Stat of the Nation

The Burnham Bounce: Who Is Labour Winning Back?

Jamie Jenkins — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 06:00:35 GMT

Andy Burnham has changed the political weather.

After more than a year in which Reform UK dominated the opinion polls, Labour is suddenly back in contention. Three pollsters now have the governing party either level with or ahead of Nigel Farage’s party.

The Burnham bounce is real.

But the detail suggests Burnham is mainly persuading people who previously supported Labour to come home. There is far less evidence that he is winning over large numbers of committed Reform voters.

Burnham has begun rebuilding Labour’s old electoral coalition.

He has not yet proved that he can expand it.

Labour Is Back in the Race

The latest polling represents a striking reversal.

More in Common has Labour on 28%, four points ahead of Reform on 24%.

YouGov has the two parties tied on 22%, with the Conservatives close behind.

Survation has Labour on 26%, two points ahead of Reform. Before Starmer announced his resignation, the same pollster had Labour trailing Reform by eight points.

The exact figures vary, as they always do between polling companies. But the direction is consistent.

Labour is rising. Reform’s clear lead has disappeared. The Greens have also lost ground.

This is no longer one unusual poll that can be dismissed as an outlier. Different pollsters, using different methods, are detecting the same movement.

Labour is back in the contest.

Who Is Paying for the Burnham Bounce?

The most interesting question is not simply whether Labour has gained support.

It is where that support could come from under Burnham.

More in Common tested a hypothetical election with Burnham leading Labour. In that scenario, Labour rose six points to 27%, narrowly ahead of Reform on 26%.

The report found that Burnham’s strongest gains came from rebuilding Labour’s support among voters on the centre left:

• 15% of current Liberal Democrat voters said they would switch to Labour
• 14% of current Green voters said they would switch
• A quarter of those who did not know how they would vote chose Labour
• 4% of current Reform voters said they would switch
• 4% of current Conservative voters also moved to Labour

These are not confirmed movements in the latest voting intention polls. They are responses to a hypothetical question about how people would vote with Burnham leading Labour.

But the pattern is still revealing.

Burnham’s greatest strength appears to be among voters who had drifted towards the Greens, Liberal Democrats or indecision. His appeal reaches across the political spectrum, but the evidence suggests only limited movement from Reform and the Conservatives.

This looks less like Burnham constructing a completely new Labour coalition and more like him rebuilding the one Labour has lost.

That is still significant. Labour’s decline under Starmer involved voters moving in several directions. Some went to Reform, some to the Greens and Liberal Democrats, while others became undecided.

Burnham appears capable of bringing parts of that fragmented coalition back together.

But recovering former Labour voters is only the first stage. To build a lasting election winning coalition, he will also need to persuade more of the voters who have moved firmly to Reform or the Conservatives.

He may be repairing Labour’s foundations.

The harder task is building beyond them.

Burnham Is Bigger Than Labour

Burnham’s personal polling is currently much stronger than his party’s.

Asked who would make the better prime minister, 48% choose Burnham, compared with 22% choosing Nigel Farage.

That gives Labour an advantage it did not possess during Starmer’s final months. Burnham can reach voters who had stopped listening to the party.

But it also exposes a potential weakness.

Burnham is significantly more popular than a Labour Party still polling in the twenties.

Voters may like him, prefer him to the alternatives and be prepared to give him a chance without yet being ready to vote Labour.

Personal popularity can lift a party.

It cannot permanently protect that party from unpopular decisions, weak public services or a struggling economy.

For now, Burnham is being judged against an unpopular predecessor and against what voters hope he might become.

Soon he will be judged against his own results.

Every Honeymoon Ends

Burnham is enjoying the easiest period of his premiership.

He is new. He communicates differently from Starmer. Voters are judging his tone and intentions rather than the consequences of his decisions.

That will change.

Announcements are popular. Funding them is harder.

Promising reform is popular. Deciding who pays is harder.

Burnham will eventually face the same pressures that damaged Starmer: weak economic growth, strained public services and voters who demand improvement but resist higher taxes.

For now, the public is giving him a hearing.

But a honeymoon measures hope.

Governing measures delivery.

The Election Gamble

Burnham has ruled out an early general election, and Labour already possesses a working Commons majority of 166.

That majority allows the government to pass legislation, survive rebellions and govern without relying on smaller parties.

An election would put that advantage at risk.

Even after the bounce, Labour remains in the twenties. That may be enough to finish first in a fragmented political system, but it is unlikely to reproduce the overwhelming majority secured in 2024.

Yet if Labour continues rising, the pressure to seek a personal mandate will grow.

Burnham inherited the premiership. He did not lead Labour into government at the last election.

Going to the country would allow him to campaign on his own programme while his personal popularity remains high and before difficult decisions begin eroding the goodwill he currently enjoys.

But it would be an extraordinary gamble.

Burnham could strengthen his personal authority while weakening his government’s position in Parliament. A commanding majority could become a narrow one, a minority administration or a hung parliament.

Go early and risk surrendering a majority most prime ministers could only dream of.

Wait and risk watching the honeymoon fade before asking voters for their verdict.

A Bounce, Not a Verdict

Andy Burnham has already achieved something significant.

Labour is back in contention. Reform’s clear polling lead has disappeared. Voters who had moved towards the Greens, Liberal Democrats or indecision are taking another look.

But Burnham is mainly recovering people Labour had already lost.

The evidence does not yet show that he is winning large numbers of committed Reform voters or constructing a broader electoral coalition.

That is the next test.

For now, voters are judging the promise of his premiership rather than its consequences.

The difficult decisions are still to come.

The Burnham bounce is real.

But it is a honeymoon, not a verdict.

What do you think? Should Burnham use his early popularity to seek his own mandate, or would an early election be a reckless gamble?

Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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Britain Is Losing Wealth, And Everyone Will Pay

Jamie Jenkins — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 06:01:18 GMT

Britain now has fewer real-terms millionaires than at any point since 2008.

The Adam Smith Institute estimates there were around 442,000 sterling millionaires in Britain in 2025, down 7% in a single year.

Some will celebrate that.

They should not.

Britain does not become richer simply by having fewer rich people. Unless those lower down the wealth distribution are becoming better off, a shrinking millionaire population means less real private wealth in the country.

That matters for investment, businesses, jobs and tax revenues.

What Counts as a Millionaire?

The Adam Smith Institute defines a sterling millionaire as an adult UK resident with net wealth of at least £1 million.

That includes property, pensions, savings, investments and business assets, minus debts.

The threshold is measured in constant 2025 prices.

This matters because inflation can create millionaires on paper without making anyone genuinely richer. Someone whose assets rise from £950,000 to £1 million may cross the nominal threshold while losing purchasing power.

The tracker is therefore designed to measure real wealth, not the illusion created by rising prices.

The Lowest Level Since 2008

The Institute estimates that Britain had around 442,000 real-terms sterling millionaires in 2025.

That is:

• 7% lower than in 2024

• The lowest estimated level since 2008

• A reversal of the growth seen during much of the previous decade

The Institute attributes the decline to falling inflation-adjusted asset values, Britain’s low savings rate and the departure of wealthy individuals.

Higher interest rates and weaker asset growth have reduced the real value of some property, pensions and investments.

The report also argues that Labour’s changes to the non-dom regime, high taxation and the threat of further wealth taxes have made Britain less attractive to internationally mobile people.

What the Figures Can Tell Us

The figure of 442,000 is an estimate, not a census.

The Institute begins with total UK household wealth and uses a statistical model, calibrated against the Office for National Statistics Wealth and Assets Survey, to estimate how many people sit above the real £1 million threshold.

The model is better at identifying the direction of change than establishing a precise headcount.

It tells us that the estimated number of real-terms millionaires has fallen sharply.

It does not tell us exactly how much of that fall came from wealthy people leaving Britain.

Some will have dropped below the threshold because their homes, pensions or investments failed to keep pace with inflation.

Others may have taken on more debt.

Fewer people may be crossing upwards into millionaire status.

Some wealthy residents will also have left, while others may have decided not to move here.

The precise balance is uncertain.

The direction is not.

Britain is becoming less successful at creating, attracting and retaining real wealth.

Why This Matters to Everyone

The issue is not whether millionaires deserve special treatment.

It is whether Britain is retaining the people, businesses and capital that support the wider economy.

Britain’s public finances already depend heavily on a relatively small number of high earners. HM Revenue and Customs estimates that the top 1% of Income Tax payers contributed around 29% of Income Tax.

Millionaires and the top 1% are not exactly the same group, but there is considerable overlap between wealth, high earnings, business ownership, investment income and taxable gains.

When wealthy and economically active people leave, the Treasury can lose Income Tax, Capital Gains Tax, dividend tax, stamp duties, business taxes and future Inheritance Tax receipts.

Public spending does not automatically fall when taxpayers leave.

The burden can instead shift towards middle earners through frozen thresholds, higher employment taxes and broader tax rises.

Wealth also provides capital to businesses.

It is invested in companies, shares, pensions, commercial property and start-ups. That supports jobs, innovation and business expansion.

Not every millionaire is an entrepreneur.

But many business founders, investors and senior professionals bring experience, networks and access to capital.

When one of them leaves, Britain may lose more than one taxpayer. It can lose future investment, jobs, business activity and commercial connections.

Fewer Rich People Does Not Mean Less Poverty

A fall in the number of millionaires does not automatically improve the lives of people on low incomes.

It does not guarantee higher wages, more housebuilding, better public services, stronger productivity or lower poverty.

Nor does it prove that wealth has moved downwards.

There is a major difference between reducing inequality by making poorer households richer and reducing inequality by making wealthier households poorer.

Only the first represents genuine progress.

A fall in property or pension wealth after inflation is not redistribution.

It is simply wealth erosion.

Britain Cannot Tax Its Way to Prosperity

British politics spends far more time arguing about how to divide wealth than how to create it.

Each new tax may appear targeted in isolation, but together they affect whether successful and internationally mobile people choose to live, invest and build businesses here.

The abolition of the previous non-dom regime may raise more revenue from those who remain.

It may also encourage some to leave and deter others from arriving.

The final outcome depends on behaviour, not simply the tax rate written on paper.

Capital, talent and businesses are mobile.

Britain cannot assume they will stay regardless of how they are treated.

Conclusion

The fall in Britain’s millionaire population should not be dismissed as a problem only for the rich.

Some of the decline reflects property, pensions and investments failing to keep pace with inflation. Some may reflect weak savings. Some, according to the Adam Smith Institute, reflects wealthy people leaving or choosing not to come here.

The precise balance is uncertain.

The warning is not.

A country that loses investors, entrepreneurs and highly mobile taxpayers risks losing capital, businesses, jobs and tax revenue with them.

Britain does not become richer by having fewer rich people.

It becomes richer by enabling more people to create, earn, save and invest.

Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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This Week with Mike Graham: Burnham in Reverse? Undoing Labour’s Mess

Jamie Jenkins — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 06:01:50 GMT

Every week, I join Mike Graham on the to break down the numbers behind the biggest political and economic stories.

This week, we discussed Andy Burnham’s first days in Downing Street and the speed at which he has started reversing Keir Starmer’s policies. The £3 bus fare cap is going back to £2, the early release of prisoners has been paused, digital ID spending is being redirected and a cut to VAT on electricity has been announced.

Burnham clearly wants to present himself as the man cleaning up Starmer’s mess. But reversing unpopular policies is the easy part. The real challenge is showing that he has a credible plan of his own.

Watch the full discussion below.

Labour Is Reversing Labour

The speed of these reversals tells us plenty about the past two years. Labour introduced these policies, defended them and insisted they were necessary. Now, under a new leader, Labour is rapidly taking them apart.

That may be politically smart, but it raises an obvious question: what was the point of the Starmer government? Changing the person at the top does not erase the record of the party that introduced the policies in the first place.

Burnham may look and sound different, but he still inherits the same economic problems, the same public finances and the same difficult trade-offs.

£45 Back, But Taxes Are Still Rising

The proposed cut to VAT on electricity has been presented as meaningful help for households. The estimated saving is around £45 over six months, which works out at roughly 90 pence a week.

That sounds far less generous when compared with the wider tax burden. By my calculations, the average full time worker is paying around £888 more each year in Income Tax and National Insurance than before Labour entered government.

Much of that increase comes from frozen tax thresholds. As wages rise, more income is taxed, more lower paid workers are pulled into the tax system and more middle earners are dragged into the 40 per cent rate.

Mike and I also discussed the possibility of raising the personal allowance, which has remained frozen at £12,570 since 2021. Increasing it would be welcome, but it would also reduce government revenue at a time when borrowing remains high.

If Burnham raises the threshold, he must be honest about what replaces the lost revenue. Will spending be cut, will borrowing rise or will another tax increase take its place?

The government cannot take hundreds of pounds more through the tax system, return £45 and call it generosity.

Britain’s Bigger Energy Problem

Burnham has also spoken about reversing the deindustrialisation of Britain. That will not happen while British businesses face some of the highest electricity costs in the developed world.

Industrial electricity prices in the UK are around four times those faced by businesses in the United States and are among the highest in Europe. That makes Britain a far less attractive place to manufacture goods, invest in factories or create energy intensive jobs.

A temporary VAT reduction may help households at the margins, but it does nothing to solve the deeper competitiveness problem. If Burnham is serious about rebuilding British industry, he must confront the cost of energy and the policies driving those costs higher.

Without that, talk of reindustrialisation is simply another slogan.

Can Burnham End Rough Sleeping?

We also discussed Burnham’s promise to end rough sleeping across Britain. Nobody disagrees with the ambition, but his record in Greater Manchester deserves scrutiny.

In 2010, the official snapshot recorded around 41 people sleeping rough across Greater Manchester. The figure increased sharply during the following years, reaching around 268 shortly before Burnham became mayor.

Numbers later fell, particularly during the pandemic, when emergency accommodation schemes moved people off the streets. However, over the past four years, rough sleeping in Greater Manchester has been rising again.

Burnham is not personally responsible for every case, but if this is going to become a flagship national promise, voters are entitled to examine what happened in the region he governed for nearly a decade.

A national pledge is less convincing when the recent local trend is moving in the wrong direction.

The Bottom Line

Andy Burnham is undoubtedly a better communicator than Keir Starmer. He speaks more naturally, looks more comfortable in public and appears capable of delivering a speech without every sentence being written down in front of him.

But good presentation is not the same as good government.

So far, Burnham’s programme is largely built around reversing Starmer. That may win him some early applause, but it does not yet amount to a credible economic plan.

Burnham wants the country to believe Labour has changed. For now, it looks more like the same government driving rapidly in reverse.

Watch the full discussion above and let me know what you think.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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£45 Off Your Energy Bill. £888 More in Direct Tax.

Jamie Jenkins — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 16:51:28 GMT

Andy Burnham has begun his premiership with a promise to put money back into people’s pockets.

From 1 October, VAT on domestic electricity will fall from 5 per cent to zero. The government says this will reduce the annual Ofgem price cap by around £45.

Any reduction in household bills is welcome. But this announcement needs to be placed against the wider financial reality facing workers.

The average full time employee is paying around £888 more in Income Tax and National Insurance than in 2024/25.

For every £1 Labour is offering back through the electricity bill, nearly £20 is being taken through direct taxation.

That is the reality behind the giveaway.

The Tax Rise Dwarfs the Energy Saving

Earlier this year, I calculated the effect of frozen Income Tax and National Insurance thresholds on an average full time worker.

Median annual earnings were £37,430 in 2024/25. Based on projected wage growth, that rises to around £40,601 in 2026/27.

Normally, rising wages should leave workers better off. But because tax thresholds have been frozen, a growing share of that income is being pulled into the tax system.

The calculation showed:

• Direct tax in 2024/25: £6,961

• Direct tax in 2026/27: £7,849

• Increase in Income Tax and National Insurance: £888

Against that increase, the government is offering households an annualised £45 reduction in electricity costs.

The difference in scale is enormous. The additional direct tax paid by one average worker is almost twenty times the value of the energy reduction offered to the entire household.

In a household with two average earners, the combined increase in direct tax would be around £1,776. The electricity saving would still apply only once.

This is not a substantial tax cut or a meaningful reversal of the pressure placed on working families.

It is a small amount being handed back after much more has already been taken.

The £45 Headline Is Annualised

The VAT reduction begins on 1 October 2026.

The government says it will reduce the yearly Ofgem price cap by around £45, cost approximately £850 million during 2026/27 and lower Consumer Prices Index inflation by around 0.10 percentage points.

But funding has so far been identified only for the period from October to the end of this financial year. The government has not guaranteed that the VAT reduction will continue beyond March 2027.

If the policy ends then, a household using a typical amount of electricity would save closer to £22 or £23 during the currently funded period. The exact amount would depend on consumption.

So the £45 is not necessarily the cash saving households will receive this financial year.

It is an annualised headline attached to a policy that has not yet been guaranteed for a full year.

Energy Bills Are Still £294 Higher

The current Ofgem price cap for a typical dual fuel household paying by direct debit is £1,862 a year.

When Labour entered government in July 2024, the equivalent cap was £1,568.

That means the current cap is:

• £294 higher than in July 2024

• Almost 19 per cent higher

Even after applying the full £45 annualised VAT reduction, the cap would remain around £249 above the level Labour inherited.

Labour can claim it is reducing one element of the bill. It cannot credibly claim that household energy has become cheaper since it entered office.

The longer term comparison tells the same story:

• 2019: around £1,137

• July 2024: £1,568

• July 2026: £1,862

The international energy crisis caused a huge increase during 2022. Prices later fell from their peak, but they remain far above their pre crisis level and are rising again.

Removing VAT reduces the visible price. It does not increase domestic production, improve energy security or reduce the underlying cost of the energy system.

Burnham Promises to End Rough Sleeping Again

Energy bills were not Burnham’s only opening promise. He has also pledged to tackle homelessness and end long term rough sleeping in England.

It is an admirable objective, but his record in Greater Manchester deserves scrutiny because he made a similar commitment after becoming mayor in 2017.

My calculation, adding together the official snapshot figures for Greater Manchester’s ten local authorities, shows the estimated number of people sleeping rough on a single autumn night was:

• 2010: 41

• 2017: 268

• 2021: 90

• 2025: 197

Burnham can legitimately point to a substantial fall during the early part of his mayoralty. The figure declined from 268 in 2017 to 90 in 2021, which was real progress.

But the pandemic was also important. The national Everyone In programme, emergency accommodation and temporarily available hotel rooms helped produce unusually low rough sleeping figures during 2020 and 2021.

Since that low point, the trend has reversed. By 2025, the Greater Manchester total had risen to 197, more than double the 2021 figure.

It remains below the exceptionally high level Burnham inherited, so it would be unfair to claim that no progress was achieved.

But he promised to eradicate rough sleeping in Greater Manchester.

He did not.

Rough sleeping was reduced. It was not eradicated.

Burnham is now making a similar promise nationally. His record suggests the public should demand measurable milestones, transparent reporting and a clear definition of success.

Promises are easy. The numbers will show whether anything genuinely changes.

Labour’s Old Problems Rearranged

Burnham has presented his arrival as a break with the Starmer government.

There have been significant changes, with John Healey becoming Chancellor, Louise Haigh becoming First Secretary of State and Minister for the Cabinet Office, and Ed Miliband becoming Foreign Secretary.

But the Cabinet still relies heavily on familiar figures from Labour’s existing government.

Shabana Mahmood remains Home Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds remains at Business, Heidi Alexander remains at Transport and Lisa Nandy remains responsible for Culture, Media and Sport.

This is not a government built from outside the political establishment. It is largely the same parliamentary Labour Party, with ministers retained, promoted or moved between departments.

Many served in the government that delivered higher taxes, falling payroll employment, weak growth and declining public confidence.

The decision to bring Burnham back from Greater Manchester suggests Labour did not believe any of the obvious candidates already around the Cabinet table could restore public confidence.

Burnham can present himself as a change from Starmer, but he is not a political outsider. He first entered Parliament in 2001 and previously served as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Culture Secretary and Health Secretary.

This is an experienced Labour insider returning to Westminster because those already there were not considered capable of rescuing the government.

A new person is in Number 10. Much of the political operation underneath remains familiar.

The First Test of Burnham’s Government

Burnham wants Britain to believe this is a fresh start, but the first evidence is underwhelming.

A £45 annualised electricity reduction is being offered to workers paying around £888 more in direct tax. The policy begins in October, but it has not been guaranteed beyond March. If it ends then, the benefit during the currently funded period would be closer to £22 or £23.

Energy bills remain almost £300 above the level Labour inherited.

Burnham promised to eradicate rough sleeping in Greater Manchester.

He did not.

Much of the same Labour political class remains in government.

Burnham deserves to be judged fairly. Removing VAT from electricity is better than leaving it in place. Reducing rough sleeping is a worthwhile objective. Changing ministers can sometimes improve a government.

But the scale of what has been announced should not be exaggerated.

A possible £22 or £23 saving will not transform household finances. A promise does not end homelessness. A Cabinet reshuffle does not automatically create competence.

Britain does not need another political relaunch built around announcements that shrink when placed beside the data.

It needs lower taxes, genuinely cheaper energy, measurable reductions in rough sleeping and ministers capable of delivering results.

So far, Labour has changed its leader. It has not yet proved that it has changed direction.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins

Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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The Government Statistics Cover-Up — Labour Hides Migrant Crime Data

Jamie Jenkins — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 06:01:43 GMT

The Government holds detailed statistics showing the nationalities of people convicted of serious crimes in Britain.

The Centre for Migration Control used the Freedom of Information Act to request those figures. When the Ministry of Justice refused, the organisation challenged the decision—and won.

The Information Commissioner ordered the Government to disclose the data.

Rather than accept that ruling, Labour’s Ministry of Justice has launched a legal appeal to prevent publication.

That deserves to be called what it is: a government statistics cover-up.

The Data the Public Has Been Denied

In June 2025, the Centre for Migration Control requested conviction data covering 2018 to 2024, broken down by nationality and detailed offence.

The request included serious categories such as violence, sexual offences, drugs, weapons, theft, robbery and arson.

It would amount to one of the most detailed releases of conviction data by nationality ever published in Britain.

The Ministry of Justice refused.

The Centre for Migration Control complained to the Information Commissioner’s Office, which enforces freedom of information law.

On 22 June 2026, the Information Commissioner ruled that the Ministry must disclose the information.

Migration Central

Labour government launches legal bid to block publication of migrant crime statistics

The Labour government is heading to court to block the publication of migrant crime statistics…

9 days ago · 129 likes · 11 comments · Centre for Migration Control

The Government’s Excuses Were Rejected

The Ministry of Justice relied mainly on two arguments.

First, it claimed that publishing the figures could risk identifying individuals from small statistical groups.

The Information Commissioner rejected that argument.

Official statisticians already have well-established ways of handling small numbers, including suppressing or combining cells where there is a genuine confidentiality risk.

The Ministry also argued that producing the data would cost too much.

That argument was rejected as well.

The Information Commissioner found that the department had not shown that the Freedom of Information cost exemption applied.

The Ministry could have accepted the independent ruling and published the evidence.

Instead, on 17 July 2026, it appealed to the First-tier Tribunal in an attempt to keep the figures hidden.

Why These Statistics Matter

Britain is already having a heated debate about immigration and crime.

But that debate is taking place without a consistent national publication showing convictions by nationality.

Instead, the public sees isolated figures released by individual police forces, campaign groups or newspapers using different definitions and covering different periods.

That is a poor basis for serious analysis.

A proper national publication would allow the public to examine:

How many foreign nationals are convicted each year
Which offences those convictions relate to
How patterns differ between nationalities
Whether convictions are increasing or falling
Whether claims made by politicians and campaigners are supported by the evidence

The figures might confirm some public concerns.

They might disprove others.

Either way, the answer is publication, not secrecy.

The Data Needs Context

Conviction totals alone would not tell us everything.

Countries with larger populations in Britain would normally be expected to record more convictions than countries represented by only a few thousand people.

Age and sex also matter because criminal offending is heavily concentrated among younger men across populations.

Any responsible publication should therefore include clear definitions, appropriate confidentiality controls, information on missing nationality and, where reliable figures exist, population estimates that allow meaningful rates to be calculated.

But these are arguments for publishing the data properly.

They are not arguments for withholding it.

Secrecy simply creates the conditions in which selective claims and misinformation thrive.

These Statistics Should Be Published Routinely

As a former government statistician, I find the Ministry of Justice’s position particularly difficult to defend.

Official statistics exist to serve the public good. They should inform democratic debate, support accountability and allow the public to judge whether government policies are working.

There is clearly substantial public, political and media interest in the relationship between nationality and criminal offending.

These figures should not need to be dragged out of government through repeated Freedom of Information requests.

The Ministry of Justice should establish a regular official statistical publication covering convictions by nationality, supported by:

Consistent definitions
Appropriate confidentiality protections
Breakdowns by age and sex where possible
Population denominators where robust estimates are available
Comparable figures over time
Clear information on data quality and limitations

That would be far better than releasing isolated spreadsheets only after legal pressure.

It would allow journalists, researchers and the public to analyse the evidence consistently. It would also expose exaggerated or misleading claims from every side of the debate.

The proper statistical response is not simply to comply with this one request.

It is to publish the information routinely, transparently and with the context required for responsible interpretation.

Where reliable data exists and there is a clear public need, the presumption should be publication.

Publish the Data

Nobody outside the Ministry of Justice yet knows exactly what the unpublished figures will show.

They may reveal serious disparities between nationalities.

They may show that some claims about migrant crime are overstated.

Either possibility strengthens the case for publication.

If the figures are unremarkable, releasing them would help challenge misinformation.

If they reveal genuine public-safety problems, ministers need to confront them.

Neither outcome justifies secrecy.

These statistics were collected by public institutions using public money.

They do not belong to ministers.

The Ministry of Justice should abandon its appeal, release the requested information and commit to publishing properly contextualised conviction data by nationality on a regular basis.

The Centre for Migration Control requested the data. The Ministry refused. The Information Commissioner ordered its release. Labour responded by going to court.

Whatever the figures eventually reveal, the Government’s effort to keep them hidden is already revealing enough.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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This Week with Mike Graham: Reeves Didn’t Fix the Foundations. She Blew Them Up.

Jamie Jenkins — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 15:04:50 GMT

Every week, I join Mike Graham on the to look at the numbers behind some of the biggest political and economic stories.

This week, we discussed Rachel Reeves’ claim that Labour had “fixed the foundations” of the economy, just as the latest figures showed weak growth, falling payroll employment and continued heavy borrowing.

We also looked at what comes next for Labour, whether Britain can afford even more spending, the cost of energy and the continued decline of the BBC licence fee.

Watch the full discussion below.

Reeves’ Economic Legacy

Rachel Reeves wants her legacy to be one of stability and repaired foundations.

The numbers tell a very different story.

The latest GDP figures showed the economy growing by just 0.1% in May, following a fall in April. Production and construction both declined during the month.

A tenth of one per cent is technically growth. It is not the strong, sustained expansion Britain needs to raise living standards or repair the public finances.

During the discussion, I joked that if Reeves had fixed the foundations of Mike’s studio, the building might have started sinking before the end of the show.

The joke lands because the wider picture is so weak.

In May alone, the public sector borrowed £23.3 billion, while debt-interest costs reached £11.7 billion.

Payroll employment is also down over the past year, while vacancies have continued to fall.

Businesses are facing higher costs, more tax and expensive energy. When that happens, they become more cautious about hiring and investment.

Reeves says she fixed the foundations.

The stronger argument is that she blew them up.

More Spending, More Tax, More of the Same?

Mike and I also discussed what may come next under a new Labour leadership team.

A change of Prime Minister or Chancellor does not guarantee a change in direction.

Whoever takes over will inherit weak growth, high borrowing, rising debt costs and continuing demands for more public spending.

We also discussed calls from Labour MPs to increase foreign aid.

Britain spent more than £13 billion on overseas aid last year, while continuing to borrow heavily at home.

There may be a case for targeted humanitarian help, but politicians demanding a larger budget must explain how they intend to pay for it.

Higher taxes?

Cuts elsewhere?

Or even more borrowing?

There is no free money.

Energy is also central to the growth problem.

Lower energy costs would help households, manufacturers and businesses across the economy. Yet Labour remains more focused on targets than affordability.

Without a genuine change in policy, Britain risks getting the same formula again: more tax, more spending and more debt.

Another 539,000 BBC Licences Lost

The final part of our discussion turned to the BBC.

Another 539,000 television licences disappeared in the latest year, following a fall of around 300,000 the year before.

That reflects a wider change in how people consume news and entertainment.

Audiences now have YouTube, streaming services, podcasts, independent broadcasters and social media.

They can choose what to watch, when to watch it and which voices they trust.

The licence fee was created for a different broadcasting age.

The BBC should have to compete for viewers like everyone else.

If it produces good content, people will watch it. If audiences value it, they can choose to pay for it.

Hundreds of thousands more households are already making a different choice.

The Bottom Line

This week’s discussion came back to one central question.

Has Labour genuinely changed Britain’s economic direction, or has it simply added more tax and borrowing to an already weak model?

Rachel Reeves says she fixed the foundations.

Weak growth, fewer payroll jobs and rising debt costs suggest otherwise.

Watch the full discussion above and let me know what you think.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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Britain Is Cancelling the BBC — Another 539,000 Licences Disappear

Jamie Jenkins — Wed, 15 Jul 2026 06:01:48 GMT

Another 539,000 television licences disappeared last year, following a fall of more than 300,000 the year before. The decline is not merely continuing; it is accelerating.

Not every missing licence represents somebody deliberately contacting TV Licensing to cancel. Some licences expire because people move home or die. But the wider story is clear: more households are deciding they no longer need or want a television licence, and many are legally arranging their viewing so they do not have to pay it.

The reasons will be familiar to millions of people. They rarely watch scheduled television, their children watch YouTube rather than traditional channels, and they already pay for Netflix, Amazon Prime or Disney+. They simply do not believe another £180 charge offers them enough value.

The audience has not stopped watching content. It has simply moved on.

Why People Are Cancelling

The BBC still raises around £3.9 billion a year from the licence fee, but the number paying is falling rapidly.

There is a legitimate issue around evasion. Anyone watching live television or using BBC iPlayer is legally required to hold a licence. Yet evasion is only part of the story.

Millions of people now consume television, news and entertainment without watching live channels or using iPlayer. They use streaming services, YouTube, podcasts and social media instead, and may watch hours of content every week without legally needing a television licence.

That is not a loophole. It is consumer choice.

Ask people why they have cancelled and the answers are usually familiar:

They rarely watch the BBC or live television.
Their children mainly watch YouTube and streaming content.
They already pay for several subscriptions.
They do not believe the BBC provides £180 of household value.
They object to funding the BBC simply to watch another broadcaster live.

More people are therefore looking at the licence fee and asking a simple question: what exactly am I paying for?

The Audience Has Moved Online

The licence fee was designed for a world with only a handful of television channels. Families watched programmes when broadcasters chose to show them, while Netflix, YouTube and the modern creator economy did not exist.

That world has gone. People can now choose from thousands of broadcasters, journalists, podcasters, entertainers and independent creators. They decide what to watch, when to watch it and who they trust.

There is also likely to be a generational effect. Older audiences remain more attached to traditional television, while younger viewers are more likely to begin with YouTube, TikTok, podcasts and streaming services.

The annual report does not tell us exactly how much of the decline is caused by older licence holders dying and younger households not replacing them. But the direction is obvious: the habit of automatically buying a television licence when setting up a household is weakening.

The BBC Is Following Its Audience

The BBC understands this. In January 2026, it announced a partnership with YouTube to produce content specifically for the platform.

That is sensible. The BBC should publish wherever audiences choose to watch, develop digital-first programming and compete for younger viewers.

But there is a contradiction. At the same time as the BBC moves onto YouTube, the government is considering whether public-service broadcasters and designated “trustworthy” news organisations should receive greater prominence online.

These proposals are still under consultation, but they should not proceed.

YouTube is not an electronic programme guide with a limited number of channel positions. It is an open platform containing established broadcasters, independent journalists, specialist organisations and millions of individual creators.

The BBC already enters that market with enormous advantages:

Around £3.9 billion in annual licence-fee income.
One of Britain’s most recognisable brands.
National television and radio networks.
Decades of publicly funded archives.
Major production and marketing resources.

It does not also need government-backed prominence over independent competitors.

If the BBC makes content people value, viewers will watch, subscribe and share it. YouTube will then recommend more of it, which is how every other creator builds an audience.

The BBC has every right to enter the race, but it should not expect the government to move the starting line.

Let Audiences Choose

The government argues that promoting trusted news could make reliable information easier to find. But that raises an immediate question: who decides which organisations deserve that status?

Large broadcasters can produce excellent journalism, but they can also make serious mistakes. Being established does not guarantee accuracy, while being independent does not automatically make someone unreliable.

Trust should be earned through evidence, transparency and correcting errors. It should not be granted simply because an organisation already occupies a privileged place in the broadcasting system.

Illegal content should be dealt with under the law, and platforms will continue to enforce their own rules. But lawful journalism and opinion should not be pushed down simply because it comes from outside the established broadcasting system.

People should be free to create lawful content, audiences should be free to decide what they want to watch, and broadcasters should have to earn their attention.

The Licence Fee Is No Longer Fit for Purpose

One response to the decline could be to widen the number of households required to pay.

There have been suggestions that households using Netflix or YouTube could eventually be required to contribute towards the BBC, even if they do not watch live television or use iPlayer.

That would not modernise the licence fee. It would simply expand it.

A household buying Netflix is paying for Netflix, while someone watching an independent creator on YouTube is choosing that creator. It does not follow that either should also be compelled to fund the BBC.

The question should not be how to force departing households back into the payment base. It should be what funding arrangement makes sense in a media market built around choice.

Another 539,000 licences disappeared in a single year, and behind that number are hundreds of thousands of household decisions. Some rarely use the BBC, others have abandoned live television entirely, and many believe the licence offers poor value. Younger audiences are increasingly organising their viewing around streaming and independent creators.

Those decisions are adding up to a national verdict: the licence fee is no longer fit for the media market Britain actually has.

The BBC is right to follow audiences online, but it should compete for their attention rather than receive privileged treatment because it occupied a privileged position in the analogue age.

The public is already voting with its remote control and with its wallet.

The BBC is welcome on YouTube. But it should have to win the click.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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Britain Is Broke — So Why Are MPs Demanding More Foreign Aid?

Jamie Jenkins — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 06:20:52 GMT

Before Andy Burnham has even become prime minister, another major spending demand has arrived. Labour MPs want the Government to begin a return to spending 0.7% of gross national income on overseas aid.

The case will be presented in familiar terms: compassion, leadership and Britain’s responsibility to the wider world.

But there is one question that cannot be avoided:

Where is the money coming from?

Britain is not distributing a comfortable surplus. It is borrowing heavily simply to sustain the state it already has.

In May 2026 alone, the public sector borrowed £23.3 billion, £5.6 billion more than forecast. Debt interest reached £11.7 billion, the highest recorded for any May, while public sector net debt stood at around 95% of GDP.

The Office for Budget Responsibility has warned that Britain’s public finances are on an unsustainable long-term path without major tax rises, spending restraint or much stronger growth.

That is the backdrop to this debate. Britain should help people facing famine, war, persecution and natural disaster. Humanitarian assistance in genuine emergencies can be morally justified.

But morality is not a blank cheque.

Britain Already Spends Billions on Aid

Provisional figures show that the UK spent £13.04 billion on official development assistance in 2025, equivalent to 0.43% of gross national income.

Of that, £2.395 billion was spent inside Britain supporting asylum seekers and refugees during their first year here. That represented 18.3% of the aid budget.

I have no objection to that spending being counted as aid.

If taxpayers are already paying to house, support and process people who have arrived in Britain, they should not then be expected to fund a completely separate overseas budget as though the first cost does not exist.

It is all public money.

Whether it is spent here or abroad, the test should be the same:

Is it necessary?
Is it effective?
Can Britain afford it?

The problem is not that asylum-related spending counts towards the aid budget.

The problem is committing Britain to an arbitrary percentage before deciding whether the programmes themselves are worthwhile.

Supporters argue that a fixed target provides certainty and protects aid from short-term political pressure.

But certainty over the total is not the same as evidence that the spending is effective.

Spending more is not proof that policy is working.

Humanitarian Help Is Not Permanent Subsidy

There are clear cases where British assistance is justified.

Emergency food, medical support, clean water and disaster relief can save lives. Aid may also help contain disease, reduce instability and support displaced people closer to their home countries.

Helping those in genuine, dire need is moral.

But those arguments apply to specific emergencies and specific programmes.

They do not justify an automatic commitment to spend 0.7% of national income every year.

Every programme should have to answer basic questions:

Where is the money going?
Who controls it?
What measurable result will it achieve?
How will waste and fraud be prevented?
Why should British taxpayers fund it?
When will it end?

Compassion should guide decisions.

It should not end scrutiny.

Aid to Major Economies Must Be Explained

Britain still records aid spending associated with major economies such as India, China, Brazil, South Africa and Turkey.

The nature of that spending matters.

Traditional bilateral grants have generally been reduced or phased down. Much of the remaining activity takes the form of development investment, climate finance, research, technical assistance or funding channelled through international institutions.

Some of that may be justified.

Investments may produce a return. Research partnerships may benefit Britain. Other programmes may support security, economic or diplomatic interests.

But a more sophisticated financial instrument should not mean less scrutiny.

The right question is not simply:

Why are we giving aid to India or China?

It is:

Why is this spending classified as aid, why should British taxpayers fund it, and what measurable return or result does Britain receive?

If it is an investment, ministers should publish the expected return.

If it is research, they should explain why it belongs in the aid budget rather than the science budget.

If it is climate finance, they should show what was achieved for each pound.

A nuclear power or space-faring economy may still contain severe poverty.

But that does not automatically mean Britain should finance its development choices.

International Institutions Must Prove Their Value

A significant share of British aid is routed through organisations such as the United Nations and World Bank.

Some of that spending may deliver real value.

But no organisation should receive automatic trust simply because it is large, international and prestigious.

When money is pooled into multinational institutions, Britain may not control the exact projects funded with its contribution.

The chain of accountability becomes longer:

Treasury → international organisation → contractor → national government → local delivery partner

The further the money travels, the harder it becomes to identify who is responsible when something goes wrong.

Audit and anti-fraud systems are necessary.

They are not proof that every programme works.

British funding should therefore depend on:

independently verified results;
transparent procurement;
published administration and consultancy costs;
clear responsibility for failure;
and the ability to suspend or recover funding.

No institution should receive money because ministers need to hit a spending target.

It should receive money because it has proved that the programme works.

Start Every Programme From Zero

The central mistake in aid policy is deciding the total first and then searching for ways to spend it.

That reverses the proper order of government.

Britain should carry out a zero-based review of every aid programme.

Nothing should be assumed to continue.

Each programme should pass five tests.

1. Is It Responding to Genuine and Immediate Need?

Emergency help for famine, war, disaster and disease should remain possible.

2. Does It Advance British Interests?

Aid may be justified where it improves security, supports allies, limits hostile influence or reduces future migration pressures.

3. Can the Recipient Country Fund the Programme Itself?

British support should be exceptional where the recipient has the resources to act but has chosen different priorities.

4. Can Success Be Measured?

Vague claims about “capacity building” or “awareness raising” are not enough.

Government should show what changed, by how much and at what cost.

5. Does the Programme End Automatically?

Every scheme should have a sunset clause.

Funding should expire unless ministers return with evidence that it worked and a clear case for renewal.

That is not hostility to aid.

It is basic financial discipline.

Britain Cannot Spend the Same Pound Twice

The argument for returning to 0.7% too often avoids the trade-offs.

Every extra pound spent on aid must come from one of three places:

higher taxes;
cuts elsewhere;
or more borrowing.

There is no fourth option called “international leadership”.

Britain is already facing enormous financial pressures from an ageing population, the NHS, pensions, defence, housing and social care.

The country cannot promise more in every direction and pretend the money will appear later. The state is already borrowing heavily.

Debt interest is already consuming sums that could otherwise be spent on frontline services.

The answer cannot be another automatic spending target.

Compassion Must Be Matched by Responsibility

Britain should remain capable of helping those in genuine need.

It should respond to humanitarian emergencies, support close allies and fund carefully chosen programmes with measurable results.

But it should not borrow money simply to preserve an image of international generosity.

It should not approve aid-linked spending in major economies without explaining why Britain is funding it and what result is expected.

It should not assume the UN, World Bank or any charity deserves funding without proof.

And it should not measure compassion by how much money ministers manage to spend.

Compassion is not measured by inputs. It is measured by results.

Britain does not have a blank cheque.

Charity may begin at home.

Fiscal responsibility must begin in Downing Street.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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Nothing Is Free — Benefits, Borrowing and More

Jamie Jenkins — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 19:54:45 GMT

This week on The Mike Graham Show, we discussed the two-child benefit cap, rising disability claims, Labour’s growing list of “free” promises and why Britain must restore the principle that work should pay.

The welfare state was created as a safety net for people who fell on hard times or genuinely could not support themselves. Increasingly, however, it risks becoming a permanent way of life, while taxpayers and businesses are expected to carry an ever-heavier burden.

Watch the full discussion below.

Free Food, Free Childcare, More Benefits

One of the more extraordinary ideas discussed was a proposed national food service.

A senior adviser linked to Andy Burnham has reportedly floated the creation of around 9,500 state-supported restaurants, providing free meals to families.

We also discussed proposals for more free childcare for people receiving benefits, alongside the removal of the two-child benefit limit.

Close to 450,000 households could receive additional support if the limit is removed, at a cost approaching £3 billion by the end of the Parliament.

Each policy is presented as compassionate and affordable. But taken together, they reveal the same political instinct: identify a problem, create another government programme and send the bill to taxpayers.

Nothing provided by government is actually free. It is funded through higher taxes, more borrowing or less spending elsewhere.

Britain Is Already Borrowing Heavily

This matters because Britain is not starting from a healthy financial position.

Since Rachel Reeves entered the Treasury, the government has borrowed around £274.3 billion. In May alone, approximately £11.7 billion was spent on debt interest.

That is the real backdrop to every new spending promise.

The government is not choosing between spare cash and another benefit. It is choosing whether to tax more, borrow more or squeeze another service.

The Office for Budget Responsibility has already warned that, without reform, Britain’s debt burden could rise dramatically over the coming decades.

That makes the endless language of “free” increasingly detached from reality.

Benefits Must Remain a Safety Net

We also discussed the sharp rise in sickness and disability claims, including claims linked to anxiety, ADHD and other mental-health conditions among younger people.

Those who genuinely cannot work deserve proper support. But the system should not write off people who could work with treatment, training or appropriate help.

A successful welfare system should move people towards independence wherever possible.

That may mean stronger conditions, proper assessments and, where appropriate, requiring people capable of contributing to undertake training, job-search activity or useful community work.

The principle should be simple: work must always pay.

The Taxpayer Cannot Fund Everything

Working people are already being pulled into higher tax bands through frozen thresholds, while businesses face rising employment costs and weaker incentives to invest.

At the same time, Britain’s ageing population will bring higher spending on pensions, healthcare and social care.

That makes it even more important to control working-age welfare spending rather than continuously expanding eligibility.

The state depends on the private economy to fund it. If taxpayers, employers and investors are squeezed too hard, the money eventually runs out.

The Bottom Line

Britain should protect the vulnerable. But compassion cannot mean unlimited spending with no conditions, no reform and no consideration of who pays.

Free food. Free childcare. More benefits. Bigger government.

Politicians can call it free. Taxpayers know better.

Watch my full discussion with Mike Graham above.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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The OBR’s Warning - Britain’s Tax & Spend Time Bomb

Jamie Jenkins — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 06:01:45 GMT

The Office for Budget Responsibility has delivered a warning Westminster cannot keep dodging.

Britain’s current tax-and-spend model is not sustainable.

That is not a slogan from an opposition party or a newspaper headline. It is the conclusion of the independent body Parliament created to test whether government plans add up.

The warning should not come as a surprise. Borrowing is already running above forecast, debt-interest bills are rising and the tax burden is heading towards post-war highs. In the first two months of this financial year, borrowing reached £46.3 billion — £7.7 billion above the OBR forecast and £8.9 billion higher than the same point last year. May’s debt-interest bill alone was £11.7 billion, the highest for any May on record.

The OBR’s new report is the long-term version of the same problem.

Under current policy settings, almost every scenario it models sees UK debt move onto an unsustainable path.

That does not mean Britain is bankrupt today. It means future governments will eventually be forced into choices that today’s politicians keep avoiding: higher taxes, lower spending elsewhere, later retirement, reformed public services, or some combination of all four.

The longer they wait, the nastier those choices become.

We Are Starting From A Weaker Position Than Most Countries

The UK is not approaching these pressures with low debt and plenty of room to manoeuvre.

The OBR says the UK has experienced one of the largest increases in government debt, as a share of GDP, of any advanced economy over the past two decades. On an internationally comparable basis, UK debt has nearly tripled relative to the size of the economy since 2005.

In 2005, UK debt was close to the advanced-economy average. By 2025, it was 45 percentage points higher.

Against the G7 average, the UK went from being 23 percentage points below in 2005 to 6 points above in 2025.

The UK is entering an ageing era already carrying more debt, paying more interest and with less room to absorb the next shock.

Debt-interest spending has more than doubled as a share of GDP since before the pandemic. At £110 billion in 2025-26, it is now the third-largest area of public spending after health and welfare.

A quick note on the numbers: GDP is the total value of everything the UK economy produces in a year — the country’s overall economic output.
We measure debt, tax and spending as a share of GDP because a £100 billion bill means something very different for a £2 trillion economy than it does for a £5 trillion one. It shows how much of the country’s total economic capacity the state is taking up, and whether the bill is growing faster than the economy that must pay it.

The State Is Growing Faster Than The Economy Can Fund It

The OBR’s baseline scenario starts with public debt stabilising at just under 100% of GDP around 2030-31 — in other words, roughly equal to the value of the entire UK economy in a year.

But from there, the pressure builds.

Primary public spending, excluding debt interest, rises from around 40% of GDP in 2030-31 to almost 49% by 2075-76. Tax receipts remain broadly flat at around 41% of GDP.

That gap is the whole story.

Under current policy assumptions, the UK is projected to maintain commitments that the economy cannot sustainably finance. The primary deficit returns in the 2030s and eventually reaches around 7% of GDP. Add rising debt-interest costs and public sector net debt moves onto an unsustainable path by the late 2040s.

Debt interest alone could eventually reach 12% of GDP.

That means more of the money raised from taxpayers goes towards paying for yesterday’s borrowing, rather than schools, policing, defence, infrastructure or lower taxes.

Health, Pensions And Social Care Are The Main Bill

This is not a fiscal problem created by a few pointless Whitehall schemes.

The biggest pressures are the things people care about most: healthcare, pensions and social care.

By 2075-76, the OBR projects:

Health spending rising from around 8% of GDP to 13%.
State pension spending rising from 5% to around 9% of GDP.
Adult social-care spending rising from 1.2% to 1.8% of GDP.
Defence spending reaching 3.5% of GDP.

Older people are not the problem. People who have worked, paid taxes and National Insurance throughout their lives deserve dignity, healthcare and financial security in retirement.

The problem is that governments have made commitments without being straight about the long-term bill.

Much of the public-sector pension system is unfunded. Unlike a private pension scheme, there is no investment pot built up to meet the full future cost of pensions already promised. Future payments are instead a claim on future taxpayers.

That is not a criticism of public-sector workers. They are entitled to the pensions they were promised.

It is a warning about who ultimately carries the risk: future taxpayers.

Net Zero Is Another Cost The UK Government Has Chosen To Add

The OBR’s baseline is not only about health, pensions and social care.

It also includes the cost of the UK Government’s legally binding commitment to reach net zero by 2050.

The OBR estimates that public-sector investment supporting that transition totals £257 billion between now and 2050, in 2025 prices. That is the Government’s assumed share of a wider £720 billion of economy-wide investment.

At the same time, the transition erodes one of the Treasury’s most dependable tax streams.

The OBR projects net-zero-affected receipts falling from 1.6% of GDP in 2030-31 to 0.5% by 2075-76, largely because fuel-duty revenue is expected to collapse as petrol and diesel vehicles disappear.

As fuel duty declines, the Government is already looking for alternative ways to tax driving.

From April 2028, ministers plan to introduce Electric Vehicle Excise Duty: effectively a mileage charge for electric and plug-in hybrid cars, paid alongside existing Vehicle Excise Duty. The proposed rate is 3p per mile for fully electric cars and 1.5p per mile for plug-in hybrids.

The tax burden on driving is not disappearing. It is being redesigned.

So the Treasury faces two pressures at once:

More public investment to deliver the policy.
Less revenue from fuel duty, requiring new ways to tax motorists.

But it is another major commitment being added while debt is already high, taxes are rising and growth is weak.

The question ministers should answer is simple:

Who pays, how much, and what gets cut or taxed more when the bill arrives?

The Private Sector Cannot Carry Everything

The fundamental point is simple.

When I say the productive economy, I mean the private sector: businesses that employ people, invest, export, innovate and generate the profits, wages and taxes that fund the state.

The money government spends does not appear from nowhere. It comes from businesses making profits, workers earning wages and consumers spending money — or it is borrowed from future taxpayers.

Public services matter. A healthy, educated and secure country needs them.

But every public-sector salary, pension contribution, benefit payment and departmental budget must ultimately be paid for by taxes raised from the private economy, borrowing against future taxes, or stronger growth.

And that private-sector base is under pressure.

When employers face higher labour costs, workers lose more of each pay rise to tax, and investment is delayed, the part of the economy that pays for the state becomes weaker.

The OBR forecasts the tax-to-GDP ratio rising from 37% in 2019-20 to 43% by 2030-31.

Yet rising taxes have not removed the borrowing problem.

That tells us something important.

The issue is not simply that the state has too little money. It is that the state is trying to do too much with an economy that is not growing strongly enough to carry it.

Delay Is The Most Expensive Choice

This is the most important part of the OBR’s report.

To keep debt at roughly 95% of GDP by the end of the projection period, the OBR estimates that the UK would need a permanent fiscal tightening worth 3.8% of GDP from 2031-32 onwards.

That is roughly equivalent to total onshore corporation-tax receipts or the entire education budget in 2030-31.

And that is the cost of acting early.

If action is phased in gradually, the required adjustment rises to around 7% of GDP in the final decade of the projection. If action is delayed until the early 2050s, it reaches around 8% of GDP.

Every political party likes to imply that difficult decisions can be handled later.

The OBR has shown that “later” is not the gentle option.

It is the option that forces bigger tax rises, deeper cuts or harsher reforms onto the next generation.

The Choice Britain Keeps Avoiding

There is no painless answer.

Britain needs faster productivity growth. It needs a welfare and tax system that rewards work. It needs a serious plan for NHS productivity and social care rather than assuming spending can rise forever faster than the economy.

It also needs honesty about pensions, debt and the cost of the commitments governments keep adding.

The OBR has not said Britain is bankrupt today.

It has said the current model is not sustainable.

We cannot keep promising more, taxing more, borrowing more and hoping weak growth will somehow carry the bill.

Reform now is difficult. But leaving it to the next generation will be harder, more expensive and far more unfair.

The numbers do not care about the next election.

And eventually, neither will the markets.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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Labour’s Great Admission — They Never Prepared For Power

Jamie Jenkins — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 06:26:50 GMT

Today marks two years since Labour won the 2024 general election and Keir Starmer entered Downing Street.

It was a huge parliamentary victory. Labour won 411 seats and secured the kind of Commons majority most governments can only dream of.

But two years on, Morgan McSweeney, the man who helped build the operation that put Starmer there, has admitted Labour was not properly prepared for what came next.

McSweeney said Labour “didn’t prepare enough” for the world it was entering. It had not had enough conversations at the top of the party about what governing in a changed Britain would mean. Most strikingly, he said Labour “didn’t come in with enough of a theory” about how it would deliver change.

That is a remarkable admission from the architect of Labour’s return to power.

A Landslide In Seats, Not In Support

Labour won 411 seats in 2024. It had an overwhelming parliamentary mandate.

But it did not have an overwhelming popular vote.

Keir Starmer’s Labour received around 9.7 million votes. Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour received 10.3 million in 2019.

That means Labour won roughly 560,000 fewer votes under Starmer than it did under Corbyn, despite securing more than twice as many MPs. Turnout also dropped from 67.3% in 2019 to 59.8% in 2024.

Labour’s victory was legitimate. That is how first-past-the-post works: seats determine who governs.

But the nature of the result matters. Labour did not sweep to power because the country was united behind a detailed programme for government. It benefited from Conservative collapse, lower turnout and a fractured right-of-centre vote.

It won office. It did not win a great national wave of enthusiasm.

That made preparation more important, not less.

Winning An Election Is Not The Same As Being Ready To Govern

McSweeney’s explanation is revealing.

For years, Labour had convinced itself that it could not win. The party focused on becoming electable, building the campaign machine and getting voters to believe that power was possible again.

That was understandable. After 2019, Labour needed a route back.

But a party asking the public to hand it the keys to the country has a responsibility to prepare for what comes next.

Winning is only the first test. Governing is the real one.

McSweeney said that by early 2024, while planning for day one in government, he had started to realise they had not done enough to prepare. Labour then got “exposed” early.

That is exactly what happened.

The Winter Fuel Decision Set The Tone

The first major decision of the new government was to remove winter fuel payments from millions of pensioners.

It was politically disastrous and it came to define Labour’s opening months.

McSweeney now admits it was a mistake. He said it “probably speaks to not having enough of a plan”, describing a new team coming in, seeing financial pressure and moving quickly to rein things in.

That is the problem in one sentence.

A government that has done the hard thinking beforehand knows which choices are politically, economically and morally sustainable. A government that has not prepared reacts to the first crisis it sees.

The winter fuel decision looked like that: a Treasury spreadsheet finding the easiest available saving, with too little thought given to the people who would pay the price.

Labour should have entered office with optimism, clarity and an understanding of what voters had just endured.

Instead, it opened by telling the country things would get worse and then targeted pensioners.

Policy By Reaction — And More State Control By Instinct

The same pattern has continued.

Farmers have faced inheritance-tax changes that caused anger across rural Britain. Employers were hit with higher National Insurance costs while businesses were already struggling with weak growth, rising costs and recruitment pressures. Welfare reforms have become trapped in rows, retreats and confusion.

Each policy can be debated individually. That is not the point.

The point is that they have not felt like parts of a coherent national plan.

They have felt like disconnected responses to immediate pressures: the Treasury looking for revenue, ministers responding to a fiscal hole, advisers trying to manage the next political problem.

Yet while Labour says it did not have enough time or preparation to work out how to fix Britain’s biggest problems, it has still found time for significant changes to the relationship between the state and the individual.

Digital ID is one example. The government initially proposed a national digital ID scheme with a compulsory role in proving the right to work. After public and political backlash, it dropped the mandatory element, but the wider digital identity programme remains in development through the GOV.UK App and related public-service systems.

Then there is jury trial.

The government’s courts legislation is designed to reserve jury trials for the most serious cases and move more cases elsewhere in the system to tackle the Crown Court backlog. Ministers argue that reform is necessary. But trial by jury is not a minor administrative detail. It is one of the oldest safeguards between the citizen and the power of the state.

If the state is failing because courts are under-resourced and backlogs have been allowed to build, the answer should not simply be to reduce the protections available to ordinary people.

That is what makes this so troubling.

Labour may not have arrived with a clear plan to improve public services, grow the economy or restore trust. But it has still shown a willingness to reach for more central control and to dilute protections when the state itself struggles to perform.

When a government does not arrive with a settled theory of how it will govern, this is what politics becomes.

A problem appears. A policy is rushed out. The backlash begins. Ministers retreat, reframe or blame somebody else.

Meanwhile, the country still waits for the change it was promised.

Government Is Not A Prize For Westminster Insiders

This is the bigger issue.

Government is not a prize for the people who ran the campaign. It is not an internal project for advisers, strategists, civil servants and the small circle around Number 10.

It exists to serve the public.

That means the pensioner worrying about heating their home. The farmer wondering whether there will be a family business left to pass on. The employer deciding whether they can afford another member of staff. The young person trying to find a first job. The family paying more tax while public services still fail to deliver.

Those people do not care about the internal logic of Westminster.

They care whether their lives are getting better or worse.

McSweeney is right when he says voters are not short of patience. They are short of time. They have spent years being told to wait through stagnant wages, higher bills, rising taxes, strained public services and a political system that repeatedly promises change but rarely delivers it.

They do not need another government explaining why the job is difficult.

They need one that is ready.

And Now Comes Andy Burnham

The danger is that Labour treats the failure of the Starmer years as a communications problem rather than a governing problem.

McSweeney has already backed Andy Burnham’s idea of a “Number 10 North” and argued that too much national decision-making is concentrated in London. There is a fair point underneath that. Britain is too centralised, and too many people making decisions about the country have little understanding of life outside the Westminster bubble.

But moving the postcode of power is not the same as changing how power is used.

Burnham’s answer appears to be more devolution, more intervention and more political control over areas such as housing, welfare, education and local economic policy.

That may sound radical. It may also mean giving the same political class even more authority over the lives of ordinary people.

And that is the question Labour now has to answer.

If Starmer’s government was underprepared, reactive and increasingly willing to extend the reach of the state, why should the public assume the next phase will be better?

It may prove to be more of the same, only bigger.

Two Years On, The Excuse Has Run Out

McSweeney deserves credit for being more honest than most people who have worked at the centre of power.

But his admission should concern every voter.

Labour did not merely inherit a difficult country. Every incoming government inherits problems. The question is whether it has prepared properly to deal with them.

Two years on, the answer appears to be no.

Labour had a plan to win. It built a machine, neutralised internal opposition, took advantage of Conservative collapse and won a huge majority in Parliament.

But it did not arrive with enough preparation for government.

Britain needed a government that understood what had gone wrong, who was being left behind and how to put it right. Instead, it got a government still working out its theory of change after it had already been handed the power to deliver it.

And now, rather than a genuine reset, the country may be asked to accept an even more interventionist version of the same project under Andy Burnham.

That is not leadership.

It is power without preparation — and potentially even more power without accountability.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins

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Starmer Says His Plan Is Working — The Numbers Say No

Jamie Jenkins — Fri, 03 Jul 2026 05:29:53 GMT

This week on The Mike Graham Show, we looked at Starmer’s claim that his plan is working, the reality behind falling asylum hotel numbers, Britain’s falling wealth and the surge in children referred for mental-health support.

Watch the full discussion below.

Keir Starmer says his plan is working.

But when you look beyond the political messaging, the numbers paint a much less comfortable picture.

Hotels Down, Pressure Moved

The number of asylum seekers in hotels is down by 8,676 since the election.

That sounds like progress, until you look at what has happened elsewhere.

Nearly 7,000 more people have been moved into dispersed accommodation, including communities already struggling with housing shortages and pressure on public services.

The problem has not disappeared. It has been moved.

Small-boat arrivals are down on last year, but nearly 12,000 people have still crossed the Channel so far in 2026.

That is not a secure border. It is simply a lower number compared with an exceptionally high one last year.

With thousands still waiting in northern France, and weather playing such a major role in crossings, there is no room for complacency.

Britain’s Wealth Has Fallen

Average wealth per adult in the UK is down 23% since 2020, one of the worst performances across the developed world.

That is not just a number for the wealthy. It feeds through into what people feel in their own lives, higher mortgage costs, more expensive borrowing, inflation eating into savings and pensions, and household debt becoming harder to manage.

Britain has a high share of wealth tied up in property rather than financial assets. That leaves households especially exposed when inflation rises and interest rates climb.

It is also why wealth taxes may sound simple in theory, but become much harder in practice when so much of people’s wealth is tied up in bricks and mortar rather than cash sitting in an account.

One Million Children Referred

More than one million children under 18 now have an active referral to mental-health support.

That number has doubled since 2019.

Children with serious mental-health needs should get support, without question. But we also need to ask what has changed in our society when referrals have risen so sharply in such a short period.

We need to support children who are genuinely struggling, while also helping them build confidence, resilience and the ability to cope with life’s inevitable setbacks.

Changing The Numbers Is Not Fixing The Problem

This is the wider problem with the political debate.

Hotel numbers can fall while pressure is pushed into local communities.

Small-boat arrivals can be lower than last year while thousands still cross the Channel.

The government can say the economy is stabilising while average wealth has fallen sharply.

And we can say we care about children’s mental health without asking why the number needing help has doubled.

Watch the full discussion with Mike Graham above.

Thanks for reading Stat of the Nation.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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The Snowflake Generation, One Million Children Referred For Mental Health Support

Jamie Jenkins — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 19:59:46 GMT

More than one million children in England had an active referral to mental-health services in 2024–25.

1,048,965 under-18s had been referred, were waiting or were receiving treatment through Children and Young People’s Mental Health Services during the year. It does not mean one million children received a new diagnosis in a single year.

But it is still an extraordinary figure.

The Children’s Commissioner says the total has risen from 563,639 in 2018–19 to more than one million today, although the earlier and later figures are not perfectly identical measures because the reporting methodology has changed.

Whatever caveat we attach, the direction is clear.

More children are reaching mental-health services. More are waiting. And too many are staying in the system for far too long.

Of course, some children need specialist help. Mental illness is real. Anxiety, depression, trauma, eating disorders and neurodevelopmental conditions cannot be wished away with a lecture about “toughening up”.

Children who need help should get it quickly, properly and without being left on a waiting list for months or years.

But we also need to ask a harder question.

Have we become too quick to treat some ordinary difficulties, disappointments and anxious periods in childhood as problems requiring a clinical pathway, rather than first helping children build confidence, coping skills and resilience?

Because one in ten children entering mental-health services is not only an NHS capacity problem.

It is a question about the culture we are building around childhood.

The Numbers Are Going In The Wrong Direction

The latest Children’s Commissioner report makes clear how stretched the system has become:

1,048,965 children had an active referral in 2024–25.
That was up from 958,192 the previous year.
35% of children with an active referral were still waiting for treatment at year-end.
More than 60,000 had already waited over two years.

That is unacceptable.

The NHS needs the capacity to support children with serious mental-health needs. But more appointments, referrals and assessments cannot be the whole answer.

We should also be asking why so many children are reaching the point where a clinical service is becoming the place they turn.

Support Is Not The Same As Protection

We are creating a snowflake generation.

That does not mean every young person is weak, lazy or incapable. Plenty are working hard, dealing with real pressures and trying to build a future in difficult circumstances.

But as a culture, we have become far too frightened of upsetting children.

Parents worry about saying the wrong thing. Teachers worry about giving honest feedback. Schools worry about being too demanding. Clubs worry about competition. Institutions worry that standards, consequences or disappointment might damage a child’s confidence.

The result is that too many children are being protected from the very experiences that help them grow.

They are protected from losing. Protected from criticism. Protected from being told they could do better. Protected from failure. Protected from the uncomfortable truth that effort does not always produce an immediate reward, and that sometimes someone else will simply be better.

That is not kindness. It is not compassion. It is a failure to prepare young people for real life.

Adult life does not offer a safe space from rejection, pressure, competition or disappointment. There are job interviews you do not get, promotions you miss out on, homes you cannot afford, relationships that end and moments where someone tells you that your work is not good enough.

Children need support through those experiences. But they also need to experience them. Because confidence is not built by being told you are brilliant at everything. It is built by struggling, improving, failing, getting back up and realising you can cope.

Prevention Is Better Than Cure

If one in ten children is now entering mental-health services, we should not only ask whether the NHS has enough clinicians.

We should ask what is happening before a child ever reaches a referral form.

Parents are not expected to be therapists. Teachers are not expected to solve every family problem. Sports coaches cannot replace a stable home or a functioning health service.

But children do not grow up in NHS waiting rooms. They grow up in families, schools, friendship groups, clubs and communities. Those are the places where resilience should begin.

A child anxious before an exam may need reassurance, perspective and help preparing. A child disappointed after not being selected may need encouragement to improve and try again. A child struggling socially may need help to build confidence and connection, alongside specialist assessment where that is genuinely needed.

Some children will need therapy, assessment, medication or safeguarding support. That is exactly what the NHS must provide.

But prevention means doing more before distress becomes crisis and before a clinical referral becomes the only route to help.

If more than one million children are being routed into mental-health services, something is not working in the support systems around childhood.

Children need adults who listen.

But they also need adults who set boundaries, give perspective, expect effort, encourage independence and teach them that difficult feelings can be faced rather than feared.

Inclusion Should Not Mean Removing Competition

Sport is one of the clearest examples.

Every child should have the chance to take part. Every child should be encouraged. Every child should feel included and valued.

But inclusion should not mean pretending performance does not matter, that everyone is equally good at everything, or that no child should ever experience losing.

Sport teaches children that hard work can improve performance. It teaches teamwork, discipline, responsibility and commitment. It teaches that you can lose one week and come back stronger the next.

It teaches that somebody else may be better than you today, but that you can still improve tomorrow.

That is not harsh. It is healthy. Life is competitive whether we like it or not.

There is competition for jobs, homes, university places, promotions, clients, contracts and opportunities. There are standards to meet, deadlines to hit, difficult feedback to absorb and moments when somebody will tell you that you need to do better.

If children are never taught how to handle losing, criticism or not being the best, what do we expect when they enter adult life?

We should not be raising children to fear challenge. We should be raising them to meet it.

This Does Not End At 18

The consequences do not disappear when a child leaves school.

If we are creating young people who are less able to cope with criticism, pressure, competition, disappointment and responsibility, then we should not be surprised when some struggle to become confident, independent and employable adults.

That does not mean every young person receiving support is unwilling to work. Many are dealing with serious illness, disability or barriers that are entirely real.

But employability is not just about qualifications.

It is also about resilience. Turning up. Taking feedback. Handling rejection. Working with other people. Recovering when something goes wrong. Keeping going when life is difficult.

Those are skills children should begin learning long before they enter the workplace.

In April 2026, 511,529 Personal Independence Payment claimants aged 16 to 29 had psychiatric disorder recorded as their main condition.

Psychiatric disorder was the main recorded condition for:

83% of PIP claimants aged 16–19
77% of those aged 20–24
71% of those aged 25–29

These are not the same people counted in the children’s referral figures, and the numbers do not prove a direct pipeline from child referral to PIP.

But they show why this debate cannot end when a child turns 18.

PIP is not an unemployment benefit. Many claimants have serious, long-term conditions and many are in work.

But if more young people are reaching adulthood already defined by anxiety, diagnosis, ill-health and dependence on support systems, then the knock-on effects will be felt in workplaces, communities, public services and the welfare system.

The welfare bill is not where this story begins.

It may be where the consequences eventually show up.

What Needs To Change

The NHS must be there for children with serious mental-health needs. A diagnosis can be life-changing when it unlocks the right treatment and support.

But the NHS cannot be the answer to every problem in childhood.

Every referral needs clinicians, time and money. The more we route ordinary pressure, disappointment and anxiety into clinical systems, the harder it becomes for children in genuine crisis to get help quickly.

The goal should not be an ever-larger mental-health service dealing with ever-larger numbers of children.

It should be fewer children reaching crisis point in the first place.

That means parents, schools, clubs and communities doing more to build resilience early, setting boundaries, encouraging effort, giving honest feedback and helping children learn that difficult feelings can be faced, managed and overcome.

Treatment matters.

But prevention, resilience and preparation for adult life matter just as much.

The Bigger Question

A country that sends more than one million children into mental-health services is not just facing an NHS capacity crisis.

It is being forced to confront a harder question.

What generation are we creating?

Children deserve fast, serious help when they are unwell.

But they also deserve a childhood that equips them to cope with pressure, rejection, criticism and failure.

A healthier generation will not be created solely by adding more appointments at the end of the process. It will be created by adults, families, schools, clubs and communities doing more at the beginning of it, building confidence, setting boundaries, encouraging effort and teaching children that difficult feelings can be faced, managed and overcome.

That is not old-fashioned.

It is essential.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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The Asylum Hotels Are Closing — But Is The Crisis Moving Onto Your Street?

Jamie Jenkins — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 10:16:51 GMT

In his speech this week, Keir Starmer listed falling small-boat crossings and closing asylum hotels among his Government’s achievements. He has also repeatedly promised to smash the criminal gangs behind the Channel crossings.

There is a fair point in both claims. The number of people in asylum hotels has fallen, and small-boat arrivals are down year-to-date on the same point last year.

But that is not the full story.

In June 2024, immediately before the general election, 29,561 people were in asylum hotels. By March 2026, that had fallen to 20,885.

Over the same period, however, the number in dispersal accommodation rose from 61,778 to 68,719.

So the hotels are closing. But more people are now being housed in communities across Britain.

And in the last 10 days alone, 1,891 people arrived in Britain by small boat.

If just one of those 1,891 people goes on to commit a serious crime against a child or young woman, that is one too many.

That is not necessarily the same thing as reducing the pressure created by the asylum system. It may simply mean moving it out of highly visible hotels and into towns, villages, shared homes and residential streets.

Lower Is Better. It Is Not The Same As Control.

The Government is entitled to say that small-boat arrivals are down compared with last year.

But by late June, more than 11,500 people had still crossed the Channel in small boats in 2026. The 1,891 arrivals in just 10 days show how quickly the numbers can rise again when conditions allow.

That is better than the alternative. It is not a secure border.

A serious border policy should not define success as simply beating last year’s number. The ambition should be to make illegal entry as difficult, unattractive and ultimately as close to zero as possible.

The Home Office exists to protect the border. It should not be judged mainly on how effectively it finds accommodation after people have arrived.

It should be judged on whether it can stop illegal entry in the first place.

The Biggest Immediate Deterrent Is Still The Weather

The most uncomfortable truth in this debate is that weather remains the strongest short-term deterrent.

When the Channel is rough, winds are high and visibility is poor, crossings fall. When conditions improve, the boats come.

The Home Office itself warns that small-boat numbers fluctuate with weather and seasonality. That is why a quieter period cannot simply be presented as proof that the gangs have been smashed.

The real test is what happens when the weather improves.

We saw that again in June. Conditions changed and 1,891 people arrived in just 10 days.

There are still people in northern France waiting for an opportunity to cross, while the smugglers’ business model remains intact.

A Government cannot claim victory because the Channel was rough for a fortnight.

Who Is Coming Across The Channel?

In the year ending March 2026, 39,271 people arrived in Britain by small boat.

The route is overwhelmingly male and heavily concentrated among younger adults:

28,417 were adult men — around 75% of arrivals where sex was recorded.
26,068 were men aged 18 to 39 — around two thirds of everyone arriving by small boat.
Around 4,700 were adult women.
Around 4,900 were children.

That does not mean every individual arriving is a danger. But it does mean the public is entitled to ask serious questions about identity, screening, safeguarding and whether Britain is genuinely in control of who enters the country.

These are not primarily people arriving through a managed resettlement scheme, where identity, eligibility and vulnerability checks happen before travel.

They are people who have travelled through France — a safe country with its own asylum system — before paying criminal gangs to enter Britain illegally.

That distinction matters.

What Can Britain Really Know At The Point Of Arrival?

The Government will say that people arriving by small boat are screened, fingerprinted, photographed and checked against available databases.

That is true.

But how robust can any check be when someone arrives without reliable documents, a verified identity or a traceable history?

Biometrics can establish whether somebody matches a record already held by Britain or an international partner. They cannot create a reliable history where no record exists.

They cannot independently verify every claimed name, nationality, address, work history or past association where the evidence simply is not available.

In a controlled system, checks happen before somebody is allowed to travel.

With small boats, the Home Office is often trying to establish identity, history and risk after somebody has already crossed the border.

That is border management after the event. It is not border control.

For the victim and their family, one serious failure is not an abstract argument about immigration policy. It can mean trauma and consequences that last for life.

The Criminal Networks Do Not Stop At The Water’s Edge

Small-boat crossings are not an accident. They are a business model.

The gangs organise routes, recruit customers, sell places on boats, move money across borders and adapt when enforcement changes.

Starmer promised to smash the gangs. Yet the gangs are plainly still operating.

BBC reporting has exposed alleged UK-linked payment networks used to facilitate Channel crossings. Separate investigations have shown how illegal labour, front businesses and informal networks can be used to exploit vulnerable migrants after arrival.

That is important because the people-smuggling trade does not stop when a boat reaches British waters.

Some people may arrive after paying cash up front. Others may be indebted, dependent or vulnerable to exploitation.

A system that allows illegal entry, leaves claims unresolved for long periods and disperses people into communities creates obvious opportunities for illegal work, cash-in-hand exploitation and criminal networks.

That is bad for those being exploited. It is bad for legitimate firms being undercut. And it is bad for communities left dealing with the consequences.

The Housing Pressure Is Not Abstract

It is not only the gangs who make money from a large, slow asylum system.

Private contractors are paid to source accommodation, manage sites, arrange transport, provide support and find rental properties for dispersal. Hotel operators, landlords, agents and accommodation providers all benefit from a system that requires tens of thousands of people to be housed for long periods.

That does not mean every contractor is doing anything improper. They are delivering services under contracts awarded by the state.

But the incentives are obvious.

The more people the system has to house, the bigger the taxpayer-funded market becomes.

Every property used for dispersal is also a property unavailable to local renters, families and workers already struggling with scarce housing and high rents.

In areas with tight rental markets, providers competing for homes can add to that pressure.

The public pays twice: once through asylum accommodation costs, then through the additional strain on housing, schools, GPs, councils and local services.

Closing Hotels Does Not Automatically Make Communities Safer

No one should argue that asylum hotels are a good long-term solution.

They were expensive, unsuitable and politically toxic. Reducing reliance on them is sensible.

But moving people out of hotels does not automatically remove the wider challenge.

A hotel is visible. Councils know where it is. Police know where it is. There is usually on-site management, a named location and a degree of public scrutiny.

Dispersal accommodation is different.

Communities deserve transparency about whether local capacity has been assessed, whether police and councils have the information they need, and whether schools, GPs and safeguarding services can cope.

They also deserve to know who is accountable if something goes wrong.

Closing a hotel may make the asylum system less visible.

It does not automatically make the public safer.

What A Serious Deterrent Would Look Like

Britain needs to change the calculation before people get into a boat.

First, it needs faster decisions. Claims cannot be allowed to drag on for years while people remain in publicly funded accommodation and criminal networks have time to exploit the gaps.

Second, people arriving illegally should be placed in clearly managed, secure and time-limited accommodation while their claims are decided — not simply dispersed into ordinary residential communities with little public visibility.

That is not about punishment. It is about control.

Third, the Government needs far tougher enforcement against illegal working and the UK-based financial infrastructure that enables people smuggling.

The gangs need to lose both the ability to move people and the ability to profit from doing so.

Fourth, Britain needs a credible third-country deterrent.

Australia understood a principle Britain has repeatedly failed to apply: arriving by boat without permission should not create a route to settlement in the country you have entered.

Its offshore-processing system was expensive and controversial. But it created certainty.

Britain needs its own lawful version of that principle. Whether through Rwanda or another safe third-country partner, the message must be clear: paying a smuggler to cross the Channel does not buy a place in Britain.

Genuine refugees can still be supported through safe, managed resettlement routes. But illegal entry cannot continue to look like a viable route to settlement.

Britain Does Not Need A Better Way To Hide The Consequences

The Government can fairly say crossings are down on last year.

It can fairly say hotel use has fallen.

But it cannot fairly say the problem is solved.

The weather remains the biggest immediate deterrent. The gangs are still operating. Contractors and landlords still profit from housing the consequences. And while hotels are closing, more people are being dispersed into communities.

Britain does not need a better way to hide the consequences of illegal entry.

It needs a system that stops it.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
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Heat, Boats, Debt And What Comes Next

Jamie Jenkins — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 12:47:25 GMT

This week on the , we covered everything from the latest heatwave panic to small boats, Labour’s borrowing and the question hanging over British politics: what comes next after Keir Starmer?

Watch the full discussion below.

A few of the key points we covered:

The Heatwave Debate: Adapt, Don’t Just Lecture

Every time temperatures rise, we are told that Britain must double down on net zero.

But even if this really is the “new normal”, there is remarkably little discussion about adapting to it. Hospitals, care homes, schools and public buildings need to be ready for hotter weather. Too many are not.

We are spending billions on policies that will not change next summer’s temperature. Meanwhile, people are sitting in overheated hospitals, schools are closing and air conditioning is still treated as though it is somehow taboo.

A country that can keep a supermarket cool should be able to keep its most vulnerable people safe.

Small Boats: Another 1,415 Arrivals In Six Days

The weather improved — and the boats came.

1,415 people crossed the Channel in just six days, underlining again how little control the Government appears to have over the border.

The supposed one-in-one-out arrangement with France was sold as a major breakthrough. Yet the numbers remain tiny compared with the scale of arrivals, while reports suggest the scheme may already be on borrowed time.

The public were promised that the gangs would be smashed. Instead, the crossings continue whenever conditions allow.

Borrowing Keeps Rising

Labour has now borrowed £274.3 billion since taking office.

In the first two months of this financial year alone, borrowing reached £46.3 billion. Debt interest came in at £11.7 billion in a single month.

That is money which cannot be spent on better services, tax cuts or investment in the future. It is simply the price of carrying an ever-growing national debt.

Yet we are still hearing that there is room for more borrowing.

There is always room to borrow until the bill arrives.

The Next Government Must Get Young People Working

The biggest issue for me is what is happening to the next generation.

Too many young people are being left outside employment, education and training, while businesses face higher costs for taking people on. The first rung of the jobs ladder is being kicked away.

A serious growth agenda would make it easier for employers to hire young people, expand practical routes into work and stop treating those who create jobs as a bottomless source of tax revenue.

Britain does not need more slogans. It needs a government focused on getting people into work, rewarding effort and giving the next generation a real chance to build a future.

Thanks for reading Stat of the Nation.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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Hotter Summers, Closed Schools — Where Is Britain’s Adaptation Plan?

Jamie Jenkins — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 19:05:39 GMT

Every summer, we hear the same phrase: “record temperatures”. That needs context. A record is only a record within the dataset being used. The UK-wide comparable temperature series goes back to 1884, while the much longer Central England Temperature record stretches back to 1659 but covers only part of the country rather than the whole UK.

That does not mean heat is harmless, or that modern records are unimportant. It means we should be precise about what “record” actually means. And if the temperatures we are seeing are now being presented as the new normal, Britain needs to start behaving as though they are.

Instead, schools are closing or shortening their hours, parents are scrambling for childcare and public services are preparing for disruption. We are not at official “heat lockdowns”, but normal life is already being suspended because too many buildings cannot cope.

That is not adaptation. It is managed disruption.

You Can Go To The Supermarket. Why Can’t You Go To School?

This is the basic question.

On a hot day, you can walk into Aldi, Lidl, Tesco, a shopping centre, restaurant, cinema or modern office and expect the building to be cool enough to function. But children are being sent home from school because classrooms are too hot.

Parents are being asked to rearrange work. Lessons are disrupted. Outdoor activities are cancelled. Uniform rules are relaxed. Some schools are shortening the day or closing entirely because their buildings cannot cope.

That should not be normal.

If a discount supermarket can keep customers and staff comfortable enough to shop, why are so many schools unable to keep children comfortable enough to learn?

The answer is not that schools do not care. It is that many school buildings were never designed for hotter summers, and successive governments have not treated overheating as a serious national resilience problem.

Too many classrooms have poor ventilation, little external shade, ageing buildings, temporary units and large windows that trap heat. We have known about this for years. Yet when temperatures rise, the country does not adapt. It retreats.

When Schools Close, The Damage Spreads

A school closure is not simply an education story. It is a childcare story, a workforce story, an NHS story and a productivity story.

When pupils are sent home early, parents have to find someone to look after them. Some can work from home, but many cannot. NHS staff, care workers, retail workers, transport staff, hospitality workers and people in countless other jobs may suddenly be trying to rearrange shifts or take emergency leave.

A child being sent home early can become a staffing problem in a hospital ward, a cancelled appointment, a care home struggling to fill a rota, or a parent losing pay because they have no option but to miss work. In many cases, the fallback is grandparents, often the very people most vulnerable to heat themselves.

That is why this is not merely a schools issue. It is a public-services issue, a workforce issue and a resilience issue. If Britain is going to experience hotter summers more often, it needs to understand that the cost of inaction spreads far beyond the school gates.

Britain Keeps Treating Heat As A Surprise

The oddest part is that none of this should be surprising. Every year, ministers and public-health bodies warn that hotter summers are becoming more likely. Every year, people are told to close curtains, drink water, avoid the hottest part of the day and check on vulnerable relatives.

All sensible advice. But it is not an adaptation strategy.

A proper adaptation strategy would ask a much more practical question: how do we keep normal life going when temperatures rise?

That means making sure schools can stay open, care homes can keep residents cool, hospital wards are safe and workable, and homes are designed to keep heat out rather than trap it in. At the moment, Britain seems to have accepted a strange model: the weather changes, so everyday life has to stop.

That is not how a resilient country should operate.

Adaptation Does Not Mean Air Conditioning Everywhere

This is not an argument for turning every British building into an airport terminal. There are plenty of practical ways to make buildings cooler before relying on air conditioning: external shading, blinds, shutters, awnings, better ventilation, window film, reflective roofs, tree cover around school grounds and building designs that keep heat out before it becomes a problem.

Many of these measures are cheaper than repeatedly dealing with closures, missed lessons and workplace disruption. But there will also be places where active cooling is necessary: care homes, hospitals, schools with vulnerable children, high-rise flats, social housing and buildings with poor ventilation and no shade.

If temperatures are genuinely becoming more extreme, it is not ideological to say these places need proper cooling. It is common sense.

The Government Knows The Problem

The Government has already acknowledged that overheating is a growing risk for schools and public buildings. Its own climate-risk material says high temperatures can affect concentration and learning, and identifies adapting the education estate as critical to reducing lost learning and lower attainment.

So the problem is not that ministers do not know.

The problem is that they have not turned that knowledge into visible action.

Where is the national programme for cooling overheated classrooms? Where is the targeted support for care homes to install shading and cooling? Where is the serious retrofit plan for vulnerable homes? Where is the practical resilience programme that says: if hot summers are coming, Britain will be ready?

Instead, we get warnings and closures.

Billions For Net Zero — But Where Is The Adaptation Budget?

Government is willing to commit billions to long-term net-zero projects: carbon capture, offshore wind, solar, grid upgrades and home-energy schemes.

But even if the UK reached net zero tomorrow, it would not alter Britain’s weather on its own. Climate is global, and the UK is only one small part of total global emissions.

That is not an argument against reducing emissions. It is an argument for recognising what Britain can do immediately.

If hotter summers are becoming more common, why is there not a comparable national effort to adapt?

Where is the funding to shade overheated classrooms, cool care homes, upgrade hospital wards and help vulnerable households keep their homes liveable?

A child in a 35°C classroom cannot wait for a distant target. A care-home resident cannot wait for the next climate summit.

If ministers are serious about heat as a risk, adaptation cannot remain the forgotten half of climate policy.

Britain Cannot Control The Weather — But It Can Adapt To It

The climate debate becomes abstract very quickly: targets, summits, models and promises for decades from now. But ordinary people experience the issue through the buildings around them.

Can their child stay in school? Can their elderly parent remain safe in a care home? Can they get to work? Can an NHS ward cope? Can their home remain liveable?

Those are the questions that matter when the heat arrives.

Britain cannot control the world’s weather on its own. But it can control whether its schools, hospitals, care homes and homes are capable of coping with the weather it has. And right now, too many are not.

If hotter summers are the new normal, then closing schools and telling parents to make do is not a plan. It is an admission that we have failed to adapt.

A country that can keep a supermarket cool should be able to keep a classroom open.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
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Labour’s Burnham Gamble: More Of The Same Or A Real Reset?

Jamie Jenkins — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 06:01:22 GMT

Keir Starmer’s resignation is not just the end of a failed premiership.

It is an admission that Labour’s electoral coalition was coming apart.

The party has been haemorrhaging votes in different directions. Reform has taken support from people who want tougher borders, lower taxes and a more fundamental break from Westminster politics. At the same time, the Greens have shown that Labour can now be beaten from its own left in seats it once regarded as safe.

That is why Andy Burnham is now being treated as Labour’s likely saviour.

He is not simply a replacement for Starmer. He is Labour’s roll of the dice: a more recognisable, more emotional, more traditional Labour figure who might reconnect with voters Starmer pushed away.

But there is a problem.

Trying to win back Green voters could pull Labour further left at precisely the moment it is already losing people to Reform for the opposite reason.

Gorton And Denton Was The Warning Shot

The Gorton and Denton by-election was not just an embarrassing defeat for Labour.

It was a warning about what is happening to the party’s voter base.

The Greens won with 14,980 votes, or 40.7% of the total. Reform came second on 10,578 votes. Labour fell to third with just 9,364.

That is a remarkable collapse in an area Labour had held for generations.

It showed that Labour is now vulnerable in two directions at once. It can lose voters to Reform where people want tougher action on immigration, crime, tax and the wider direction of the country. But it can also lose voters to the Greens where people think Labour has become too managerial, too cautious or too disconnected from its own activist base.

That is the political calculation behind Burnham.

He may be able to appeal to voters who think Starmer stripped the emotion, ambition and identity out of Labour. He may be able to compete with the Greens for younger, urban and progressive voters. And he may be able to challenge Zack Polanski’s appeal by sounding more radical on public services, local power and the environment.

But every move in that direction carries a cost.

The more Labour moves left to win back Green support, the harder it may become to win back voters who have drifted to Reform because they believe Labour is already too high-tax, too controlling and too detached from everyday concerns.

Burnham Is Labour’s Attempt To Rebuild A Broken Coalition

Burnham’s appeal is obvious.

He is more comfortable than Starmer talking about communities, public services and the impact of political decisions on ordinary people. He has a regional base, a public profile and a more natural political style.

That matters because Starmer’s problem was never just his personal popularity.

It was that Labour increasingly looked as though it had no instinct for where the country was heading.

The Government promised growth, but businesses were hit with higher employment costs. It promised control of the border, but the small boats crisis continued. It promised stability, but the public got U-turns, internal chaos and a government that often appeared to be reacting rather than leading.

The result was predictable: voters started looking elsewhere.

Burnham may be able to change the mood. He may restore some energy. He may make Labour feel less like a managerial project and more like a political movement.

But a warmer tone is not the same as a new direction.

The voters who left Labour for Reform are not necessarily waiting for a more charismatic Labour leader.

Many are waiting for something much more fundamental: lower taxes, firmer borders, less bureaucracy and a government willing to challenge the assumptions that have dominated Westminster for years.

Wales Is Starmer’s Defining Legacy

For Labour, the loss of Wales is especially damaging.

This was not simply another poor result or a difficult night at the polls. It was historic.

For the first time since devolution, Labour did not win the most seats in the Senedd. Plaid Cymru emerged as the largest party, Reform came second, and Welsh Labour was reduced to just nine of the 96 seats.

That is a brutal verdict on a party which had long treated Wales as one of its safest political territories.

Starmer will have to live with that legacy.

Under his leadership, Labour did not just lose support in Westminster polling. It lost its grip on one of its historic heartlands. It showed that voters who had backed Labour for decades were no longer prepared to do so automatically.

Burnham may be able to reset the mood inside the party.

But he inherits a Labour movement that has already lost trust in Wales, lost ground to Reform, and been humiliated by the Greens in a seat it once took for granted.

That is not a routine leadership transition.

It is a rescue mission.

A Burnham Coronation Would Not Be A Mandate

Burnham is now the clear frontrunner to replace Starmer. He has declared his intention to run and has already received support from senior Labour figures including Wes Streeting.

He may face little meaningful opposition.

That may suit Labour MPs who want a quick, orderly transfer of power and a chance to stop the bleeding.

But it should not be confused with a public mandate.

The electorate did not vote for Andy Burnham to become Prime Minister. Nor did they vote for Labour to replace its leader less than two years after a general election because its first choice had become untenable.

That matters because Burnham will face an immediate question.

Is he offering a genuine change of direction?

Or is he simply a more polished version of the same Labour model: more spending, more intervention, more tax and more state control?

That may be enough to win back some voters on the left.

It is unlikely to be enough for everyone else.

The Real Question Is What Labour Does Next

Starmer’s resignation may bring Labour a brief period of relief.

A new leader often creates a burst of attention, goodwill and internal unity. Burnham may slow the Green surge. He may win back some voters who found Starmer cold, distant or politically exhausted.

But Labour’s deeper problem remains.

The party is being squeezed by voters who want entirely different things.

Some want Labour to move left, become greener and spend more. Others want a sharper break from high tax, weak borders and an increasingly controlling state.

Burnham cannot satisfy both groups indefinitely.

That is why this is a gamble.

Labour may believe Burnham is the man who can rebuild its coalition.

But he may instead reveal how impossible that coalition has become to hold together.

Starmer is gone.

The real test now is whether Burnham offers change — or simply a more charismatic route to more of the same.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
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Borrowing Surges — Would Burnham Make It Worse?

Jamie Jenkins — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 10:56:52 GMT

Markets do not vote in by-elections. But they do react to what those by-elections mean.

After Andy Burnham’s victory in the Makerfield by-election, The Telegraph reported that the cost of UK government borrowing rose at the fastest pace in Europe. The yield on 10-year gilts climbed from 4.76% to 4.82%, while the pound fell below $1.32 for the first time since April.

It would be too neat to put all of that on one by-election result. Markets may have been reacting to two things at once: the political risk of Burnham’s return to Westminster, and the fiscal reality of borrowing figures released the same morning.

Those figures showed the Treasury had already borrowed £46.3bn in the first two months of the financial year, £7.7bn above the OBR forecast.

In other words, markets were not just looking at who might lead Labour next. They were looking at the numbers any Labour leader would inherit.

And the numbers are ugly.

The Borrowing Numbers Were Already Bad

The UK borrowed £23.3bn in May 2026. That was the second-highest May borrowing figure on record, beaten only by May 2020 during Covid.

It was also:

£5.4bn more than May 2025
£5.6bn above the OBR forecast
Part of a £46.3bn borrowing total in the first two months of the financial year
£8.9bn higher than the same point last year
£7.7bn ahead of the OBR forecast

This is not a minor monthly wobble. It is the public finances running ahead of forecast almost immediately.

The Government is taxing more, borrowing more, and still missing the numbers.

Debt Interest Is Eating The Room

The most alarming figure is not just the borrowing total. It is the cost of servicing the debt.

Debt interest payable by central government hit £11.7bn in May. That was £4.1bn more than May 2025 and the highest May debt interest bill on record.

This is the trap Britain is now in. Years of borrowing have created a situation where a huge chunk of money is spent before any politician has made a new decision. The bills from past choices arrive every month.

That money does not build a new hospital, fix a road, cut waiting lists or improve productivity.

It is the cost of yesterday’s promises.

Labour’s Problem Is Spending

The standard Labour answer is nearly always the same: tax more.

But that argument is wearing thin. Taxes are already high, and yet borrowing is still rising. That tells us something important. The problem is not simply that the state has too little money. The problem is that the state is trying to do too much with an economy that is not growing strongly enough to carry it.

This is why it is hard to believe Labour has the political DNA to control spending. The instinct is always to expand the state, protect programmes, increase benefits, hire more people, and then tell the taxpayer it is all necessary.

But the public sector is funded by the productive economy. If the productive economy weakens while the state expands, the gap is filled by tax rises, borrowing, or both.

That is exactly the loop Britain is now stuck in: more tax, more spending, less growth, more borrowing.

The State Keeps Expanding

The latest public sector employment figures underline the point.

Public sector employment was estimated at 6.19 million in March 2026, up 37,000 on the year. Central government employment hit a record high of 4.07 million, up 46,000 on the year.

The Civil Service employed 558,000 people, up 8,000 on the year. NHS employment was 2.07 million, up 6,000 on the year.

Some of this reflects classification changes and academy conversions, but the broader direction is clear: the central state is larger than ever.

And it is not just the headcount. It is the pay bill.

ONS earnings figures show annual regular pay growth of 5.1% in the public sector compared with 2.9% in the private sector in February to April 2026. ONS notes that public sector pay growth is affected by the timing of pay awards, but the political point remains: the part of the economy funded by taxpayers is seeing stronger pay growth than the private sector expected to fund it.

That does not mean public sector workers do not deserve fair pay. But it does mean the state is expanding while its wage costs are also rising faster than the productive base beneath it.

Every public sector salary, pension contribution, benefit payment and departmental budget line has to be funded from somewhere.

It comes from taxation, borrowing, or both.

The Private Sector Carries The Bill

The private sector pays for the public sector. That should be obvious, but too many politicians talk as if government money appears from nowhere.

It does not.

It comes from workers, businesses, profits, investment, wages and future taxpayers. When the private sector grows, the state can collect more without necessarily raising tax rates. But when private sector confidence weakens, employment softens, business costs rise and investment stalls, the tax base is damaged.

That is why higher taxes can become self-defeating. They may raise money in the short term, but they also risk weakening the very economy the state relies on.

This is the danger of the current model. The Government squeezes businesses and workers, the private sector slows, revenues disappoint, spending keeps rising, and borrowing fills the gap.

That is not a plan.

It is a loop.

Benefits Are The Spending Question Labour Avoids

If Britain is serious about controlling spending, it cannot avoid the benefits bill.

In 2025/26, the Government is forecast to spend £322.6bn on the social security system in Great Britain. That is 10.6% of GDP and almost a quarter of total government spending.

Within that, around £145.0bn is forecast to be spent on working-age and children welfare. That includes Universal Credit and its predecessors, alongside non-DWP welfare spending.

This does not mean cutting support from people who genuinely cannot work. A decent society protects the vulnerable. But a serious country also has to confront the parts of the welfare system that pull people away from work, trap households in dependency, and allow economic inactivity to become permanent.

Too much of modern government spending is not productive. It does not build capacity, raise growth, strengthen the tax base, or help people back into work.

It simply maintains failure.

Politicians love announcing compassionate spending, but they rarely want to talk about whether that spending is producing better outcomes. More money is treated as proof of virtue. Results are treated as optional.

But if spending does not improve productivity, health, work, skills, or economic participation, it eventually becomes another bill handed to the taxpayer.

Burnham Is A Symptom, Not The Disease

This is where Andy Burnham matters.

Burnham has positioned himself as the Labour figure who wants a more interventionist, more state-led, more explicitly left-wing economic offer. He has previously talked about the need to get beyond being “in hock to the bond markets”.

That may sound attractive to parts of the Labour movement. But it sounds very different to the people lending Britain money.

Bond markets are not sentimental. They do not care about slogans. They care whether the sums add up.

The danger is not simply that Labour changes leader. The danger is that Labour changes leader and decides the lesson is not “spend less”, but “spend more loudly”.

If a weakened Starmer is replaced by someone promising more spending, more state intervention, more borrowing, and more protection from hard choices, the market reaction should surprise nobody.

Reeves Is Trapped

Rachel Reeves has spent her time as Chancellor trying to sell herself as the guardian of fiscal discipline.

But that position is now under pressure from both sides.

On one side, the public finances are deteriorating faster than expected. Borrowing is above forecast, debt interest is rising, and the state is still spending beyond its means.

On the other side, Labour’s political mood is shifting. If the party concludes that Starmer is finished, the next leader will almost certainly want a new economic message. And if Labour decides it wants a more left-wing economic offer, Reeves becomes the obstacle, not the solution.

If Starmer falls, Reeves is unlikely to survive the wreckage. Her entire brand is tied to fiscal discipline, but the numbers are already moving against her and Labour’s internal pressure is moving in the opposite direction.

That is why the leadership question matters for markets. A new Prime Minister could mean a new Chancellor, a new fiscal event, a new set of priorities, and a new attempt to persuade voters that Britain can spend its way out of weak growth.

But Britain has already tried too much of that.

Politicians Spend. Taxpayers Inherit.

There is a deeper problem here.

Politicians find it very easy to spend other people’s money. They announce schemes, expand programmes, claim the moral credit, and talk about investment, fairness and compassion.

Then they leave. They resign, get sacked, lose office, move on to speeches, books, directorships, think tanks or retirement.

But the bills remain.

The debt remains. The interest remains. The tax burden remains. The weaker economy remains. And the public is left to pick up the pieces.

That is why borrowing matters. It is not just a line on a spreadsheet. It is deferred taxation. It is a claim on the future. It is money being spent today by people who may not be around when the bill comes due.

The Arithmetic Does Not Change

Labour can change the leader. It can change the Chancellor. It can change the slogan.

But unless it changes the instinct to spend first and ask the taxpayer later, the public finances will keep deteriorating.

Borrowing has surged. Markets are watching. Labour is wobbling. The private sector is being asked to carry a larger state. Debt interest is consuming more of the room. And the benefits bill remains one of the hardest spending questions politicians refuse to face honestly.

So the question is not just whether borrowing has surged.

It has.

The question is whether Labour’s next political turn makes the problem worse.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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The Private Sector Is Being Squeezed — And The State Keeps Expanding

Jamie Jenkins — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 06:01:42 GMT

This week on I joined Mike for our usual Thursday morning look at the numbers behind the headlines. The main focus was the latest labour market data, but the wider theme was hard to miss: Britain’s private sector is under pressure, the welfare bill is rising, borrowing remains far too high, and the state keeps expanding its reach.

Payroll jobs are now down by 192,000 since the election, vacancies are falling, and the sectors being squeezed are exactly the ones most exposed to Labour’s jobs tax — hospitality, retail, manufacturing and smaller businesses. At the same time, public sector employment is rising, public sector pay is outpacing the private sector, and disability benefit claims are close to 4 million.

But the conversation also moved beyond the economy. We discussed the government’s proposed social media restrictions for young people, the dangers of drifting toward digital ID, and the BBC’s bloated legacy model as YouTube and independent broadcasters continue to gain ground. Different topics, same underlying question: how much more of national life should be run, funded or controlled by the state?

The Numbers Tell The Story

The clearest way to understand the state of the country is to put the latest figures side by side. Once you do that, the government’s claim that its economic plan is working becomes much harder to sustain.

192,000 fewer payroll jobs since the election
Vacancies falling as employers cut back hiring
Private sector pay growth: 2.9%
Public sector pay growth: 5.1%
PIP claims close to 4 million
£24.3 billion borrowed in April alone

That is the contradiction at the heart of Labour’s economy. The people and businesses expected to fund the system are being squeezed, while public spending, public employment and welfare dependency keep moving in the opposite direction.

You cannot build a strong economy by making work more expensive, weakening the tax base, expanding the state and then borrowing to fill the gap.

The Jobs Market Is Flashing Red

The fall in payroll jobs matters because these are not abstract numbers on a spreadsheet. They are real jobs, real pay packets and real tax receipts disappearing from the economy. When payroll employment falls by 192,000 since the election, that is a serious warning sign for any government claiming to have a growth plan.

The weakness is also showing up in exactly the sectors most exposed to Labour’s jobs tax: hospitality, retail, manufacturing and smaller businesses. These are lower-margin employers where higher National Insurance, rising wage costs and weak consumer demand quickly feed into hiring decisions.

This is why the employer National Insurance rise matters. Businesses do not absorb higher employment costs in a fantasy world. They respond by hiring fewer people, delaying expansion, cutting hours, raising prices or reducing investment. When the government makes work more expensive, it should not be surprised when fewer jobs are created.

Vacancies are another important warning sign because they look forward. A fall in payroll employment tells us what has already happened, but falling vacancies tell us what employers think is coming next. Right now, they are not behaving like firms preparing for a boom.

Rachel Reeves keeps saying the economic plan is working. But 192,000 fewer payroll jobs since the election is not what success looks like.

The Private Sector Is Paying The Price

The private sector ultimately funds the state. It creates the wealth, pays the wages, generates tax receipts and supports the public services politicians like to promise. If that part of the economy weakens, the whole fiscal model becomes more fragile.

That is why the pay figures matter. Private sector regular pay growth is now around 2.9%, while public sector regular pay growth is around 5.1%. That does not mean every public sector worker is overpaid, and many do difficult jobs, but at the national level the imbalance is obvious: the people paying for the system are seeing weaker pay growth than the people employed by it.

A country cannot keep increasing the cost of the public sector while the private sector slows down. You can do it for a while through higher taxes and borrowing, but eventually the numbers stop adding up.

That is the split we are seeing now. The private sector is adjusting to pressure. The state is carrying on regardless.

The State Keeps Growing

While payroll jobs are down since the election, public sector employment has been rising over the past year. That is exactly the wrong balance for the economy.

A healthy economy needs a growing private sector and a public sector that is efficient, focused and affordable. Britain increasingly looks like it is moving in the opposite direction: more pressure on business, more people dependent on the state, and more public spending financed by a weakening productive base.

This creates a dangerous political incentive. Governments can keep spending, hiring and promising more because the cost is spread across taxpayers or pushed into future borrowing. Businesses cannot operate like that. If costs rise and demand is weak, they have to make decisions immediately.

The result is a two-speed economy. The private sector has to live in the real world. The state behaves as if the real world can be postponed.

Welfare Is Becoming A Parallel Economy

The jobs figures cannot be separated from what is happening in welfare. Personal Independence Payment claims are now close to 4 million, and the rise among younger claimants is particularly concerning.

One of the most striking trends is the number of young adults claiming disability benefits for psychiatric disorders. There will always be people who genuinely need support, and a civilised country should provide a safety net for those who cannot work, but a safety net is not supposed to become a parallel labour market for people written off before they have properly started adult life.

The question is not whether mental health problems exist. Of course they do. The question is whether the welfare system is now too quick to move people out of the labour market and too slow to help them back in.

If hundreds of thousands of young people are leaving education and drifting into long-term benefit dependency, Britain has a serious social and economic problem. It means fewer people working, fewer people paying tax, higher welfare costs and more lives lost to inactivity.

That is not compassion. It is failure dressed up as support.

Borrowing Is The Escape Route

When jobs fall, tax receipts come under pressure. When welfare rises, spending goes up. When public sector employment and pay rise, the state becomes more expensive. Put those together and the answer becomes obvious: more borrowing.

In April, the first month of the financial year, public sector borrowing was £24.3 billion. That is an extraordinary figure outside the kind of emergency period we saw during Covid.

This is the part politicians prefer to avoid. Every spending promise has to be paid for through taxation, borrowing or cuts elsewhere. If the government is not willing to cut spending, and if the private sector is weakening, then borrowing becomes the default option.

That is how countries become poorer slowly: not through one dramatic crash, but through years of weak growth, high borrowing and bad incentives. The state expands, the tax base weakens, the debt bill rises, and eventually more of the national income goes on servicing yesterday’s promises.

The Social Media Ban And The Drift Toward Digital ID

We also discussed the government’s proposed social media restrictions for young people. Ministers and broadcasters have tried to present the policy as if parents overwhelmingly support an outright ban, but the real debate is more complicated.

Many parents are rightly worried about addictive features, algorithms, late-night scrolling and online harms. That is understandable. But concern about social media is not the same as support for a blanket ban, and it is certainly not the same as handing the state and big tech the machinery to police access to the internet.

This matters because the systems needed to enforce online age restrictions are not trivial. Once people are required to prove who they are to access online services, the debate quickly moves from child safety into digital ID territory.

A serious government would ask what specific harm it is trying to reduce, what evidence exists, and what the least intrusive solution would be. Instead, the instinct is too often the same: regulate first, expand power, and ask awkward questions later.

The BBC, YouTube And The End Of The Old Media Monopoly

The BBC also came up, particularly after reports of cuts and restructuring. The reaction from parts of the legacy media world was predictable: outrage, sadness and claims that something vital is being lost.

But there is another side to this debate. Anyone who has worked around large public institutions knows how much duplication and waste can build up over time. Multiple teams covering the same story. Layers of production. Different departments doing work that leaner organisations would do with far fewer people.

The point is not that every BBC worker is bad at their job. It is that the model is bloated. When an organisation is funded by a compulsory licence fee, it has a duty to be ruthlessly efficient with public money. It cannot behave as if every internal job is sacred while households and businesses are forced to do more with less.

The media world has changed. Independent broadcasters, YouTube channels, podcasts and online platforms are now producing political and current affairs content with far smaller teams and far lower costs. Mike Graham’s show is part of that shift. Viewers are moving away from legacy gatekeepers and toward people they trust to speak directly, without the old broadcast machinery.

That is healthy. The BBC should not be protected from the same efficiency pressures that households and businesses face every day.

The Bigger Picture

Jobs, welfare, borrowing, social media regulation and the BBC may sound like separate issues, but underneath them is the same bigger question: is Britain building a stronger society, or just a bigger state?

Right now, the numbers point in the wrong direction. Fewer payroll jobs. Falling vacancies. More welfare dependency. More borrowing. More regulation. More state control.

That is not renewal. It is managed decline.

Britain needs more people in work, more businesses hiring, more investment, and a welfare system that protects those who genuinely need help without writing off people who could still contribute. It also needs a public sector that improves productivity rather than simply demanding more money, more staff and more borrowing.

The country cannot keep loading costs onto the people and businesses that pay for everything else.

Conclusion

Rachel Reeves says the economic plan is working. The data says otherwise.

Payroll jobs are down by 192,000 since the election. Vacancies are falling. Private sector pay growth is weak. Public sector employment is rising. Welfare claims are climbing. Borrowing is already far too high.

This week’s discussion with Mike Graham kept coming back to the same point: Britain is drifting into a bigger state, a weaker labour market and a heavier burden on taxpayers.

The question now is simple. How long can Britain keep expanding the state while the productive economy underneath it gets squeezed?

Because at some point, the numbers win.

And right now, the numbers are flashing red.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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Disability Benefits Hit 4 Million — 500k Young Claimants With Psychiatric Disorders

Jamie Jenkins — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 06:02:41 GMT

New PIP figures are out, and the benefit has reached a major milestone.

As of April 2026, 4.0 million people in England and Wales were entitled to Personal Independence Payment. That is up 86,000 in just three months and 266,000 in a year.

PIP is not an unemployment benefit. It is designed to help with the extra costs of long-term disability, ill-health, or conditions that affect daily living and mobility.

But when a disability benefit reaches 4 million claimants, it becomes impossible to separate from the wider debate about sickness, worklessness, mental health and public spending. The headline is the caseload. The real warning sign is what sits underneath it.

The 4 Million Milestone

The latest figures show the PIP caseload in England and Wales has crossed 4 million. This is no longer a small corner of the welfare system. It is one of the biggest pressure points in the state.

The caseload has increased by:

86,000 in three months
266,000 in a year

That means the system is not simply large. It is still growing. And as the stock of claimants gets bigger, even relatively small percentage increases translate into very large numbers of people.

Who Is On PIP?

Most people on PIP are not pensioners. Around 3.3 million claimants in England and Wales are of working age, which is about 83% of the caseload.

Looking at broad age groups, the largest group is those aged 50 to 64:

16–29: 666,000 claimants
30–49: 1.15 million claimants
50–64: 1.39 million claimants
65+: 804,000 claimants

There is an important caveat on the 65+ group. PIP is mainly a working-age disability benefit. People who are already over State Pension age usually cannot make a new claim for PIP; the equivalent route for new disability support claims after that point is generally Attendance Allowance.

So many older PIP claimants are people who claimed before reaching State Pension age and have aged through the system while remaining entitled. That still matters, because it shows the existing caseload is ageing and staying in the system, but it should not be read as a wave of new pension-age PIP claims.

That age profile matters. PIP is often discussed as if it sits in a separate box labelled “disability benefits”, but the scale of working-age entitlement means it is also part of a much bigger national story.

Britain has a growing long-term sickness problem. We see it in the labour market, NHS waiting lists, mental health services and the welfare system. PIP is not the same as being out of work, but a country with millions of working-age adults receiving disability support has to ask harder questions about health, work, productivity and the pressures building across public services.

The Real Warning Sign: Half a Million Young Claimants

The 4 million figure is the headline. But the more worrying number may be this: 511,529 PIP claimants aged 16 to 29 have psychiatric disorder recorded as their main condition.

That is more than half a million young people.

This is where the PIP story changes. It is no longer just a debate about welfare spending or disability administration. It becomes a question about what is happening to the mental health, resilience and work readiness of younger generations.

The figures by age group are stark:

16–19: 170,233 claimants
20–24: 180,982 claimants
25–29: 160,314 claimants

Together, that adds up to more than half a million young claimants with psychiatric disorder recorded as their main condition. That should worry policymakers far more than the headline cost alone.

Among Young Claimants, Psychiatric Disorder Dominates

The same point shows up even more clearly when we look at shares. Among younger PIP claimants, psychiatric disorder is not a marginal category. It dominates the caseload.

In April 2026, psychiatric disorder was the recorded main condition for:

83% of 16–19-year-old PIP claimants
77% of 20–24-year-old PIP claimants
71% of 25–29-year-old PIP claimants

That does not mean every case is the same. “Psychiatric disorder” is a broad official category that can include severe mental illness, anxiety and depressive disorders, autism spectrum disorders, hyperkinetic disorders and other diagnoses.

But the overall pattern is clear. For younger adults on PIP, this is overwhelmingly a mental health, neurodevelopmental and psychiatric-disorder story.

That does not mean support should be denied to people who need it. But it does mean the country has to ask why so many younger people are reaching the point where they qualify for disability support.

The Welfare Bill Is the End Result

This is where the debate needs to move beyond slogans. If more than half a million 16–29-year-olds are on PIP with psychiatric disorder recorded as their main condition, that raises much deeper questions.

What is happening in schools? What is happening with diagnosis? What is happening with NHS waiting times? What is happening with family breakdown, social media, isolation, resilience and the labour market?

And what kind of economy are young people being asked to enter?

The welfare bill is not the beginning of this story. It is the end result. The causes sit much earlier.

The Fiscal Pressure Is Growing

This is also a major fiscal issue.

DWP forecasts PIP spending at £32.1 billion in 2026/27, rising to £44.7 billion by 2030/31.

That is a huge increase for a single benefit. And it comes at the same time as the labour market has weakened under this Government.

The latest PAYE data showed the number of payrolled employees falling. Put simply, fewer people in payroll work means a weaker tax base, while long-term sickness and disability spending keeps rising.

That is the basic pressure point Britain cannot ignore.

A healthy welfare state needs a healthy working population underneath it. If the number paying in weakens while the number receiving long-term sickness and disability support rises, the pressure eventually shows up somewhere: higher taxes, higher borrowing, tighter eligibility, or worse services elsewhere.

This is why the PIP debate cannot just be about compassion or cost. It is also about whether Britain still has the productive base needed to support the welfare state it has built.

The Debate Is Too Small

The political debate around welfare usually collapses into two simple arguments: one side talks about compassion, the other talks about cost. But the PIP numbers point to something deeper.

Britain needs to ask why so many working-age people are living with conditions severe enough to qualify for disability support. More urgently, it needs to ask why more than half a million young claimants are recorded with psychiatric disorders as their main condition.

It also needs to ask how a shrinking or weakening payroll base is supposed to support a welfare system with rising long-term sickness and disability costs.

That is not just a Department for Work and Pensions issue. It is a long-term sickness crisis, a mental health crisis, a labour-market crisis, and increasingly a welfare-state crisis.

The question is whether Britain is prepared to tackle the causes — or whether we will simply keep managing the bill.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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