal route, often with uncertain documentation, and the public is simply asked to trust that everything is under control.

Control is not a ministerial statement, a press release, or another meeting with France. Control means stopping the route. Right now, when the weather turns, the route reopens.

Who Exactly Has Entered Britain?

The issue is not whether every person on those boats is dangerous. Clearly, they are not. Some may have genuine asylum claims. Some may be fleeing awful circumstances. Some may eventually be judged to have a legal right to remain.

But that is not the same as saying the route is safe, controlled or acceptable.

The public is entitled to ask basic questions. Who are these people? Where have they come from? What documentation do they have? What checks have been carried out? And can the authorities say with confidence that every person arriving has been properly identified and assessed?

That question becomes even more important when people arrive through an illegal route, often after passing through multiple countries, and sometimes with little or no reliable documentation. If someone arrives without papers, or with identity details that cannot be quickly verified, how can the state confidently say who has entered the country?

This is not a minor administrative issue. Identity is the foundation of border control. Without reliable identity, everything else becomes weaker: asylum decisions, criminal checks, security screening, removals and public protection.

That matters because the small boat route is overwhelmingly made up of adult men. Official statistics show that since January 2018, 75% of small boat arrivals have been adult males aged 18 and over.

That does not make every adult male a criminal. But it does make proper identity checks, security screening and enforcement absolutely essential.

This is where the public protection question becomes unavoidable. The government says its first duty is to keep citizens safe and the country secure. So judge it by that test.

If just a handful of people among this latest thousand go on to commit serious crimes in Britain, then the state has failed again in its most basic duty: protecting the border and protecting the British public.

You do not need every arrival to be a threat for the system to become a threat. You only need the wrong people to get through.

The Bigger Picture: This Has Become Normalised

This bank holiday surge is not happening in isolation. It sits on top of years of failure in which a once smaller route has become a permanent feature of Britain’s border crisis.

The published small boats time series now shows 201,175 detected arrivals since records began in 2018, up to 25 May 2026. What began as a relatively small route has become a major, recurring route into Britain.

That is the wider context. This is no longer a one-off emergency response problem. It is a route that activates when the weather allows, that smugglers understand, that ministers condemn, and that the state still fails to stop.

After the outrage, after the new laws, after the slogans, after the promises to smash the gangs, the boats still come.

That is not border control. It is a managed failure.

More Money To France, Same Result

And what is the government’s answer? More money to France.

In April, the UK and France announced a new agreement to reduce illegal crossings. The deal was presented as a strengthening of operations in northern France, with more personnel, more technology and more intelligence resources. Personnel deployed under the partnership are set to rise by 53%, from 907 in the 2023 to 2026 cycle to 1,392 in the 2026 to 2029 cycle.

The funding is substantial. The House of Commons Library says the UK has agreed to provide £662 million to France between 2026/27 and 2028/29 under the new three-year funding agreement, with £501 million to strengthen existing controls in northern France and £161 million available for new tactics.

So the public hears the same story again: more cooperation, more enforcement, more technology and more funding. But then the bank holiday arrives, the weather improves, and another thousand people come across the Channel.

At some point, the public are entitled to judge these deals by outcomes, not announcements. If the result is still boats on the water and arrivals in Britain, then what exactly has changed?

Britain keeps sending money to France. The boats keep coming to Britain. And the British taxpayer keeps picking up the bill.

Conclusion: Remove The Incentive, Or The Boats Will Keep Coming

The small boat crisis is not just a migration story. It is a public protection story.

Britain now has a route into the country that activates whenever the weather allows. Hundreds can arrive over a long weekend. The route is dominated by adult men. Many arrive without prior permission. And the public is asked to trust that the state has everything under control.

But control means knowing who is entering the country. It means stopping those with no right to be here. It means removing those who pose a risk. It means protecting the border and protecting the British public.

The deeper problem is incentive. If people know that reaching Britain means being brought ashore, housed, processed, legally represented, and potentially remaining here for years while the system works through their case, then the route still has a reward attached to it.

That reward is what has to end.

The only serious deterrent is to make clear that arriving illegally by small boat does not get you into the British asylum system, British hotels, or years of taxpayer-funded limbo. It gets you transferred elsewhere for processing, so the incentive to land in Britain disappears.

That is the test. Not slogans. Not another cheque to France. Not another announcement about smashing the gangs.

If another thousand people can arrive in five days, through an illegal route, at the cost of the taxpayer, the question is not whether the government sounds tough. The question is whether the border is secure at all.

And on the evidence of this bank holiday weekend, the border is not secure.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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This week I joined Mike Graham on the to talk through the latest numbers, but the bigger theme was not just the economy. It was the distraction machine around it.

When households are still being squeezed, businesses are under pressure, young people are struggling to get work and fuel prices are biting again, what does the political class reach for? Supermarket price caps. Another round of Brexit blame. Leadership gossip around Andy Burnham. And more talk of drifting back towards Brussels.

None of it answers the basic question: why does Britain still feel so expensive, stagnant and badly run?

Price Cap Talk Is Back — And That Should Worry Everyone

One of the more revealing stories this week was not that the Government had formally brought back 1970s-style price controls. It has not. But the Treasury was reportedly pushing large supermarkets to consider voluntary caps on key groceries, while ministers were reported to have ruled out mandatory food price caps and encouraged voluntary freezes instead.

That distinction matters because a voluntary cap is not the same as the state legally fixing prices, but the instinct is still revealing. When politicians start talking about holding down the price of bread, milk and eggs, it usually means they want to be seen doing something visible while avoiding the harder question of why costs have risen so sharply in the first place.

Food prices matter because everyone notices the weekly shop. But price cap talk does not fix the cost structure beneath it: energy, transport, rents, business rates, wages, borrowing costs and taxes. The danger is that it gives the impression of action while ducking the larger problem.

Price cap talk is what politicians reach for when they want to look busy without fixing the thing that made prices rise. That was the point I made to Mike. If the Government really wanted to put money back into people’s pockets, it would not start with a symbolic row over a basket of supermarket staples. It would look at the big household pressures: energy, fuel, housing, tax and the cost of doing business.

Because if families are paying hundreds or thousands more each year for the basics of life, a supermarket stunt is not a serious cost-of-living strategy. At that point, it starts to look less like help and more like political theatre.

Prices Are Still Rising — Whatever The Headline Inflation Rate Says

There was also plenty of noise this week about inflation “coming down”. And yes, the headline rate has fallen. The Consumer Prices Index rose by 2.8% in the 12 months to April 2026, down from 3.3% in March. But that does not mean prices are falling. On a monthly basis, CPI still rose by 0.7% in April 2026.

This distinction matters because when politicians say inflation is down, many people hear that prices are coming down. They are not. It means prices are still rising, just more slowly than they were before.

For households, that is not much comfort. The damage from previous price rises is still baked into the weekly shop, the energy bill, the mortgage payment, the rent, the train fare and the cost of filling up the car.

Fuel is a particularly painful example. The ONS said motor fuel prices rose by 23.0% in the 12 months to April 2026, the largest annual increase since September 2022. Diesel prices rose sharply in April, with the average price reaching 190.0p per litre, the highest since July 2022.

So when people say they do not feel inflation is “coming down”, they are not being stupid. They are describing their lived reality: they are still paying more.

And the Government’s big fuel duty announcement hardly changes that. Rachel Reeves was not announcing a major cut to help motorists. She was effectively announcing that the Government would not make things even worse by adding further tax at the pump. That is where we are now: households are expected to be grateful when the state merely pauses the next hit.

The Jobs Market Is The Warning Sign

The economy still matters in this piece, but it is best understood as the warning light behind all the political distraction.

The labour market is weakening. The early estimate for April 2026 showed payrolled employees down 210,000 over the year and down 100,000 in a single month, to around 30.2 million. The ONS warns that early estimates can be revised, especially at the start of the tax year, but the direction of travel is not encouraging.

PAYE data is one of the clearest near-real-time signals we have for employee jobs, and it is moving the wrong way. That matters because the cost-of-living squeeze is not happening in isolation. It is happening at the same time as employers face higher costs, weaker demand and less confidence.

When businesses are hit by higher National Insurance costs, higher wage bills and cautious consumers, they become more careful. They delay hiring. They cut shifts. They postpone expansion. And the people who suffer first are often the young, the inexperienced and those trying to get their first proper step into work.

That is why the political response feels so inadequate. Free bus travel for young people might make a decent press release, but a bus pass is not a substitute for a job. The real issue is whether there are enough businesses confident enough to hire young people in the first place.

If the economic plan is “working”, as Rachel Reeves keeps saying, then the obvious question is: working for whom?

Hospitality Shows The Squeeze In Real Life

You can see the pressure most clearly in hospitality.

Everyone has had the same experience. You go out for a fairly ordinary meal, nothing fancy, and the bill lands like a small utility statement. Fish and chips, a family chain restaurant, a quick lunch — all of it feels more expensive than it used to.

That changes behaviour. People cut back. They go out less. They skip dessert, avoid drinks, choose cheaper places, or just stay home. For hospitality businesses, that creates a brutal squeeze. Customers are more cautious, while costs keep rising: wages, energy, ingredients, rents, taxes, borrowing costs and business rates.

Margins were already tight. Now many firms are being asked to absorb higher costs while customers have less money to spend. That wider caution also showed up in the latest retail sales figures, with ONS data showing retail sales volumes falling by 1.3% in April 2026, with fuel sales dropping sharply.

This is what the cost-of-living crisis looks like in the real economy. It is not just a number in an ONS spreadsheet. It is fewer meals out, fewer shifts, fewer vacancies and fewer young people getting that first job.

Hospitality is where household pressure turns into labour market pressure.

Brussels And Burnham Are Not A Growth Plan

Then, as usual, when the domestic picture looks uncomfortable, parts of the political class reach for the same comfort blanket: Europe.

This week brought more talk of closer EU ties, more Brexit blame, and more positioning from senior Labour figures. Andy Burnham and Wes Streeting helped drag the issue back into view during the discussion, while Keir Starmer has leaned into the idea that Brexit made Britain poorer.

But the lazy version of this argument does not survive serious scrutiny. Britain has plenty of problems, but they are not all sitting at the border. They are in energy policy, tax policy, planning failure, weak productivity, poor infrastructure delivery, public sector performance and the rising cost of doing business.

Brussels is not a growth plan. At this point, it looks more like a political comfort blanket.

If the European Union were the magic answer, Germany would not be struggling with its own economic problems. Britain should trade well with Europe, of course. We should cooperate where it makes sense. But drifting back into the EU’s orbit by stealth will not fix the underlying domestic failures making Britain expensive, sluggish and overtaxed.

The Burnham chatter fits the same pattern. Labour is already looking around for another answer because the Starmer project feels managerial, exhausted and directionless. But changing the salesman does not change the product, and that is the problem with the Burnham chatter.

Andy Burnham may be more charismatic than Keir Starmer. That is not exactly a high bar. The serious question is whether he has a credible answer to the problems facing the country: high costs, weak jobs growth, squeezed households, expensive energy and businesses losing confidence.

If Andy Burnham is the answer, the question must be: how do we rebrand the same failed model with a different accent?

The Bottom Line

This week told us a lot about where British politics is heading.

Price cap talk will not fix the cost-of-living crisis. EU nostalgia will not create growth. Burnham gossip will not create jobs. And pretending that lower inflation means prices are falling will not fool households paying the bills.

The problem is not that Britain lacks political announcements. It is that too many of them are distractions from the basic failure to make the country cheaper to live in, easier to work in, and better to do business in.

That is the real Stat of the Nation.

Labour says the plan is working. The country can see the bills, the jobs market and the empty restaurants — and it is entitled to ask: working for whom?

✍️ Jamie Jenkins

Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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The latest public sector finance figures are striking. According to the Office for National Statistics, the UK public sector borrowed £24.3bn in April 2026. That was £4.9bn higher than April 2025, a rise of 25.1%, and £3.4bn higher than the Office for Budget Responsibility had forecast.

That matters because April is the first month of the financial year. Before the year has even got going, borrowing is already overshooting the official forecast.

To be fair, borrowing over the financial year to March 2026 was lower than the year before. But that is not the same as fiscal health. Britain still borrowed £129.0bn last year, and April has now started the new financial year above forecast.

Labour has raised taxes. Employer National Insurance is bringing in more money. But the public finances are still under pressure.

That is the story.

April Borrowing Is Historically High

The headline number is simple: the public sector borrowed £24.3bn in April 2026.

The ONS says this was the highest April borrowing figure since 2020, when the country was in the middle of the pandemic response. But the longer historical picture makes the point even more clearly.

Looking at April alone, going back to the start of the monthly series in 1997, April 2026 stands out as one of the largest April deficits on record. It is not as extreme as the pandemic spike in April 2020, when borrowing reached around £49bn, but it is still well above most of the pre-pandemic period.

That is what the chart below shows.

The reason for looking at April against previous Aprils is simple: monthly borrowing is seasonal. January often looks better because of self-assessed income tax receipts, while April has its own pattern. Comparing April with April gives a cleaner historical view than dropping one monthly number into the air.

And on that basis, April 2026 looks bad. Borrowing was £24.3bn, compared with £19.5bn in April 2025 — an increase of £4.9bn in a single year.

This is the bit Labour will not want to explain. They have already put up taxes. They have already hit employers with higher National Insurance. Yet borrowing is still going the wrong way at the start of the year.

Receipts Rose — But Spending Rose Faster

The key figure is not just the borrowing total. It is the gap between what came in and what went out.

Central government receipts were £85.5bn in April 2026, up £2.4bn on the year. Tax receipts alone rose by £1.8bn, including increases in income tax, corporation tax and VAT. Compulsory social contributions also rose to £15.4bn.

So this is not a simple story of the Treasury receiving less money. The Treasury received more.

The problem is that spending rose much faster. Central government current expenditure — the money spent on day-to-day activities — rose to £101.1bn, up £6.2bn on April 2025.

That is the public finance problem in one line:

Receipts up £2.4bn. Day-to-day spending up £6.2bn.

The state is taking in more. It is spending even more.

Benefits, Public Services And Debt Interest Drove The Increase

The rise in spending was not caused by one single item. It came from several familiar pressures across welfare, departmental spending and debt interest.

Net social benefits paid by central government increased by £2.7bn to £29.5bn, largely because many benefits are linked to inflation and State Pension payments are linked to earnings. Departmental spending on goods and services rose by £1.7bn to £38.8bn, with inflation pushing up the cost of providing public services. Debt interest also increased by £0.9bn to £10.3bn.

This is where the politics becomes difficult for Labour. They want to talk about investment, stability and fiscal responsibility. But the data shows a state whose running costs keep climbing.

Benefits are rising. Public service costs are rising. Debt interest is rising.

And taxpayers are being asked to keep feeding the machine.

Inflation Is Feeding The Debt Bill

The debt interest number deserves its own attention. Central government debt interest payable in April was £10.3bn, the highest April debt interest figure on record.

A major reason was the UK’s stock of index-linked gilts. These are government bonds where part of the cost moves with the Retail Prices Index. When RPI rises, the cost of servicing this part of the debt can rise too.

In April, the ONS said the RPI-linked “capital uplift” added £2.9bn to central government interest payable. That largely reflected a 0.4% increase in the RPI between January and February 2026.

That matters because inflation does not just hit families at the supermarket, the petrol pump or through higher bills. It also hits the government’s own debt bill. When inflation rises, parts of the national debt become more expensive to service — and when debt interest rises, taxpayers pay the bill.

This is the trap Britain is now in: high debt makes the country more exposed to inflation, and inflation makes the debt bill harder to control.

Rising Gilt Yields Could Make It Worse

There is a second pressure too: gilt yields.

A gilt is UK government debt. When the government borrows, it sells gilts to investors. The yield is the return investors demand for lending money to the UK. When gilt yields rise, the market is effectively saying: “we will still lend to Britain — but only at a higher price.”

I wrote recently about how Rachel Reeves spent months blaming Liz Truss for borrowing costs, only for gilt yields to surge under Labour as well.

That matters because higher yields do not just create bad headlines. They make future borrowing and refinancing more expensive.

The effect is not instant across the whole debt stock. Existing gilts are already issued at their original terms. But as old debt matures and the government issues new debt, higher yields mean the state has to borrow at higher rates.

That is the slow-burn danger. Today’s debt bill is being pushed up by inflation-linked gilts. Tomorrow’s debt bill could be pushed higher again if gilt yields remain elevated.

So the taxpayer gets squeezed twice: inflation pushes up index-linked debt costs today, while higher gilt yields make new borrowing and refinancing more expensive tomorrow.

That is why debt interest is not just an accounting detail. It is a warning light on the dashboard.

The Jobs Tax Has Not Fixed The Books

There is another important point buried in the financial year figures: Labour’s jobs tax is now showing up in the numbers.

Across the financial year ending March 2026, compulsory social contributions increased to £206.4bn, up £32.6bn, as changes to employer National Insurance contributions came into effect from 6 April 2025.

In plain English, the Treasury is taking in more money from employer National Insurance. But the public finances are still under pressure, and the jobs market is flashing red at the same time.

I wrote recently about how youth unemployment has hit an 11-year high and the early April PAYE estimate showed around 210,000 fewer payrolled employees over the year. That matters because higher employer National Insurance does not land in a spreadsheet. It lands in hiring decisions, vacancies, hours and entry-level jobs.

Borrowing for the financial year ending March 2026 was £129.0bn. That was down on the previous year, but it was still an enormous amount of borrowing. Then April opened the new financial year £3.4bn above forecast.

So the line is not complicated.

Labour taxed jobs, raised more money from employers, watched payroll employment fall by around 210,000 over the year, and still started April above the borrowing forecast.

That is not a clean bill of fiscal health. It is the cost of taxing work while the state keeps spending faster than the money comes in.

Debt Is Still Near 1960s Levels

The public sector balance sheet remains under pressure. Public sector net debt was estimated at 94.2% of GDP at the end of April 2026. That was 0.5 percentage points higher than April 2025, and the ONS says it remains at levels last seen in the early 1960s.

In cash terms, public sector net debt excluding public sector banks stood at around £2.943 trillion at the end of April. This is the long-term problem: Britain is carrying a huge debt burden, paying record April debt interest, and still borrowing heavily to cover day-to-day spending.

That is why the public finances feel permanently squeezed. It is also why every new promise from government now comes with the same question:

Who is paying?

Labour’s Fiscal Trap

Labour’s problem is not that the state has no money. The state is taking more.

The problem is that spending keeps rising faster than receipts. April’s numbers show it clearly: receipts rose by £2.4bn, day-to-day spending rose by £6.2bn, borrowing hit £24.3bn, debt interest hit £10.3bn, and debt remains near early-1960s levels.

This is the fiscal trap Britain is now in. Higher taxes have not created stability. Higher borrowing costs threaten future budgets. Inflation is feeding into the debt bill. And the taxpayer is still being handed the bill.

Conclusion

Labour promised economic stability. But the latest borrowing figures show something much less comfortable.

The government has raised taxes. Employer National Insurance is bringing in more money. Receipts are up. Yet borrowing has still started the financial year above forecast, debt interest has hit the highest April figure on record, and national debt remains near levels last seen in the early 1960s.

The state is not short of money. It is spending faster than taxpayers can fund it.

And when inflation feeds into index-linked gilts, and rising gilt yields threaten to push up future borrowing costs, the bill does not disappear. It lands on taxpayers.

That is Britain’s fiscal trap: higher taxes, higher spending, higher debt interest — and still more borrowing.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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Labour promised growth.

But the latest jobs data tells a very different story.

I joined Martin Daubney on GB News to discuss the latest labour market figures, and the warning signs are now difficult to ignore. Payroll employment is falling. Vacancies are drying up. Private sector pay growth is weak. Self-employment has been hammered. And young people are being hit just as they try to get on the first rung of the jobs ladder.

This is not just a set of dry labour market statistics. It is about whether young people can find work, whether small firms can afford to hire, and whether Labour’s so-called “growth mission” is already running into the real-world consequences of taxing employment.

🚨 The Jobs Market Is Flashing Red

The early estimate from HMRC Pay As You Earn Real Time Information shows 30.2 million payrolled employees in April 2026, down from 30.4 million a year earlier.

That is a fall of around 210,000 payrolled employees over the year, and around 100,000 in a single month. The ONS rightly warns that April is an early estimate and more likely to be revised, but the direction is not pretty.

And this is not one isolated indicator.

Vacancies fell to 705,000 in February to April 2026. That is down 28,000 on the quarter, down 54,000 on the year, and the lowest level since February to April 2021.

So the basic picture is clear.

There are fewer people on payroll. There are fewer vacancies available. And employers appear to be pulling back from hiring.

That matters because this is exactly what businesses warned about when Rachel Reeves increased the cost of employing people.

You cannot make hiring more expensive and then act surprised when hiring slows.

This is what taxing jobs looks like.

🧑‍🎓 Young Workers Are Being Hit First

The most politically damaging part of the story is youth unemployment.

Young people are often the first to feel a weakening labour market. They have less experience, fewer contacts, and are more likely to rely on entry-level roles in retail, hospitality and local services.

Those are precisely the kinds of jobs that become vulnerable when employers face higher costs.

For 18 to 24-year-olds, unemployment now stands at around 590,000, with an unemployment rate of 14.7%. That is up 91,000 over the year, with the rate up 1.9 percentage points.

Among 16 to 17-year-olds, unemployment stands at around 140,000, with an unemployment rate of 29.5%. That is up 19,000 over the year, with the rate up 2.7 percentage points.

If the first rung of the jobs ladder starts disappearing, the damage is not just one missed payslip. It is lost experience, lost confidence, lost skills and lost momentum.

Labour talks constantly about opportunity. But opportunity starts with work.

And if young people cannot get that first proper job, the promise starts to fall apart.

🏪 Retail, Hospitality And Small Firms Are Under Pressure

This is where the “jobs tax” argument becomes real.

Raising employer National Insurance does not land in theory. It lands in cafés, shops, restaurants, warehouses, salons, garages, construction firms and small local businesses.

Larger organisations may be able to absorb some of the cost.

Small firms often cannot.

The vacancy data shows the pressure clearly. The largest quarterly fall in vacancies was among businesses with 1 to 9 employees, where vacancies fell by 19,000.

Over the year, vacancies were down 26,000 among businesses with 10 to 49 employees, and down 21,000 among businesses with 1 to 9 employees.

That is the real economy pulling back.

A small employer facing higher wage bills, higher National Insurance, higher energy costs, higher rent and weak consumer demand has limited options.

They can hire fewer people. They can cut hours. They can delay recruitment. They can raise prices. Or they can try to do more with fewer staff.

None of that looks like a serious growth strategy.

💷 Private Sector Pay Is Weakening

Labour can point to wage growth and claim workers are still seeing pay rises.

But the detail is far less flattering.

Annual growth in average earnings was 3.4% for regular pay and 4.1% for total pay in January to March 2026. Once inflation is taken into account using CPIH, real regular pay growth was just 0.1%.

In other words, regular pay was barely moving in real terms.

The private sector picture is weaker still.

Regular earnings growth was 3.0% in the private sector, compared with 4.8% in the public sector. The last time private sector regular earnings growth was lower than 3.0% was August to October 2020.

That split matters.

The danger is obvious: the state-funded economy keeps growing while the taxpaying economy weakens.

The private sector is the part of the economy that has to generate the wealth, productivity and tax base to pay for everything else. If that side of the economy is being squeezed, Britain’s growth model becomes even more dependent on government spending, debt and higher taxes.

Workers do not experience the economy through ministerial slogans.

They experience it through pay packets, job security, bills and opportunities.

Right now, the labour market is saying something very different from Labour’s growth rhetoric.

🎓 The Broken Promise To Young People

There is a bigger issue here than one month of data.

For years, young people have been told to take on debt, go to university, build skills and prepare for a better future.

But what happens if the jobs market waiting for them is weaker, more expensive and less willing to hire?

A degree is not a guarantee of opportunity. Training only matters if the economy can absorb people into decent work. Skills policy is pointless if the businesses expected to hire young workers are being punished with higher employment costs at the same time.

Young people were told education would buy opportunity.

But that promise breaks down if the jobs market waiting for them is shrinking.

That is why youth unemployment hitting an 11-year high should be treated as a serious warning. It is not just an economic indicator. It is a signal that too many young people are being left at the starting line.

📊 The Numbers Tell The Story

Taken together, the latest labour market data points in one direction:

• around 210,000 fewer payrolled employees over the year in the early April PAYE estimate;

• around 100,000 fewer payrolled employees in a single month;

• 705,000 vacancies, the lowest since early 2021;

• 54,000 fewer vacancies than a year ago;

• 18 to 24 unemployment at 14.7%, up 91,000 over the year;

• real regular pay growth of just 0.1%;

• private sector regular pay growth of 3.0%, compared with 4.8% in the public sector;

That is not a growth story.

It is a warning sign.

Labour promised growth, opportunity and stability. But the data now shows a labour market under pressure: fewer payroll jobs, fewer vacancies, weak real pay growth, falling self-employment and rising youth unemployment.

This is the danger of taxing work.

Businesses do not absorb higher employment costs in a vacuum. They hire less, delay recruitment, cut hours, raise prices or squeeze wages.

Rachel Reeves called it a plan for growth.

For young workers, small firms and the private sector, it increasingly looks like the bill arriving.

This is what taxing jobs looks like.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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There is a simple question at the heart of Labour’s latest crisis.

If Andy Burnham is the answer, then what is the question?

Labour won 411 seats at the 2024 general election. It has a huge Commons majority, a sitting Prime Minister and a full Cabinet. Yet the name many are now reaching for is not a senior minister around the Cabinet table, but the Mayor of Greater Manchester.

That alone tells us something. This is not just about Keir Starmer looking wooden, unpopular or trapped in political no man’s land. It is about a governing party that won power, but already looks unsure what it is for.

Andy Burnham may be a better communicator than Starmer. He may sound more rooted, more human and more comfortable talking about place, transport, housing and regional pride. But the real question is whether he solves Labour’s crisis — or merely proves how deep it has become.

🚨 Labour Has 400 MPs — So Why Burnham?

This is the most revealing part of the story. A government with more than 400 MPs should not be short of political authority, short of voices, short of possible successors, or short of people capable of connecting with the country.

Yet Labour is looking beyond Westminster.

Burnham is being discussed because Labour MPs can see the danger ahead. The current offer is not cutting through, Starmer looks trapped, and the Cabinet does not contain an obvious successor with public cut-through. So the party starts looking to the man outside the room.

That is why Makerfield matters too. Burnham has been cleared to seek Labour’s nomination in the Makerfield by-election, opening a possible route back to Parliament for a politician many Labour figures already see as a potential future leader.

A return to Westminster would not simply be a local candidate selection. It would be a route back into Parliament for the one Labour figure many believe could one day challenge for the leadership.

Makerfield is not just being treated as a constituency. It is being treated as Labour’s possible emergency exit.

And that raises the real question: what exactly does Labour think Burnham solves? If the problem is that Starmer lacks warmth, Burnham helps. If the problem is that Labour looks too London-focused, Burnham helps. If the problem is that the party sounds too managerial, too technocratic and too detached, Burnham helps.

But if the problem is that Labour’s voter base is fragmenting in every direction at once, then one mayor from Greater Manchester cannot magically glue it all back together.

🧱 Starmer’s Problem Is Bigger Than Starmer

It is tempting for Labour MPs to believe this is all about Keir Starmer. Change the leader, change the mood. Swap the grey lawyer for the plain-speaking northerner. Replace the cautious managerial style with someone who can sound like he has actually met a voter.

There is some truth in that. Burnham is more natural, has a better political ear, and understands place and identity in a way Starmer often struggles to communicate. He can talk about towns, transport and local pride without sounding as though the phrases have been focus-grouped in London.

But Labour’s crisis is not just personal. It is structural.

For years, Labour’s route to power relied on holding together a broad and awkward coalition: public sector professionals, urban liberals, working-class towns, Welsh Labour loyalists, parts of Scotland, ethnic minority voters, younger progressives, and people who simply saw Labour as the default alternative to the Conservatives.

That coalition is now under pressure from all sides. Reform is attacking Labour in the old industrial and post-industrial areas. The Greens are pulling at Labour in younger, more progressive, urban and university-heavy areas. Plaid Cymru has shown in Wales that Labour’s old tribal loyalties can break. Scotland remains shaped by the national question.

So Labour’s problem is not just that Keir Starmer is unpopular.

It is that the party’s old electoral map no longer looks secure.

🧩 Labour’s Coalition Is Splitting

This is where Burnham’s pitch becomes difficult.

Labour’s old coalition is being pulled apart in different directions. Reform is attacking its old working-class and post-industrial base. The Greens are pulling at younger, progressive and urban voters. Plaid Cymru has shown in Wales that Labour can no longer assume old tribal loyalties will hold. Scotland remains a long-term structural problem.

Wales should worry Labour in particular. The 2026 Senedd election was the first Welsh devolved election since 1999 where Labour did not win the most seats, with Plaid Cymru finishing first and Reform UK Wales second. The final seat totals were stark: Plaid Cymru 43, Reform 34, Labour nine, Conservatives seven, Greens two and Liberal Democrats one.

That is not a normal defeat. It is the collapse of an old political order.

And that is why this is so difficult. Burnham may speak more naturally to parts of Labour’s old base than Starmer does, but he cannot be everything to everyone. The more he tries to reassure Reform-curious voters, the more he risks disappointing the progressive left. The more he tries to sound radical, the easier it becomes for Reform to paint Labour as unchanged.

Labour’s problem is not one audience. It is too many audiences wanting different things.

Move right and lose the Greens. Move left and feed Reform. Stay in the middle and look like Starmer.

🧳 Makerfield Is A Runway, Not Just A Seat

Burnham’s route back to Westminster also matters. He was Labour MP for Leigh until 2017. Since then, his political brand has been built around Greater Manchester, and the mayoralty gave him distance from Westminster.

That distance has become part of his appeal. It allowed him to present himself as more rooted, more practical, and less trapped by the internal Labour machine.

That is why the move towards Makerfield is so interesting. On one level, there is nothing unusual about a former MP trying to return to Parliament. Politics is full of comebacks. But in this case, the context matters.

Makerfield is not just any seat. It is estimated to have voted heavily Leave in 2016, with around 65% backing Brexit. That makes it a perfect test of Labour’s wider problem: can the party still speak to places that voted Leave, feel ignored, and are now being targeted by Reform?

This does not look like an ordinary candidate selection. It looks like a possible runway back to the Labour leadership — but also a live test of whether Labour can still hold the kind of seat it once took for granted.

🔥 The Case For Burnham — And The Problem With It

The case for Burnham is obvious. He sounds more authentic than Starmer. He has a regional identity, executive experience, and the ability to talk about public transport, local government, devolution and northern renewal in a way that feels lived rather than scripted.

His supporters will argue that he can rebuild trust with the kinds of voters Labour has been losing for years. There is something in that. Burnham is better at retail politics than Starmer, understands the emotional side of politics better than Starmer, and is less awkward, less brittle, and less obviously trapped in the language of managerial government.

But the anti-Burnham case is also obvious. He is not new. He has been around Westminster for a long time, serving as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Culture Secretary and Health Secretary before becoming Mayor of Greater Manchester. He backed Britain’s continued membership of the European Union in 2016. He now says he is not proposing that the UK rejoin the EU, arguing that reopening the debate would deepen division.

That shift matters because Makerfield is not neutral Brexit territory. A heavily Leave-voting seat is exactly the kind of place where Labour’s language on Brexit, borders, identity and trust will be tested.

To Reform-minded voters, Burnham is still the Labour politician who backed Remain. To Remain-minded Labour voters, his current position may sound too cautious. To Labour strategists, he may look like the only person who can bridge the gap.

But bridging the gap is easier in speeches than in ballot boxes.

Burnham is not some outsider storming the gates. He is a Labour insider with a long record — and records invite scrutiny.

He helped build parts of the house Labour now says is falling down.

And most importantly, he cannot be all things to all people. He cannot be the answer to Reform voters, Green voters, Welsh nationalists, Scottish unionists, Labour left members, fiscal hawks and bond markets at the same time.

At some point, he would have to choose.

And that is when Labour’s real problem would return.

The Real Question

So we return to the headline.

If Andy Burnham is the answer, then what is the question?

If the question is, “Who is a better communicator than Keir Starmer?”, then Burnham is a plausible answer. If the question is, “Who can make Labour sound more human?”, then Burnham is a plausible answer. If the question is, “Who can talk about the North, devolution and local pride better than the current Labour leadership?”, then Burnham is a plausible answer.

But if the question is, “Who can hold together Labour’s collapsing electoral coalition?”, then the answer is much less obvious.

Because Labour’s crisis is bigger than Starmer. It is the crisis of a party being pulled apart by voters who now want very different things.

Reform voters do not want Labour with a Manchester accent. Green voters do not want Labour caution with warmer delivery. Plaid Cymru voters do not want Wales to be taken for granted again. Scottish voters are not waiting for a Greater Manchester mayor to answer the national question.

Burnham may be a better politician than Starmer. But Labour’s problem is not just that it picked the wrong salesman.

It may be that the product no longer makes sense to enough of the country.

Conclusion: Labour Is Looking For A Leader, But It Needs A Reason To Exist

Andy Burnham may be Labour’s best available option. He is more natural than Starmer, more rooted, and better able to speak to parts of the country Labour has spent years sounding detached from.

But that does not mean he solves the crisis. Labour is not just looking for a new leader. It is looking for a reason to exist that makes sense across towns and cities, Leave and Remain, England and Wales, the left and the centre.

If Labour has more than 400 MPs, a huge majority, a sitting Prime Minister and the full machinery of government, why is it already looking to a mayor outside Westminster to save it?

That is the real crisis. Labour won power, but already looks unsure what it is for.

If Andy Burnham is the answer, then the question may be brutal: does Labour actually have anyone else?

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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I joined Mike Graham for my regular weekly slot this morning to discuss the latest GDP figures, Rachel Reeves’ attempt to claim Labour’s economic plan is working, Keir Starmer blaming Brexit, rising gilt yields, and the political earthquake in Wales after Labour’s collapse in the Senedd election.

Rachel Reeves finally has a growth number to celebrate — but the detail tells a much less comfortable story.

You can watch the full discussion below.

GDP is better — but this is not a miracle

The latest GDP figures are not bad. The UK economy grew by 0.6% in the first quarter of 2026, which is clearly stronger than the sluggish growth we have seen in recent months. GDP per head also rose, which matters because it means this was not just population growth flattering the headline.

So yes, this is better news.

But it is not the economic miracle Rachel Reeves wants to sell.

Scratch beneath the surface and the picture looks much more fragile. Growth was heavily services-led. Household consumption improved, but not dramatically. Production rose only slightly. Manufacturing looked better in places, but part of that was helped by transport equipment bouncing back after earlier disruption.

That is not a broad-based private-sector boom.

It is one better quarter after a long period of drift.

Labour will say: the plan is working.

The data says: the economy had a decent quarter, but the foundations are still patchy.

Britain is patching, not building

The construction figures are probably the most damaging part of the release for Labour.

This was supposed to be the government of “build, build, build”. More homes. More infrastructure. More growth. A planning revolution. A construction boom.

But the data does not show Britain building its way out of trouble.

Total construction output rose slightly, but the growth was driven by repair and maintenance, not new work. In fact, new work fell. That means the sector was being lifted by people fixing and maintaining the existing estate, not by a wave of new homes or major projects.

That gives us the clearest line from the whole release:

Britain is not building. It is patching.

And the forward-looking picture is no better. New construction orders fell sharply in the quarter, suggesting the future pipeline is weakening too.

For a government that promised to get Britain building again, that is a serious problem.

Starmer’s Brexit excuse does not stack up

We also discussed Keir Starmer’s latest attempt to blame Britain’s problems on Brexit.

This has become Labour’s all-purpose alibi: weak growth, weak living standards, poor delivery — apparently it can all be blamed on a referendum from nearly a decade ago.

But the data does not support using Brexit as the explanation for everything wrong with the country.

Since the Brexit vote, UK GDP growth has been broadly in line with several major European economies. Britain has not collapsed relative to France, Italy or Germany. In fact, Germany — so often presented as the powerhouse of the European Union — has had a particularly weak period.

That does not mean Brexit had no economic consequences. Of course there have been frictions and costs.

But Starmer wants Brexit to do far more work than the data allows. He wants it to be the permanent excuse for weak growth, weak living standards and poor government delivery.

That is not serious economics.

If Labour wants to explain Britain’s problems, it should start with the things it controls now: tax, regulation, energy costs, borrowing, public spending, business confidence, planning, productivity and investment.

Blaming Brexit is not a growth strategy.

It is deflection.

The bond market is flashing warning signs

Rachel Reeves also has another problem: the bond market.

Gilt yields matter because they show what the government has to pay to borrow money. When yields rise, debt interest costs rise. That means more taxpayer money going on servicing debt, rather than public services or tax cuts.

Labour spent years blaming Liz Truss for what happened to gilt yields after the mini-Budget.

But on key measures, borrowing costs are now higher than they were during the Truss episode.

That creates a very obvious political problem.

If rising gilt yields were proof of Conservative incompetence then, Labour cannot pretend they are irrelevant now.

The market is not giving Reeves a vote of confidence.

So while she may have a GDP headline to celebrate, the cost of government borrowing is telling a much less comfortable story.

Wales is Labour’s warning sign

Finally, we discussed the political earthquake in Wales.

For decades, Welsh politics was built around one assumption: Labour would dominate.

That assumption has now collapsed.

Plaid Cymru’s rise and Labour’s collapse in traditional Labour territory show something much deeper than a bad campaign. In parts of the valleys, Labour has not just lost votes. It has lost the sense that it is the natural party of government.

That matters beyond Wales.

If Labour cannot hold its old heartlands in Wales, Starmer should be worried across the UK. Voters who once saw Labour as their default political home are clearly willing to move.

The danger for Starmer is that Wales may be the early warning system for Labour’s wider collapse.

Plaid Cymru now has a major opportunity. If it presents itself as steady and competent, it could become entrenched in Wales in the way the SNP did in Scotland.

For Labour, Wales is no longer a fortress. It is a warning.

The real takeaway

The economy grew. That is true.

But Rachel Reeves should be careful about overselling it.

This was a better GDP number, not a growth miracle. Services did most of the work. Construction is not delivering a building boom. Production remains fragile. Household consumption has improved, but not enough to suggest a consumer surge. Borrowing costs are rising. And Starmer is still reaching for Brexit as an excuse for problems his government now owns.

Labour got its headline. But it has not delivered the growth miracle it promised.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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For years, Labour had one answer to every difficult economic question: Liz Truss.

Mortgage rates? Liz Truss.
Borrowing costs? Liz Truss.
Market credibility? Liz Truss.

But today’s gilt-market move should make Labour nervous.

During a volatile trading session, the 10-year gilt yield moved above 5.1%, touching its highest level since 2008, while the 30-year gilt yield rose to around 5.8%, its highest level since 1998, before easing back slightly later in the day. Market data pointed to pressure from political instability, renewed inflation concerns and wider doubts over the UK’s fiscal position.

The numbers moved during trading. That is what markets do.

But the message was clear: investors were demanding a higher price to lend money to the UK Government.

The bond market does not care how many times Labour mentions Liz Truss.

It cares whether Britain’s numbers add up.

The Market Is Sending Labour a Warning

A gilt is UK Government debt.

When the Government spends more than it raises in tax, it has to borrow the difference. It does that by selling gilts to investors. The yield is the interest rate those investors demand for lending money to Britain.

So when gilt yields rise, the message from the market is simple:

“We will still lend to Britain — but only at a higher price.”

That is the warning now.

Investors are looking at the UK and seeing a dangerous mix: weak growth, high debt, sticky inflation, political instability and uncertainty over whether Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules can survive Labour’s internal pressure.

This is not just about one leader or one Chancellor.

It is about whether the Government still has the authority to make hard choices — or whether Labour’s political panic ends with taxpayers funding another round of promises Britain cannot afford.

Why Should Voters Care About Gilt Yields?

Gilt yields sound boring.

They are not.

They are one of the clearest signals of how expensive Britain has become to finance.

In plain English, gilt yields are the interest rate on Britain’s national credit card. When they rise, the Government’s debt becomes more expensive. And that bill does not vanish into the financial system.

It lands on taxpayers.

The more the Government spends on debt interest, the less room it has for everything else: tax cuts, public services, defence, policing, infrastructure, or support for households.

If borrowing costs rise far enough, the Chancellor has only a few choices:

• Raise taxes.

• Cut spending.

• Borrow even more.

• Break the fiscal rules.

None of those choices are painless.

That is why voters should care. Gilt yields are not just a market statistic. They are a real-world pressure gauge on the public finances.

And because government bonds sit at the heart of the financial system, higher gilt yields can also feed into wider borrowing costs, including mortgages, business loans and other forms of credit.

So the question is not:

“Why should ordinary people care about gilts?”

The question is:

“Why should ordinary people ignore the interest rate on Britain’s national credit card?”

Why the 30-Year Gilt Matters

The 30-year gilt is especially important because it reflects long-term confidence.

This is not just about what the Bank of England might do next month.

It is about what investors think Britain will look like decades from now: how much debt it will carry, how much inflation it will tolerate, and whether politicians will keep control of the public finances.

When long-term borrowing costs rise, markets are not just reacting to today’s headlines.

They are asking whether Britain’s future finances are credible.

That should worry any Government.

What Labour Will Say

Labour will say this is about global markets, oil prices, inflation expectations and wider international uncertainty.

There is some truth in that.

Political turmoil is not the only factor pushing up UK borrowing costs. Inflation concerns, global bond-market pressure and wider uncertainty also matter.

But there was also some truth in that during the Truss episode.

Global conditions mattered then too. Inflation was high. Interest rates were rising. Bond markets around the world were under pressure.

Yet Labour still turned the gilt-market reaction into a simple political attack: Liz Truss crashed the economy.

So Labour cannot have it both ways.

If every rise in borrowing costs under the Conservatives was proof of Tory recklessness, Labour cannot now pretend that rising borrowing costs under Labour are just an act of God.

The question is not whether global markets exist.

The question is whether the UK is being punished harder because investors doubt the Government’s fiscal credibility.

That is the uncomfortable part for Labour.

The Causes Are Different. The Lesson Is the Same.

To be clear, this is not identical to the Liz Truss mini-budget.

The Truss episode was a sudden fiscal shock.

In September 2022, Kwasi Kwarteng announced major tax cuts without the normal full Office for Budget Responsibility forecast. The House of Commons Library later summarised that the mini-budget included tax cuts that would have reduced Treasury revenues by around £45 billion in 2026/27.

The market reaction was severe. On 28 September 2022, the Bank of England announced temporary purchases of long-dated UK government bonds to “restore orderly market conditions.”

So no, today is not the same event.

There has not been one dramatic mini-budget moment. There has not been an emergency Bank of England intervention on the same scale. And we should be honest about that.

But Labour’s problem is still serious.

It is not one Friday morning statement. It is a slower build-up of doubts: weak growth, high debt, rising debt-interest costs, political instability and concern that the fiscal rules may not survive pressure from within the party.

Truss lost market credibility in days.

Labour is now discovering that credibility can also drain away slowly — one weak forecast, one leadership wobble, one fiscal doubt at a time.

The causes are different.

The lesson is the same.

Markets punish governments when they think the numbers do not add up.

Labour’s Liz Truss Problem

This is where the politics becomes awkward.

Labour spent years using Liz Truss as the permanent explanation for Britain’s economic pain.

But if Labour keeps saying “Liz Truss crashed the economy”, voters are entitled to ask why borrowing costs are now surging under Labour.

If the answer is “global markets”, then Labour has to admit that not everything in 2022 was simply about Liz Truss.

If the answer is “political instability”, then Labour has to admit that its own internal chaos now has a real economic cost.

And if the answer is “markets are worried about borrowing and spending”, then Labour has to admit the central point:

Britain has a fiscal credibility problem.

Not just a Liz Truss problem.

A Britain problem.

The Real Cost Falls on Taxpayers

The danger with rising gilt yields is that they squeeze the Government from every direction.

A higher debt-interest bill means more taxpayer money going to bondholders rather than public services. It means less room for tax cuts. It means more pressure on the Chancellor to find savings. It makes every Budget more difficult.

This matters even more when Britain is already carrying a huge debt burden.

The more debt you have, the more exposed you become to higher interest rates. A country with low debt can absorb higher borrowing costs more easily. A country with high debt has far less room for error.

That is Britain’s problem.

When borrowing costs rise, the Government cannot simply pretend nothing has happened. The bill gets bigger. The choices get harder. The room for political fantasy gets smaller.

Higher gilt yields are not just numbers on a trading screen.

They are a warning that Britain’s public finances are becoming harder to sustain.

Conclusion: The Market Has No Patience for Spin

Labour spent years telling voters that Liz Truss proved the importance of market credibility.

They were right.

But credibility is not owned by one party. It has to be earned every day.

The bond market does not care how often Rachel Reeves says “stability”. It does not give Labour a discount because it spent years attacking Liz Truss. It looks at debt, borrowing, inflation, growth and political risk — then it sets the price.

Today, that price is rising.

And when Britain’s national credit card gets more expensive, taxpayers pick up the tab.

Labour wanted to make Liz Truss the symbol of economic chaos.

But the market is now sending Labour a message it cannot spin away:

The Liz Truss excuse is wearing thin. Britain’s debt problem is still here. And taxpayers are still the ones left carrying the bill.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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Keir Starmer stood up yesterday to save his premiership. What he delivered was a speech that showed exactly why it is collapsing.

After brutal election results, open questions about his leadership, and growing frustration across the country, Starmer had a chance to show he had listened. He could have used the moment to set out a serious domestic reset on living standards, housing, taxes, energy costs, immigration and public services.

He mentioned some of those pressures. He claimed NHS waiting lists, child poverty and immigration were coming down, and argued that the economy had been stabilised so living standards could improve after two decades of stagnation. But when it came to the big defining answer, he reached for something familiar: Europe.

Not serious reform at home. Not a proper reckoning with his own failures. Not a plan to cut costs, control borders, unleash growth or rebuild trust.

This was not a reset. It was a relapse.

A Prime Minister Running Out Of Road

Starmer began by admitting the election results were “tough, very tough”. He said he took responsibility. He admitted people are frustrated with politics, frustrated with the state of Britain, and frustrated with him. He also acknowledged that he has “doubters” and needs to prove them wrong.

But the speech quickly exposed the problem. He talked about responsibility, but much of the argument was still about why he should be allowed to carry on. He talked about change, but the substance was built around familiar Labour territory: state intervention, attacks on Reform, blame for Brexit, and a renewed push to pull Britain closer to the European Union.

To be fair, Europe was not the only policy announcement. Starmer also announced legislation to give the government powers, subject to a public interest test, to take full national ownership of British Steel. There may be specific arguments around steel, sovereign capability and national security. No serious country should be relaxed about losing strategic industrial capacity.

But that only reinforced the broader picture. This was not a growth reset built around lower costs, cheaper energy, tax competitiveness, housebuilding or private-sector dynamism. It was state control at home and closer EU alignment abroad.

That may reassure Labour activists. It is less likely to reassure voters looking at their mortgage, rent, council tax, energy bill, food shop and local high street. The country does not need slogans about hope. It needs proof that government can make life better.

Power Without Popularity

This is the problem I wrote about in February in Power Without Popularity.

Starmer entered Downing Street with a huge Commons majority, but not a huge popular mandate. Labour won fewer votes in 2024 under Starmer than it did under Jeremy Corbyn in 2019. Labour took 9.71 million votes in 2024, compared with 10.27 million in 2019 — around 560,000 fewer votes. Turnout also fell sharply, from 67.3% in 2019 to 59.7% in 2024. In absolute terms, around 3.2 million fewer votes were cast, despite a larger electorate.

That matters because this was never a great popular realignment behind Starmer. It was a landslide of seats, not a landslide of support. Labour did not surge. The Conservatives collapsed, Reform split the right, the Greens peeled away voters on Labour’s left, and First Past the Post did the rest.

A majority built on thin enthusiasm can look powerful from Westminster, but it is brittle when voters turn. That is what we are now seeing. The results have not created Starmer’s authority problem. They have exposed it.

Starmer’s Big Answer: Britain Back At The Heart Of Europe

The most revealing part of the speech came when Starmer turned to Europe.

He said the next EU summit would “set a new direction for Britain”. He said the last government was defined by breaking Britain’s relationship with Europe, but his Labour government would be defined by “rebuilding our relationship with Europe” and putting “Britain at the heart of Europe”.

There it was, right in the middle of his supposed reset.

Not Britain at the heart of an industrial revival. Not Britain at the heart of cheaper energy. Not Britain at the heart of domestic reform. Not Britain at the heart of border control.

Europe.

That matters because this is not just a diplomatic preference. It reveals Starmer’s political instinct. For him, the great emotional wound in British politics is still Brexit. The central task is not primarily to rebuild trust between voters and Westminster. It is to rebuild the relationship with Brussels.

That is why this speech matters. When the country sent him a warning, he answered with Europe.

Europe Is Not Exactly Booming

There is also a basic economic problem with Starmer’s argument.

He talks about Europe as if Britain is desperate to move closer to an economic powerhouse. But the recent GDP record does not support that simple story.

Since the Brexit vote, comparing real GDP in Q4 2025 with Q2 2016, the UK economy has grown by 12.1%. That is not spectacular. Nobody should pretend Britain is booming.

But compare it with the major European economies Starmer seems so keen to move closer to. France is slightly ahead, up 12.5%. Italy is up 10.1%. Germany — supposedly the industrial engine of Europe — is up just 6.0%.

So the honest picture is this: Britain has grown broadly in line with France, faster than Italy, and roughly twice as fast as Germany since the Brexit vote.

That does not prove Brexit was an economic triumph. It clearly was not. But it does puncture the lazy political story that Britain’s problems are simply the result of Brexit, and that closer alignment with Brussels is some obvious economic cure.

Britain has serious economic problems: weak productivity, expensive energy, high taxes, poor infrastructure, unaffordable housing, and too many people out of the labour market. Those problems are real.

But they will not be fixed by pretending the EU is some economic rocket ship. Germany is stagnating. Italy remains sluggish. France is only slightly ahead of Britain over this period.

So when Starmer says Britain must be put back “at the heart of Europe”, the question is obvious:

Why is he trying to tie Britain more closely to a bloc whose own economic engine is spluttering?

Britain needs growth. It needs investment. It needs cheaper energy. It needs planning reform. It needs lower burdens on business. It needs better infrastructure. It needs a tax system that rewards work, risk and enterprise.

It does not need a Prime Minister treating Brussels as a comfort blanket.

The Working-Class Disconnect

The sharpest question of the day came from Katherine Forster of GB News.

She pointed out that Labour was founded to represent the working class, many of whom voted for Brexit because they felt left behind. She then put the problem directly to Starmer: after losing core votes in the Red Wall, Wales and Scotland, why was he standing in London promising “more Europe”?

It cut to the heart of the speech. Starmer’s response was to go straight back to Brexit.

He talked about Nigel Farage. He said Brexit had not made Britain richer, had not reduced migration, and had not made the country more secure. He said Britain needed stronger economic, defence and security arrangements, and that was why he wanted Britain closer to Europe.

That exchange tells you everything. The question was about whether Labour had abandoned working-class voters. The answer was about Brexit.

Starmer did not really address the deeper issue: that many voters feel ignored, overtaxed, priced out, talked down to, and taken for granted by a political class that keeps asking for their trust while delivering less and less in return.

When working-class voters asked to be heard, Starmer heard Nigel Farage.

The Chaos Is Already Here

Starmer’s defence is that changing leader would plunge the country into chaos. But that argument is wearing thin, because the chaos is already here.

According to reports, Cabinet ministers are now pushing him to quit, with sources claiming senior ministers went into No 10 to tell him his time is up. Dozens of Labour MPs have reportedly told him to resign after his fightback speech failed to stop the mutiny, and at the time of writing, 72 MPs are said to have publicly demanded a timetable for his departure.

The line from one Labour source is devastating: “The PM has had his say, people have heard him out, but it has not changed minds. The herd is moving.”

That is the danger for Starmer. Once a Prime Minister becomes the issue, every speech becomes a survival test. Every press conference becomes a leadership story. Every policy announcement gets swallowed by the same question: how long has he got?

There are also signs the party is no longer united around what comes next. Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham are reportedly canvassing supporters, Angela Rayner has called for Burnham to be allowed back into Westminster, and Labour MPs are split between those who want a swift contest and those who want a delay.

Starmer says replacing him would create chaos. But if Cabinet ministers are briefing, aides are resigning, MPs are organising, and markets are getting nervous, the more brutal question is this:

What if keeping him is the chaos?

That is not stability. It is drift.

Conclusion: Time To Go

Keir Starmer’s speech was meant to reset his premiership. Instead, it confirmed why it is failing.

The country wanted evidence that he had listened. What it got was a Prime Minister still trapped in the old arguments: Europe, Brexit, Reform, and the claim that any alternative would mean chaos.

Britain should not be complacent. But nor should it be conned into thinking Brussels is the answer to problems made in Westminster. Britain’s future will not be saved by moving closer to a low-growth European bloc. It will be saved by fixing Britain.

That is why yesterday’s speech matters. Not because it was dramatic, but because it was revealing.

Starmer has had his reset. It failed. Now the rebellion appears to be widening, the Cabinet is wavering, and Labour MPs are openly asking whether he can carry on.

Britain does not need another Starmer reset. It needs a Prime Minister who has actually heard the country.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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For decades, Welsh politics was built around one assumption: Labour would always be the dominant force. That assumption has now collapsed.

Plaid Cymru has emerged as the largest party in the Senedd with 43 seats, just six short of a majority. Reform UK finished second with 34 seats, Labour fell to 9, the Conservatives held 7, the Greens won 2 and the Liberal Democrats took 1. This was the first time since devolution that Welsh Labour will not form the government, and turnout passed 50% for the first time in a Senedd election.

This is not just a poor result for Labour. It is political rock bottom in Wales under Keir Starmer. But it is also not quite the story some expected. Reform broke through in a major way, but the party that came out on top was Plaid Cymru — a nationalist-left party that managed to take the anti-Labour energy and turn it into a serious route to power.

The Polls Were Mixed — But the Direction Was Clear

Some polling and commentary suggested Plaid Cymru and Reform were locked in a much tighter contest. There were moments in the campaign where the story felt like Reform could finish ahead, or at least push Plaid much closer than the final result showed.

But it would be wrong to say all the polls missed it. They did not. The final YouGov MRP for ITV Cymru Wales and Cardiff University had Plaid Cymru on course to win 43 seats, with Reform UK on 34 — exactly where the election landed. The lesson is not that polling is useless. The lesson is that some polls and some campaign narratives captured the direction better than others.

The wider political point is that the mood on the ground was clearer than some of the campaign noise suggested. The Caerphilly by-election had already shown that Labour’s lost vote was not simply moving in one direction. Reform was clearly gaining support, but Plaid Cymru was also becoming the more natural destination for many former Labour voters, especially in parts of Wales where the party had built local credibility.

That is why this result should not be treated as a complete shock. The signs were there. Labour’s vote was breaking apart, and Plaid Cymru was better placed than many realised to benefit from that collapse.

Labour’s Fortress Has Fallen

Welsh Labour used to look immovable. It dominated the post-devolution era, controlled the Welsh Government for more than two decades, and treated large parts of Wales as safe territory. That old political machine has now broken.

Nine seats is not a difficult election result. It is a collapse. Labour has been pushed into third place, behind both Plaid Cymru and Reform UK, while First Minister Eluned Morgan lost her seat and resigned as Welsh Labour leader.

The challenge for Labour is that this happened while the party is in power at Westminster. Keir Starmer has not revived Labour’s fortunes in Wales; he has presided over one of its worst results. That creates a serious political problem because Labour can no longer claim to be the automatic governing party of Wales. It now has to earn that position back from near rock bottom.

There is a possible upside for Labour, but only in the long term. When Starmer eventually goes, Labour may be able to argue for a reset and say this was the low point. But voters do not return just because a party changes leader. Labour needs a reason for people to come back, and that is where the problem becomes much harder.

Labour’s Route Back Is Blocked by Plaid Cymru

Labour’s lost voters have not simply moved to Reform. Many have moved to Plaid Cymru, and that creates a much deeper strategic problem.

If Labour wants to recover in Wales, it needs to win back voters who now see Plaid Cymru as the main alternative. But if Labour helps Plaid govern too closely, it risks validating Plaid as the natural party of government. It could end up keeping Plaid in office while making it even harder to challenge them later.

That is Labour’s quandary. A formal deal with Plaid Cymru may look tempting in the short term. It could give Labour influence and keep Reform away from power. But in the long term, it could be disastrous. Labour would be tied to Plaid’s record, unable to fully oppose the government, and still unable to rebuild a distinct offer of its own.

Scotland should be the warning. Labour once dominated there too. Then the SNP became the main anti-Labour force, and Labour spent years trying to recover from a political realignment that it failed to understand quickly enough.

Wales is not Scotland. But the risk for Labour is obvious. If Plaid Cymru becomes the party that former Labour voters trust to run Wales, Labour could find itself locked out for a generation.

Reform Broke Through — But Plaid Blocked Them

Reform UK will rightly point to 34 seats as a major breakthrough. They now have a serious presence in Welsh politics, a platform inside the Senedd, and a base from which to build.

But this was not an uncomplicated success. The electoral map matters. In much of Wales, including parts of the Valleys where Reform may have expected to do especially well, Plaid Cymru came out ahead. That is crucial because Westminster elections are fought under first-past-the-post, where finishing second can mean finishing nowhere.

For Nigel Farage, the Welsh result is therefore a warning as well as an opportunity. Reform has proved it can win support. It has not yet proved it can dominate enough places to turn that support into Westminster seats.

In a proportional Senedd election, 34 seats is huge. In a Westminster election, coming second across large parts of Wales could leave Reform with far less to show for it. That is why this result matters beyond the Senedd. It suggests Reform is a major force in Welsh politics, but not necessarily the main anti-Labour vehicle everywhere. In many places, Plaid Cymru got there first.

The Greens Failed to Turn Polling Into Power

The Green Party also needs to be part of this story, because their result shows something important about where the left-wing anti-Labour vote actually went.

During the campaign, the Greens appeared to have some momentum. Under the new Senedd system, with Labour’s vote collapsing and voters looking for alternatives, there was a clear opportunity for them to break through. In the end, they won just 2 seats. That gets them into the Senedd, but it is not a major political breakthrough.

The problem for the Greens is that the left-wing protest vote in Wales did not mainly go to them. It went to Plaid Cymru. For voters who wanted to punish Labour but did not want to move right, Plaid looked like the more serious vehicle for change.

That matters because Plaid Cymru managed to occupy the space the Greens might have hoped to grow into: anti-Labour, left-of-centre, Welsh-focused and electorally credible. The Greens may have picked up representation, but they failed to turn favourable conditions into meaningful political power.

In a fragmented Senedd, 2 seats can still matter. But the bigger lesson is obvious. Labour’s collapse did not create a major Green surge. It created a Plaid Cymru landslide.

The Conservatives Survived — And That Matters

For the Conservatives, this was not a strong result in any traditional sense. Seven seats is still a small presence in the Senedd, and they remain well behind Plaid Cymru and Reform.

But survival matters. Before the election, there was talk of the Welsh Conservatives being wiped out entirely. That did not happen. In a political system this fragmented, simply remaining on the board gives the party something to build from.

The Conservatives now have a chance to reposition themselves. They are no longer the main challenger to Labour in Wales, and Reform has clearly taken much of the anti-establishment energy on the right. But if Reform struggles to convert Senedd success into Westminster seats, and if Labour remains weak, the Conservatives may see an opportunity to rebuild as a smaller, more disciplined force.

They are wounded. But they are not extinct.

What This Means for Wales

This result changes the political direction of Wales. Labour’s dominance has ended. Plaid Cymru is now the largest force in the Senedd and the party most likely to lead the next Welsh Government. Reform has broken through, but the map suggests Plaid may be better placed in many areas that matter for Westminster. The Conservatives have survived, while the Greens failed to turn favourable conditions into a meaningful breakthrough.

The immediate question is how Plaid Cymru governs. With 43 seats, they are six short of the 49 needed for a majority. They could try to govern as a minority, relying on support issue by issue. Labour could support them informally, but a formal deal would carry serious risks for Labour’s future.

The bigger question is whether this is the start of a long-term realignment. If Plaid Cymru governs competently, they could become the natural party of government in Wales. If Labour fails to rebuild, the old Labour vote may not come home. If Reform cannot turn its breakthrough into local dominance, it may find that the Welsh political map is much less helpful than the headline seat total suggests. And if the Greens cannot convert left-wing dissatisfaction with Labour into seats, they risk being squeezed by Plaid whenever Welsh voters want change without moving right.

That is the core story. Wales has not simply moved from Labour to Reform. It has rejected Labour’s old dominance and handed the initiative to Plaid Cymru.

For Wales, this is a new era.

Not Labour Wales.

Not Reform Wales.

Plaid Wales — at least for now.

And everyone else now has to work out how to respond.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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Britain is paying more and more for public services that too often feel like they are delivering less.

Higher taxes. Bigger budgets. More spending. Yet the public still faces NHS backlogs, council services under pressure, schools struggling with staffing, policing failures, and a state that too often feels slow, expensive and unaccountable.

The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics add another piece to that puzzle. Across the UK labour market, 148.8 million working days were lost because of sickness or injury in 2025. That works out at 4.4 days lost per worker.

But the real divide is between the public and private sector.

The sickness absence rate was 2.9% for public sector employees, compared with 1.7% for private sector workers. The public sector sickness absence rate has been higher than the private sector for every year on record.

That does not explain every failure in Britain’s public services. But it helps explain something the public can feel: why more money does not always turn into better delivery.

The Public Sector Sickness Gap

The public sector sickness gap is not a small statistical footnote.

It is a delivery problem.

If hospitals are short-staffed, patients wait longer. If schools are short-staffed, children lose consistency. If councils are short-staffed, services get slower. If government departments are short-staffed or badly managed, the public gets delays, excuses and failure.

And taxpayers are left paying the bill.

The difference becomes even clearer when you look at days lost per worker. In 2025, public sector workers lost 6.2 days per worker to sickness absence, compared with 3.8 days in the private sector.

Of course, some public sector jobs are difficult. NHS staff, prison officers, police officers, teachers and care workers often deal with stressful, physical and emotionally demanding conditions. But that cannot be the end of the discussion.

The public sector is funded by people who have to get up, go to work, pay their taxes and often wait months or years for the services they have already paid for. They are entitled to ask whether sickness absence is being properly managed.

Health Is The Real Hotspot

The public sector gap is broad, but health stands out.

In 2025, sickness absence among workers in health was 4.0%, compared with 1.7% in the private sector. In days lost per worker, the gap is even clearer: 8.6 days per worker in health, compared with 3.8 days in the private sector.

That is more than double, although there is an important caveat. Health workers are not sitting in ordinary office jobs. Many are working directly with sick patients in hospitals, GP settings, care environments and other frontline roles where exposure to viruses and infections is naturally higher.

So yes, some of this gap will reflect the reality of the job.

But it still does not remove the problem. If the health system is losing 8.6 days per worker to sickness, that directly affects NHS and care capacity. Fewer staff on shift means more pressure on colleagues, longer waits for patients, more cancelled activity, and more strain on a system already struggling to deliver.

Health and social work also lost 30.3 million working days to sickness absence in 2025 — around one fifth of all working days lost across the economy.

The point is not to attack NHS staff. The point is that the NHS cannot solve its waiting list and productivity problems while ignoring workforce sickness inside the system itself.

Big Organisations Absorb Absence — Small Firms Cannot

There is another pattern in the data that matters: sickness absence is higher in larger organisations.

Workers in organisations with fewer than 25 employees lost 3.6 days per worker to sickness absence in 2025. In organisations with 500 or more employees, it was 5.5 days per worker.

That should not surprise us. Small firms cannot carry absence in the same way large organisations can. If someone is off in a small business, everyone feels it immediately. The work still has to be done. The customers still need serving. The bills still need paying.

Large organisations, especially large public sector bodies, can absorb absence more easily. The cost does not disappear. It is simply spread across departments, waiting lists, delayed services and ultimately the taxpayer.

That is the danger.

A big bureaucracy can hide poor performance for far longer than a small business can. In the private sector, persistent absence affects output, customers, colleagues and the bottom line. In the public sector, it affects patients, pupils, victims of crime, taxpayers and every citizen waiting for the state to do its job.

The public should not be fobbed off with “it is complicated”. The public sector is enormous. It is expensive. It is paid for by taxpayers. And it should be held to a high standard.

The Fit Note System Looks Too Weak

This is where the fit note debate matters.

A recent BBC investigation asked more than 5,000 GPs in England about mental health-related fit notes. Of the 752 GPs who replied, 540 said they had never refused such a request, while 162 said they had refused at least one.

That does not mean every request was false. It does not mean every GP is rubber-stamping people off work. But it does raise a serious question: if the system rarely says no, is it really assessing fitness for work — or just recording what the patient asks for?

Reports around the same issue suggest fit notes have more than doubled over the past decade, from around 5.3 million in 2015 to more than 11 million in the latest year. Mental health and behavioural disorders accounted for more than 956,000 fit notes where a reason was recorded, though many fit notes do not specify a reason.

That links directly to the sickness absence data. Mental health conditions accounted for 11.9% of public sector sickness absence occurrences, compared with 7.5% in the private sector.

Again, this does not mean every case is abuse. Mental illness can be real, serious and disabling. But a system that appears reluctant to say no is a system that will be tested.

A fit note should not be the end of the conversation. It should trigger proper questions. What work can this person still do? What adjustments are reasonable? Is this short-term or long-term? Is there a plan to return? Is the employer involved? Is there occupational health support? Is there any evidence of abuse?

Because the current model too often appears to treat being signed off as the default answer.

That is not good enough.

Taxpayers Deserve Accountability

The solution is not complicated in principle.

First, public bodies should publish clear sickness absence data. NHS trusts, councils, police forces, departments and agencies should be expected to show absence rates, trends, short-term absence, long-term absence and how they compare with similar organisations.

If taxpayers are funding the service, taxpayers should be able to see the problem.

Second, repeat absence should be actively managed. Not with vague HR processes that drag on forever, but with proper return-to-work interviews, clear thresholds, documented action plans and managers who are expected to manage.

Third, the fit note system needs tightening. GPs should not be left as the sole gatekeepers for worklessness, especially when many openly say they do not see themselves as policing the system. The process needs to move towards proper work capability, occupational health and return-to-work planning — not simply signing people off and hoping for the best.

Fourth, conflicts of interest need to be taken seriously. I have heard anecdotal examples of NHS staff being signed off sick while allegedly doing private work elsewhere. That does not mean it is widespread, and it certainly does not mean most NHS staff are abusing the system.

But if it happens, the question is obvious: who is checking?

There may be legitimate explanations. Someone may be unfit for one role but capable of different duties. The private work may be less physically demanding, more flexible, or under different conditions. But if a taxpayer-funded service is short-staffed because someone is off sick, while that person is still able to do paid work elsewhere, management should be asking serious questions.

Fifth, public sector managers need to be held accountable for absence. Not blamed for every illness, but held responsible for whether patterns are spotted, processes are followed, and problems are challenged.

Support genuine illness. But stop allowing weak systems, weak management and weak accountability to hide behind compassion.

Conclusion: The Dashboard Is Flashing Red

Nobody serious should pretend every sickness absence is fake.

But nobody serious should pretend the system is working either.

Britain lost nearly 149 million working days to sickness or injury in 2025. The public sector sickness absence rate remains far higher than the private sector. Health is a particular hotspot. Big organisations appear able to absorb absence in a way small firms simply cannot. And the fit note system looks far too weak.

There is also a deeper health problem. Workers with long-term health conditions had a sickness absence rate of 4.0% in 2025, compared with 1.0% for those without long-term health conditions. Older workers also had higher rates, rising from 1.3% among 16 to 24-year-olds to 3.3% among workers aged 65 and over.

That matters because Britain is ageing, public finances are stretched, and the welfare bill is already under pressure. The country needs more people in work, not fewer. It needs more hours worked, not fewer. It needs a public sector that delivers, not one that absorbs more money while producing endless excuses.

That is the issue. Not attacking the genuinely ill. Not pretending difficult jobs are easy. But asking whether Britain’s public sector has become too big, too expensive, too slow, and too weak at holding itself accountable.

The public sector sickness gap is not the whole reason Britain cannot deliver.

But it is another warning light on the dashboard.

And right now, the dashboard is flashing red. 🚨

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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The Bank of England held interest rates at its latest meeting, but the real story was in the vote.

At its meeting ending 29 April 2026, the Monetary Policy Committee voted 8–1 to keep Bank Rate at 3.75%. One member wanted to increase rates by 0.25 percentage points, taking Bank Rate to 4%. After months of assuming rates were on the way down, Britain is now back in a world where some at the Bank are already thinking about pushing them higher.

The Bank’s concern is that inflation could prove more persistent, especially if higher energy costs feed into wages, prices and expectations. That is why the vote matters. One member of the MPC did not think holding rates was enough.

But if inflation is being driven by energy prices, fuel prices, imported costs and global shocks, hiking interest rates does not solve the cause.

It just makes households poorer.

The Warning Sign Was In The Vote

The headline is simple: rates stayed at 3.75%. But the split matters, because an 8–1 vote with one member voting for a rise tells us the Bank’s inflation reflex is still alive.

When inflation rises, the instinct is to squeeze demand. That makes sense if households are flush with money, borrowing cheaply, spending heavily and bidding up prices because too much money is chasing too few goods. In that world, higher rates cool demand, make borrowing more expensive, encourage saving and slow the economy.

But that is not the same as an energy shock. Higher interest rates do not refine more petrol, produce more gas or make food production cheaper. They do not solve the source of the inflation. They squeeze the people already paying it.

This Is Not Demand-Led Inflation

Not all inflation is the same.

There is a world where inflation is caused by excess consumer demand. People have too much spending power, firms cannot keep up, and prices rise. But the inflation shocks Britain has faced in recent years were not simply caused by households living the high life.

Families were not bidding up gas prices because they felt rich. Drivers were not pushing up diesel prices because they had too much disposable income. Parents were not demanding higher food bills.

They were being forced to pay more for essentials.

And when essentials go up, demand often falls elsewhere. If a household has to spend hundreds or thousands more on energy, fuel and food, it has less money left for restaurants, clothes, holidays, home improvements, subscriptions, local businesses and the high street.

That is not an overheated consumer boom. That is a cost-of-living squeeze.

So the question is obvious: why is the consumer punished as if they caused the problem?

The Second-Round Effects Argument

The Bank of England would argue that higher rates are not just about the original energy shock. Its concern is what happens next.

The theory is that energy prices rise, headline inflation rises, workers seek higher wages to protect their living standards, and businesses then raise prices to cover higher wage and input costs. That is what economists call second-round effects.

But look at what that means in practice.

If energy bills rise and workers ask for higher pay so they are not made poorer, the Bank sees that as a risk. If firms try to pass on higher input costs, the Bank sees that as a risk too. So the response is to weaken demand, cool the labour market and make it harder for wages and prices to adjust.

In plain English, the Bank is not reversing the original inflation shock. It is trying to stop people from catching up with it.

Higher rates do not produce more gas. They do not refine more petrol. They do not reduce food production costs. They do not lower the energy bills that started the squeeze.

What they do is make borrowing more expensive, reduce disposable income, weaken workers’ bargaining power and put pressure on businesses that were not responsible for the original shock.

That is the problem.

The Bank talks about preventing inflation becoming embedded. But for households, the experience is different: prices rise first, then mortgages rise, loans rise, rents rise, and people are told this is the medicine.

At some point, we need to ask a simple question.

Why should ordinary households be made poorer today because policymakers fear they might try to recover their living standards tomorrow?

What Happened Last Time

We have already lived through this.

UK inflation peaked at 11.1% in October 2022. The Office for National Statistics said the main drivers included energy, fuel and food prices, while the largest upward contributions came from housing and household services, including electricity, gas and other fuels, along with food and transport.

Typical household energy bills rose by 54% in April 2022, then by a further 27% in October 2022. Lower wholesale prices later helped bring bills down, but they remained well above winter 2021/22 levels.

That was the first hit. Then came the second.

The Bank of England raised interest rates sharply from near-zero levels, eventually taking Bank Rate to 5.25% in August 2023 before later cuts. Bank Rate influences borrowing costs across the economy, including mortgages, loans and credit.

That fed through into mortgage costs. People coming off cheap fixed-rate deals refinanced at much higher rates, households on variable-rate mortgages felt the pain more quickly, and landlords with mortgages faced higher costs too. Some of that pressure inevitably fed into rents.

So ordinary people were squeezed from both sides. First came higher energy bills, higher food bills and higher fuel costs. Then came higher borrowing costs and higher rents.

That is the double hit.

The Competence Question

Some second-round effects are not neatly stopped by raising rates. If benefits, pensions, contracts, rents, fares or other payments are linked to inflation, then once the inflation figure has happened, some later increases are already baked into the system. Higher interest rates cannot go back in time and erase the inflation reading.

This is why the timing matters. Inflation rises first, then interest rates rise, then mortgages and borrowing costs rise, and then inflation-linked payments may rise later. Households are still poorer anyway.

The Bank operates within global constraints. Britain imports energy, food, goods, raw materials and components. The exchange rate matters because a weaker pound can make imports more expensive, feeding back into inflation. The Federal Reserve does not set UK interest rates, but US monetary policy influences global markets, capital flows, bond yields, exchange rates and financial conditions.

So yes, the Bank does not control the global monetary weather.

But that does not absolve it of judgement.

Back in 2022, former Bank of England Governor Lord Mervyn King challenged the role central banks played during the Covid period. His argument was that lockdowns reduced the supply of goods and services, while central banks increased the supply of money. That created the classic inflation risk: too much money chasing too few goods.

That does not mean the Bank is causing inflation now. It means its recent judgement should not simply be waved through without challenge. The same institution that helped preside over the Covid-era monetary response then pushed rates up sharply after an energy shock. Now, with inflation risks returning, households are being asked once again to trust that higher borrowing costs are the right medicine.

Andrew Bailey was Governor during the Covid period and remains Governor today. He began his term on 16 March 2020, and remains in post.

If central banks helped fuel inflation after Covid, then responded to an energy shock by hammering borrowers, people are entitled to ask a simple question: how much confidence should we have in the institution prescribing the cure?

This is not just a technical debate.

It is a question of competence.

The Bigger Question

The Bank of England has a target. It wants inflation at 2%. But the public has a different concern.

They want to know why the response to higher energy bills is higher mortgage costs. They want to know why families are squeezed again because of a shock they did not cause.

If inflation is driven by excess demand, interest rates have a role. But if inflation is driven by energy shocks, fuel prices, imported costs and global instability, then higher rates are a blunt weapon.

They do not fix the source of the inflation. They spread the pain.

And the latest MPC vote shows the danger has not gone away. One member already wanted rates higher. The direction of travel may have changed.

Households could be about to discover, once again, that when inflation returns, the Bank’s first instinct is not to protect the consumer.

It is to squeeze them.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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I joined Mike Graham on the this week to discuss what is happening in Wales, but the conversation quickly widened into something much bigger.

Welsh politics. Labour’s decline. Plaid Cymru. Reform. Population growth. Migration. The dark economy. Digital ID.

On paper, these can look like separate issues. They are not.

They all point to the same deeper problem: Britain is drifting, Wales is drifting, and the people in charge do not appear to have a serious plan.

Wales May Be About To Send Labour A Brutal Message

Wales is heading into a major political moment.

For months, Reform and Plaid Cymru have been close in the polls. Some polls have put Reform ahead. Some have put Plaid ahead. But the polling is only one part of the story.

The real question is turnout.

In Wales, even for national Welsh Parliament elections, we have never had more than half the population bother voting. That tells you something about the state of politics here.

A lot of people are disengaged. A lot are frustrated. And a lot simply do not believe anything will change.

That matters for Reform.

Reform may be doing well in the polls, but one of their biggest challenges is converting disillusionment into actual votes. Many Reform supporters are people who have lost faith in mainstream politics. The problem is that those voters may also be less likely to turn out.

Meanwhile, Labour looks exhausted.

Driving around parts of the Welsh valleys, you used to see Labour placards everywhere. This time, I have barely seen any. It feels like people do not even want to admit they still support the Labour Party.

My prediction is simple: Plaid Cymru probably become the largest party, Reform do well, and Labour take a serious hit.

But the bigger question is whether anything actually improves.

And I am not convinced it does.

Will Anything Really Change In Wales?

Labour has never really ruled Wales alone in the way some people imagine.

Because of the electoral system, Labour has usually needed support from other parties. There have already been agreements between Labour and Plaid Cymru.

So if Plaid become the largest party, will Wales suddenly change direction?

I doubt it.

The deeper problem in Wales is not just which party is in charge. It is the quality of political leadership.

Too much of Welsh politics feels small, stale and low calibre.

I always ask people a simple question: how many of the people standing for these roles would earn £80,000 a year in the private sector?

Very few.

That is not a throwaway point. It matters because we are handing these people responsibility over health, education, transport, taxation, housing, business and public services.

These are serious jobs. They require serious people.

Instead, too much of politics now feels like a taxpayer-funded career path for people who would struggle to command the same responsibility elsewhere.

That is why I am sceptical about the idea that a change of party automatically means a change of direction.

Wales has had decades of Labour. Plaid Cymru have helped prop that system up. The Greens may yet help prop up Plaid.

Different badges. Same basic direction.

That is not renewal.

That is rotation.

The Population Is Still Growing — And Migration Is Doing The Heavy Lifting

The latest population projections matter because they are not just abstract numbers.

They are used for planning.

Government, local authorities, the NHS, schools, housing, transport, infrastructure and businesses all need some idea of how many people will be living in the country in future.

That is why these projections matter.

The Office for National Statistics has revised down the long-term assumption for net migration from the very high levels seen after the Boris-era migration surge. Previously, the assumption was around 340,000 net migration every year into the future.

That has now been revised down to around 230,000 a year.

But let’s be honest: that is still a lot of people.

Every year.

The projection suggests the UK population will rise by around 1.7 million by 2034, and that growth is entirely driven by migration. Natural change is negative because deaths are projected to exceed births.

That should force a serious national debate.

Because the obvious question is simple: where are people supposed to live?

We already have a housing affordability crisis.

Back in 1997, the average house price was around 3.6 times average earnings. That ratio is now over 7. It has come down slightly in recent years, but the basic point remains: housing has become far less affordable.

That affects family formation.

People settle down later. People have children later. Some do not have children at all because the financial pressure is too high.

Then politicians turn around and say we need more migration because the birth rate is falling.

That is not a serious solution.

That is a feedback loop.

Make housing unaffordable. Watch family formation weaken. See births fall. Then import more people into an already stretched housing market.

At some point, the country needs to stop pretending this is sustainable.

The Dark Economy Is Not A Side Issue

Mike also raised reports about organised crime and dodgy outlets operating through parts of the high street.

Convenience stores. Takeaways. Counterfeit goods. Cheap tobacco. Vape shops. Nail bars. Barber shops.

People can laugh about the endless barber shops with nobody in them, but the underlying issue is serious.

This is about the growth of the dark economy.

When counterfeit tobacco is sold under the counter, no duty is paid.

When criminal gangs control outlets, legitimate businesses are undercut.

When illegal workers are exploited, the state loses tax revenue and the public loses trust.

And this also links back to illegal migration.

Some people assume every person coming across the Channel has paid thousands of pounds upfront to smugglers. But that is not always how this works.

Some may be brought in and then expected to work off the debt through criminal networks.

That is not compassion.

That is exploitation.

And it is another reason why simply talking about “smashing the gangs” is not enough.

The gangs are not just operating on beaches or boats. They can be embedded in local economies, high streets, cheap labour markets, counterfeit goods, drugs, tobacco and cash businesses.

This is not just a border issue.

It is a state capacity issue.

Digital ID Will Not Fix This

The government’s answer to this kind of problem always seems to be the same: more control over the people already following the rules.

Digital ID is a perfect example.

If people are already smuggling themselves into the country, working illegally, selling dodgy tobacco, dealing in counterfeit goods or operating in criminal networks, are they really going to be stopped by a digital ID scheme?

Of course not.

It risks becoming like punishing insured drivers because some people drive without insurance.

The people already ignoring the law will continue ignoring the law. The people who are law-abiding will be the ones asked to give up more information, accept more monitoring, and live with more bureaucracy.

That is the wrong way around.

The problem is not that ordinary people lack digital ID.

The problem is that the state is not enforcing the rules it already has.

Britain Needs A Reset

The final point is the most important one.

Between 2021 and 2024, net migration to the UK was around 2.3 million.

Between 1981 and 2007, it was around 2.2 million.

In other words, more people were added through net migration in three years than in the entire period from 1981 to 2007.

That is a staggering change in the pace of population growth.

And yet the public services, housing stock, roads, GP surgeries, schools, water infrastructure and wider economy have not been prepared for it.

This is why we need a reset.

Not another slogan.

Not another gimmick.

Not another pretend crackdown.

Not another digital ID scheme.

A real reset.

That means getting net migration down, restoring control, tackling the dark economy, enforcing the law, and making sure public services and infrastructure can actually cope with the population already here.

Because right now, Britain is changing faster than the political class is willing to admit.

And the public can see it.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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The latest ONS population projections should trigger a serious national debate.

Not the usual debate about whether the latest numbers are slightly higher or slightly lower than the last set. Not the usual political game of pretending that if the projection has come down a little, the problem has somehow disappeared.

The real question is much bigger.

Where are all these people supposed to live? Where are they supposed to work? Who is going to pay for the services they use? And why does Britain keep defaulting to mass immigration instead of asking why so many people already here cannot afford to build a family, buy a home, or get a decent job?

The latest ONS 2024-based national population projections show the UK population rising from 69.3 million in mid-2024 to 71.0 million by mid-2034. That is an increase of 1.7 million people in a decade. Yes, that is lower than the previous 2022-based projection, which had the UK reaching 72.2 million by 2034. But Britain is still projected to keep growing, and the growth is still being driven by migration.

That should be the centre of the story.

📈 Britain Is Still Adding Another 1.7 Million People

The headline number is simple enough.

The UK population is projected to rise from 69.3 million to 71.0 million over the decade to mid-2034. That is another 1.7 million people added to the country.

To put that in perspective, that is equivalent to adding more than half the population of Wales on top of the existing pressure on housing, schools, GP surgeries, hospitals, roads, transport, water, energy and public services.

The ONS also estimates that the population grew by 4.7 million in the decade from 2014 to 2024. So the latest projection is not starting from a quiet, stable baseline. It comes after a period in which Britain has already absorbed huge population growth.

I covered this recently in my piece on the post-2021 migration surge.

In the three years between mid-2021 and mid-2024, net migration added 2.3 million people to the UK population. Over the same period, natural change added just 34,000. That means around 98.5% of UK population growth in those three years came from immigration.

That is extraordinary. What once took a generation has happened in just a few years. From 1981 to 2007, a period of 26 years, net migration added 2.2 million people in total. The last three years alone have exceeded that.

That is the context for the latest ONS projections.

Britain is not debating population growth from a standing start. It is debating another decade of growth after one of the fastest migration-driven population surges in modern British history.

🛂 Migration Is Still Doing The Heavy Lifting

The most important line in the ONS release is not just that the population is growing.

It is that net migration remains the only source of expected population growth.

Over the decade to mid-2034, the ONS projects 6.4 million births, 6.9 million deaths, 7.3 million long-term immigrants and 5.1 million long-term emigrants. Rounded up, that means deaths exceed births by around 450,000, while net international migration adds around 2.2 million people.

That is the demographic model Britain is now running on.

The country is not growing because more families are having children. It is growing because politicians have chosen — either openly or by default — to use migration as the population plug.

The ONS has lowered its long-term annual net migration assumption from 340,000 in the previous 2022-based projections to 230,000 in the latest 2024-based version. That is why the latest projection is lower than the last one.

But we should not pretend this solves the problem.

An assumption of 230,000 net migration every year is still a huge structural inflow. It still means large numbers of people coming into a country that cannot currently house its own people properly, cannot get waiting lists under control, cannot keep public services functioning smoothly, and cannot offer many young people a realistic path to owning a home.

That is not a serious long-term national plan.

It is a pressure valve for failed domestic policy.

👶 Britain Needs More Children — Not A Permanent Migration Patch

The most worrying part of the projections is not just migration. It is what is happening to children.

The ONS projects that deaths will exceed births from mid-2026 onwards. Over the decade to mid-2034, there are projected to be around 450,000 more deaths than births. The number of children aged 0 to 15 is projected to fall from 12.6 million to 11.0 million by mid-2034 — a drop of 1.6 million children.

That should be a national alarm bell.

Britain does not just have a migration problem. It has a family formation problem.

Too many people who would like to have children are delaying it, limiting it, or giving up on it altogether because the cost of living is too high, housing is too expensive, childcare is punishing, wages do not stretch far enough, and family life feels financially risky.

This is where the debate needs to become more honest.

A country cannot keep saying it needs more people while making it harder for working people to have children. It cannot keep relying on migration to fill demographic gaps while young couples already here are priced out of homes, squeezed by taxes, hit by childcare costs and told to simply get on with it.

And we need to be clear about the kind of family policy Britain needs.

The answer is not simply paying people to have children in households where no one works. That does not build the productive next generation Britain needs. The priority should be helping working families have the children they already want to have, without feeling financially punished for doing so.

That means making work pay. It means reducing the tax burden on working households. It means making housing more affordable. It means childcare that supports work rather than trapping parents. It means rewarding responsibility, employment and family stability.

Because relying on migration is not a family policy.

It is an admission that the current system is failing the people already here.

🏠 The Housing Question Cannot Be Dodged

This is where population projections collide with real life.

Housing affordability has deteriorated dramatically over the past generation. In 1997, the median home across England and Wales cost around 3.6 times median workplace-based annual earnings. By 2025, that ratio was around 7.6 times earnings. It peaked in 2021 and has fallen back a little since, partly because wages have risen during a period of inflationary pressure, while higher interest rates have also cooled what people can afford to pay for homes.

But the long-term picture is still clear: housing has become far less affordable relative to earnings.

And mass migration has clearly played a role in that. It affects the ratio in two obvious ways. First, by increasing labour supply, it can suppress wage growth in parts of the labour market. Second, by increasing population and household demand, it adds pressure to housing demand. Immigration is not the only reason homes have become unaffordable, but it is hard to deny that huge population growth over the past 25 years has made the housing squeeze worse.

Now add more population growth on top.

Every extra person needs somewhere to live. Every extra household adds pressure. Every extra family needs space. And when housing supply does not keep up, the result is predictable: higher rents, higher prices, more competition, more overcrowding, longer social housing lists, and a generation pushed further away from ownership.

This is one of the great dishonesty points in British politics.

Politicians talk about migration as if it exists in a vacuum. They talk about labour shortages, universities, care homes and GDP. But they rarely talk honestly about the housing consequences.

If Britain adds millions of people and fails to build the homes, the pressure does not disappear. It lands on young workers, renters, first-time buyers and families trying to get on with life.

And then those same people are told they are somehow unreasonable for noticing the squeeze.

They are not unreasonable.

They are living with the consequences.

💼 Why Do We Need More Workers If The Labour Market Is Weakening?

The old argument for high migration was that Britain needed workers.

But that argument now needs much more scrutiny.

The latest labour market figures show signs of weakness. ONS estimates for payrolled employees fell by 74,000 between February 2025 and February 2026, and vacancies have also been falling.

At the same time, young people are struggling to get started. Graduates are finding the jobs market harder. Many entry-level roles are more competitive. AI is already beginning to reshape white-collar work. Businesses are under pressure from higher employment costs. The benefit bill remains enormous, with DWP figures showing £145.0 billion forecast for working-age and children welfare in 2025–26, alongside £177.7 billion on pensioner benefits.

So the question has to be asked.

If Britain already has people out of work, people stuck on benefits, young people struggling to get jobs, graduates unable to find proper roles, and AI threatening to reduce demand for certain types of labour, why is the default answer still more immigration?

This does not mean Britain should never have any migration. That is a straw man.

It means the burden of proof should change.

Instead of assuming high migration is normal and asking critics to justify lower numbers, politicians should have to explain clearly why each route is needed, what economic value it brings, whether it raises wages or suppresses them, whether it adds to housing pressure, and whether Britain has the infrastructure to cope.

Because a growing population is not automatically a stronger country.

A stronger country is one where people can work, earn, build families, buy homes, access services, and see a future.

Right now, too many people cannot.

🧾 The Real Debate: Population Policy, Not Just Immigration Policy

This is why the latest ONS projections matter.

They should force Britain to have a grown-up debate about population policy.

Not just immigration policy. Not just border policy. Not just whether the projection is slightly lower than the last one. But the bigger question of what kind of country Britain is trying to become.

Do we want an economy that depends on constantly importing more people because it has failed to train, house, employ and support the people already here?

Do we want a society where young families cannot afford children, but politicians use migration to paper over the fertility collapse?

Do we want rising population numbers while public services deteriorate and housing becomes less attainable?

Do we want a labour market where young people are competing with global labour while AI changes the job market beneath their feet?

These are not extreme questions. They are basic questions of national planning. And they have been ducked for too long.

The latest projections may be lower than the last set. But they still show a Britain growing through migration, ageing rapidly, losing children as a share of the population, and placing even more pressure on housing and public services.

That is not a sustainable model. Britain needs a reset.

Lower migration. A serious family policy. A housing policy that prioritises citizens and young workers. A labour market that gets people already here into work. And a government willing to ask the most obvious question of all:

If Britain is already struggling to house, employ and support the people who live here now, why are we still planning for millions more?

✍️ Jamie Jenkins

Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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This week’s roundup has a simple theme: drift.

Everywhere you look, the country feels like it is being managed by a government that is already running out of road. Ministers are talking, announcing, briefing and blaming, but the core problems are not getting fixed. The public finances are still a mess. The labour market is softening. Small boats remain unresolved. And in Wales, we are now being told paramedic university places are being paused because there are not enough jobs available.

That last one really sums up modern Britain. You can wait hours for an ambulance, the system can be under constant pressure, and yet the answer is apparently not to train more paramedics. Meanwhile, across the wider public sector, money keeps being swallowed by bureaucracy, management layers, strategies, diversity roles and endless process. The frontline struggles, the taxpayer pays more, and nobody in power seems capable of asking the obvious question, what are we actually prioritising?

🧟 A Zombie Government, Consumed By Its Own Shambles

The week began with the Government still caught in the Peter Mandelson mess. Starmer promised integrity, professionalism and a clean break from the chaos of the Conservatives. Instead, he now finds himself under pressure over whether full vetting procedures were followed in the appointment of Mandelson as UK ambassador to Washington, with reports that security advice had been ignored or overruled.

This matters because it goes right to the heart of Starmer’s pitch. He built his brand on being serious, forensic and above the old political games. But this week the Government looked anything but serious. It looked defensive, confused and trapped in process, while the country’s real problems piled up around it.

That is why the phrase “zombie government” feels so fitting. Not because nothing is happening, but because the Government seems to be moving without purpose. It is staggering from row to row, statement to statement, apology to apology, without any clear sense of national direction.

And the public can see it.

People are not stupid. They can see a government that promised competence but is now stuck explaining who knew what, who signed off what, who ignored what, and why nobody seems responsible when things go wrong. At some point, the question becomes very simple, if they cannot run their own appointments properly, why should anyone believe they can run the country?

💷 Borrowing Is Still Huge, And Spending Keeps Going Up

Then came the latest borrowing figures. The Government will no doubt try to present them as some sort of improvement, because borrowing in the financial year ending March 2026 was estimated at £132.0 billion, down on the previous year and slightly below the OBR forecast.

But let’s not kid ourselves.

Borrowing £132 billion in a single year is still enormous. The ONS says it was the sixth highest financial year borrowing figure since records began in 1947.

That is the problem with modern politics. If the Government borrows a little less than expected, ministers want a round of applause. But the bigger picture is that the state is still spending far more than it raises, while taxpayers are being squeezed harder and harder to pay for it.

This is not fiscal discipline. It is managed decline with a press release.

The public sector keeps expanding. Spending keeps rising. Taxes keep going up. Debt remains extremely high. And yet, for all that extra money, people do not feel services improving. They feel poorer, more taxed, and less able to get the basics done.

That is the real failure. The state is taking more, borrowing more, spending more, and still not delivering enough.

And this is where Rachel Reeves has a serious problem. The Government has very little room for error. If inflation stays higher, if debt interest costs rise again, if growth disappoints, or if tax receipts come in weaker than hoped, the whole fiscal position gets squeezed very quickly.

So when ministers say the plan is working, I keep coming back to the same question, working for who?

Because it does not look like it is working for taxpayers. It does not look like it is working for businesses. And it certainly does not look like it is working for the people waiting on public services that still fail despite record levels of spending.

📉 The Labour Market Is Flashing Warning Signs

This week I also wrote about the labour market and cost of living pressure, because the latest data is not comfortable reading for the Government.

In my article, I pointed out that payrolled employment was 30.3 million in March 2026, down 65,000 on the year and down 11,000 on the month. Vacancies also fell again to 711,000, this is the lowest level of vacancies since February to April 2021.

That is not a labour market roaring with confidence.

It is a labour market where firms are clearly becoming more cautious. Retail is under pressure. Self employment has weakened. Vacancies have been falling for a long time. And this is happening while businesses are also dealing with higher employment costs, higher wage bills, higher energy costs and a consumer who is still squeezed.

This is the trap Labour has created for itself. It wants to tax more, regulate more and spend more, while still claiming it can deliver growth. But growth does not come from making it more expensive to employ people. It does not come from loading more costs onto business. And it does not come from pretending the private sector can keep absorbing every new burden government throws at it.

The cost of living is heating up again, but the labour market underneath is softening. That is a nasty combination. If prices are rising while jobs are weakening, families get hit from both sides.

Ministers will blame global events. They always do. But the domestic picture matters too. If you increase the cost of employing people, do not be shocked when employment weakens. If you increase the cost of doing business, do not be shocked when firms stop hiring. If you squeeze the productive economy, do not be shocked when growth disappoints.

This is not complicated. It is basic cause and effect.

🚤 Another Deal With France. More Money. Same Old Problem.

Then we had the latest small boats deal with France. Once again, Britain is paying more money to France to try to stop illegal Channel crossings.

Reports this week said the UK has agreed a new three year deal worth up to around £660 million, including extra police, surveillance, enforcement and a new French unit to tackle crossings. This follows years of previous payments and promises.

Sorry, but how many times are taxpayers expected to fall for this?

We keep handing over money. We keep being told this deal will be different. We keep being told the smugglers will be smashed. And then the boats keep coming.

The basic problem remains. If people know that reaching British waters gives them a strong chance of staying in the UK, then the incentive remains. You can spend more on drones, cameras, patrols and police, but unless the incentive changes, the flow will continue.

And this is what frustrates people. It is not just the boats. It is the sense that the British taxpayer is being treated like a bottomless cash machine. We pay for hotels. We pay for processing. We pay for legal challenges. We pay for enforcement. And now we pay France even more money to do what many people think France should already be doing.

Of course we need cooperation with France. Nobody sensible says otherwise. But cooperation cannot just mean Britain writes another cheque every year while ministers pretend they have solved the issue.

The public wants control. They want deterrence. They want enforcement. They want a system that is fair to people who follow the rules and firm with those who do not.

What they keep getting is another announcement.

🚑 Meanwhile In Wales, You Can Wait For An Ambulance, But They Are Pausing Paramedic Courses

Meanwhile in Wales, as people struggle to get an ambulance, we are now told there will be no paramedic university courses run in Wales for the upcoming academic year, with Health Education and Improvement Wales saying the decision was made to “reduce competition for vacancies”. ITV Wales reported that paramedic courses at Swansea and Wrexham are being paused because of a lack of job opportunities.

Just let that sink in.

This is Wales, where the NHS has been under pressure for years. Ambulance waits have been a major public concern. People know stories of patients waiting far too long for help. Families know what it feels like to be told there are no crews available. And now the system is saying, in effect, there are not enough jobs for new paramedics.

That should be a national embarrassment.

Because if the frontline is under pressure, why are we not making sure more people can get onto the frontline? If ambulances are struggling, why are we pausing the pipeline of paramedics? If the Welsh NHS is so stretched, why does the system still seem better at generating bureaucracy than capacity?

And yes, I do think this is where politicians need to get serious about priorities.

Before anyone tells us there is no money, look across the system. Look at the layers of management. Look at the strategies, boards, frameworks, equality plans, diversity posts, administrative growth and endless paperwork. Then ask whether every pound is being spent in the right place.

Because if I had to choose between another diversity role and more paramedics, I know what I would choose.

That is not controversial to most normal people. It is common sense. People want ambulances to arrive. They want hospitals to function. They want frontline staff supported. They do not want a public sector that is brilliant at writing strategies but poor at delivering services.

Wales should be a warning to the rest of the UK. This is what happens when political systems become obsessed with process, ideology and bureaucracy, while the basics fall apart.

Final Thought

So that is this week’s roundup.

A government drowning in its own Mandelson shambles. Borrowing still at huge levels. Taxes high. Spending high. Public services still failing. A labour market losing momentum. Another expensive deal with France that looks suspiciously like more of the same. Wales pausing paramedic training while people struggle to get ambulances. And jury trial changes moving through Parliament despite not being clearly put to voters.

This is what drift looks like. Not one single crisis. Not one single headline. But a country where the basics are not working, and the people in charge seem more interested in managing the narrative than fixing the problem.

The data, and the news this week, point in the same direction, Britain is paying more and getting less.

And that cannot carry on forever.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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