Has Labour crashed the economy ?

Older people use hospitals and community centres too not just young people.

The sensible thing to do would have been to say those living on less than 40 hours at minimum wage should get it and those who have more don't get it. Instead Labour have created a situation where those who payed in all their lives and get a state pension but no other private pension/income don't get it whilst those who never paid enough in get it and overall come out better off once no council tax, free dental care etc have been calculated than the contributors. Labour have no idea how to manage the economy. They have no idea of fairness. Hence we are on the brink of recession.

Totally agree with this. Frustrates me immensely.

@TheGrinchIsComingToTown

"It's the same as businesses who say they can't afford the increase in NMW - why not? Why are you operating your business in such a way that you cannot afford to pay your staff a living wage?"

Quite simply because we largely operate in an international market. Your logic is sound if you are talking about high street hairdressers or local builders but not applicable if you are in the business of manufacturing large telecommunications towers or airport fire trucks where you are reliant on exports.

If you have high labour costs and high energy costs and high business taxation without trade tariffs then you are simply creating unemployment and lower economic growth by transferring business growth to another country such as China that has higher pollution (from cheaper coal fired power) and lower employment rights.

Labour Party member here. I think it's too early to pass judgement but I do think the NI hike is a huge mistake. Companies are still in recovery from Covid, dealing with increasingly volatile markets, still experiencing supply chain issues due to war in Ukraine and a cost of living crisis that affects discretionary (and sometimes essential) spend.

The NI hike is a tax on jobs. It's a disincentive to hire and a disincentive to reward. It's going to impact on employment, and therefore tax take, and that will result in less money for public services.

I'm also of the opinion that the public sector needs large scale reform, not more money thrown at it.

(And yes, the note in the drawer re the treasury was a joke. It's a tradition in outgoing administrations just not made public previously).

Lack of economic growth isn't a partisan problem - it is an issue for all of us. None of our politicians have a clue on how to run a business. None of them are commercial in any way. They are career politicians without experience to help solve the issue and without the self awareness to seek advice from those with better skills in this area than them. Honestly, we've been fucked for a while (and that was before Brexit, COVID and furlough, and the Ukraine war impacting energy and food prices). I'm sorely depressed that our politicians and the voting public generally can't see the bigger issue here. How can we get the right people into politics to better represent our interests and get us out of this terminal decline?

@caringcarer id find better sources…

Very few ‘British firms’ can ‘flee’ the U.K. Theyre small and medium businesses whose customer base is local. They have nor the means nor the will to ‘flee’.

As to whether the US would be a good choice financially …. I personally would have chosen a low wage country instead. The US isn’t one of them. (Yet? Who knows what Trump has in mind…..)

Except increasing MW means people have more money to spend, which is good for the economy.

Businesses can’t survive if people don’t buy their products. And they’re not going to do it if they have no money.

UK in ‘doom loop' as British firms flee Labour meltdown for Trump's booming US

www.express.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/1989157/UK-doom-loop-money-dries-up-firms-flee-Labour-Trump-s-US#ICID=Android_ExpressNewApp_AppShare.

Let’s not forget the 6 week tenure of Liz Truss and the catastrophic financial consequences of that.

@StarDolphins lets be honest. The first step is to reconnect with the EU.
But he can’t say he is going to do that wo a huge outcry from ‘certain newspapers’. Because Brexit.

Thats what he is doing though. Slowly and quietly.

@Witchlite i disagree.
When the vote for Brexit happened, many people thought they voted for Brexit light.
A hard Brexit was a political choice from Johnson and co.

The Norvegian option would have taken us out of the EU wo the consequences we are now facing economically.

This might be true. However, no point LP just keep rattling on about this shocking black hole that they did didn’t know about. If you take over anything that’s been shit, the first thing you do is drawer a line under it, move forward & formulate a plan. I don’t see that Labour has done this as yet. No-one I speak to has an idea of what the actual plan is for anything. He’s concentrating on the decor when the house is falling down. Same as my local MP, completely grey rocks the big issues but post endless photos of himself next to the goose shit on the paths at the local park.

Each business has to look at how much their customers are paying/can pay/willing to pay. Look at the cost of nursery fees. They are high. I'm not saying nursery staff don't deserve more wages but if their wages go up then nursery fees go up to pay for it. In April their wages will go up a little over a pound and hour plus employers will have to pay more NI to employ them. That means come April nursery fees will soar again. This will lift inflation. BoE won't reduce mortgage rates. One decision has a lot of knock on effects. Same with rents Milliband wants to make LL's get new EPC certificates every time a tenant moves in or out. That could be more than once every year. While the LL is waiting for the person to come the home must remain empty. In a HMO he wants a new EPC every single time anyone from house moves in or out so in some cases a LL will have to get a new EPC multiple times each year. This adds cost to LL's. These costs will simply be passed on to tenants including cost of void periods whilst waiting for a person to come to issue another new EPC. Again this will increase rental prices and put up inflation. I hope tenants realise this increase is down to Ed Milliband. Labour never connect the dots and consider the consequences of a single action.

I don’t disagree that the they were the instigators of the opportunity for this b@###&#t, but every person who voted for it was responsible and I would say people who didn’t vote as well!

Most people, myself included, assumed it would fail. Hindsight is wonderful, but more people went out and put a tickin the leave box than the stay box. The EU and the blatant disregard for accountability, leading to accusations of corruption are also culprits. The politicians who treated it as a party political thing (yes looking at you Labour) and didn’t want to come out too strong for stay, in case they upset their voters … and the Tories were just a culpable.

In the end, it was the people who voted for it, or didn’t bother to vote who were responsible.

When I was young there was a winter of discontent. No electric 3 nights a week and we all had to light candles. We had gas and both my Aunties were all electric and had to come to our house for their cooked meals and take a flask of tea home. I'm worried some farmers will give up farming and sell their land and herds and if too many do this we will have food insecurity.

Policy changes don't usually have an immediate impact, unless you are Liz Truss. Labour haven't made that many changes to have been able to impact the economy yet.

Jaguar Land Rover are cutting 4500 car plant jobs. Manufacturing will be cutting jobs thanks to Ed Milliband and his zero targets. We still want these goods so instead we'll just be buying them from overseas and importing their pollution along with the goods. Why can't he see this blindingly obvious situation?

Wales has had a Labour leader for as long as I can remember and our healthcare and many services are devolved.
We have a NHS deficit of £183 million, over 800,000 people on waiting lists and a severe lack of dentist and GP spaces.
I live in a suburb outside a city, we have one GP surgery and one NHS dentist. Neither are taking on new patients.
They’ve knocked down 2 out of the 3 local high schools, sold the land to developers (even though one is on a flood area and now they can’t sell the homes) and now had to convert the local college into a high school so that kids actually have a school to go to. They’ve demolished a local park/playground and built over 200 new homes on the school and play sites. With no infrastructure to support all these people who will be living here.
There used to be a bus from our area to the hospital every hour, relied on by staff, which has been reduced to 1-2 times a day so useless for shift workers and patients alike. The local park and ride was closed earlier this year. We don’t have a train station here (there is a rail track that runs right through here but they’ve never created a stop even though it’s been requested since 1910!). Labour want less cars on the road but other than installing miles of cycle lanes (in the wettest city in the UK), they’ve withdrawn any service that helps you to leave your car behind.
Millions was spent on changing the speed limit, now it’s slowly being changed again but as some signs haven’t been replaced, visitors and many locals are unsure what speed they should be driving so it causes havoc on the roads.
I absolutely do not think the Tories are the answer, they’ve buggered things up. But Labour can bugger things up just as effectively.

These are business expenses, though.

It's the same as businesses who say they can't afford the increase in NMW - why not? Why are you operating your business in such a way that you cannot afford to pay your staff a living wage?

The NI increase, lowering of NI threshold and increase in minimum wage will undoubtedly floor some businesses, particularly those employing part time and very young staff.

@Herwoggle

"I agree with you on millionaires receiving wfa...but I would rather all pensioners get it than those at the bottom miss out. By all accounts if everyone who is eligible claimed pension credit it will, cost more anyway"

The WFA cut to me was a clear demonstration of economic incompetence and inability to see the secondary effects by Labour.

You are correct that the policy encourages more eligible pensioners to claim pension credits so that the policy ends up costing more money than it saves.

I absolutely totally agree that it is not necessary for the wealthy to be able to receive WFA. But a more effective way to cut it would have been to simply make it a taxable benefit. Therefore anyone on a little more than the state pension starts paying tax on it and those on higher pensions more tax.

Every single thing that's happening now can be traced back to the tories.

The black hole in public finances. The uncontrolled immigration that they lied about - because their mates can use the immigrants as cheap labour while whipping the public up into a fury. Education, the NHS, universities going bust. It all comes down to the tories. Labour will have to make hard decisions that will be unpopular and may not have brilliant short term consequences, but will hopefully have good long term consequences.

You are right that none have run a business. Their decisions are having a massive impact on business abd will stifle entrepreneurship.

Housing ... trades people have left in droves and loads are leaving abd not being replaced.

Building houses without builders/brickies/chippies is not going to happen.

If only the bastards hadn't shredded building apprenticeships by 54%.

Oh, hang on a second, it was the Tories who did that.