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Telegraph
10-07-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Beggars, rough sleepers, Palestine protesters on drugs... London is a showcase for Starmer's Britain
But hang on! The idyll I briefly re-entered is but a bubble. Real as it is, my village is one of a diminishing number of places in the UK that are – as yet – unaffected by the terrifying change sweeping the rest of the country. And herein lies a problem: for well-heeled people like myself who live in places like this, are almost entirely insulated from what is going on elsewhere. In the kind of towns and villages in the shires where sweet old ladies mark Armistice Day by knitting poppies and slip crocheted love hearts through letterboxes on February 14, the wealthy can, and do, exist in almost complete ignorance of the way our country is sliding into angry and dangerous division. Sure, it was ever thus: rich and poor have always led divergent lives, knowing little to nothing of how the other half lives. What is genuinely new, however, is the devastating impact of mass, uncontrolled immigration; ballooning dependency on the welfare state; and the associated sky-high taxation of workers and wealth creators. Of the many issues blighting Britain, the loss of control of our borders has the gravest social, economic and cultural implications. The tidal wave of incomers who enter the country illegally, speak no English, and are dumped on already downtrodden areas, is exacerbating the grinding poverty that has always existed in those places. In the last 12 months alone, the number that have crossed the Channel – around 45,000 – would be too many to fit into Chelsea FC's Stamford Bridge stadium. Unless someone, somehow, stops the boats, by this time next year, the total number would fill Wembley Stadium. The more that come, the more resentment grows among those who have always lived here and are now forced to compete on equal – or even disadvantaged – terms. In parts of the UK where it is not normal to spend a tenner on a piece of purple sprouting broccoli, there are all manner of other desperate problems. Central London is a showcase. To the casual eye, the capital certainly looks splendid in the sunshine, but the rampant crime and aggressive promotion of foreign cultures and causes is impossible to ignore. Mid-afternoon on Embankment, I watched as a Rastafarian swaggered down the middle of the road, high as a kite on God knows what. He was waving two gigantic Palestinian flags – far more prolific, it seems, in town centres these days than the Union Jack. Pathetically, Sir Keir Starmer now says he didn't mean it when he talked of an 'island of strangers', but such spectacles suggest he is right. Near Lambeth Palace, a tented shanty has sprung up on the steps of an underpass. As the rubbish piles up, the authorities do nothing. Then there's the pickpockets, shoplifters, spliff smokers and Tube dodgers who have always been around, but have never before operated with such open contempt for authority or their fellow citizens. In the last fortnight alone, two friends have had phones snatched by masked muggers. On the Strand, dozens of rough sleepers hang around gurning at tourists and breakfasting on cans of cheap cider. Around Charing Cross, there are so many ruffians that fashion retailer Jigsaw – a most unlikely sounding target for thieves – now locks its doors. This isn't Tiffany's, or even Greggs the baker: it's a mid-market women's clothing retailer. Who on earth is stealing linen skirts? Opposite the headquarters of Coutts, a soup kitchen draws all manner of toothless desperadoes. On the doorstep of the prestigious bank, an old retainer, suited and booted, is part security guard, part symbolic buffer between the destitute and the company's well-heeled clientele. He watches silently as a shirtless man calling himself 'Little J' reels around the pavement, swearing he is the King of Iran. Half an hour later, Little J's story changes: he is one of Elon Musk's many secret children, and had £900,000 in the bank, until someone took it. Some 40 per cent of rough sleepers in London are foreign nationals who have discovered the streets of Great Britain are not, in fact, paved with gold. Nonetheless, several told me that they can make £40 an hour just by sitting on the pavement with a dog and a sad sign. Evidently not all are genuinely homeless: many privately admit to claiming benefits. Spend too much time in places like my village, and it is quite possible to imagine that none of this is happening – or worse, not to care. Amid the heady scent of climbing roses and the chime of ancient church bells, I too almost fell into this trap. After the aphrodisiac, however, comes cold hard reality. For the time being, at least, I was not wrong to step away from this dizzying decline.
Telegraph
09-07-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
Britain's century-long welfare experiment has reached its inevitable conclusion
More than a century ago, the Government made a deal with us all: in return for extra taxation, we would be looked after in ill-health, old age, employment and unemployment. Spearheaded by David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, the founding of Britain's welfare state and invention of National Insurance over the first decades of the 20th century was nothing short of revolutionary. Aneurin Bevan's NHS followed in 1948, offering healthcare free at the point of use to all UK residents. Today, the social safety net has expanded to include parental leave, winter fuel payments, child and housing benefits and income support, among many others. At the heart of this system remains the central premise from the Government that we are rich enough as a nation that nobody should live in poverty. As Lloyd George said of the 1909 People's Budget: 'This is a war Budget. It is for raising money to wage implacable warfare against poverty and squalidness.' But over the generations since, the fight has become unaffordable. A century of exogenous shocks has combined with a growing and ageing population, slowing economic growth and an ever-widening belief of what we're owed from the state to threaten that noble promise. At the turn of the 20th century, our population was just shy of 40 million – next year it's set to hit 70 million. In the past 20 years, we've endured a global financial crisis, a pandemic and an energy crisis, all of which resulted in enormous amounts of government borrowing to keep the lights on. We celebrate GDP growth of 0.2pc while more than a hundred Labour backbenchers mobilise against their own government for trying to tighten up disability benefits. Against all odds, it's the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) that has laid the dire situation bare. On Tuesday, the OBR published a report which declared the nation was in a 'vulnerable' economic position. Our deficit is well above the average for an advanced economy, our debt is the fourth highest among advanced European economies and our borrowing costs are the third highest of an advanced economy globally. Try as we might, nothing has tempered these risks over the past 15 years. Underlying debt has risen by 24pc of GDP in that time – since 2005 it's risen by 60pc of GDP. Every year since 2020, the OBR's debt forecasts for the UK have risen. We can assume that trend won't be broken under this Government for reasons internal and external. Borrowing costs are rising around the globe with little sign of abating, while geopolitical tensions are the most volatile they've been for years. Donald Trump's tariffs will be implemented over the coming months, upending the global trade system the West has benefited from for decades, and every nation is being forced to spend more money on defence. Within our borders, successive governments have baulked at the task at hand. As the OBR writes: 'Planned tax rises have been reversed, and, more significantly, planned spending reductions have been abandoned.' Taxes are already at their highest relative level since 1950 – there's not much room left to squeeze until our pips squeak. And that's only the situation as it stands. The state pension alone is set to cost more than 9pc of annual GDP by the time I get there, if the past decade is anything to go by, while the death of the defined benefit pension will massively reduce the number of large buyers of gilts. The cost of servicing the Government's debt will only increase as uncertainty continues to grow – a one percentage point increase in gilt yields adds roughly £30bn to the national debt. Were the Government to be forced into renationalising the water companies, decades of mismanagement would cost us a net £78bn to repurchase these debt-laden businesses. That's not to mention climate change, which the OBR predicts could lower our GDP by 8pc, while adding debt to the national balance sheet worth 56pc of GDP by the 2070s. Even if they've over-egged this five times over, that's still a GDP hit of 1.6pc with an increase to debt of more than £300bn. By anyone's calculations, we are on an unsustainable path. Let me be clear: I believe wholeheartedly in the notion of a welfare state, but in order to maintain the most important elements of the system, we need to have a difficult conversation that nobody wants. Even Rachel Reeves's attempt to tinker with minutiae like the winter fuel payments was shut down by Keir Starmer when he saw an opinion poll for an election four years hence. The core of the problem is that none of us want to admit the promises we were born into were false. We've all grown up knowing there is a state pension waiting for us when we're old, the NHS when we're ill and payments when we're in dire straits. But something has to give – and it will be deeply unpopular. Gold-plated public sector pensions obviously need reform, but this is far from bold enough. Perhaps the answer is the end of universality, with every single benefit – including pensions and the NHS – means-tested. Perhaps it's the end of one major strand of government support. Perhaps everything becomes less generous. Until we ask the question, we'll never know the answer. Whichever government sets us on the right course is signing its own death warrant – but it will be for the good of us all.
Wall Street Journal
06-07-2025
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
The Crisis of the Welfare State in Profile
The crisis of the welfare state—fiscally unaffordable but politically unreformable—afflicts nearly every 21st-century Western democracy. And the revolt last week against British Prime Minister Keir Starmer's modest disability reforms shows how deeply the entitlement state mentality is entrenched. At issue were so-called personal independence payments for those who struggle with tasks like bathing, preparing food or managing finances owing to physical or mental infirmities. Sounds compassionate, but more Brits than ever are claiming anxiety and depression to qualify. As many as a thousand people each day are signing up for the allowance that can exceed $250 a week. Some 2.8 million jobless Brits are now classified as long-term ill, and the government says one in 10 working-age people now claim a sickness or disability benefit. Personal independence payment awards have more than doubled since the pandemic. British spending on working-age, health-related benefits has skyrocketed to £52 billion from £36 billion over the past five years, according to the London-based Institute for Fiscal Studies. Mr. Starmer sought to tighten eligibility requirements, but his own party revolted. More than 120 Labour MPs threatened to kill the reform bill outright. The government responded with concessions that shielded existing claimants from the changes, knocking billions off the total savings.
Telegraph
03-07-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
The great pensioner gravy train is finally coming to a halt
Rachel Reeves may go down in history as the Chancellor who had the bad luck to be in charge when the music stopped. For decades, British politicians have spent beyond their means, robbing the future of its inheritance to pay for consumption today. Now the bill is beginning to come due. Wherever you look, the pillars of the welfare state are beginning to buckle. The Covid backlog may have added a mountainous pile-up of cases to the NHS's problems, but the fundamental flaws of the health service are the same as they were at its foundation – a system of state command and control that destroys competition and price signals. If the NHS were a patient, we'd put it up for assisted dying. Ever greater injections of cash and resources have ceased to produce visible responses, with the result that despite advances in AI and medical equipment, productivity has now slipped below its level in 2012.
Sky News
02-06-2025
- Business
- Sky News
Starmer couldn't be clearer: Britain must prepare for war
Clement Attlee was the Labour prime minister credited with creating the welfare state. On Monday, at a shipbuilding yard in Glasgow, Sir Keir Starmer presented himself as a Labour prime minister who wants to be credited with turning the UK into a warfare-ready state, as he spoke of the need for the UK to be prepared for the possibility of war at the launch of his government's Strategic Defence Review. The rhetoric couldn't be clearer: Britain is on a wartime footing. The UK's armed forces must move to "war-fighting readiness" over the coming years, the UK faces a "more serious and immediate" threat than anytime since the Cold War, and "every citizen must play their part". The prime minister promised to fulfil the recommendations of the 10-year strategic defence plan, which will be published in full on Monday afternoon. But what he refused to do was explain when he would deliver on spending 3% of GDP on defence - the commitment necessary to deliver the recommendations in the Strategic Defence Review. 8:36 PM is sticking plasters over wounds His refusal to do so blunts his argument. On the one hand, the prime minister insists there is no greater necessity than protecting citizens, while on the other hand, he says his ability to deliver 3% of spending on defence is "subject to economic and fiscal conditions". This is a prime minister who promised an end to "sticking plaster politics", who promised to take difficult decisions in the interest of the country. One of those difficult decisions could well be deciding, if necessary, to cut other budgets in order to find the 3% needed for defence spending. Instead, the prime minister is sticking plasters over wounds. After voters lashed out at Labour in the local elections, the Starmer government announced it was going to look again at the cut to pensioners' winter fuel allowance. There is an expectation, too, that Sir Keir is planning to lift the two-child cap on benefits. Refusing to lift the cap was one of his hard choices going into the election, but now he is looking soft on it. 2:15 What choices is Starmer prepared to make? That's why I asked him on Monday what the choices are that he's going to make as prime minister. Is his choice properly-funded defence, or is it to reverse winter fuel cuts, or lift the two-child benefit cap? If he needs to be the prime minister creating the warfare state, can he also deliver what voters and his own MPs want when it comes to the welfare state? To hit the 3% target, Sir Keir would have to find an extra £13bn. That's difficult to find, and especially difficult when the government is reversing on difficult decisions its made on cuts. For now, the prime minister doesn't want to answer the question about the choices he's perhaps going to make. But if he is really clear-eyed about the security threat and what is required for the UK to become ready for war, it is question he is going to have to answer.
