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
📢 Call to Action
If this helped cut through the noise, share it and subscribe free by entering your email in the box below and get the stats before the spin, straight to your inbox (no algorithms).
📚 If you found this useful, you might also want to read:
For Every £1 You "Save" on Energy, Rachel Reeves is Taking £8 Back in Tax
At the Budget, the Chancellor promised an “average £150-a-year cut” to household energy bills. It was sold as a lifeline for families—but the data shows a reality for the average worker that is far more bleak.
📲 Follow me here for more daily updates:
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.