The latest ONS population projections should trigger a serious national debate.

Not the usual debate about whether the latest numbers are slightly higher or slightly lower than the last set. Not the usual political game of pretending that if the projection has come down a little, the problem has somehow disappeared.

The real question is much bigger.

Where are all these people supposed to live? Where are they supposed to work? Who is going to pay for the services they use? And why does Britain keep defaulting to mass immigration instead of asking why so many people already here cannot afford to build a family, buy a home, or get a decent job?

The latest ONS 2024-based national population projections show the UK population rising from 69.3 million in mid-2024 to 71.0 million by mid-2034. That is an increase of 1.7 million people in a decade. Yes, that is lower than the previous 2022-based projection, which had the UK reaching 72.2 million by 2034. But Britain is still projected to keep growing, and the growth is still being driven by migration.

That should be the centre of the story.

📈 Britain Is Still Adding Another 1.7 Million People

The headline number is simple enough.

The UK population is projected to rise from 69.3 million to 71.0 million over the decade to mid-2034. That is another 1.7 million people added to the country.

To put that in perspective, that is equivalent to adding more than half the population of Wales on top of the existing pressure on housing, schools, GP surgeries, hospitals, roads, transport, water, energy and public services.

The ONS also estimates that the population grew by 4.7 million in the decade from 2014 to 2024. So the latest projection is not starting from a quiet, stable baseline. It comes after a period in which Britain has already absorbed huge population growth.

I covered this recently in my piece on the post-2021 migration surge.

In the three years between mid-2021 and mid-2024, net migration added 2.3 million people to the UK population. Over the same period, natural change added just 34,000. That means around 98.5% of UK population growth in those three years came from immigration.

That is extraordinary. What once took a generation has happened in just a few years. From 1981 to 2007, a period of 26 years, net migration added 2.2 million people in total. The last three years alone have exceeded that.

That is the context for the latest ONS projections.

Britain is not debating population growth from a standing start. It is debating another decade of growth after one of the fastest migration-driven population surges in modern British history.

🛂 Migration Is Still Doing The Heavy Lifting

The most important line in the ONS release is not just that the population is growing.

It is that net migration remains the only source of expected population growth.

Over the decade to mid-2034, the ONS projects 6.4 million births, 6.9 million deaths, 7.3 million long-term immigrants and 5.1 million long-term emigrants. Rounded up, that means deaths exceed births by around 450,000, while net international migration adds around 2.2 million people.

That is the demographic model Britain is now running on.

The country is not growing because more families are having children. It is growing because politicians have chosen — either openly or by default — to use migration as the population plug.

The ONS has lowered its long-term annual net migration assumption from 340,000 in the previous 2022-based projections to 230,000 in the latest 2024-based version. That is why the latest projection is lower than the last one.

But we should not pretend this solves the problem.

An assumption of 230,000 net migration every year is still a huge structural inflow. It still means large numbers of people coming into a country that cannot currently house its own people properly, cannot get waiting lists under control, cannot keep public services functioning smoothly, and cannot offer many young people a realistic path to owning a home.

That is not a serious long-term national plan.

It is a pressure valve for failed domestic policy.

👶 Britain Needs More Children — Not A Permanent Migration Patch

The most worrying part of the projections is not just migration. It is what is happening to children.

The ONS projects that deaths will exceed births from mid-2026 onwards. Over the decade to mid-2034, there are projected to be around 450,000 more deaths than births. The number of children aged 0 to 15 is projected to fall from 12.6 million to 11.0 million by mid-2034 — a drop of 1.6 million children.

That should be a national alarm bell.

Britain does not just have a migration problem. It has a family formation problem.

Too many people who would like to have children are delaying it, limiting it, or giving up on it altogether because the cost of living is too high, housing is too expensive, childcare is punishing, wages do not stretch far enough, and family life feels financially risky.

This is where the debate needs to become more honest.

A country cannot keep saying it needs more people while making it harder for working people to have children. It cannot keep relying on migration to fill demographic gaps while young couples already here are priced out of homes, squeezed by taxes, hit by childcare costs and told to simply get on with it.

And we need to be clear about the kind of family policy Britain needs.

The answer is not simply paying people to have children in households where no one works. That does not build the productive next generation Britain needs. The priority should be helping working families have the children they already want to have, without feeling financially punished for doing so.

That means making work pay. It means reducing the tax burden on working households. It means making housing more affordable. It means childcare that supports work rather than trapping parents. It means rewarding responsibility, employment and family stability.

Because relying on migration is not a family policy.

It is an admission that the current system is failing the people already here.

🏠 The Housing Question Cannot Be Dodged

This is where population projections collide with real life.

Housing affordability has deteriorated dramatically over the past generation. In 1997, the median home across England and Wales cost around 3.6 times median workplace-based annual earnings. By 2025, that ratio was around 7.6 times earnings. It peaked in 2021 and has fallen back a little since, partly because wages have risen during a period of inflationary pressure, while higher interest rates have also cooled what people can afford to pay for homes.

But the long-term picture is still clear: housing has become far less affordable relative to earnings.

And mass migration has clearly played a role in that. It affects the ratio in two obvious ways. First, by increasing labour supply, it can suppress wage growth in parts of the labour market. Second, by increasing population and household demand, it adds pressure to housing demand. Immigration is not the only reason homes have become unaffordable, but it is hard to deny that huge population growth over the past 25 years has made the housing squeeze worse.

Now add more population growth on top.

Every extra person needs somewhere to live. Every extra household adds pressure. Every extra family needs space. And when housing supply does not keep up, the result is predictable: higher rents, higher prices, more competition, more overcrowding, longer social housing lists, and a generation pushed further away from ownership.

This is one of the great dishonesty points in British politics.

Politicians talk about migration as if it exists in a vacuum. They talk about labour shortages, universities, care homes and GDP. But they rarely talk honestly about the housing consequences.

If Britain adds millions of people and fails to build the homes, the pressure does not disappear. It lands on young workers, renters, first-time buyers and families trying to get on with life.

And then those same people are told they are somehow unreasonable for noticing the squeeze.

They are not unreasonable.

They are living with the consequences.

💼 Why Do We Need More Workers If The Labour Market Is Weakening?

The old argument for high migration was that Britain needed workers.

But that argument now needs much more scrutiny.

The latest labour market figures show signs of weakness. ONS estimates for payrolled employees fell by 74,000 between February 2025 and February 2026, and vacancies have also been falling.

At the same time, young people are struggling to get started. Graduates are finding the jobs market harder. Many entry-level roles are more competitive. AI is already beginning to reshape white-collar work. Businesses are under pressure from higher employment costs. The benefit bill remains enormous, with DWP figures showing £145.0 billion forecast for working-age and children welfare in 2025–26, alongside £177.7 billion on pensioner benefits.

So the question has to be asked.

If Britain already has people out of work, people stuck on benefits, young people struggling to get jobs, graduates unable to find proper roles, and AI threatening to reduce demand for certain types of labour, why is the default answer still more immigration?

This does not mean Britain should never have any migration. That is a straw man.

It means the burden of proof should change.

Instead of assuming high migration is normal and asking critics to justify lower numbers, politicians should have to explain clearly why each route is needed, what economic value it brings, whether it raises wages or suppresses them, whether it adds to housing pressure, and whether Britain has the infrastructure to cope.

Because a growing population is not automatically a stronger country.

A stronger country is one where people can work, earn, build families, buy homes, access services, and see a future.

Right now, too many people cannot.

🧾 The Real Debate: Population Policy, Not Just Immigration Policy

This is why the latest ONS projections matter.

They should force Britain to have a grown-up debate about population policy.

Not just immigration policy. Not just border policy. Not just whether the projection is slightly lower than the last one. But the bigger question of what kind of country Britain is trying to become.

Do we want an economy that depends on constantly importing more people because it has failed to train, house, employ and support the people already here?

Do we want a society where young families cannot afford children, but politicians use migration to paper over the fertility collapse?

Do we want rising population numbers while public services deteriorate and housing becomes less attainable?

Do we want a labour market where young people are competing with global labour while AI changes the job market beneath their feet?

These are not extreme questions. They are basic questions of national planning. And they have been ducked for too long.

The latest projections may be lower than the last set. But they still show a Britain growing through migration, ageing rapidly, losing children as a share of the population, and placing even more pressure on housing and public services.

That is not a sustainable model. Britain needs a reset.

Lower migration. A serious family policy. A housing policy that prioritises citizens and young workers. A labour market that gets people already here into work. And a government willing to ask the most obvious question of all:

If Britain is already struggling to house, employ and support the people who live here now, why are we still planning for millions more?

✍️ Jamie Jenkins

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This week’s roundup has a simple theme: drift.

Everywhere you look, the country feels like it is being managed by a government that is already running out of road. Ministers are talking, announcing, briefing and blaming, but the core problems are not getting fixed. The public finances are still a mess. The labour market is softening. Small boats remain unresolved. And in Wales, we are now being told paramedic university places are being paused because there are not enough jobs available.

That last one really sums up modern Britain. You can wait hours for an ambulance, the system can be under constant pressure, and yet the answer is apparently not to train more paramedics. Meanwhile, across the wider public sector, money keeps being swallowed by bureaucracy, management layers, strategies, diversity roles and endless process. The frontline struggles, the taxpayer pays more, and nobody in power seems capable of asking the obvious question, what are we actually prioritising?

🧟 A Zombie Government, Consumed By Its Own Shambles

The week began with the Government still caught in the Peter Mandelson mess. Starmer promised integrity, professionalism and a clean break from the chaos of the Conservatives. Instead, he now finds himself under pressure over whether full vetting procedures were followed in the appointment of Mandelson as UK ambassador to Washington, with reports that security advice had been ignored or overruled.

This matters because it goes right to the heart of Starmer’s pitch. He built his brand on being serious, forensic and above the old political games. But this week the Government looked anything but serious. It looked defensive, confused and trapped in process, while the country’s real problems piled up around it.

That is why the phrase “zombie government” feels so fitting. Not because nothing is happening, but because the Government seems to be moving without purpose. It is staggering from row to row, statement to statement, apology to apology, without any clear sense of national direction.

And the public can see it.

People are not stupid. They can see a government that promised competence but is now stuck explaining who knew what, who signed off what, who ignored what, and why nobody seems responsible when things go wrong. At some point, the question becomes very simple, if they cannot run their own appointments properly, why should anyone believe they can run the country?

💷 Borrowing Is Still Huge, And Spending Keeps Going Up

Then came the latest borrowing figures. The Government will no doubt try to present them as some sort of improvement, because borrowing in the financial year ending March 2026 was estimated at £132.0 billion, down on the previous year and slightly below the OBR forecast.

But let’s not kid ourselves.

Borrowing £132 billion in a single year is still enormous. The ONS says it was the sixth highest financial year borrowing figure since records began in 1947.

That is the problem with modern politics. If the Government borrows a little less than expected, ministers want a round of applause. But the bigger picture is that the state is still spending far more than it raises, while taxpayers are being squeezed harder and harder to pay for it.

This is not fiscal discipline. It is managed decline with a press release.

The public sector keeps expanding. Spending keeps rising. Taxes keep going up. Debt remains extremely high. And yet, for all that extra money, people do not feel services improving. They feel poorer, more taxed, and less able to get the basics done.

That is the real failure. The state is taking more, borrowing more, spending more, and still not delivering enough.

And this is where Rachel Reeves has a serious problem. The Government has very little room for error. If inflation stays higher, if debt interest costs rise again, if growth disappoints, or if tax receipts come in weaker than hoped, the whole fiscal position gets squeezed very quickly.

So when ministers say the plan is working, I keep coming back to the same question, working for who?

Because it does not look like it is working for taxpayers. It does not look like it is working for businesses. And it certainly does not look like it is working for the people waiting on public services that still fail despite record levels of spending.

📉 The Labour Market Is Flashing Warning Signs

This week I also wrote about the labour market and cost of living pressure, because the latest data is not comfortable reading for the Government.

In my article, I pointed out that payrolled employment was 30.3 million in March 2026, down 65,000 on the year and down 11,000 on the month. Vacancies also fell again to 711,000, this is the lowest level of vacancies since February to April 2021.

That is not a labour market roaring with confidence.

It is a labour market where firms are clearly becoming more cautious. Retail is under pressure. Self employment has weakened. Vacancies have been falling for a long time. And this is happening while businesses are also dealing with higher employment costs, higher wage bills, higher energy costs and a consumer who is still squeezed.

This is the trap Labour has created for itself. It wants to tax more, regulate more and spend more, while still claiming it can deliver growth. But growth does not come from making it more expensive to employ people. It does not come from loading more costs onto business. And it does not come from pretending the private sector can keep absorbing every new burden government throws at it.

The cost of living is heating up again, but the labour market underneath is softening. That is a nasty combination. If prices are rising while jobs are weakening, families get hit from both sides.

Ministers will blame global events. They always do. But the domestic picture matters too. If you increase the cost of employing people, do not be shocked when employment weakens. If you increase the cost of doing business, do not be shocked when firms stop hiring. If you squeeze the productive economy, do not be shocked when growth disappoints.

This is not complicated. It is basic cause and effect.

🚤 Another Deal With France. More Money. Same Old Problem.

Then we had the latest small boats deal with France. Once again, Britain is paying more money to France to try to stop illegal Channel crossings.

Reports this week said the UK has agreed a new three year deal worth up to around £660 million, including extra police, surveillance, enforcement and a new French unit to tackle crossings. This follows years of previous payments and promises.

Sorry, but how many times are taxpayers expected to fall for this?

We keep handing over money. We keep being told this deal will be different. We keep being told the smugglers will be smashed. And then the boats keep coming.

The basic problem remains. If people know that reaching British waters gives them a strong chance of staying in the UK, then the incentive remains. You can spend more on drones, cameras, patrols and police, but unless the incentive changes, the flow will continue.

And this is what frustrates people. It is not just the boats. It is the sense that the British taxpayer is being treated like a bottomless cash machine. We pay for hotels. We pay for processing. We pay for legal challenges. We pay for enforcement. And now we pay France even more money to do what many people think France should already be doing.

Of course we need cooperation with France. Nobody sensible says otherwise. But cooperation cannot just mean Britain writes another cheque every year while ministers pretend they have solved the issue.

The public wants control. They want deterrence. They want enforcement. They want a system that is fair to people who follow the rules and firm with those who do not.

What they keep getting is another announcement.

🚑 Meanwhile In Wales, You Can Wait For An Ambulance, But They Are Pausing Paramedic Courses

Meanwhile in Wales, as people struggle to get an ambulance, we are now told there will be no paramedic university courses run in Wales for the upcoming academic year, with Health Education and Improvement Wales saying the decision was made to “reduce competition for vacancies”. ITV Wales reported that paramedic courses at Swansea and Wrexham are being paused because of a lack of job opportunities.

Just let that sink in.

This is Wales, where the NHS has been under pressure for years. Ambulance waits have been a major public concern. People know stories of patients waiting far too long for help. Families know what it feels like to be told there are no crews available. And now the system is saying, in effect, there are not enough jobs for new paramedics.

That should be a national embarrassment.

Because if the frontline is under pressure, why are we not making sure more people can get onto the frontline? If ambulances are struggling, why are we pausing the pipeline of paramedics? If the Welsh NHS is so stretched, why does the system still seem better at generating bureaucracy than capacity?

And yes, I do think this is where politicians need to get serious about priorities.

Before anyone tells us there is no money, look across the system. Look at the layers of management. Look at the strategies, boards, frameworks, equality plans, diversity posts, administrative growth and endless paperwork. Then ask whether every pound is being spent in the right place.

Because if I had to choose between another diversity role and more paramedics, I know what I would choose.

That is not controversial to most normal people. It is common sense. People want ambulances to arrive. They want hospitals to function. They want frontline staff supported. They do not want a public sector that is brilliant at writing strategies but poor at delivering services.

Wales should be a warning to the rest of the UK. This is what happens when political systems become obsessed with process, ideology and bureaucracy, while the basics fall apart.

Final Thought

So that is this week’s roundup.

A government drowning in its own Mandelson shambles. Borrowing still at huge levels. Taxes high. Spending high. Public services still failing. A labour market losing momentum. Another expensive deal with France that looks suspiciously like more of the same. Wales pausing paramedic training while people struggle to get ambulances. And jury trial changes moving through Parliament despite not being clearly put to voters.

This is what drift looks like. Not one single crisis. Not one single headline. But a country where the basics are not working, and the people in charge seem more interested in managing the narrative than fixing the problem.

The data, and the news this week, point in the same direction, Britain is paying more and getting less.

And that cannot carry on forever.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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In June 2024, the month before Labour took office, CPI inflation stood at 2.0%. It now stands at 3.3%. So before ministers start blaming wars, oil markets or events abroad, let’s start with the obvious: inflation is higher now than when Labour inherited office. The latest rise was driven above all by transport, with higher fuel costs pushing the headline the wrong way again.

At the same time, the labour market continues to struggle along. Payrolled employment is falling on the year, vacancies have fallen again, and the sharpest job losses are showing up in sectors like retail. This is what makes the latest inflation figures so awkward for ministers: prices are rising again, but the economy underneath still looks weak.

🚗 Transport Knocked Inflation Off Course

This is the key point in the whole release.

Without the surge in transport costs, inflation would have been broadly flat in March rather than rising again. That matters because CPI was supposed to be moving back towards the Bank of England’s 2% target. Instead, transport pushed the headline the wrong way again — and once higher fuel costs start feeding through the economy, the risk is that progress back to target gets delayed again.

The ONS says transport was the main upward driver of the annual rate, while clothing and footwear provided a downward offset. That tells you two things at once: transport did the damage, and without falling clothing prices the headline number would have looked worse still.

But this is not just a forecourt story. Food inflation also rose, from 3.3% to 3.7%. That is what makes this politically dangerous. Food is not an abstract economic concept. It is the weekly shop. It is the price of the basics. It is the part of inflation people feel in everyday life, again and again.

And that is why transport matters so much. Fuel costs do not stop at the pump. They feed into deliveries, haulage, supermarket shelves, service costs and business overheads. Families do not just pay once when they fill the car up. They often pay again at the tills.

⛽ Ministers Had Choices — And More Pressure Is Still Coming

Governments cannot stop every external shock. But they are not powerless either.

A temporary fuel duty cut or targeted tax relief would not have erased the full rise in pump prices, but it could have offset part of it. And part matters. If ministers had taken some of the edge off fuel prices, they could have reduced part of the immediate inflation hit and some of the wider pressure spreading through the economy. That is the point I made in my recent fuel-price piece: government has largely stood by while prices rose, even as the Treasury quietly benefits from higher VAT receipts.

So ministers do not get to pose as helpless bystanders. They had policy levers available and chose not to use them.

And there is every reason to think more inflationary pressure is still on the way. The March figures were already pushed up by transport and fuel, but they may not yet capture the full effect if pump prices continued rising beyond the reference period. On top of that, April brought another increase in minimum wage costs — including a 4.1% rise for workers aged 21 and over, an 8.5% rise for 18 to 20-year-olds, and 6.0% rises for both 16 to 17-year-olds and apprentices. Those increases will not have driven the March inflation figures, but they are exactly the kind of extra business costs that can start feeding into the next round of prices, especially in labour-intensive sectors.

That is what should worry ministers most. March may not be the end of the inflation story. It may only be the first wave.

💷 High Inflation Is Also A Treasury Problem

High inflation is not just painful for households. It can blow holes in the public finances too.

If inflation stays elevated, debt interest can rise through index-linked gilts. And if higher CPI persists for long enough, it can also mean more expensive uprating of CPI-linked benefits. The OBR notes that CPI is used widely in the tax and social security systems, while RPI drives interest on most index-linked government debt.

That means inflation does not just squeeze families at the supermarket or petrol station. It can also come back and hit the Chancellor’s books.

So this is not merely a cost-of-living problem. It is a government problem too.

📉 The Labour Market Is Too Weak For This

If the economy were roaring ahead, ministers might hope Britain could absorb another inflation bump. But that is not the backdrop here.

The PAYE figures show 30.3 million payrolled employees in March 2026, down 65,000 on the year and down 11,000 on the month. The ONS also says the biggest annual sector fall was in wholesale and retail, down 57,000.

That is worth pausing on. This is probably not some sweeping AI revolution replacing shop-floor workers. It looks much more like strain: weaker demand, higher employer costs, squeezed margins and firms pulling back. This is not a story of modernisation. It is a story of pressure in the real economy.

And the weakness is not just among employees. Workforce jobs were down 266,000 comparing December 2025 with a year earlier — and almost all of that fall came from self-employment, which was down 242,000. That hardly screams confidence, dynamism or risk-taking. It suggests caution in the very part of the labour market where you would want to see energy and optimism.

📌 Vacancies Show The Same Weakness

The vacancies figures tell the same story.

Vacancies fell again to 711,000, marking the 33rd consecutive quarterly decline and leaving job openings below pre-2020 levels. The employment rate slipped to 75.0%, inactivity rose to 21.0%, and regular pay growth slowed to 3.6%, with real regular pay growth only 0.2%.

That is what makes this whole picture so grim. Britain is not suffering from inflation because the economy is surging. It is seeing inflation rise again while the labour market softens underneath it.

That is a far uglier mix — and far harder for ministers to explain away.

Final Thought

This is what drift looks like.

Inflation is higher than when Labour took office. Transport stopped inflation being flat. Food prices are rising again, hitting the part of inflation people feel most in everyday life. Government could have softened some of the pressure through fuel tax relief, but chose not to. And there is every reason to think more inflationary pressure is still coming, with fuel costs still feeding through and higher minimum wage costs hitting from April.

At the same time, the labour market is softening. Retail is shedding jobs. Self-employment is down sharply. Vacancies keep falling.

And yet ministers will still try to say this is all just bad luck from abroad.

It is not.

Britain is too exposed to shocks, too weighed down by domestic cost pressures, and too economically weak to absorb inflation flaring up again. This is no longer just inflation happening to Britain.

It is inflation happening on Labour’s watch.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins

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There are elections where voters can at least pretend the people on offer look ready for power. This is not one of them in Wales.

After my latest chat with Mike Graham, Sunday night’s ITV leaders’ debate and the latest More in Common poll, the same conclusion keeps forcing itself to the surface. Wales is heading into one of the biggest political moments since devolution — and the quality on offer looks alarmingly poor. Labour is weakening. Plaid is rising. The map is shifting. The Senedd is expanding. But for all the noise, there is still no serious sense that Welsh politics is producing the kind of talent or vision needed to turn the country around.

📉 Jane Dodds Was Asked About The Money — And Fell Apart

One clip from my Mike Graham interview told you more about Welsh politics than hours of campaign spin ever could.

Jane Dodds was asked about the money, and the answer was chaos. Not clarity. Not command. Not even the basics. Just the sort of muddle that should end any serious claim to high office.

As I wrote on X, she came across as someone with no idea on the basics and no idea what the Welsh budget is.

And that matters because budgets are not some technical sideshow. They are the whole point. Every promise in politics eventually runs into the same wall: the money. If you do not understand that, then you do not understand the job.

That is why the clip mattered. Not because it was awkward. Not because it was embarrassing. But because it was revealing.

It showed, in a few seconds, what too much of Welsh politics now looks like: people asking for power without demonstrating even the most basic grip on what that power involves.

If you cannot explain the budget, you are not ready to help run the country. It really is that simple.

🎭 Sunday Night’s Debate Showed Just How Thin The Talent Pool Is

If the Jane Dodds clip captured the problem in one moment, Sunday night’s ITV leaders’ debate showed that it runs much wider.

This should have been the moment when party leaders showed they were ready to govern. Instead, what viewers got was a stage full of politicians long on lines, short on depth, and badly lacking anything close to a compelling vision for Wales. ITV’s coverage showed the leaders being challenged on the cost of living, health and public services, while separate campaign reporting set out the usual long list of party promises on tax, childcare, hospitals and transport.

But that is exactly the point. Welsh politics does not suffer from a shortage of promises. It suffers from a shortage of seriousness.

Where was the hard-headed plan for economic growth? Where was the honesty about trade-offs? Where was the recognition that public services cannot be fixed with warm words and another round of fantasy accounting?

Too much of the debate felt like politics as amateur dramatics — people performing conviction rather than demonstrating competence.

And that is the deeper problem in Wales. It is not just that too many politicians lack answers. It is that too few even look capable of asking the right questions.

🏴 The Poll Rounds Off A Pretty Bleak Picture

If the interview and the debate raised doubts about the quality on offer, the latest More in Common 2026 Senedd MRP projects Plaid Cymru on 30 seats, Reform on 28 and Labour on 24, with the Conservatives on 7, the Greens on 4 and the Liberal Democrats on 3. That would leave Labour in third place after 27 years in power, and Plaid as the largest party, though still 19 seats short of a majority

Yes, this poll is somewhat better for Labour than ITV Cymru Wales’ earlier March MRP, which had the party on just 12 seats. But “less awful than before” is not a recovery. A model that still puts Labour in third is not good news. It is a sign that the old order is breaking down.

And yet the really important point is not simply that Labour is weakening. It is that the alternatives still do not look convincing enough to inspire much confidence either.

That is what makes this poll so striking. It does not point to a country rallying around a strong new direction. It points to a country drifting away from one exhausted political model without any obvious belief in what comes next.

💷 More Politicians, Still No Sign Of Better Politics

And now for the part that would be funny if it were not so absurd.

At the very moment the political system is becoming more fragmented, more unstable and more visibly mediocre, the Senedd itself is expanding from 60 members to 96. That means more politicians, more salaries, more staffing costs and more burden on the taxpayer.

But where is the evidence that this will produce better politics?

Where is the sign that doubling down on the class of people currently producing this level of vision and competence is going to improve anything?

If anything, the opposite looks more likely. Wales is on course for more politicians, more posturing, more coalition horse-trading, more competing demands on public money — and still no serious plan.

That is the real indictment here. Not just that Welsh politics looks weak, but that it wants to become bigger at the same time.

Final Thought

Taken together, my chat with Mike Graham, Sunday night’s ITV leaders’ debate and the latest More in Common poll all point in the same direction.

The quality looks weak. The vision looks thin. The confidence they ask from voters is nowhere near matched by the seriousness they display in return.

Labour is fading. Plaid is rising. The system is fragmenting. More politicians are on the way.

But if this is the talent on offer for the next chapter of Welsh politics, voters are entitled to ask a very blunt question:

Is this really the best Wales can do?

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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The Covid inquiry says trust in vaccines must now be rebuilt. But trust was not broken by accident. It was broken by exaggerated claims, moral pressure, broken promises, and a culture that punished doubt while rewarding bad information from the right people.

The establishment now talks about “rebuilding trust” as though trust simply faded away. It did not.

Trust was broken when the public was sold certainty in a situation full of uncertainty. Broken when politicians told people the jab would stop them from infecting others. Broken when parents were pressured to vaccinate children despite tiny levels of serious risk. Broken when TV doctors got basic numbers wrong and still kept their authority. Broken when ministers promised one thing on passports and mandates, then moved the other way.

That is the story. Not that lots of vaccines were delivered. But that public confidence was burned up in the way the campaign was sold.

💉 Rebuilding trust means admitting how it was broken

Baroness Hallett says trust in vaccines must be rebuilt before the next pandemic. She is right. But that starts with admitting why trust fell in the first place.

The easy answer is to blame “misinformation” online. That is convenient. It also lets ministers, broadcasters and public-health figures dodge their own role.

Because much of the damage came from the top down.

From politicians speaking with far more certainty than the evidence justified. From broadcasters pushing fear and moral pressure. From experts flattening nuance into slogans. And from a wider culture that treated scepticism as a vice rather than a sign that people wanted honest answers.

You do not rebuild trust by lecturing the public again. You rebuild it by admitting the public was often spoken to in a way that felt manipulative, one-sided and, at times, plainly misleading.

⚠️ Vaccinated under false pretences

This is where the trust argument becomes undeniable.

People were not simply told to take the Covid vaccine to reduce their own risk. They were told to take it to protect others. That was the emotional core of the campaign.

At Christmas 2021, Boris Johnson said: “We have been getting that vaccination that protects us and stops us infecting others.” That was the sales pitch. And millions complied on that basis. They took the jab because they believed they were protecting elderly parents, vulnerable relatives, neighbours and friends.

That is why the phrase “vaccinated under false pretences” hits so hard.

Because many people now feel they were not simply informed. They were pushed. They were guilted. They were made to feel that hesitation was selfish, that questioning was dangerous, and that doing “the right thing” meant falling in line.

Once people conclude they were pressured on a false or incomplete basis, trust does not wobble. It breaks. And once it breaks, no amount of polished messaging will put it back together.

🧒 Four million doses for one ICU admission

If you want to know why so many parents stopped trusting the system, start here.

Back in February 2022, I wrote that the JCVI had reaffirmed that Covid-19 was a very low risk to children aged 5 to 11. Under an Omicron-type scenario, it estimated that around four million doses given to two million children would be needed to prevent a single ICU admission. It also pointed to around 58,000 vaccinations to prevent one hospitalisation, while estimating that roughly 85% of children in that age group had probably already had the virus by the end of January 2022.

That should have set off alarm bells. Four million doses for one ICU admission.

Those are not the numbers of a clear, overwhelming case for pressure. Yet the pressure came anyway. Parents were nudged. Hesitation was frowned upon. The culture around the issue suggested that only reckless people would pause and ask whether any of this was proportionate.

This is where the trust argument stops being abstract. If the direct benefit was that small, why was the push so hard? Why were parents made to feel irresponsible for hesitating? Why did a low-risk group become part of such a moralised public-health campaign?

People can forgive uncertainty. What they do not forgive is being pushed on weak numbers and then being treated as the problem for noticing.

📺 The misinformation didn’t just come from social media

One of the great frauds of the Covid years was the claim that misinformation was mainly a problem from below.

Of course, there was some nonsense online. But some of the most damaging misinformation came from the biggest platforms in the country — mainstream television, household-name experts, and broadcasters speaking to millions.

I wrote about this in my piece on Dr Hilary Jones leaving ITV. In December 2021, Dr Hilary told viewers on Lorraine: “Ninety per cent of people in hospital have not been vaccinated.” NHS England data at the time showed the figure was around 36%, not 90%. Later came more dramatic claims about hospitals and ventilators that the data also did not support.

That is not a small detail. That is trust-destroying. Because the public was endlessly warned about misinformation while being fed misinformation from national television studios.

And it was not just one example. You have the ITV medic claiming that after 12 days from a first AstraZeneca dose, you were “100% effective against hospitalisation and death.” You have the wider pattern of overconfident messaging. You have NHS England later deleting material after concerns it had overplayed the risk to children, something referenced in your own piece at the time.

The point is simple. The public did not just lose trust because of anonymous cranks on social media. They lost trust because some of the loudest bad information came from the very people telling everyone else to trust the experts.

🚫 Pressure, mandates and passports made everything worse

The next great mistake was turning a public-health campaign into a pressure campaign.

Once persuasion gave way to coercion, the entire tone changed. It was no longer “here is the evidence, make your choice.” It became “comply, or face consequences.”

In Wales, Mark Drakeford said: “There will be no mandation of [vaccine certificates] here in Wales. There will never be a requirement for people to demonstrate they have been vaccinated.” That wording matters because it was absolute. And when politicians speak in absolutes and then move the other way, they do not just change policy. They teach the public not to believe them.

That is how trust breaks.

Across the UK, care workers were mandated. NHS staff were threatened next before the policy was dropped. Vaccine passports hung over daily life. The inquiry reporting says mandatory vaccination decisions likely contributed to alienation and hesitancy. Of course they did.

Because once governments stop making the case and start tightening the screws, people start asking a fatal question:

If the argument is so strong, why do you need force? That question alone does immense damage.

🤐 If you punish dissent, don’t act surprised when trust dies

The final piece is this: people were not just pushed to comply. They were made to feel suspect for questioning any of it.

Raise concerns about harms, and you risked being branded reckless. Challenge passports, and you were treated like a nuisance. Point out bad data from mainstream broadcasters, and somehow you became the problem rather than the misinformation itself.

That culture was poisonous.

The inquiry now says serious long-term injury from Covid vaccines was rare but real, and that the vaccine damage payment scheme needs urgent reform because it is not sufficiently supportive. That matters not only because of those affected, but because a trustworthy system does not sneer at difficult truths. It faces them.

Once people see that the wrong people were treated as dangerous while the right people were allowed to mislead with impunity, trust vanishes.

And once it vanishes, it is very hard to win back.

🔚 Final thought

The lesson of the Covid vaccination programme is not that the public needs another lecture.

It is the people who broke trust who are now asking for more of it.

• They told people the jab would stop them from infecting others.

• They pressured parents to vaccinate children despite the very limited benefit.

• They tolerated misinformation from mainstream screens while denouncing dissent elsewhere.

• They made promises on mandates and passports, then broke them.

• They blurred the line between consent and coercion.

And now they act surprised that so many people no longer believe them.

That is the scandal. Not that trust fell. But it was squandered. And that too many of the people responsible still refuse to admit it.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins

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If Pakistan is so dangerous that it is Britain’s top source of asylum claims, then common sense says very few people would want to visit it.

But that is not what the numbers show.

The ONS travel data show 625,000 UK-resident visits to Pakistan in 2024. Yet Home Office figures show Pakistan was once again the top source country for asylum claims in the year ending December 2025, with a total of 100,625 claimants.

That does not prove every asylum claim from Pakistan is false, or that nobody there faces real danger. But it does create a glaring contradiction that Britain’s asylum system should be able to explain far better than it currently does.

✈️ UK residents still travel to Pakistan in large numbers

According to the ONS, UK residents made 625,000 visits to Pakistan last year. That included around 24,000 holidays, 10,000 business trips, 585,000 visits to friends or relatives, and 6,000 miscellaneous visits.

Those figures do not prove Pakistan is safe for everyone, and they do not mean nobody can face persecution there. But they do show something politically important: Pakistan is clearly not a country that UK residents want to avoid.

That is what makes the asylum numbers so striking. If a country continues to attract hundreds of thousands of UK resident visits every year, then it is entirely reasonable to ask much tougher questions about why it is also producing the largest number of asylum claims in Britain.

The travel figures do not settle the argument on their own. But they make the scale of the asylum claims much harder to accept at face value.

📈 Pakistan still tops the asylum table

In the year ending December 2025, 100,625 people claimed asylum in the UK. That is below the recent peak, but still extremely high by the standards of the last two decades. Pakistan accounted for 11% of all claimants, making it the largest single source country once again.

So this is not a minor issue buried somewhere in the data. Pakistan is not just one contributor among many. It is the number one source of asylum claims to Britain.

That alone ought to command far more scrutiny than it does. Because if the top asylum source country is also one that UK residents still visit in very large numbers, then the public is entitled to ask whether the system is really distinguishing between genuine protection cases and something else.

🚤 Most Pakistani claims are made after arrival, not on small boats

The route into the system makes the picture even clearer. There were 10,638 Pakistani asylum claimants in 2025. Of those, 9,875 claimed in-country and only 763 claimed at port. Just 108 Pakistani small boat arrivals went on to claim asylum. So despite all the political focus on the boats, very few Pakistani asylum claims are tied to that route. Most are made only after people are already in the UK.

It means this is not mainly a story about people fleeing immediate danger and arriving by small boat. It is, overwhelmingly, a story about people getting into Britain first and then entering the asylum system later.

That does not make every claim illegitimate. But taken together with the travel figures, it points to a system that is far too open to abuse.

Asylum was never meant to become a route that people can switch into after arriving on a visa, only for the country to spend months or years trying to work out whether the claim is genuine.

🌍 The comparison with safer countries exposes the problem

The wider comparison makes the contradiction even harder to ignore.

• UK residents made 564,000 visits to Australia in 2024. Australia produced just 4 asylum claimants in 2025.

• UK residents made around 593,000 visits to Norway. Norway produced just 1 asylum claimant.

• UK residents made about 373,000 visits to Japan. Japan produced none.

• UK residents made roughly 160,000 visits to New Zealand. New Zealand produced just 8 asylum claimants.

Pakistan saw 625,000 UK resident visits — more than Australia and Norway, and far more than Japan or New Zealand — yet it also produced 10,638 asylum claimants. Those countries, by contrast, generate virtually no asylum claims to Britain.

Again, that does not prove nobody in Pakistan can ever have a genuine protection case. But it does make it much harder to believe that the scale of claims from Pakistan is simply a straightforward reflection of people fleeing danger.

The more plausible conclusion is that Britain’s asylum system is not properly filtering between genuine refugees and opportunists.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
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This week offered a pretty clear snapshot of modern politics in Britain and Wales.

On one side, organised immigration crime operating in Welsh communities. On the other hand, parties demanding more powers, more spending and more control, while offering very little evidence that they can use the powers they already have well. Different stories, same pattern.

🚨 The Caerphilly Case Exposes A Bigger Failure

The most striking story of the week was not a manifesto launch. It was the National Crime Agency confirming that a people-smuggling operation was being masterminded from a car wash in Caerphilly. Two men were jailed for 19 years each, and the NCA says it believes they smuggled more than 400 people in just six months.

That matters because it cuts across one of the biggest issues in Britain today. Illegal immigration is not just about boats in the Channel or arguments in Westminster. It is also about organised criminal networks operating on the ground, including in Welsh communities.

Once people enter the country illegally, they can still go on to commit serious offences, and the public ends up paying again through policing, prosecution, prison and wider enforcement costs. In this case, the NCA investigation was supported by Gwent Police, and the public now picks up the bill for the consequences.

We are often told immigration is not devolved, as if that settles the matter in Wales. Formally, border control is not devolved. But the consequences of illegal immigration and organised criminality do not sit neatly in constitutional boxes. They land in local communities, on local services, and ultimately on the public purse.

That is why this story matters. It is not just about one case in Caerphilly. It is about a wider failure of control, enforcement and political seriousness.

🏴 Plaid Cymru — More Power, More Tax, Less Credibility

With less than a month to go until the Senedd election, Plaid Cymru launched its manifesto this week. Like many of the parties, it is full of promises. But, again, like many of the parties, there is far less detail on how all of it would actually be paid for.

Plaid likes to present itself as the fresh alternative in Welsh politics. But on the big questions, its instincts are familiar: more powers, more intervention and more tax.

Wales is already taxed enough under Westminster. But Plaid’s answer is not to lighten the burden — it is to demand more devolved powers so Cardiff Bay can levy more taxes of its own. The manifesto backs made-in-Wales income tax bands, a Vacant Land Tax and an increase in the Senedd’s total capital debt limit from £1 billion to £3 billion. It is the same socialist instinct as ever: when the model fails, take more, spend more, and promise that next time it will work.

That is hard to take seriously when health outcomes and education outcomes in Wales are worse than in England. Plaid’s own manifesto says around 1 in 5 people in Wales is on an NHS waiting list, with more than 5,000 waiting more than two years for treatment, and that Wales recorded its lowest ever PISA scores in 2022. After more than two decades of devolution, that should be the starting point for humility. Instead, Plaid’s answer is to ask for more powers, more borrowing and more room to do even more of the same.

The contradiction runs deeper than that. Plaid wants Wales to move towards leaving one political and economic union — the United Kingdom — while also pushing to move closer to another in Europe through the single market and customs union. The manifesto says the UK should urgently seek to rejoin both. That is not realism. It is a constitutional obsession dressed up as a strategy.

Its stance on immigration reflects a similar instinct. The manifesto says Plaid does not support open borders or uncontrolled migration, but backs a Wales-specific visa and shortage occupation list as a first step towards devolving immigration powers. It also opposes restrictions on student visas and wants a joined-up strategy to support migrants and sanctuary seekers with no recourse to public funds.

That all points in one direction: a softer, more accommodating instinct.

When a party signals that it wants a more welcoming approach without giving equal weight to enforcement and control, it risks sending the wrong message. Border policy must begin with public safety. If even one person who should not have been in this country goes on to attack a woman or a child — something we have seen far too often — that is one too many.

There is also a political reality here that cannot be ignored. For many of the key years of devolution, Plaid has supported Labour, whether through formal deals or informal partnerships. Its co-operation agreement with Welsh Labour ran until May 2024.

That is part of the credibility gap at the heart of Welsh politics. Too many of the people asking for more power have done too little with the power they already have. And if you are honest about the standard of talent on display, you do have to wonder how many would command anything like the same level of responsibility or reward in a competitive private-sector environment. Very few, I suspect.

💷 The New Tax Year — The State Expands Again

The new tax year brought one of the biggest policy changes of the week: the scrapping of the two-child limit. The government says the change will put 450,000 children on a pathway out of poverty in the final year of this Parliament, and that up to 1.5 million children across Great Britain could be helped by the change.

That is the compassionate case, and it is easy to see why it resonates. But there is a wider point that should not be ignored.

Britain is already living with one of the highest tax burdens in decades, and yet the response to weak living standards is still to expand redistribution rather than tackle the underlying causes. Instead of building a country where families keep more of what they earn, the system increasingly works by taking more from working households and then handing more of it back through the state.

That tells you a lot about the direction of travel. Britain is becoming a country where government failure is answered not with reform, but with a bigger bill.

🐎 The Greens — From Anti-Car To Anti-Horse

The Green Party also provided one of the more telling stories around Grand National weekend, with renewed attention on comments from Zack Polanski calling for animals to be removed from sport. As reported, Polanski wrote on X in 2024: “Let’s go further and remove all animals involved in sport.” He has also backed banning equestrian events from the Olympics.

That matters because this is not some tiny fringe issue. Horse racing is a major industry worth around £4 billion, tied to jobs, events and local economies.

It also brought a sharp response from one of racing’s best-known figures. Trainer Nicky Henderson invited Polanski to visit his yard and see the reality for himself. As Henderson put it, “It’s a five-star hotel for horses. These wonderful animals are bred to race.”

That line gets to the heart of the debate. For many people involved in the sport, this is not cruelty dressed up as tradition. It is a long-established part of British life built around the care, training and performance of elite animals.

What stands out is the wider pattern. First, the focus was on reducing car use, and now it extends into traditional leisure and sport. For a party that presents itself as tolerant and progressive, there is an increasing tendency to challenge and restrict ordinary choices and long-standing traditions that do not align with its worldview.

🌱 The Green Agenda In Wales — Full Of Fantasy, Still Worrying

The Welsh Green Party launched its manifesto this week, with the cost-of-living crisis presented as a top priority. The pitch included a long list of commitments and support measures.

Like many of the parties, it is full of promises. But the familiar problem remains: there is far less clarity on how any of it would really be paid for.

That matters because, however unrealistic some of these policies may sound, they are not politically harmless. The Greens are no longer just a fringe protest outfit shouting from the sidelines. Their ideas could still influence the direction of the next Welsh government if the numbers line up.

The problem is that much of this agenda appears disconnected from how people actually live, particularly in Wales. Large parts of the country remain rural, car-dependent, and less able to absorb policies designed around urban assumptions and activist preferences.

That is why this manifesto should be taken seriously, even if much of it reads like fantasy. It is full of expensive promises, light on funding detail, and built around policies that would push Wales further toward a bigger, more interventionist state.

🎯 Conclusion

Put together, this week’s stories paint a consistent picture. Plaid Cymru continues to lean toward more tax powers, more borrowing and more constitutional focus, rather than confronting the outcomes of the current model. Westminster continues to expand the welfare state while leaving deeper economic challenges unresolved. And the Greens are becoming more confident in pushing policies that extend into how people live their daily lives.

At the same time, serious issues such as organised immigration crime are too often handled cautiously or avoided altogether, particularly when politicians can hide behind arguments about devolved powers rather than show real leadership.

That is why these stories matter when viewed together. They reflect a broader political instinct to expand the role of the state while struggling to deliver improvements where they are most needed.

Because increasingly, the direction of travel feels clear: a larger state, greater intervention, and growing pressure on the people who fund it.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
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Last week, the Green Party’s wider direction came into focus with reports of a proposed 55mph speed limit on major roads, alongside higher costs for drivers, fewer parking spaces and tighter restrictions on car use. This week, with the Senedd election approaching, we have had their Wales-specific manifesto: softer in tone, more carefully packaged, and focused on devolved powers. But scratch beneath the surface, and the same instincts are still there. The Welsh pitch is gentler. The agenda is not.

That matters because the Greens are no longer just a fringe protest outfit. YouGov’s first Senedd MRP for ITV Cymru Wales put Plaid Cymru on 43 seats and the Greens on 10, which would be enough for a Plaid-Green majority in the new 96-seat chamber. And at Westminster level, YouGov’s latest voting intention poll has the Greens on 16%, level with Labour. These are no longer background numbers. They point to a party with real political space and, in Wales, a plausible route to influence if Plaid falls short of governing alone.

🚗 A Softer Welsh Mask Over A Harder Agenda

The Welsh manifesto does not explicitly repeat the reported 55mph proposal. But it would be a serious mistake to treat the Welsh document as some fundamentally different project. The instinct is the same: make driving less central, make alternatives politically favoured, and reshape how people travel from the top down.

The manifesto promises £1 bus fares, free travel for under-22s, a target to double the proportion of journeys made by walking, wheeling, cycling and public transport by 2030, a requirement that at least 10% of the transport budget be spent on active travel, and a roads policy that says maintaining existing roads must come before building new ones. It also backs community car-sharing and says public subsidy for Cardiff Airport should end by the close of the Senedd term.

On paper, that can be sold as a rebalance. In practice, it reflects the same anti-motorist instinct that surfaced nationally last week. The reported wider package included a 55mph limit on major roads, repeated driving tests every five years, incremental fuel tax rises and steadily reduced parking spaces. You do not need every one of those lines to appear in the Welsh manifesto to see the direction of travel. It is already there.

📉 Wales Still Runs On Cars

This is where Green theory collides with Welsh reality.

Wales is not a compact, metro-based economy where most people can swap a car for a tram, tube or frequent rail service. Large parts of the country still rely on cars every day for commuting, school runs, caring responsibilities, and basic services. Even the Green manifesto admits many communities have been left without reliable alternatives to the car after decades of underinvestment in public transport.

That is not ideology. It is geography.

If you make driving slower, pricier, and less practical before alternatives are properly in place, you do not create a smooth green transition. You create a squeeze on working people. Shift workers in the valleys, parents juggling childcare, carers helping elderly relatives and tradesmen moving between sites are not abstract units in a transport model. They are people whose lives still depend on getting from A to B reliably. Wales cannot be run on a fantasy rail map and a bicycle.

💷 Promise Everything, Cost Nothing

The financial problem is just as serious.

The manifesto promises to scrap council tax and replace it with a land value tax. It promises a one-year rent freeze followed by rent controls. It promises to build 60,000 affordable homes over 10 years, with most of them social housing. It promises £1 bus fares, free travel for under-22s and universal childcare from nine months. It also promises a Green Transformation Fund, a National Green Jobs Plan, more community ownership, more public intervention and a long list of new legal duties, frameworks and programmes.

Some of those promises will sound attractive on first reading. That is the point. But serious politics is not a list of things people would like to have. Serious politics is about trade-offs, constraints and delivery. And that is the hole at the centre of this manifesto.

It is full of things the Greens want to spend, cap, freeze, subsidise, build or regulate. It is much thinner on what gets dropped, where the money comes from, how quickly the Welsh state could realistically deliver it, and what happens when the theory collides with the budget. The document calls for greater Welsh borrowing powers and tax reform, including replacing council tax and business rates with land value-based systems, but that is still a very long way from a credible explanation of how the whole package adds up.

This is the classic Green problem. They promise Scandinavian-style provision with no serious reckoning with the bill.

⚡ Lower Bills, But No Nuclear

The energy section exposes another contradiction.

The Greens say they want to cut bills and drive a rapid low-carbon transition. They want 100% of Wales’s electricity demand to be met by renewable energy by 2035, backed by at least 17GW of renewable generation, including 5GW of solar power and 10GW of battery storage. They also want new homes built with rooftop solar and fossil-free heating, such as heat pumps.

At the same time, the manifesto says plainly that the Green Party opposes nuclear power, including small modular reactors.

That is not a minor detail. It is a serious contradiction. They want more electric heating, more electric transport and more electrification across the economy, but they rule out one of the few firm low-carbon sources that can keep the system stable when renewable output drops. If you want lower bills, higher resilience and less fossil fuel use, taking nuclear off the table makes the challenge harder, not easier. Ambition without realism is not a plan.

🌾 Farmers Backed — Then Buried In Frameworks

The Greens are careful in how they talk about farming. The language is softer than many people might expect. They say farmers must be “properly rewarded”, they promise to simplify some agricultural regulations, and they talk about viability and a just transition.

But the broader direction is still unmistakable: a national land-use framework, national minimum environmental standards, targets on soil, pesticides and pollution, a stronger Sustainable Farming Scheme, more metrics, more strategic direction over how land is used, and a wider shift toward the Green view of how food, climate and nature policy should be integrated.

That may be attractive to policy professionals. It is less obvious that it will be attractive to farmers already dealing with unstable markets, rising costs and constant uncertainty. The Greens say they are backing farmers. Too often, what they are really offering is to manage them.

🏛️ The Bigger Picture

Step back from the individual policies, and a broader pattern appears.

Across transport, housing, energy, food, land and the economy, the answer is almost always the same: more state direction, more regulation, more public bodies, more targets, more frameworks, more intervention. The manifesto talks a lot about fairness, climate and community, but much less about productivity, wealth creation and the basic question of how Wales grows strongly enough to support all the promises being made.

That is why the title fits. This really is war on motorists, fantasy on finance.

On the transport side, the party’s instinct is to make driving less attractive in a country that still depends heavily on the car. On the economic side, it offers a long catalogue of attractive-sounding commitments without anything like the same seriousness on cost, trade-offs or delivery.

📊 Why This Matters Now

For years, it was easy to shrug off Green manifestos as a kind of moral wishlist: interesting in theory, irrelevant in practice. That is no longer good enough.

The latest Senedd polling says Plaid could be the largest party, but still short of a majority. The same projection gives the Greens 10 seats and points to a Plaid-Green arrangement as one plausible route to stable government. Anthony Slaughter has already said collaboration is “in the DNA” of his party and that the Greens are open to negotiations with Plaid Cymru. This is no longer about mocking fringe proposals. It is about looking seriously at what influence these ideas could have if the Greens end up holding the balance of power.

⚠️ The Bottom Line

The Green Party’s Wales manifesto is written in softer language than the national headlines that broke last week. But the underlying worldview is the same. It is suspicious of cars, comfortable with control, hostile to nuclear, heavy on intervention and remarkably relaxed about cost.

That does not make it evil. It does make it unserious.

Wales needs better transport, more homes, cheaper energy and stronger public services. But it also needs realism. It needs a government that understands how people actually live, how the economy actually works and how much policy failure costs when ministers start from ideology rather than reality.

The Greens are offering a vision of Wales that sounds compassionate on paper. In practice, it risks being slower, poorer and more tightly controlled. And if they do end up holding the balance of power in the next Senedd, that will stop being a theory very quickly.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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This week, as we moved into the new tax year, the two‑child limit in Universal Credit and Child Tax Credit was scrapped. Support is now paid for every child — not just the first two.

That sounds simple. But it isn’t. This is one of the biggest welfare decisions in years — and it brings an old question back into view:

What should the welfare system do when families have children they cannot afford?

🧾 The Cap Was Introduced To Reflect What Families Can Actually Afford

The two-child limit was introduced to reflect a simple reality:

👉 Many families think carefully about whether they can afford to have more children — and if they cannot, they don’t.

For most households, having another child is not just a personal decision. It is a financial one.

People look at wages, rent or mortgage costs, childcare, bills and the wider cost of living, then make difficult choices about what they can realistically afford.

The argument for the cap was that the welfare system should reflect that same reality.

If many families have to limit family size because of what they can afford, should the benefits system keep paying more regardless?

That was the principle.

💷 Labour Has Scrapped It — For £2.3bn Next Year

This week, that principle was reversed. The two-child cap is now gone. Support is paid for every child, not just the first two.

The government says around 1.5 million children could benefit, with 450,000 projected to be lifted out of poverty by the final year of this Parliament.

There is no doubt that this will increase support for larger low-income families.

But it comes at a cost. This policy costs around £2.3 billion next year, rising to roughly £3 billion a year by the end of the decade.

The OBR estimates 510,000 families will gain next year, rising to 560,000 by the end of the decade.

👉 On average, families are set to receive around £4,500 more next year — roughly £380 a month — rising to more than £5,300 a year.

That is real money. It is also a permanent expansion of the welfare state — introduced at a time when tax thresholds are frozen, fiscal drag is pulling more workers into higher tax bands, and many households already feel they are paying more just to stand still.

👉 This is a transfer — from those paying into the system, to those receiving more from it.

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Larger Low-Income Families Gain Most — And Some Groups Gain Disproportionately

The main beneficiaries are low-income households with three or more children.

Many of them are in work. Around 60% of households affected by the cap had a parent in work. So this is not simply a story about workless households. It is about low-income families, including many who are already working.

In absolute terms, most of the money will go to White households, because they made up the largest share of those affected under the previous system. But proportionately, the gains are not evenly spread.

The policy matters most for larger families — and larger family sizes are not evenly distributed. The Children’s Commissioner found that:

• 41% of Pakistani families

• 38% of Bangladeshi families

• compared with 14% of White British families

have three or more children.

👉 That means Pakistani and Bangladeshi families are more likely to benefit disproportionately from lifting the cap, because they are more likely to have the family size the policy affects most.

Both things are true at once:

• Most of the total spending goes to White households in absolute terms

• But some groups are likely to see larger proportional gains

⚖️ The Real Question Is Whether This Is Fair To Taxpayers

This is where the debate sits. Millions of households make difficult decisions every year about whether they can afford another child.

Some delay it. Some stop at two. Some decide they simply cannot make the numbers work. Not because they want to. Because they have to. They budget. They plan. They absorb the cost themselves.

Now compare that to a system where:

👉 The state steps in to fund additional children beyond what a household could otherwise afford.

That is a fundamental shift.

If one family decides it cannot afford more children, why should another family’s choice be underwritten by taxpayers?

There is no doubt that this policy reduces child poverty.

👉 The government estimates 450,000 children will be lifted out of poverty by the final year of this Parliament.

But policy does not just change outcomes. It also changes the signals the system sends.

The original cap said that affordability mattered.

👉 This change says the state will step in anyway.

Even now, the system is not clean. The benefit cap still remains, meaning some families will not receive the full gain.

And more broadly, this fits a wider pattern: higher taxes, more welfare spending, and a growing reliance on redistribution at a time when borrowing remains high, debt is near record levels, and growth is weak.

👉 This is how the system increasingly works: families who work and make hard decisions about what they can afford are asked to fund a system that softens those same financial constraints for others.

🧠 Conclusion

Scrapping the two-child cap will increase support for larger low-income families, cost around £3 billion a year by the end of this Parliament, and, according to the government, lift 450,000 children out of poverty.

That is the headline. But the bigger question is whether this is the best way to help families at all.

Yes, higher benefit payments may reduce measured poverty. But it still relies on the assumption that more household benefit income automatically translates into better outcomes for the child.

And it leaves a wider problem untouched.

Britain increasingly taxes working people more heavily, then gives part of that money back through an ever more complicated welfare system — with all the cost, bureaucracy and distortions that come with it.

So the real question is not just whether this policy helps.

It is whether we would be better off building a system where working families keep more of what they earn in the first place — and need less recycling through the state.

👉 That would mean lower taxes, less bureaucracy, and a system that supports family life without first taking the money away.

That is the real choice here.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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Fuel prices are moving fast — and the numbers are getting worse.

When I wrote on Sunday, I estimated that rising pump prices were handing the Treasury about £36 million more in VAT every week. Just a few days later, that figure is already closer to £43 million a week.

Petrol has jumped from 132.83p on 28 February to 153.68p a litre. Diesel has surged from 142.38p to 184.20p. That is a rise of 20.85p for petrol and 41.82p for diesel in just over a month.

This is moving quickly — and it is already starting to spread beyond the forecourt.

⛽ Prices Are Still Rising

This is no longer a minor increase that drivers can absorb. It is a sharp and sustained squeeze on households, commuters and businesses.

Diesel is doing much of the damage. And when diesel rises like this, it does not stay contained. It feeds directly into deliveries, logistics and the cost of moving goods across the country.

There is no clear sign yet that the pressure has peaked. If anything, the risk is that it spreads further through the economy before it eases.

🎤 On Wednesday, Starmer Offered Review — Not Relief

At his press conference on Wednesday, Keir Starmer confirmed the fuel-duty cut will remain until September, while emphasising that the government is monitoring the situation.

Prices are rising now. Costs are rising now. And the inflation data has not even caught up yet. What motorists are being offered is uncertainty. What businesses are being offered is a delay. And what families are being offered is the hope that things improve.

When people want action, the government is offering a review.

📉 This Is Starting To Look Like A Wider Economic Problem

The February inflation figures are already out of date. They were collected before the Iran conflict began on 28 February, when fuel was still dragging inflation down.

The next figures will show something very different. Petrol and diesel are now likely to push inflation back up again.

Once that happens, this stops being just a fuel story. Higher fuel costs feed into transport, deliveries and wider business prices. If that pressure holds, it begins to show up across the economy.

And if it lasts long enough, it hits the public finances too. Higher inflation increases the cost of servicing government debt. At the same time, benefits are uprated using the September inflation figure, meaning sustained price rises now can translate directly into higher welfare spending next year.

Fuel does not just hit the pump. It works its way through everything.

🚗 Drivers Are Being Squeezed From More Than One Direction

This is not just about the cost of filling up anymore. From this month, the standard annual rate of Vehicle Excise Duty rises to £200, with more vehicles — including electric cars — being drawn into the tax net.

So drivers are being hit twice. Higher costs when they use their car, and higher costs simply for owning one.

🛣️ You Already Pay Per Mile

There is also a bigger point here. Motorists are often warned about pay-per-mile charges. But for petrol and diesel drivers, that system already exists.

Every time you fill up, you pay fuel duty. The more you drive, the more fuel you use, and the more tax you pay. The model has not changed. The state is not moving away from taxing movement. It is looking for the next version of it.

🌄 Many Motorists Have No Real Choice

For many people, driving is not optional. It is essential.

That is especially true in rural areas, where public transport is limited or non-existent. For millions, the car is the only way to get to work, run a business, or manage daily life.

That is what makes this so politically important. The easiest people to tax are the ones who cannot opt out.

🌍 Other Governments Are At Least Trying To Cushion The Blow

Across Europe and beyond, governments are stepping in.

Fuel taxes are being cut. Temporary subsidies are being introduced. Key sectors are being supported. In some cases, direct action is being taken to limit price volatility.

The approach is simple: when prices surge, governments act. Britain’s response looks very different. Ministers are monitoring the situation, while the cost to drivers keeps rising.

Conclusion

What began as a pump-price story is now something much bigger. It is an inflation story. A business-cost story. And increasingly, a public-finance story too.

For millions of people, there is no alternative to driving. They still have to get to work, move goods and keep daily life going.

Higher fuel prices do not just hit drivers. They ripple through the economy, push up inflation, and — if they persist — increase the cost of benefits and borrowing as well.

There are no official shortages today. But if this continues, the risk is no longer just higher prices. It is a wider disruption. Drivers are paying more. Businesses are paying more. Families are paying more.

And Britain still has no real plan.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
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This week’s Stat of the Nation starts at the forecourt, where higher petrol and diesel prices are not just squeezing drivers but quietly boosting the Treasury’s tax take too. From there, it heads to Wales, where a new poll points to a collapse in Welsh Labour support and a political establishment already talking openly about how to stop Reform from taking power.

Then there is the London march against the so-called “far right”. But if that label now includes a party leading some mainstream polls, what exactly does the term even mean anymore? Put together, these stories point to the same thing: a growing gap between establishment language and public reality.

⛽ The Treasury Wins Twice When Fuel Prices Rise

The latest RAC figures show average pump prices at 150.11p a litre for petrol and 177.68p for diesel on 27 March. RAC says that since the conflict began on 28 February, petrol has risen by 17.3p a litre and diesel by 35.3p. That is a big hit for drivers. But it is also good news for the Treasury.

Fuel duty alone is expected by the Office for Budget Responsibility to raise £24 billion in 2025-26 — about £460 million a week before VAT is even counted. Then there is the extra windfall from higher pump prices. Using official 2024 road-fuel demand, the rise in petrol and diesel prices over the past month implies the Treasury is now taking roughly £36 million more in VAT every week than before on RAC’s comparison. If those prices were sustained, that would be worth roughly £1.9 billion a year in extra VAT alone. That is an estimate, not a Treasury forecast, and it assumes fuel demand holds up.

And diesel matters far beyond the forecourt. Official data shows the UK still uses far more road diesel than petrol, which tells you this is not just about private motorists. Diesel is tied to haulage, delivery fleets and business transport, so when diesel prices surge, the cost does not stay with drivers alone. It feeds through into the cost of moving goods around the country, which means households often end up paying again through higher prices in the shops.

So the state wins twice: it collects the fixed duty on every litre sold, and then takes a bigger slice in VAT as prices climb. And if road use does start to fall, that may not worry many policymakers too much either, given how often transport policy now points in the direction of making driving less attractive. Either way, motorists — and often households more broadly — lose.

🏴 Drakeford Says The Quiet Part Out Loud

I covered earlier this week how bleak the picture now looks for Welsh Labour. The latest YouGov MRP for the 2026 Senedd election puts Plaid Cymru on 33%, Reform UK on 27%, and Labour on just 13%. The seat projection puts Plaid on 43 seats, Reform on 30, and Labour on just 12.

That is not a wobble. It looks like a party running out of road.

Then came this moment from Politics Wales on the BBC, where Mark Drakeford openly discussed left-wing parties working together to block Reform from taking power in Wales.

That matters because it says a lot about where the Welsh Labour mindset now is. This is no longer the language of a party confident in its own support. It is the language of an establishment already thinking about how to stop a challenger, even as its own vote collapses.

And there is a deeper problem with that argument. Turnout at the last Senedd election in 2021 was just 46.6%. Even at a record high for a Senedd election, more than half of eligible voters did not vote.

So yes, left-wing parties may be able to combine for a majority of seats. But that is not the same as having the support of most people in Wales. Not even close.

And if voting were compulsory, with a proper None of the Above option on the ballot, I suspect the result would be even more uncomfortable for the Welsh establishment.

🚩 If Reform Is “Far Right”, What Is The Centre Now?

Around 50,000 people marched through central London on Saturday in a “March to Stop the Far Right”, while Green Party leader Zack Polanski claimed the turnout was “half a million”. That gap alone tells you something about modern political activism and media narrative.

But the more interesting question is not the crowd estimate. It is the label itself.

Because if Reform UK is one of the main targets, then this is no longer a protest against some tiny fringe movement on the edge of public life. Reform is now polling at 23% in the latest YouGov Westminster voting-intention poll, ahead of Labour on 19%, with the Greens on 18% and the Conservatives on 17%.

The event also looked less like a narrow argument about one party and more like a wider progressive coalition. It was organised by the Together Alliance and backed by trade unions, charities and campaign groups, while police also reported 25 arrests linked to this march and a concurrent pro-Palestinian protest.

That does not settle every argument about labels. But it does raise an obvious one. When a party is leading some mainstream polls, calling it “far right” starts to sound less like a neutral description and more like political branding. And when that label is being used against millions of voters, it may tell us as much about the worldview of the people using it as the people they are trying to condemn.

🔍 The Old Story No Longer Fits

This is the thread connecting the week.

Fuel prices rise, and the state quietly gains from it. Welsh Labour slides towards a historic humiliation, and the answer from the old machine is not renewal but blocking tactics. Protesters march against the “far right”, but the object of their anger now includes a party with very substantial democratic support.

The old political class still talks as though it is managing events. More and more, it looks as though it is reacting to them.

That is why this week matters. Not because each story on its own is unprecedented, but because together they point in the same direction: weaker legitimacy, deeper frustration, and a widening gap between establishment language and public reality.

More and more people can see it.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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For 27 years, Welsh Labour has been the default party of power in Cardiff Bay. But the final FMQs before the May election did not feel like a government closing strongly. They felt like a machine running on fumes.

Then came the latest ITV Cymru Wales YouGov MRP poll, produced with Cardiff University: Plaid Cymru on 33%, Reform UK on 27%, Labour on 13%, Greens on 12%, Conservatives on 7% and Liberal Democrats on 5%. On that model, Plaid would win 43 seats, Reform 30 and Labour just 12. Most damaging of all, Eluned Morgan is on course to lose her own seat in Ceredigion Penfro.

That is not just another bad poll for Labour. It looks more like the hardening of a political collapse.

⚠️ The Last FMQs Felt Like The End

The final FMQs of this Senedd did not feel like the close of a government still firmly in command. They felt like a Parliament bracing for life after Welsh Labour dominance.

That matters because the latest poll suggests that instinct was right. This no longer looks like routine frustration with an incumbent. It looks like the point where a tired governing machine runs out of authority, at the same time the electorate runs out of patience.

📉 This No Longer Looks Like A Bad Spell For Labour

The most important thing in the latest poll is not that Labour is under pressure. We already knew that.

The point is that the pressure is no longer easing. Back in January, ITV Cymru Wales had Labour in fourth place on 10%, level with the Conservatives, while Plaid was on 37% and Reform on 23%. The latest poll moves Labour up to 13% and back into third — but that is hardly a recovery when Plaid still leads on 33%, and Reform has climbed to 27%. Labour’s projected seat total rises from 8 in January to 12 now, but it is still nowhere near the real contest for power.

That is why this poll hurts. It does not reveal some sudden new danger. It shows that the danger is becoming embedded.

After nearly three decades in charge, Welsh Labour is no longer being judged by whether it can win well. It is being judged by whether it can avoid humiliation. Third place is not a wobble. Repeated polling like this makes it look like something worse: a party losing not just votes, but its claim to be Wales’ default governing force.

🧨 Starmer’s Shambles Is Dragging Welsh Labour Down Too

Welsh Labour has a second problem: Keir Starmer.

This is not just a Cardiff Bay story. It is a Westminster drag effect too. In January, YouGov found that 67% of Welsh adults thought the UK government was doing a bad job, while only 10% thought it was doing a good job. Welsh adults also said Starmer was doing a bad job as Prime Minister by 74% to 15%. Even among 2024 Welsh Labour voters, only 24% said either the UK or Welsh governments were doing a good job.

That matters because Welsh Labour no longer gets to run as a separate brand untouched by Westminster. It now carries the baggage of government at both ends of the M4.

So when Welsh Labour asks voters for one more chance, it is doing so with a Labour government in London that large numbers of Welsh voters already think is failing. That is a toxic combination for an already struggling party in Cardiff Bay.

🎯 A First Minister On Course To Lose Her Own Seat

Every bad poll has numbers. But some polls also have a symbol.

This one does. Eluned Morgan is on course to lose her seat in Ceredigion Penfro, while Labour would fail to elect anyone in four constituencies under ITV’s model.

That cuts through because it tells voters something bigger than a percentage swing ever could. When a sitting First Minister is projected to lose her own seat, you are no longer talking about a difficult campaign. You are talking about a governing party whose authority is starting to break down.

For years, Welsh Labour’s strength rested not just on support but on familiarity. It was the permanent fixture. The known quantity. The party people assumed would still be standing when the dust settled.

But if even the First Minister’s own seat looks unsafe, that old assumption is dead. This is what political eras look like when they begin to end.

💷 More Seats. More Cost. More Fragmentation.

This election is not just being fought in a volatile political climate. It is also being fought under a radically changed system.

From 7 May 2026, the Senedd will expand from 60 Members to 96 — a 60% increase. Wales will move to 16 constituencies, each electing six Members, and voters will have one vote under a closed proportional list system. The Senedd says these changes reflect its larger responsibilities, including full law-making powers and some tax powers.

That means a bigger political institution, and a costlier one too. The Senedd’s FAQ says the total cost is “not yet known”, but also says the Senedd Commission’s 2025-26 budget proposed a 16% increase in spending to support the 60% increase in Members.

Politically, the timing is striking. Wales is being asked to fund a much bigger political class just as faith in the old one is wearing thin.

🚨 Final Thought

The final FMQs of this Senedd felt like an ending because they probably were. Not just the end of a parliamentary term. The possible end of an era in Welsh politics.

For years, Welsh Labour looked too entrenched to lose Wales. Now it looks too tired to save itself. The latest poll puts Plaid Cymru on course to be the largest party. Reform is closing fast. Labour is stuck in third. And the First Minister herself is on course to lose her seat.

Polls are not votes. But some polls tell you something bigger than who is up and who is down. They tell you when an old political order is running out of road.

And in Wales, that moment now looks very close

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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Another week, another set of numbers pointing in the same direction.

Britain is not in freefall. But it is not getting stronger either.

Borrowing is still high. Growth is weak. The private economy is struggling to build momentum. And when global conditions turn against us, the UK looks badly exposed.

💷 February’s Borrowing Was Brutal

The latest public finances release showed the UK borrowed £14.3 billion in February alone. That was £2.2 billion more than a year earlier and the second-highest February borrowing since monthly records began in 1993, behind only February 2021 during the Covid era.

Across the financial year to February, total borrowing reached £125.9 billion. Britain’s total public sector net debt excluding public sector banks now stands at £2.88 trillion, equal to 93.1% of GDP. The Office for National Statistics says that leaves debt at levels last seen in the early 1960s.

High borrowing indicates the government is still spending far more than it brings in, and the gap must be financed with additional debt. That leaves Britain more exposed to higher interest rates, less able to absorb the next shock, and more likely to spend future tax revenue servicing existing commitments rather than improving public services or cutting taxes.

This is not borrowing for some one-off national emergency. It is borrowing to keep the system going.

There is one relative bright spot: borrowing so far this financial year is 8.7% below the same period last year. But some of that improvement may prove temporary. A surge in self-assessment receipts appears to have been flattered by taxpayers bringing forward capital gains ahead of the October 2024 tax changes — a timing effect that helps 2025-26, but could leave a softer comparison in January 2027.

📈 Debt Interest Is Eating More of the Budget

Central government debt interest payable hit £13.0 billion in February, up £5.5 billion on a year earlier. The ONS says recent movements in the Retail Prices Index added £4.8 billion to February’s total through the inflation-linked uplift on index-linked gilts.

Over the financial year to February, central government debt interest was £94.4 billion, up £13.5 billion on the same period a year earlier.

That matters because debt interest is dead money from the taxpayer’s point of view.

It does not build roads. It does not train doctors. It does not raise productivity. It is the price of financing what has already been spent.

📉 Growth Still Is Not There

This week, I wrote about the gap between Rachel Reeves’ rhetoric and the state of the economy. That gap is still there.

The UK ended 2025 in a per-person recession, and January delivered no growth.

She can blame Brexit, but that does not explain away flat growth, weak productivity, sluggish business activity, or an economy that struggles to generate sustained momentum outside the public sector.

High borrowing would be one thing if it were buying strong growth. It is not.

👔 The Private Economy Still Looks Weak

My second piece this week looked at a trend that should worry far more people than it does: the public sector continues to expand while the private economy looks soft.

That imbalance is a serious problem.

A country cannot sustainably grow richer by shifting ever more weight onto the state while the productive economy slows underneath it. The long-run tax base depends on private sector jobs, profits, investment and output.

More state. More spending. More pressure. But not more prosperity.

⚠️ The Gilt Market Is Flashing a Warning

UK gilt yields have jumped sharply as markets priced in the inflation risk from the Middle East energy shock and the possibility that interest rates stay higher for longer.

That matters because gilt yields are effectively the price the government pays to borrow in financial markets.

When gilt yields rise, government borrowing gets more expensive.

And when you already have nearly £2.9 trillion of debt, that is not a side story. It is central to the fiscal outlook.

⚡ Energy Security Matters More Than Ever

Britain’s weak energy security leaves the country more exposed when the world turns rough.

If policy leaves Britain more reliant on imported energy, then global shocks hit harder. Bills rise faster. Inflation becomes stickier. Rate cuts get pushed back. Borrowing costs go up. And the public finances come under even more pressure.

That is why this debate is bigger than energy bills. It is about national resilience.

🌤️ Spring Starts. Real Life Carries On.

Away from the spreadsheets, spring has finally started to show up.

Even in Wales, we have had several days of proper sunshine. After a long wet stretch, it makes a difference. I coach a junior football team, and this season has seen too many games called off across the leagues.

But last weekend the lads won their cup semi-final, and they have earned themselves a place in a cup final in April. That is real life. Family. Community. Kids playing football. People getting out again when the weather improves.

🚨 Better Weather Also Brings More Boats

Better weather brings another reality too.

Home Office small boats data for the last seven days show arrivals resumed on 18, 19 and 20 March, with 262, 144 and 116 people arriving respectively. That is 522 arrivals across three days.

So yes, spring brings sunshine. It also brings renewed Channel crossings. And once again, the cost lands on the taxpayer.

🔚 Final Thought

This week’s numbers all point the same way.

Britain borrowed £14.3 billion in February alone, the second-highest February figure on record. Total debt is now almost £2.9 trillion. Debt interest is swallowing more of the budget. Growth remains weak. The public sector keeps expanding while the private economy struggles to generate momentum. And when global energy markets wobble, the UK looks more exposed than it should.

Britain is not borrowing to transform the country. It is borrowing to stand still.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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The latest labour market figures point to a deeper imbalance in the British economy. While ministers will point to headline employment numbers and pay growth, the detail tells a more troubling story: public-sector employment is at record highs, public-sector pay is rising faster than private-sector pay, private-sector payroll jobs are falling, and self-employment is shrinking. In other words, the state is expanding while the more productive, risk-taking side of the economy is losing momentum — and taxpayers are left footing the bill.

📊 The Numbers: The State Keeps Growing

The latest labour market data shows public sector employment reached 6.19 million in December 2025, up 43,000 on the year. Central government hit a record 4.06 million, the NHS a record 2.07 million, and the Civil Service rose to 555,000. Local government, by contrast, fell to a record low 1.97 million.

At the same time, the clearest and most up-to-date employee measure from the Pay As You Earn system is moving the other way. The Office for National Statistics says the early estimate for February 2026 was 30.3 million payrolled employees, down 49,000 on the year.

That means the broad story is not hard to see: private payroll jobs are softer while public sector employment is still expanding.

💷 The Pay Gap: The State Is Outpacing The Wealth Creators

The pay data deepens the story. Annual average regular earnings growth was 5.9% in the public sector but only 3.3% in the private sector.

That gap matters. When private sector conditions weaken, firms have to react. They need revenue, margins and profit to pay wages. If demand softens, hiring slows, pay growth weakens, and jobs go. The public sector does not face that discipline in the same way. Government can borrow more, tax more, or push the cost into the future.

So the gap is not just about pay. It is about who lives inside economic reality, and who can postpone it.

🏭 The Private Sector Squeeze: Fewer Jobs, Less Risk-Taking

The private economy is where the strain shows up first.

Using that same Pay As You Earn payroll data, the largest annual increase in payrolled employees was in health and social work, up 42,000, while the largest decrease was in wholesale and retail, down 49,000.

The workforce jobs data adds another important layer. Total workforce jobs were 36.6 million in December 2025, down 266,000 on the year. But the standout weakness was self-employment. Self-employment jobs were down 242,000 over the year, including a 28,000 fall on the quarter.

That matters because self-employment is often where risk-taking, flexibility and small-scale enterprise show up in the economy. When self-employment is falling that sharply, it suggests something deeper than a normal wobble. Some people are deciding it is no longer worth taking the risk. Others may simply have gone under.

Either way, it points to a private economy that looks less dynamic, less resilient, and less confident.

⚠️ What This Means: The Taxpayer Carries The Burden

This is the real warning sign in the data.

A bigger public sector means a bigger wage bill, bigger pension obligations, and more pressure on the taxpayer. If the state keeps growing while private payroll jobs weaken, the country ends up with a smaller productive base carrying a larger public burden.

That is the imbalance. The public sector does not fund itself. It is funded by taxes on productive activity, or by borrowing that taxpayers will eventually have to cover. So when the state grows at the same time as private hiring weakens and self-employment falls, Britain is moving in the wrong direction.

This is not broad-based prosperity. It is not a private-sector jobs boom. It is not a healthy recovery. It is a labour market where the private economy is under pressure, the state is still expanding, and the bill is being pushed back onto the taxpayer.

Fewer private payroll jobs. More public sector workers. Faster state pay growth. Falling self-employment.

That is not economic renewal. That is the state growing while the productive economy slows.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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Yesterday, the Chancellor unveiled a new set of “key principles” for UK-EU alignment, presenting it as part of a broader growth pitch for the country. The government says this is about reducing friction for business, backing AI and innovation, and “unlocking growth in every region.”

Rachel Reeves keeps repeating that her economic plan is the right one. But if you step back from the announcement and look at the macro picture, the gap between the rhetoric and the reality is hard to ignore.

Behind the press release, Britain is still dealing with the same old problems: weak growth, falling output per person, and an energy system that is nowhere near ready for the AI ambitions ministers keep talking up.

Let’s take the announcement piece by piece.

🌍 Closer EU Alignment Is Being Sold As A Growth Strategy

A big part of Reeves’ pitch is that closer alignment with the EU will help support growth by reducing barriers and giving businesses more certainty.

Fine. But there is an obvious problem here: Europe is not exactly booming.

Trade with Europe obviously matters. Reducing avoidable friction is sensible. But alignment is not the same thing as a growth strategy. At best, it may reduce some costs around the edges. It does not solve Britain’s deeper structural weaknesses: poor productivity, expensive energy, weak investment and a softening jobs market.

And then there is Reeves’ line that Brexit did “deep damage” to the economy, with figures of up to 8% of GDP being waved around.

It is worth being clear what numbers like that actually are. They are not direct measures, as inflation or unemployment are. They come from modelled estimates that compare the UK’s real path with a hypothetical version of Britain that did not leave the EU.

That matters because the period since 2016 has also included a pandemic, an energy shock, tight monetary policy, and a long list of domestic weaknesses that predate the referendum. So when Reeves reaches for a big Brexit number, she is leaning on a highly model-dependent estimate, not a clean real-world observation.

And that raises the harder political question: if the economy is weak right now, why is the Chancellor so keen to relitigate a referendum rather than account for what is happening on her own watch?

📍 “Unlocking Growth In Every Region”

Another big claim in the announcement is that the government will unlock growth in every region of the UK. Fine. But before worrying about growth in every region, Britain first needs growth at all.

Because on the measure that better captures living standards, the UK ended 2025 going backwards. Real GDP per head fell in both Q3 and Q4 of 2025. In other words, on a per-person basis, Britain was in recession in the second half of last year.

And the new year has not exactly started with a bang either. In January, there was no growth again.

So yes, it would be lovely if every region of Britain were growing. But the country as a whole is still flatlining. You cannot unlock regional prosperity if the national economy itself is stagnating.

With the local elections on 7 May approaching, voters will get an early chance to deliver their verdict on Keir Starmer’s government — and on Rachel Reeves’ endless insistence that her plan is working.

If the economy feels stagnant, those elections could become a pretty damning referendum on both.

⚡ AI Ambitions Meet Britain’s Energy Reality

The government also keeps talking about Britain becoming a global leader in artificial intelligence. But AI needs something very basic before it needs another speech.

Electricity.

AI data centres consume enormous amounts of power. Running a large-scale computing infrastructure means vast electricity demand — and that means energy prices matter. And here Britain has a serious problem.

Industrial electricity prices in the UK are around four times higher than in the United States, and among the highest in Europe.

That is not a small difference. It is a massive competitive disadvantage.

Because AI infrastructure can be located almost anywhere in the world. If companies are deciding where to build large data centres, they will naturally gravitate towards locations where energy is cheap and reliable.

And right now, the United States has a huge advantage. Cheap power, abundant energy supply and lower industrial electricity costs make it a far more attractive place to run power-intensive technologies.

Which means Britain faces a simple reality: You cannot build an AI superpower while charging some of the highest industrial electricity prices in the developed world.

Until that changes, talk of Britain leading the global AI race risks sounding more like a slogan than a strategy.

🔁 The Chancellor Keeps Repeating The Same Line

This is the real problem. Rachel Reeves keeps repeating that her economic plan is the right one. But the macro picture keeps refusing to back her up.

Britain ended 2025 with two consecutive quarterly falls in GDP per head. January brought no growth again. And the Chancellor is still reaching for modelled Brexit counterfactuals while the real-world economy on her watch remains weak.

So forgive me if this starts to sound repetitive to regular Stat of the Nation readers. But I am only repeating myself because the Chancellor is. She keeps repeating the same line about the plan working. I keep having to point out the same awkward problem: the numbers do not support it.

Final Thought

A serious growth strategy would start with the basics.

• Real growth.

• Higher output per person.

• Cheaper energy.

• Better infrastructure.

• A tax and investment environment that actually rewards growth.

Instead, we are being offered a familiar mix of alignment talk, future ambition and political excuses. That may sound like a plan. But Britain’s broken growth model is still there in plain sight. And until that changes, Rachel Reeves’ broken record will keep colliding with economic reality.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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This week’s picture is not one of renewal. In Wales, decades of Labour rule have delivered weak outcomes despite higher spending. Across the NHS, a fit-note system is making it too easy for people to be signed off work, while even GPs question whether it is working. Westminster is still edging towards greater control through digital identity and curbs on the jury. And after all the rhetoric from Rachel Reeves, the economy still is not growing.

🏴 Wales Is The Proof That Socialism Does Not Work

If you want a real-world test case for left-wing government in Britain, look at Wales.

Labour has run Wales since devolution. It has had years in power, years to make its case, and years to deliver. Yet Wales still struggles with weaker outcomes, longer waits, poorer performance, and a sense of national drift. That is not an accident. It is the result of a political model that keeps promising that more state control, more public spending, and more intervention will eventually solve everything.

It does not.

The IFS laid out the numbers this week. Identifiable public spending per person in Wales in 2024–25 was 15.4% higher than in England. Yet Welsh health and education systems are still underperforming. The IFS said elective waiting times in Wales were higher than in England and Scotland, and that educational performance in Wales has been systematically lower than in England and the rest of the UK since the mid-2000s.

This is what socialism looks like in practice: bigger government, weaker results, and endless excuses for why the public still has to wait a little longer for things to improve.

The left always wants the argument to be about inputs. More money. More programmes. More bureaucracy. More redistribution. But voters live in the world of outcomes. Are the services better? Are people healthier? Are children learning more? Is the country moving forward? In Wales, after decades of Labour rule, the answer is too often no.

And let’s be honest — Plaid Cymru is not some serious alternative to this model. Strip away the branding, and it usually comes back to the same instinct: more intervention, more state management, more dependency on government. Wales does not need a different logo on the same failed ideology.

That is why the political landscape in Wales is becoming so volatile. Labour is clearly losing authority. Even Zack Polanski has sensed an opening and is trying to present the Greens as part of the post-Labour future, saying Labour in Wales is “finished”. But that only underlines the wider problem: once Labour’s model starts to fail, what often circles the wreckage is not reform, but even more fringe versions of the same bad thinking.

The Greens are not a serious answer either. Their migration policy includes the aim of “a world without borders”, and Polanski has reiterated his backing for legalising drugs. Wales should be a warning to the rest of the UK. If decades of statist politics leave you with weak outcomes and permanent excuses, the answer is not to double down. It is to admit the model has failed.

🩺 It Is Becoming Far Too Easy To Be Signed Off Work

The BBC’s survey of GPs cut straight to the heart of another failing system this week.

Among 752 GPs who responded, 540 said they had never refused a request for a mental-health-related fit note. At the same time, fit notes have surged in recent years, with mental health now one of the biggest recorded drivers.

This is not about denying that genuine illness exists. Of course it does. Some people absolutely need time away from work. But when the vast majority of requests are effectively waved through, the system stops acting as a safeguard and starts acting as a rubber stamp.

Even GPs themselves admit the setup is flawed. Some told the BBC it is easier to sign a patient off than deal with complaints or confrontation if they refuse. Others said being the gatekeeper for work absence should not even be their responsibility.

The problem is that being signed off work is no longer a small decision. There is a real cost to it.

When someone is absent for long periods, the employer carries the disruption and often the cost as well, whether through sick pay, reduced productivity, or the need to bring in temporary cover. Multiply that across thousands of workplaces, and it becomes a serious drag on the wider economy.

A fit-note system should exist to support people through genuine illness and help them recover. But if it becomes too easy to step out of the workforce, it quietly shifts from being a safety net to being a pathway out of work altogether.

A sick-note system that is too easy to game does not just weaken work ethic — it shifts the cost onto employers and the rest of the country.

⚖️ Government Cannot Be Trusted With Your Data

Before ministers ask the public to trust them with digital ID, they should explain why anyone should trust them with the data they already hold.

This week, a serious Companies House vulnerability exposed sensitive personal information and appears to have opened the door to company hijacking. Tax Policy Associates reported that the flaw exposed the private dashboard of roughly five million registered companies, including directors’ home addresses and email addresses, and appeared to allow changes to company records and even filings. The Financial Times separately reported that Companies House suspended its online filing service after the risk was identified.

That alone should kill any lazy assumption that government systems are automatically safe just because they are government systems.

And it gets worse. Whistleblowers involved in the One Login technology that underpins the government’s digital ID plans have already raised what ITV described as “extreme” security concerns. ITV reported that senior civil servants involved in the programme warned the technology would form the basis of digital ID while exposing millions of people’s data to significant cybersecurity risk.

So this is the real issue. Ministers want people to hand over more identity data into a growing state-run digital architecture, while fresh evidence suggests the state cannot even be relied upon to secure the systems it already operates to normal standards. That is not modernisation. That is a risk transfer from the government to the public.

And people should not fall for the usual sales pitch either. Digital ID keeps being floated as if it will solve everything from public-service access to illegal immigration. It will not. A digital wallet does nothing to stop someone from arriving here illegally in the first place. It just creates another mechanism for tracking and verifying the people already inside the system.

You cannot trust this government with your data, and you should not trust its promises on digital ID either.

📉 Reeves Says The Plan Is Right. The Economy Still Says Otherwise.

Rachel Reeves says the government’s economic plan is the right one.

But the hard numbers still do not support the sales pitch.

The UK economy recorded zero growth in January. Recruitment is weak, hospitality is soft, and housebuilding has lost momentum — exactly the sort of warning signs you would expect to fade if confidence was really returning. Instead, the picture remains one of drift, hesitation and stagnation.

That is what makes all of this so politically dangerous for Labour. If people could feel meaningful growth in their pay packets, in business confidence, in job creation, ministers might get away with the rest. But they cannot. Wales looks tired. The fit-note culture looks dysfunctional. The state wants more power over how people live and identify themselves. And the economy still is not providing a convincing reason to believe the country is moving forward.

Final Thought

The thread running through all of this is simple. The state keeps getting bigger. The results keep getting worse.

In Wales, decades of Labour rule have given us a real-world test of statist politics, and it has failed. In the NHS, the system is becoming too permissive and too costly. In Westminster, ministers still want more control over how people live and identify themselves. And in the economy, there is still no convincing sign that Labour’s plan is delivering.

That is not renewal. It is a managed decline.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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The UK economy flatlined in January. Services went nowhere, eating out fell, private housebuilding remained weak, and parts of the state-heavy economy helped stop the picture from looking worse. Strip away the spin and the same problem remains: Britain is not generating enough private-sector growth to sustainably fund the size of state it now carries.

📉 Flat Growth Is Still Weak Growth

The headline is simple: the UK economy showed no growth in January. That follows growth of just 0.1% in December and 0.2% in November. Over the last three months, GDP grew by only 0.2%. Services rose 0.2%. Construction fell 2.0%.

That is not a take-off. That is not recovery. That is an economy stuck in the mud.

There will be the usual attempt to spin this as resilience. But zero growth is still zero growth.

Services, the biggest part of the economy, showed no growth at all in January. Production fell 0.1% on the month. Construction rose 0.2%, but even that came with a big catch. This is not a broad-based strength. It is patchy, shallow and fragile.

🍽️ Eating Out Is Falling — And That Matters

One of the most telling details in the release is what is happening in hospitality.

Accommodation and food service activities fell 1.8% in January, and within that, food and beverage service activities fell 2.7%. In plain English, people are eating out less.

That is one of the clearest real-world signs of pressure in the economy. When household budgets are stretched, meals out are one of the first things to go. The treat gets cut. The coffee run gets skipped. The pub visit gets binned. And this is where it becomes a vicious circle.

Hospitality is already under pressure. If customers start pulling back while businesses are being hammered by higher costs, the sector gets squeezed from both sides. Less demand. Less revenue. Less confidence. Less hiring.

That is how weakness spreads.

👔 The Recruitment Market Is Flashing Warning Signs

Another ugly number in the release is that employment activities were down 5.7% in January.

That sounds technical, but it is not. It basically means the recruitment and temp-agency market has taken a hit.

And that matters because it is often one of the first places you see nerves show up.

When employers feel confident, they hire. When they get jittery, recruitment slows, agency demand drops, and firms start sitting on their hands.

So put the pieces together: people are eating out less, hospitality is under strain, and recruitment activity is falling sharply.

That does not look like a confident private economy. It looks like a private economy retreating into caution.

🏛️ The State Is Helping Keep The Numbers Afloat

This is where the release gets politically awkward.

There were some brighter spots in services. Retail and wholesale had a better month. Some professional services held up. But the wider private economy was patchy, while government-linked parts of the economy helped keep the overall picture from looking even worse.

That point needs to be made carefully — but it should still be made. This is not proof that the public sector alone is carrying the whole economy.

But it is fair to say that without state-linked activity cushioning the numbers, the picture would look weaker. And that leads to the deeper problem. The state cannot fund itself.

You can prop up headline GDP for a while through government-heavy activity. You can expand public spending. You can keep the machine going.

But in the end, the money has to come from somewhere. It comes from businesses investing, employing, producing, selling and paying tax. If the private sector is weak while the public sector keeps growing, the foundations start to look shakier and shakier.

You cannot build a stronger country on a weaker tax base.

🏠 Britain Is Repairing More — But Building Less

Housebuilding is another clear weak spot.

Construction output fell 2.0% in the three months to January, after a 2.1% fall in the previous three-month period. Within that, private housing new work fell 6.3%.

That is one of the most telling numbers in the whole release.

Because when private housebuilding is weak, it tells you confidence is weak too. Developers are not exactly charging ahead. Investors are not exactly brimming with optimism. And the wider economy loses out.

Yes, construction rose 0.2% in January. But that was only because of repair and maintenance. New work actually fell 2.0% on the month.

So Britain is patching things up, not pushing forward.

And you do not solve a housing shortage, boost growth, or lift productivity by endlessly repairing old stock while private housebuilding slides backwards.

🛍️ Consumer Britain Still Looks Soft

The ONS also says consumer-facing services were flat in the three months to January.

That matters because these are the parts of the economy people actually feel: shops, restaurants, travel, leisure, hospitality, and everyday spending.

Yes, there was a tiny 0.1% rise in consumer-facing services in January. But that is hardly a great consumer comeback. And even inside that, food and beverage services were dragging things down.

So the idea that the British consumer is back out there powering growth just is not borne out by the figures.

Consumers are still cautious. Businesses still look cautious. And the economy overall still looks weak.

👥 GDP Per Head Still Matters More Than The Headline

This is also a good moment to remind people of the bigger picture of living standards.

At the end of 2025, Britain had already seen two consecutive quarters of falling GDP per head.

That matters because governments love talking about total GDP. But if the economy is barely growing while the population keeps rising, the average person can still end up worse off.

That is the key point. A flat or slightly positive topline number does not automatically mean living standards are improving. In fact, they can still be going backwards.

And that is why GDP per head matters.

⚠️ Final Thought

Reeves says, “our economic plan is the right one.”

But these numbers do not suggest an economy on the right track. They suggest an economy still struggling to generate genuine private-sector momentum, while state-linked activity helps stop the numbers from looking even worse.

No growth in January. Eating out down. Recruitment activity down. Private housebuilding weak. Consumer-facing services flat.

That is not a recovery. A strong public sector depends on a strong private sector beneath it. If Britain is not building enough, hiring enough, producing enough and selling enough, then the state is resting on foundations far weaker than ministers want to admit.

The economy is being kept upright. It is not being transformed.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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For months, I’ve been warning about two things moving quietly in the background: curbs on jury trials and digital ID by the back door. This week, Labour pushed ahead on both. MPs voted on 10 March 2026 to give the Courts and Tribunals Bill its second reading, while ministers also launched a consultation on a new digital identity system built around GOV.UK One Login and GOV.UK Wallet.

These are not minor technical tweaks. One affects how justice is delivered in England and Wales. The other affects how you prove who you are to the state. And in neither case was the public clearly asked for permission in plain English at the last election. Labour’s 2024 manifesto talked about reforming justice and tackling delays, but it did not clearly tell voters it would curb access to jury trial in this way, and it did not clearly set out a national digital ID system for accessing public services.

⚖️ Jury Trials Are Not the Cause of the Backlog

Labour says the Courts and Tribunals Bill is about reducing the backlog in the courts. Ministers argue the system is under huge strain and needs reform to free up time for more serious cases. But the central question is simple: Did juries cause this mess? Because if they did not, then curbing access to jury trial would not fix the root problem. It is shifting the cost of failure onto the public.

That is why the opposition from inside the legal profession matters so much. This is not just a few political opponents making noise. The Bar Council says 3,236 legal professionals signed an open letter urging Keir Starmer to stop the proposal, including more than 300 KCs, 22 retired judges, past and present Bar Council chairs, and a former Director of Public Prosecutions. Their verdict was blunt: the plan is “unpopular, untested and poorly evidenced.”

Their most devastating point is also the simplest one: juries have not caused this crisis. The legal profession is pointing instead to chronic underfunding as the real cause of the collapse in performance. So here is the real question: who do you trust more on this — the legal profession, or Starmer and Lammy? When thousands of people within the justice system warn that Labour is targeting a safeguard rather than the real problem, ministers cannot honestly pretend this is just harmless modernisation.

And a jury is not some outdated inconvenience. It is one of the last places where ordinary citizens still stand between the individual and the state. Plenty of defendants who choose a jury trial are convicted. But juries also bring common sense, independence and public scrutiny into the courtroom. Once you start treating jury trial as an obstacle to efficiency, you are no longer just fixing a backlog. You are changing the balance of power in the justice system.

📱 Digital ID Through the Back Door

The second move is digital ID. The government’s consultation says GOV.UK One Login and GOV.UK Wallet are intended to become a single “front door” to government, allowing people to prove who they are and store secure digital documents instead of relying on paper. Ministers are selling it as convenience, speed and modernisation. The consultation also says that without the government providing a “foundational digital ID”, many people will remain stuck with paper-based systems.

But this is exactly how these systems are always introduced. They are not pitched as control. They are pitched as making life easier. Less paperwork. Faster access. Fewer hoops to jump through. Yet once the infrastructure is built, the pressure to expand its use only grows. A system can begin as voluntary and still become hard to avoid in practice as more services are routed through it. That is how convenience turns into quiet compulsion.

And there is another reason for scepticism. Why should the public trust Darren Jones on digital ID when he has already shown he will say things on live television that do not match the facts? Jones is now fronting this consultation, but in June 2025, he said on BBC Question Time that “the majority of the people in these boats are children, babies and women.” Home Office data showed adult men made up around three-quarters of small-boat arrivals.

That matters because digital ID is not just another app. It is the creation of a new identity layer between the public and the state. Labour did not clearly ask voters for that. And once that architecture is in place, ministers will always be tempted to widen its use. Today, it is sold as an easier access to services. Tomorrow, it can become the default gateway for more and more parts of daily life.

⚠️ Final Thought: More Control, Less Consent

Step back and look at the pattern. A justice system weakened by years of failure becomes the excuse to chip away at the jury trial. An inefficient state becomes the excuse to build a national digital identity framework. In both cases, the answer from the government is the same: more centralisation, more control, fewer safeguards. And when the same ministers asking for that power have already shown they are willing to stretch the facts when it suits them, the public is right to be wary. On the evidence so far, this is not a government I would trust with something as sensitive as either of these changes.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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Britain has had another week of big political headlines.

In Wales, the countdown to 7 May is now on, with Plaid and Reform increasingly shaping up as the real fight. In Westminster, the government has announced plans to pay some failed asylum seekers to leave, while small-boat arrivals have picked up again with better weather. And in the wider economy, workers are still being asked to shoulder more of the burden.

Strip away the slogans, and the same pattern keeps appearing. The system is not being fixed. It is being managed, patched up, and sold back to the public as progress.

🏴 Wales: Countdown To May 7

In Wales, the countdown to 7 May is now properly underway.

Welsh Labour kicked off its campaign in Newport, talking about “a new chapter for Wales.” After nearly three decades in power, that line is difficult to hear with a straight face. If Wales needs a new chapter, the obvious question is simple: who wrote the last one?

But politically, Labour is starting to feel almost irrelevant to the real argument. The sharper dividing line now looks more like Plaid versus Reform.

Plaid spent its conference trying to present itself as the voice of people who feel unheard and left behind. But when you strip away the branding, its offer still looks like more of the same Cardiff Bay consensus: more green targets, more pressure on motorists, more constitutional debate, and not enough evidence that any of it will improve outcomes for ordinary Welsh families. Plaid itself has tried to frame the election as a straight choice between Plaid and Reform.

Reform, by contrast, is trying to turn this election into a revolt against how Wales has been run. At its Welsh launch, it pushed a set of simple retail policies: scrap the default 20mph policy, oppose pay-per-mile, and revive the M4 relief road to tackle the Newport bottleneck that has turned the M4 into a rolling car park. Reform has also floated a toll as one possible funding option for that road.

Critics say a toll would hit drivers. But the truth is, the road would have to be paid for either way. If it is funded through general taxation, motorists still pay for it anyway. If it is funded through a toll, motorists still pay — but at least they get a choice over whether they use it.

And that is why the latest polling matters. A recent More in Common poll put Reform UK and Plaid Cymru level on 26% each, with Labour on 20%. The same poll projected 28 seats each for Reform and Plaid, with Labour on 26.

So yes, Labour may have started the campaign. But the real fight increasingly looks like this:

Plaid is offering more of the same in a slightly different accent. Reform is offering a revolt against the way Wales has been run.

💷 The £40,000 “Leave Britain” Offer

This week, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced a trial scheme offering families of failed asylum seekers with children up to £10,000 per person, capped at £40,000 per family, if they agree to leave the UK within seven days.

The pilot is aimed at about 150 families. Officials say it could save money because accommodation costs for a typical family can run to around £158,000 a year.

And yes, on a narrow level, that maths explains why they are trying it. But that is also the indictment. Britain has built an asylum system so slow and so expensive that paying failed claimants to leave can now be presented as value for money.

Then look at the scale. The Home Office says around 101,000 people claimed asylum in the year ending December 2025. So a pilot aimed at around 150 families is tiny beside a system dealing with claims in the six figures. It is not a solution to the wider problem. It is a small back-end clean-up operation in a much bigger failing system.

That is why this risks looking like another gimmick.

• A big headline.

• A small pilot.

• And a very weak signal to the outside world.

Because people smugglers and would-be migrants will not study the policy footnotes. They will see the headline: Britain may pay failed claimants up to £40,000 to leave.

🚤 Small Boats: Good Weather Returns — And So Do The Crossings

Talking of paying people to leave, this week also saw the return of small boat arrivals on consecutive days as the weather improved. Government figures show 204 arrivals on 3 March, 275 on 4 March, 66 on 5 March and 157 on 6 March — 702 in four days.

And it raises an obvious question: When was the last time you heard Keir Starmer talk about “smashing the gangs”?

That line was everywhere when Labour wanted to sound tough. Now that the weather has improved, the boats are coming again, and the rhetoric has gone quieter.

Because this is the reality. Winter suppresses crossings. Better conditions bring them back. And once again, the system looks reactive, not in control.

As people arrive, in many cases, documents are missing or disputed, identities can be difficult to verify quickly, and people can then be housed around the country while their cases drag on.

That is not a serious system of control. It is a system built on delay, weak enforcement and crossed fingers.

And the public instinctively understands the risk. If just one person who should never have been here goes on to commit a serious, violent or sexual offence, that is one too many.

Paying people to leave. Boats are still arriving. Gangs not smashed. System not fixed.

⛽ Energy Security: The Ed Miliband Problem

Energy has been back in the argument again this week, and it matters because this is about more than just bills. It is about energy security.

Britain is still using gas. The question is whether that gas comes more from our own waters, under our own tax base and regulatory control, or whether we become more exposed to imports and international shocks.

And right now, the government is making that harder by taxing the North Sea so heavily that companies have less incentive to invest in finding and developing new domestic supply. The Energy Profits Levy has pushed the sector’s headline tax rate up to 78%, and the industry has repeatedly warned that this kind of regime damages confidence and deters long-term investment.

At the same time, ministers keep talking as if piling further into intermittent wind and solar automatically means more security. It does not.

You do not strengthen energy security by making yourself more dependent on the weather and less willing to back your own domestic supply.

Because this is the reality. More intermittent power without enough firm backup is not secure.

Punishing North Sea investment is not security. Becoming more dependent on imports is not security. That is not an energy strategy built on resilience.

That is managed dependence.

📉 The Spring Statement Shows Who This Government Is Really For

The wider economic picture has not improved either.

My earlier Spring Statement piece made the core point clearly: Britain is still stuck in the same loop of weak growth, higher taxes, and a welfare bill that keeps rising.

That is the trap Reeves cannot escape.

When growth disappoints, government falls back on the same two levers: squeeze more from taxpayers and borrow more to keep the machine going.

And workers are the ones left carrying the burden.

That is why the bigger picture matters:

• Britain downgraded
• tax burden rising
• frozen thresholds dragging more people into higher tax bills
• welfare spending is climbing
• and still no serious growth plan to break the cycle

The public gets told there is a plan. The numbers suggest Britain is drifting.

Workers are paying more, keeping more of the system afloat, and getting less back in return.

So when Starmer talks about being on the side of workers, people should judge him by the outcomes, not the slogans.

Because the argument is not complicated.

If you tax work harder, reward dependency more, and still cannot deliver growth, then you are not making life easier for the people who keep the country going.

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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I joined the this week to look past the political theatre of the recent financial statements and examine what is actually happening to your money. If you listen to the Chancellor, you’d think we are on the “right economic plan.” But if you look at the statistics, we are witnessing an economy being choked by taxation, energy insecurity, and a fundamental misunderstanding of what drives growth.

Here are the key takeaways from our discussion.

The Laughter Curve: A Downgrade Reality Check

Rachel Reeves spent much of the week laughing and joking in Parliament, but there is very little to be cheerful about in the latest forecasts. It isn’t just the OBR; the Bank of England also downgraded the UK’s growth outlook. A downgrade in economic terms means that, compared to the projections from just a few months ago, the state of our economy is officially worse.

While the Chancellor tries to project confidence, we are seeing a pincer movement: taxes are rising while welfare spending is ballooning. It is working people who are being asked to bridge that multi-billion pound gap, even as the government’s own figures suggest their “plan” is failing to spark the very momentum they promised.

The Retirement Trap: The “Fiscal Drag” Stealth Tax

The government claims they aren’t raising “the main taxes” on working people, but they are using a deceptive tool called Fiscal Drag. By freezing tax thresholds while inflation pushes wages up, they are effectively pushing millions more people into higher tax bands without ever having to announce a rate hike.

This doesn’t just affect those in high-paying jobs; it is hitting pensioners with unprecedented force. Over the next five years, many pensioners will find themselves paying income tax on their state pension for the first time. Because the state pension rises with the Triple Lock while the tax-free allowance remains stubbornly frozen, the Treasury is essentially giving with one hand and taking back with the other. It is a stealth tax on retirement that few saw coming.

The “Exit” Economy: The Migration Myth and the Brain Drain

We keep hearing the tired mantra that we need mass migration to fuel economic growth, but the data exposes this as a fallacy. Total GDP—the “top line” number—might look better because there are more “heads” in the country, but when you look at GDP per head (the size of the economy per person), it is falling.

The economic reality of mass migration is often the opposite of what is promised. A high supply of labour, particularly when skills aren’t aligned with the needs of the economy, puts significant downward pressure on wages for domestic workers. Simultaneously, this rapid population growth increases the demand for housing, pushing prices and rents up for everyone. It is a pincer movement that makes the average person poorer while the headline GDP figures mask the decline.

Even more concerning is the OBR’s recent adjustment to migration figures. They haven’t downgraded the numbers because fewer people are arriving; they’ve adjusted them because more people are leaving. We are witnessing a “Brain Drain” of productive, hardworking Brits who are looking at the UK’s punitive tax regime and deciding to take their skills and capital elsewhere. When the net contributors leave, the tax burden on those who stay behind only grows heavier, creating a vicious cycle of decline.

Multipliers vs. Handouts: Energy Insecurity and the Cost of Living

We discussed the staggering cost of basic utilities that are now crushing households. One viewer reported a water bill of over £2,200—a figure that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. We also saw a run on heating oil this week as prices ballooned following global instability.

The UK was once self-sufficient in gas, providing a buffer for our economy. Now, because we ban our own exploration and instead rely on expensive, intermittent renewables, we are at the mercy of international markets. You cannot have a buoyant economy when the “multiplier effect”—the money you spend in a local restaurant that then pays a waiter who then buys a local gift—is being swallowed up by the state. Instead of stimulating local business, that money is being diverted to pay for hotel bills for illegal migrants and an ever-expanding welfare state.

The Socialist Experiment: Why Wales is a Warning to Westminster

Living in Wales, I see the “Labour Blueprint” in action every day, and it should serve as a warning to the rest of the UK. Labour has run Wales for 27 years—effectively my entire adult life—and yet they launched their latest campaign for the Senedd under the slogan: “A New Chapter for Wales.”

It’s an extraordinary bit of chutzpah. They’ve been writing the book for nearly three decades, and now they want us to believe they’ve suddenly found a fresh start. The reality is that socialism has failed Wales, and that same failing ideology is now being exported from Westminster to the rest of the UK.

We saw this week that Reform has launched its manifesto in Wales, with Nigel Farage and Welsh Leader Dan Thomas offering a genuine alternative to the managed decline of the status quo. In contrast, parties like Plaid Cymru offer no real change for the better. They are simply another side of the same socialist coin that has kept Wales in the slow lane for a generation. If we want a “New Chapter,” it cannot be written by the same people who ruined the first one.

The Bottom Line

Old-fashioned media might be dying, but the appetite for the truth is growing. Mike’s show is hitting nearly 10 million views because people are tired of the “fairy tales” being told in Westminster. We don’t need more jokes from the dispatch box; we need lower taxes to put money back into people’s pockets and get the economy moving again. Until then, we aren’t on the “right plan”—we are on the “laughter curve.”

✍️ Jamie Jenkins
Stats Jamie | Stats, Facts & Opinions

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