Wales Is Failing. The NHS Is Drifting. The State Still Wants More Power.
Wales continues to underperform after decades of Labour rule, GPs warn of a fit-note system that is too easy to use, fresh data concerns undermine digital ID, and the economy is still stuck in neutral
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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I read that the current first minister of Wales has said that her Finance Minister Mark Drakeford (former first minister) has no interest in economics. And what you say about Labour being about inputs is right. Wales is like a family on benefits who could work but don't and then complain that they are not given enough money. I'm Welsh but I live in England and when I go back one thing I hear a lot is that Wales is losing out after Brexit because Wales no longer gets all that EU money. I try to point out that it was never EU money it was always our money because the UK was a nett contributor. We give the EU £100 and they give us 50 quid back. But you can't convince them.
Thanks Jamie. A completely honest and real view of the state of the country today. Going forwards with this dire out of touch and ideologically captured Labour government will only get worse and the decline is more than palpable already. I used to visit Wales regularly for a break with my dogs, for years actually. I absolutely love Pembrokeshire and the coastal path. The truth is that I thought I would eventually retire there with a little cottage and a small amount of land and just surround myself in nature with my adored dogs, perhaps rescuing more as and when. That dream has been completely knocked for six unfortunately. At this point I don’t think I will EVER be able to retire nor move as I am now in negative equity in one of the most expensive parts of London, especially after my recent divorce. I am not alone. A good friend who is a successful author is in the same situation. Again left in negative equity post divorce and two kids at private school (crucifying her financially) as the local state schools are all full to brim and the kids are as thick as fuck. I honestly don’t know how most state school teachers get the job, the standards are horrifyingly low.
Anyway, I’ve digressed. Back to Wales. Whilst coastal Pembrokeshire is incredibly scenic and gorgeous, there are many surrounding areas that are so dreadfully run down with high crime, drug addiction and almost zero employment. That is the state of the nation sadly, it permeates through what were once proud working class mining or milling or steel works towns and villages up and down the country. Even our capital city is now a cess pit of mass immigration and high crime, high unemployment and more than waning public services. What Sadiq Khan has created and allowed here is criminal in itself but that’s for another time. I haven’t been back to Wales for a couple of years (sadly) but what I hear from Welsh friends and I see on live interviews with podcasters going around and filming the state and decline of a beautiful scenic once proud community, it breaks my heart. Entire communities and neighbourhoods have been overtaken with this and previous governments idea of a no borders nation ( they can pretend we have borders but we don’t) and the demographic is and has changed to such a degree that I do not feel safe nor welcome in many parts my own country. I’ve seen reports that dogs are to be banned from many open spaces in Wales because of the Muslim population that has exponentially increased in recent years. Well that rules me out of moving there anymore because my dogs are my world. What a sorry state we are in here in the very UN United Kingdom. Poverty everywhere and increasing under the government that was supposed to be for the ordinary working classes. The NHS is no longer fit for any purpose. I think I would rather amputate my own leg than leave it to the butchers and fake medical professionals from Nigeria and beyond that are apparently holding it together at the seams. Last time I saw a NHS Doctor I could’ve actually done with an interpreter so that I could understand them. In the end I just nodded my head and waited for the letter to arrive telling me the results. How is that providing a service when the native person is unable to understand the medical providers terrible grasp of the English language? Surely speaking English in a hospital or Doctors surgery should be of the utmost importance? But no, not in modern Britain where dire standards are now the norm and we either accept that or we don’t get seen. Anyway thanks again Jamie. Have a good Sunday!