Why the UK Is FAILING – The Data Doesn’t Lie
Jamie Jenkins joins Peter McCormack for a two-hour deep dive on migration, inflation, the NHS, housing, energy, and why Britain feels poorer despite what politicians claim.
Introduction
I sat down recently with Peter McCormack for a long-form interview — over two hours digging into the numbers and stories that show why Britain is failing.
This wasn’t a five-minute TV debate. It was a proper conversation about the data: what the numbers actually tell us, where politicians mislead, and why the gap between statistics and lived reality is growing wider every year.
I opened by explaining my stats background, and why this isn’t about left vs right — it’s about right vs wrong. When the data says one thing and politicians say another, someone has to call it out.
🚨 Britain’s Economy Is Being Hollowed Out
The private sector is tanking while the state keeps expanding. Hospitality is being decimated, and the only real job growth is in the public sector.
What Britain really needs is growth driven by enterprise, not bureaucracy. That means cutting taxes to get money back into people’s pockets, encouraging spending and investment that can stimulate real economic growth.
During the pandemic, the government shut down the economy and the Bank of England printed money on a massive scale. People sat at home on furlough — grateful at the time because the money was coming in — but all of it now has to be paid back. That flood of cheap money fuelled inflation and left us with a weaker economy and higher living costs.
🌍 Immigration Truths
Migration is one of the defining issues. Starmer says he wants to get people out of hotels, yet at the same time, his government went to court to stop removals.
We now have a record 110,000 asylum claims and 32,000 migrants in hotels, costing the taxpayer £4.7 billion a year. That’s the equivalent of 600,000 people’s entire tax bill from income tax and National Insurance going to pay for accommodation.
Meanwhile, payroll jobs are falling and the private sector is shrinking. Migration adds to the headline GDP figure, but Britain is getting poorer.
⚡ Energy Prices, Net Zero & a Broken Market
We’re constantly told that energy bills are coming down, but when you look closer, the standing charges are rising. Lisa Nandy went on Sky News claiming Labour is “reducing energy bills,” yet the data shows families aren’t seeing relief. Fixed costs are up, and the UK still has some of the highest prices in the world.
The energy price cap has also killed off competition. With almost every supplier charging similar rates, there is no real market pressure to bring bills down. At the same time, Britain has undermined its own energy security — importing gas from Norway’s North Sea fields while banning ourselves from accessing the same reserves at home.
The result is a broken system: high bills, little choice, and long-term costs locked in by the rush to Net Zero.
📉 Inflation Hits the Poorest Hardest
Headline CPI may show inflation falling, but that’s not what families feel. People don’t live in the CPI basket. Essentials like food, energy, rent and mortgages have kept rising, and that’s where most households spend their money.
The burden isn’t shared equally. Poorer households face much higher inflation because a bigger share of their income goes on food and energy — the very basics that have risen fastest. Even if headline inflation looks lower, those families are still under enormous strain.
Inflation is also creeping back up again, which matters not just for households but for government spending. Many benefits and pensions are uprated in line with inflation, so higher prices mean higher welfare bills. That squeezes the budget further at a time when borrowing is already high.
And while ministers like to insist Britain is “turning a corner,” the numbers don’t stack up internationally. UK inflation is far higher than France or Germany, leaving us uncompetitive and keeping pressure on interest rates. Ordinary people feel poorer, and the government has less room to manoeuvre.
🏥 The NHS Backlog & Britain’s Housing Failure
Despite billions more being poured into the NHS, outcomes are getting worse because waiting lists remain high. Politicians make the same promises over and over, but mismanagement and bloated bureaucracy swallow the money before it reaches the frontline. In the end, we are stealing from the future — piling on costs without fixing the fundamentals.
Housing tells a similar story of failure. Since 1991, the population has grown by 11.5 million people, yet infrastructure has not kept pace — no new reservoirs have been built for 30 years, and the same neglect applies to housing. In 1997, the average house cost just three times the average salary; today it’s around eight times. The driver is clear: huge immigration increases demand, while far too few homes are built.
The result is predictable — soaring prices, rising rents, and a generation locked out of ownership. Housing policy hasn’t just failed; it has actively made life harder for millions of younger people.
🚨 Public Order Offences & Policing
Public order prisoners — those jailed for things like “offensive” speech, protest disruption, or causing alarm — have surged by 65% in the past year. That’s an increase of 1,222 people.
The figures have climbed sharply, showing how policing priorities are shifting. Instead of focusing resources on tackling everyday crime that people experience — burglary, anti-social behaviour, shoplifting — increasing attention is being directed towards managing protests and clamping down on dissent.
This raises bigger questions about the balance between freedom and control. If more policing time is consumed by public order cases, while communities continue to feel unsafe in their daily lives, then confidence in the system erodes further. It’s another example of how government priorities are misaligned with the problems ordinary people actually face.
📊 Transparency Matters
One of the few real wins in recent decades has been the Freedom of Information Act. Much of government data is buried on obscure websites, and the FOI process is often the only way for the public to find out what’s really happening.
Transparency matters because when politicians spin, independent analysis is the only way to expose the truth. That’s why this work is so important — to tell the real story hidden in the numbers.
📺 Full Interview
This conversation pulls no punches — covering migration, inflation, the NHS, Net Zero, public order, and much more.
👉 Watch the full 2hr 11m interview here
✍️ Jamie Jenkins
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We seem to be living in a world of illusion - everything you have written that is wrong with the country is because of mismanagement by the government (any and all government) and yet there appears to be nothing anyone can do to change any of it. Every bloke in the pub or on the bus can list the solutions required but there is nobody in government with the ability to fix anything. All the government ever seems to do is throw more imaginary money at a situation whilst passing new laws which always have totally unintended (but clearly visible) consequences. I totally despair!
Heard about you on this podcast and loved the interview. Now a subscriber.