The dear old UK has a problem. And you already know it. Our taxes are going up, our welfare benefits are going up but the money we have to spend is going down.
Don’t take my word for it, just read a report by a global financial analyst called New World Wealth which shows that while income per head in the United States has risen by 72 per cent since the financial crisis of 2007 to £65,767 ours has fallen by 2 per cent to £ 39,370.
Kelvin MacKenzie has said Keir Starmer is in a difficult position
PA
This is an absolute shocker since in 2008 our individual income was actually higher than America’s. And right now, with the US telling Europe you are own your own, we face an even bigger issue as our defence spending is going up to 2.5% by 2027 but that will be nowhere need what we need. And Starmer and Co know it.
In 1960, we spent twice as much on defence as we did on health. Back in the mid-80s the amount of our taxes we spent on defence was running at 4%. In the Second World War it was at 50%.
Then along came Blair and his alter ego Cameron and they took the view that America would always bail us out and in any event Gorbachev had defanged the tiger.
How wrong they were.
And where did all that defence money go? You guessed it. On welfare. On the unemployed. On the alleged sick. On pensions. Today such spending accounts for 45% of our GDP. That can’t carry on.
Britain is not only doing shockingly against the US but our performance relative to the world economy is dire. Average global income has risen by more than half from $8,700 to $13,200 since 2007.
The effect is that our global average which used to be six times higher than the rest of the world is now just over three times.
I am delighted that the world is getting richer but the reality is we are getting poorer.
The falling value of sterling hasn’t helped but what has really been painful is our higher and higher taxes and our falling productivity. The reality is we are a nation of idlers. And the bosses are just as bad. They too love working from home although they know they are not as productive.
Only last week I wrote that pre-pandemic NHS productivity was 18.6% down and public sector workers down 8%. How much longer can we continue like this?
Nobody wants to pay more taxes which means that cuts are inevitable. I would advocate reducing ALL benefits by around 7%. Painful but it might force some of the unemployed into finding work and it would also make pensioners grateful they live in the UK where the state pension is £884 a month compared with the much more successful China where it’s £461 a month.
All sides of the political spectrum are agreed we need spend more on defence. Who will tell the public the truth about where that money is going to come from? Certainly not Starmer or Reeves who haven’t spoken a truthful word about the state of our economy since they came to power.
Both Farage and Badenoch would be cautious about revealing their hand as they might fear the electorate backlash at the polls. But surely we deserve the truth. The question is; Can we handle the truth.
Supposing you or your family were told that benefits were to be cut would you switch votes. History seems to indicate enough would to change the direction of a General Election.
And that’s where the issue. We all want an increase in defence spending but nobody wants to pay for it and no politician wants to upset the voter as they might lose their seat.
It’s an impossible triangle and can only be changed if somebody, a Thatcher for instance, comes along and is brave enough to tell the electorate the way it is.
I’d like to believe that whoever it is emerges from the Right. I just can’t put a name to that person.
