Claire’s Accessories goes under - blaming Rachel Reeves for the 1,300 jobs lost

[ProudAmberTurtle]

Claire’s Accessories has just gone bust - and over 1,300 people have lost their jobs.

I know it’s overpriced plastic and the piercing guns were always a bit controversial, but it’s been a total rite of passage for many girls. First earrings, birthday parties and that excitement of spending their pocket money on some glittery rubbish... it feels like another bit of childhood nostalgia is being wiped out.

But what’s really grating is why. According to the owner, the final nail in the coffin was the massive hike in National Insurance contributions from Rachel Reeves. It wasn't the only factor obviously - the high street is doing very badly, but it was the decisive factor.

How can a business that relies on young, part-time staff survive when their overheads have just been hiked through the roof? It’s not just the big brands; it’s the independent shops too. We’re going to be left with nothing but vape shops and empty units at this rate.

There was a report yesterday that Starmer will sack Reeves if the local elections go badly for him. Why can't they both go whatever the result?

Well, they survive by carrying goods people actually want, at prices people can actually afford.

That the staff is young or part time is neither here nor there. The Claire's business model has been failing for years, is undercut by online retailers, and the business failed to move with the times.

This one isn't on Rachel Reeves. Some failures may well be - but this one is like a private school that's been mismanaged for years finally failing and squawking about VAT rather than facing reality.

People will be squawking when it shows in jobs more and more, perhaps some who care nothing for those schools and CA.

Or maybe when it hits funds generally.

People always squawk. It's what they do.

People will, however, be better off in the long run if we can create an economy that isn't filled with zombie companies lurching along from one crisis to the next. At the moment we've a lot of dead weight, established in the market, which has the effect of stifling any 'green shoots' of entrepreneurship. Killing the zombies will make way for dynamism and advancement. then we need people with enough 'go getting' to make the most of the opportunities.

However, there will be a pain point. You can't have the destruction of the old, to make way for the new, without job losses. There will be an impact on investments as things move around. And then the markets will rise again, as they always do.

Trouble is we've been suffering your "pain point" since the 1970s, so that's 50 years so far during which we've sacrificed our shipbuilding, railway building, steel industry, coal mining, slate/tin mining, car manufacturing, "corner shops", pubs, High Street, oil & gas industries, clothing manufacture, etc.

Where does it stop?

Yes, we have the financial services industry which is highly risky as the entire thing could easily be shipped off to any number of other countries.

We've also relied on foreign investors buying up new build houses and flats or buying and renovating big old properties, but successive governments have hit that market with various tax grabs so even foreign investors are now slowing down their buying and starting to sell off their UK real estate.

We had the growth in universities but the wheels are falling off that too now.

We've, as a nation, just borrowed and borrowed and borrowed to finance our decline, with national debt now standing at a whopping £3 BILLION and the interest on that alone being higher than the amount we spend on education.

It's not sustainable and we're heading for an economic death spiral.

You can't base an entire economy on importing cheap crap from China and a small army of "influences" sat on their sofas on their laptops!

If only it was 3 billion, it’s trillion.

No one will be better off with more people stuck at home with no work, particularly not young people.

Some seem ok if it’s other people’s jobs (or schools) closing but it has a tendency to creep towards what you and others work in.

10 people with machines, 100 people without machines ? not to mention the machines and the tech support could all be outsourced to another country so then still no need for domestic people

Some seem ok if it’s other people’s jobs (or schools) closing but it has a tendency to creep towards what you and others work in

True. There is lots of crowing on MN when cuts to public sector jobs are announced, especially cuts to the Civil Service.

Then the unemployed get blamed for being unemployed

MN has tens of thousands of posters - unless you are noting posting names, it’s meaningless to compare responses on different threads as if MN was a unified body.

It should be aimed at the gov and their policies not those unable to get work. Especially if they really want to work, which young people usually will.

I think the point I made was relevant. Fine if you don't agree.

eventually one way or another society will need a whole new economic system

Or aim it at companies like CA for not running their business properly?

Do you think CA would have survived withour the NI contributions?

So GB Energy, started by Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, is creating thousands of jobs.

Breakfast Clubs also support businesses.

As will Pride in Place.

Yes, well spotted, my typo. If only the annual deficit was as low as 3 billion, let alone total debt.

It'll never happen.

No country has taxed its way to growth, the opposite happens….every single time.

If you tax jobs, the number of jobs will shrink and companies will close.
If you tax education, education options will shrink and schools will close.
If you tax farms, farms will shrink and close.
If you tax property, property options will reduce and people will go into negative equity and defaults.

CA isn’t the first and it certainly won’t be the last, this is not due to poorly managed businesses, This was completely expected by every non Labour advisor economist, it is expected to get much worse and the blame falls squarely on domestic economic policies championed by Rachel Reeves.

No country has taxed its way to growth, the opposite happens….every single time.

Nothing's quite as straightforward as you've outlined, @GoldebWeasel. Governments have often raised funds through taxation and borrowing in order to stimulate their economies. This has worked well for the UK in the past, with public sector industries affording regular, reliable employment. The stimulus programmes included house building, road and railway expansions, improved education, the NHS and more - meaning people not only had decent jobs but better lives. This then opens the field for more enterprises providing the goods and services people could now afford, thus more jobs.

We're in a new situation now. With the exploding capabilities of computers and the increasing likelihood of war, there simply can't be full employment any more and defence must take a higher priority. None of the old solutions will work. Tricky.

Borrowing is not taxing.

Of course governments raise funds through taxation, but the last time we were taxed this heavily was just after world war 2 when we were at total war and the entire economy had been mobilised for war.

The taxes introduced by Labour have been almost entirely focused on employers, business owners, higher earners l, stealth taxes and children’s education. These are precisely not the areas to target tax to stimulate an economy. These will lead to disincentive work, bankruptcies, closing business, less investment, shrinking and closing businesses, higher unemployment, worse education options, wealth flight and ultimately pressure on public services as more people need state support .

You can see this already in unemployment figures, business closures, independent schools closing at twice the usual rate, welfare spending and economic growth. This is just the short term consequences, it hasn’t fully taken affect yet. It always has the same outcome and we are living through it and seeing it every day.

Indeed.

The only way the pain point is worth it, is if there’s a plan for a sustainable, not easily transferable form of business for ‘after’. Which requires long term planning based on skills available or teachable, a true understanding of our natural resources, and serious thought about likely demand. The govt then has to encourage it including using the tax system.

Successive UK governments have failed to do this. They look for short term wins (within three years is ideal for the election cycle) rather than plan for the long term. They prefer to bring in already trained foreign workers than train up the preexisting population available to them, in short - they prefer to do anything by the hard part.

They are also not fond of entrepreneurs. Not really. Small businesses and their owners are too busy running their companies to fund political parties and they aren’t wealthy enough individually to be photographed with.

It’s easy to blame someone else for your poor management of a company and it going bust

https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/document-api-images-live.ch.gov.uk/docs/He0BymHoPMM03vvSoJ2cRb4bplf0ULfirHr4mJC3JOk/application-pdf?X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=ASIAWRGBDBV3GH35QLBV%2F20260430%2Feu-west-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20260430T055757Z&X-Amz-Expires=60&X-Amz-Security-Token=IQoJb3JpZ2luX2VjED0aCWV1LXdlc3QtMiJHMEUCIQCmOEXLrnjKbEgTDPLLE8mk8d02npJm%2FwJ8zzGWqScMeQIgfpAq6cLJKqsOEau7K5p%2FMbbIIavsUi6ZFZMHNBWeG0wqgQQIBhAFGgw0NDkyMjkwMzI4MjIiDEOqKcbtZ%2FH5Ay76KCreA7AGjMda8JejxhqqUbW03hyKCrh5BMssVGkJu4xuH6JNf1NO2O2rRgsyyHYf9GBaic0AA77iuu9dvaHmvbiQc9OdYUwSKBUV2BAWm4%2FU2mHI%2BSgAZUWnAN85oZGm9mIudqxX5JVOXccQnV%2F3qyAEYH4whjF7Mu1l%2FnMfac0ONZ1F6vYwUxrPVFUj1AkgiCi4%2F4C8Sn%2B%2BZKEHV%2Bxcz%2BZB72pVphJ7TkFxHBbwo8dur1fzZLYwmW29lK0DzB9bwnT58iDmjYA4kVu6u%2FnIXDP1OMu4uAKS42dr56eTS8t8PK4dUi4%2BoM7O5x%2BR%2FtnEiIesfb3wGa%2BjOw6SNZ2dut8Or%2B%2FTU46WqGhdHN%2B9%2BSZvskk1GsrkP4BLv4HL05LV8x0IiyyjLYWxMELOB5b2Cn8cX5biBYOOiF7RereSldpH6kxPR5MA82UM29XnoE4H7KZuI3RsFBl%2FV%2F4khyhDLl8TAQm3ETOMGiVA2HVWRyF2RkeTdYMP8jkOWrJHYcOwq9BYNCiVriEbaoYSAbfRg%2BeNruJSMUkZTaEIyxs7HAMyoGtnfgmbCWsE1jhkCLMQEy%2FwnjlwWE1sEwGb6FbmUR7WaOIUZNyn0l%2FMIMVlPys7F0q5EodWS4Quzz%2BHukSYUQYwzrbLzwY6pQGT7egpd8MVySMK3iK8wxfAUO%2BjoMdp0jTKHfXR2gdNElDHnwII3PDrPjmSY3%2BkDmqC7BiMlWKHexR9JTIUEAHt0vOe6PlCRZYn4e4OVrUOsetoYzxIAqOYinfFPNSA2brUH3KztHBgmpFln8o0vkuZyvHJR7pDaslXsOaQgqapAE3D17up8B%2FcB9Y4m%2FzzRZrfwpY3mXRbQxHs01ZGkViZIBLSOCQ%3D&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&response-content-disposition=inline%3Bfilename%3D%22companies_house_document.pdf%22&X-Amz-Signature=ede20872afe0b1a93527a8be11189d0fa14931500f23883c99e60db8bf24d8e1

page 14 is an interesting read, this is from 2023 before change of government

seems Brexit, Covid and rising inflation were part of the problem long before Reeves took the reins

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/03115188/filing-history

2023 full accounts page 14

I wonder as well if the window for girls to like Claire’s is getting smaller and smaller affecting things. Girls seem to grow up so fast these days, I can’t imagine any teens going to Claire’s, all this skincare obsession, wanting to be seen as grown up, they’ll outgrow Claire’s faster than we did.

Yes government economic policy is to blame for increased business closure and unemployment increase, I think you need to re-read that link if you think it shows otherwise. It’s not a mystery why this is happening, it was forecast by every single economist. It’s a bit weird to be arguing over it really.