Welcome back, dear readers, to another riotous week beneath the Big Top of Blunders, where the sawdust is ankle deep, the trapeze has come loose from the ceiling and Britain’s increasingly alarmed audience is beginning to wonder whether anybody in this travelling Labour circus actually knows how to put the tent up.
At the centre of the ring, naturally, stands our increasingly beleaguered ringmaster, Prime Minister Andy “No Answer Andy” Burnham, top hat slightly askew, clutching a megaphone through which remarkably few answers ever emerge.
Around him, the Cabinet performs its now familiar repertoire.
The Treasury contortionists twist economic logic into shapes previously considered anatomically impossible. Ministers make taxpayers’ money disappear with all the finesse of a magician dropping the rabbit. The welfare department fires banknotes out of a confetti cannon. The energy team juggles Britain’s security while standing next to a bucket of petrol, and somebody at the back appears to be making balloon animals out of the defence budget. Roll up, roll up. Welcome to Clowning Street, Week Eight.
The £330 Million Vanishing Act
Every circus needs a magician, and Labour has apparently perfected one extraordinary trick. Making taxpayers disappear.
This week, billionaire hedge fund manager Chris Rokos, estimated to have paid around £330 million in UK tax in a single year, was reported to be moving to Greece. Think about that number for a moment. Three hundred and thirty million pounds. It pays for about 9,000 police offices or nurses every year.
You might imagine that a government desperately searching down the back of Britain’s fiscal sofa for loose change would regard somebody contributing that sort of money as quite useful. Not Labour.
The economic philosophy beneath the Big Top appears to be rather simpler.
Find the people creating wealth, tax them, frighten them, threaten them with another tax, express surprise when they leave, then tax everybody remaining to make up the difference.
It is fiscal plate spinning, except Rachel Healey keeps smashing the plates and ordering new ones on the taxpayer’s credit card.
Rokos is hardly alone. Concerns have been mounting for months about wealthy entrepreneurs and investors relocating overseas as Britain becomes less competitive.
Labour supporters may cheer when a billionaire leaves. The trouble comes approximately five minutes later, when the Treasury discovers the billionaire was paying enough tax to fund rather a lot of nurses, teachers, police officers and public services.
Still, never mind. Perhaps Healey can replace £330 million by putting another 50p on something.
Healey Takes to the Fiscal High Wire
Talking of our Chancellor, this week Rachel Healey climbed back onto the fiscal high wire. Unfortunately, the markets looked up and appeared to conclude that she had forgotten the balancing pole.
Britain’s borrowing costs rose to their highest level since 1998, an uncomfortable verdict on the state of the public finances and investor confidence. That matters because government debt is not Monopoly money.
Higher borrowing costs ultimately mean more taxpayers’ money spent servicing debt, leaving less available for the things governments are actually supposed to provide. Defence, policing, roads, hospitals. You know, the boring stuff.
Labour arrived promising stability. Instead, the bond market appears to be sitting in the front row with its coat on, checking where the emergency exits are.
The great Labour economic circus is therefore becoming something of a circular performance. Taxes rise because the Government needs money. Investment weakens because taxes rise. Growth struggles because investment weakens. Borrowing becomes more expensive because growth struggles. Then the Government needs more money. Cue the clowns running back through the same door they entered 30 seconds earlier.
Coming Soon, The Great British Holiday Tax
And what better way to encourage growth than making holidays in Britain more expensive?
Enter No Answer Andy with this week’s newest attraction, the Great British Holiday Tax. Labour’s proposed Overnight Visitor Levy would allow English mayors to impose a percentage charge on hotels, B&Bs and holiday lets, with no national cap.
The hospitality industry, which has already endured a bruising period of rising employment costs and weakening margins, was understandably delighted in much the same way that a man in the stocks is delighted when somebody arrives carrying another bucket of rotten tomatoes.
Industry estimates cited this week suggested a levy comparable with Edinburgh’s 5 per cent model could add roughly £100 to the cost of an average family holiday.
Labour says mayors will not want to price their own areas out of the market. Splendid.
The same political class that has repeatedly demonstrated its enthusiasm for taxation is being restrained by the solemn promise that it probably will not overdo the taxation. That should calm everyone down.
The Treasury clowns are now apparently operating on the principle that if something moves, tax it, if it stops moving, subsidise it, and if it books a weekend in Blackpool, tax the hotel room as well.
Unless, Of Course, You Are Staying in an Asylum Hotel
And then came the custard pie. Because taxpayer funded hotels housing asylum seekers will reportedly be exempt from the new visitor levy, having been classified as “temporary accommodation”.
Ordinary British family spending its own money on three nights away? Pay up. Business traveller? Pay up. Someone staying near a hospital to visit a sick relative? Potentially, pay up.
Hotel being paid by the taxpayer to accommodate asylum seekers? Step right this way, sir, no ticket required. You really could not make this stuff up.
Apparently a hotel becomes “temporary accommodation” when the Government is paying for it, but remains taxable accommodation when you are. This is the sort of contortion that would earn a standing ovation at Cirque du Soleil.
British families are already paying through their taxes for the asylum system, and Labour has now devised the remarkable possibility that they could be taxed again when they themselves stay in a hotel, while the asylum accommodation their taxes are funding escapes the charge.
At this stage, the Labour circus does not require a satire column. It merely requires minutes.
Britain’s Biggest Carmaker Reaches for the Redundancy Forms
Over in the industrial tent, the mood was hardly merrier. Jaguar Land Rover announced plans to cut around 4,000 jobs worldwide over the next two years as part of a £1.7 billion cost reduction programme.
JLR employs around 30,000 people in Britain and is deeply embedded in the West Midlands economy, with major operations at Solihull, Wolverhampton, Gaydon and Whitley.
The company faces a genuine cocktail of global pressures, including fierce Chinese competition, international tariffs, the enormous cost of electrification and the consequences of a major cyber attack.
Those facts matter. But they also make Labour’s job obvious.
When British industry is fighting global competitors with lower costs, ministers should be asking how Britain becomes cheaper, faster, more productive and more attractive for investment.
Instead, businesses keep looking towards Westminster and seeing another clown approaching with a clipboard.
Higher employment costs, higher taxes, regulation, expensive energy and political uncertainty are not ingredients in an industrial renaissance. They are ingredients in a relocation brochure.
Bet365 Places a Bet on Fewer Employees
Then came another 300 jobs. Bet365 announced cuts as the gambling industry grapples with higher taxes and costs.
Once again, the Labour circus has managed the impressive feat of claiming it wants jobs and growth while making employing people more expensive. There is a recurring theme here. Government announces tax. Business warns about consequences.
Labour dismisses warning. Jobs disappear. Labour announces employment initiative.
You half expect Angela Rayner to appear carrying a giant cheque marked “JOB CREATION FUND”, only for somebody to point out that the Government has just taxed the jobs out of existence in the first place.
It is economic policy by balloon animal. Impressive for six seconds, then somebody squeezes the wrong bit and it explodes.
House Prices Join the Tumbling Act
The property market, meanwhile, has joined the circus acrobats.
Average UK house prices fell 0.4 per cent in the year to August according to figures from Lloyds, the first annual decline in that index since November 2023.
The typical home was valued at £298,468, while prices also slipped 0.2 per cent during August.
Now, falling house prices are not automatically disastrous, particularly for first time buyers desperate for affordability, and other indices have produced somewhat different readings.
But the more worrying feature is the freezing of activity.
Buyers hesitate, sellers wait, mortgage approvals weaken and the whole machine begins to seize.
And hovering over everybody is the Autumn Budget.
What will Labour tax next?
Homes?
Landlords?
Investors?
Pensions?
People with particularly ostentatious garden sheds?
Nobody knows.
Perhaps Healey herself does not know.
But uncertainty has consequences, and economies do not thrive when households and businesses spend half the year hiding behind the sofa waiting to discover what the Chancellor has found to tax.
More ADHD Benefit Claimants Than Full-Time Soldiers
And now we arrive at a statistic so extraordinary that even the Clowning Street writers’ room might have rejected it for being too ridiculous.
More than 100,000 people were receiving Personal Independence Payments for ADHD as of April.
The British Army, meanwhile, had around 82,000 full-time troops.
Yes.
Britain now has more people receiving PIP for ADHD than full-time soldiers defending the country.
The comparison does not mean people with legitimate disabilities should not receive support. Of course they should.
The question is whether Britain has built a welfare system that is expanding at a pace the economy can sustainably support, while the Armed Forces are being stretched ever thinner.
Total spending on health and disability benefits reached £76.9 billion in 2024/25, compared with a £60.2 billion defence budget.
And what did No Answer Andy do when challenged in Parliament about finding savings from welfare to strengthen defence?
Which brings us neatly to our next act.
No Answer Andy Performs His Famous Duck
Every ringmaster needs a signature trick.
Andy Burnham has developed one.
The Great Parliamentary Duck.
Asked whether he would support finding £4 billion in welfare savings to strengthen Britain’s defence, Burnham instead insisted national security could not come at the expense of social security.
Which sounds wonderfully compassionate until one remembers that national security is the rather important mechanism by which we continue to possess a nation in which social security can be paid.
The world is becoming more dangerous.
Russia is waging war in Europe.
China is expanding its military power.
Iran has destabilised the Middle East.
Britain’s Armed Forces face profound pressures.
Yet when presented with the uncomfortable business of priorities, No Answer Andy pirouettes away like a circus horse that has spotted an open gate.
A government must protect vulnerable citizens.
It must also defend the country.
These concepts are not mutually exclusive, unless your fiscal policy has become so catastrophically constrained that every serious decision resembles choosing which limb to remove.
Sold Out, Sinking and Apparently Waiting for the Submarines
The defence story became still more alarming.
This week brought further questions over Britain’s military preparedness, including reported delays affecting future submarine construction and continuing fury over Labour’s Chagos agreement.
The Chagos deal would transfer sovereignty over the British Indian Ocean Territory to Mauritius while Britain and the United States retain use of Diego Garcia under a 99 year arrangement.
Diego Garcia is not some ornamental colonial outpost.
It is a strategically critical military facility in the Indian Ocean.
Yet Labour’s approach to defence increasingly resembles a circus strongman whose enormous papier mâché barbell turns out to be hollow when somebody taps it.
Ministers speak grandly about national security, NATO and Britain’s place in the world, then Britain looks at the practicalities and discovers delays, stretched forces and strategic assets being wrapped in diplomatic red tape.
Perhaps the Ministry of Defence should simply replace the lion on the British coat of arms with a white flag and save everybody the suspense.
Israel Shuts the Door
Labour’s diplomatic acrobats were also hard at work this week.
Britain joined measures restricting trade with Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Israel responded by ordering the closure of the British consulate in East Jerusalem and removing British representatives from the International Gaza Support Centre.
Whatever one’s view of Israeli policy, settlements or the conflict itself, the deterioration of relations with an important security and intelligence partner is serious.
Foreign policy requires outcomes, not merely applause from whichever faction of your own party is currently shouting loudest.
Yet Labour increasingly seems to conduct diplomacy as though international relations were a university debating society.
Make gesture.
Receive applause.
Discover other country has responded.
Look surprised.
Send David Lammy to find the emergency face paint.
Britain Has Gas, Labour Has a By-Election
Back at home, the energy contortionists were performing another remarkable manoeuvre.
The Government had been expected to make a decision on the Jackdaw gas field, the largest untapped gas reserve in British waters.
Instead, the decision now looks set to slip until after the Holborn and St Pancras by-election.
How tremendously convenient.
The contest pits Labour against a Green candidate fiercely opposed to new North Sea drilling, meaning a decision approving Jackdaw before polling day could cause Labour considerable political discomfort.
No Answer Andy’s solution appears to be wonderfully simple.
Do not answer.
The Government denies deliberately delaying the decision for political reasons, and the formal decision sits with the Energy Secretary.
But critics have understandably asked why something affecting British jobs and energy security should apparently be left hanging while Labour fights an election.
Jackdaw and Rosebank could, according to their developers, contribute more than £28 billion to the economy and support more than 3,500 jobs at peak construction.
Britain needs energy.
Britain possesses energy.
Companies want to extract the energy.
The Government is apparently checking the opinion polls.
Somewhere, a Russian gas trader is presumably ordering popcorn.
Warwickshire Presents: The Invisible Policeman
And if all this has left you feeling slightly nervous, do make sure you lock your doors.
Because in Warwickshire, figures reported this week showed that 97 per cent of residential burglaries went unsolved.
Ninety seven per cent.
At that point burglary begins to look less like a criminal gamble and more like an unusually secure pension plan.
Imagine running any other public service with that success rate.
“Good news, Prime Minister, the fire brigade extinguished three per cent of fires.”
“Excellent work. Promote everyone.”
Nobody expects every burglary to be solved. Policing is difficult, evidence can be scarce and criminals are not generally considerate enough to leave their forwarding addresses.
But 97 per cent going unpunished should terrify anybody who believes the first duty of government is keeping law abiding citizens safe.
Perhaps the police simply need to introduce a visitor levy.
Burglars could pay five per cent of the value of everything they steal and the Treasury could call it growth.
And There Goes Another Week Beneath the Big Top
So ends another magnificent seven days at Clowning Street.
A £330 million a year taxpayer reportedly heads for Greece.
Government borrowing costs hit their highest level since 1998.
House prices wobble.
JLR prepares thousands of job cuts.
Bet365 cuts hundreds more.
Hospitality braces for another tax.
British holidaymakers face paying that tax while taxpayer funded asylum hotels escape it.
More than 100,000 people claim PIP for ADHD while the full-time Army numbers around 82,000.
No Answer Andy ducks the argument over welfare and defence.
A major North Sea gas decision drifts suspiciously beyond a politically inconvenient by-election.
Relations with Israel deteriorate.
And in Warwickshire, burglars could apparently hold their annual conference in your living room with a 97 per cent chance that nobody would be successfully brought to justice.
At an actual circus, of course, the clowns are professionals.
They rehearse.
They know what they are doing.
They make people laugh deliberately.
And, crucially, when the show ends, they pack everything into a lorry and leave town without presenting the audience with a multi-billion-pound borrowing requirement.
The trouble with Labour’s Big Top is that the joke is becoming increasingly expensive.
No Answer Andy remains in the centre ring, waving his arms, insisting everything is under control while another tent peg flies past his head.
Healey is balancing the national credit card on her nose.
The Treasury is chasing Britain’s taxpayers towards the exit.
The energy department is tying itself into balloon animals.
The defence team appears to have misplaced the cannon.
And the rest of the Cabinet are tumbling out of a tiny red car, one after another, each carrying a new tax.
The audience is no longer laughing.
It is checking the bill.
See you next week, dear readers, for another instalment of Britain’s most expensive travelling freak show.
At Clowning Street, the performance never ends.
Unfortunately, neither does the invoice.
READ ALL ABOUT IT: Links to this week’s top Labour circus acts below:
