Britain’s rising unemployment, slowing hiring and weakening business confidence began long before the latest conflict overseas. Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer need to stop searching for foreign excuses and start taking responsibility for domestic decisions.
The Labour Government have found a convenient political shelter. Whenever another economic warning light starts flashing, whenever growth disappoints, whenever inflation proves stubborn, whenever businesses complain that they are struggling to hire or invest, the answer increasingly seems to be the same.
The Middle East.
According to the latest OECD forecasts, Britain faces the fastest rise in unemployment in the G7. Inflation is expected to remain among the highest in the developed world. Job vacancies have fallen to a new low. Payroll numbers are shrinking. Business confidence remains fragile.
And yet the Government’s response appears to be that events thousands of miles away are somehow responsible for everything.
Nobody disputes that conflict in the Middle East matters. Nobody disputes that disruption to global energy markets can push up prices. That is Economics 101.
But here is the question that Starmer and Reeves seem desperate to avoid. If the Middle East is responsible for today’s problems, who was responsible for the warnings from British businesses months ago?
Employers were sounding the alarm long before the latest escalation overseas. They warned that higher National Insurance contributions would increase the cost of hiring. They warned that large increases in the minimum wage would place pressure on sectors operating on thin margins. They warned that additional employment regulations would make firms more cautious about taking on staff.
Those warnings were dismissed.
Now unemployment is rising, vacancies are falling, and businesses are pulling back. Yet instead of engaging honestly with those concerns, ministers appear determined to point at a map and blame everything on events beyond Britain’s control.
That is not leadership. It is excuse-making.
The fundamental weakness in the Government’s argument is that it treats Britain as a passive spectator in its own economic story. We are constantly told what the world is doing to us. Rarely do we hear what Britain intends to do for itself.
Take energy.
Every time global tensions flare, politicians remind us how vulnerable Britain is to international energy markets. They warn of rising oil prices. They warn of rising gas prices. They warn of supply disruptions.
Fine.
If that is the case, then why are we making ourselves more dependent on imported energy?
Britain sits on significant oil and gas reserves. We possess the expertise. We possess the infrastructure. We possess the workforce. We possess some of the highest environmental and safety standards anywhere in the world.
Yet much of the political establishment behaves as though extracting British energy is somehow more objectionable than importing exactly the same energy from abroad.
This makes little sense.
If Britain still needs oil and gas, and every serious forecast suggests we will for decades to come, then importing it does not make it disappear.
The choice is not oil versus no oil.
The choice is often British oil or foreign oil.
British gas or imported gas.
Energy produced under British regulations, by British workers, generating British tax revenues, or energy shipped thousands of miles around the world before arriving on our shores.
There is also an environmental reality that is too often ignored.
Transporting oil and gas across oceans requires ships, fuel and logistics networks that themselves generate emissions. Producing energy closer to where it is consumed can reduce those transport requirements while improving security of supply.
The Government talks endlessly about resilience. Energy resilience begins with producing more of what you need yourself.
Drill, baby, drill may sound like a slogan, but beneath the slogan lies a serious point. No advanced economy ever became stronger by deliberately making itself more dependent on foreign suppliers for essential resources.
The wider problem is that Britain increasingly seems to suffer from a crisis of confidence.
We are told we cannot build quickly enough. We are told we cannot develop our natural resources. We are told we cannot reform regulation. We are told we cannot compete. We are told we cannot grow.
And yet around the world, countries are building, drilling, investing and expanding with astonishing speed.
The United States is attracting capital. Gulf states are transforming entire economies. Asian nations are constructing infrastructure on a scale that Britain would struggle to imagine.
Meanwhile, Westminster debates why nothing can be done.
The British people deserve better than a Labour Government that constantly explains why events abroad are responsible for failures at home.
Starmer and Reeves inherited the fastest growing country in the G7, and look what they have done. Of course there are always challenges. But governments are elected to solve problems, not narrate them. They are elected to make difficult choices, not provide a running commentary on geopolitical events.
At some point the excuses run out. At some point ministers must explain why business confidence is weakening, why hiring is slowing, why investment remains subdued and why growth continues to lag behind expectations.
Because voters understand something that often escapes politicians. Bad luck exists. But so does bad policy.
So stop blaming the desert for a disaster made in Downing Street, Starmer and Reeves.
