The global economy is all over the place right now — the war in Ukraine is still grinding on, Trump’s threatening trade tariffs like it’s 2018 are all over again, and tensions with China aren’t letting up. Honestly, no one really knows where it’s all heading.
So, when growth slows again — and it’s looking likely — we can already guess what the Labour government will say: “It’s the global outlook.” But a lot of people reckon that’s just passing the buck. The IMF now expects UK growth to crawl along at just 0.5% this year. Compare that with last October, when our own Office for Budget Responsibility was predicting 2% growth for 2025. It’s quite the downgrade, reported GB News.
The thing is, while it’s easy to blame global instability, much of the pressure here at home seems self-inflicted. Labour’s been busy hiking taxes — on businesses, on employers, even on wealthy foreigners. And, shockingly to no one, that’s had some pretty immediate effects.
There’s now a stat doing the rounds that a millionaire is leaving Britain every 45 minutes. Some might say “good riddance,” but it’s not that simple. The wealthiest in society pay a massive chunk of the tax that funds everything from the NHS to schools. In fact, the top 1% of income taxpayers are now contributing 29% of all income tax, up from 25% in 2010 and just 21% back in 2000.
We’ve become more reliant on high earners than ever before, even while ramping up the pressure on them. It’s a risky move. If those people disappear, so does their tax money, and public services take the hit.
Yet Labour seems to be ploughing ahead with full-on ideological zeal. They raised £40bn in new taxes just four months into office. £25bn of that is coming from employers through national insurance hikes. They’ve also slapped an inheritance tax on farmers and small business owners who were mostly exempt before. And in the name of green policy, they bumped up the windfall tax on energy profits from 75% to 78%. That one, to be fair, started under the Conservatives — but it’s been taken even further now.
To top it off, Labour’s already dished out generous pay deals to unions within weeks of taking power, and there’s more where that came from. The spending is racking up fast — but where’s the growth to match it?
If the economy doesn’t bounce back soon, we may see even more taxes, more union handouts, and more “hard Labour” all round. And if things go south, it won’t just be Chancellor Rachel Reeves taking the flak — it’ll be the ideology that got us here.
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