No Answer Andy’s Circus, The Boats Keep Coming and the Bills Keep Rising
Welcome back, dear readers, to Week Ten beneath Westminster’s Big Top of Blunders, where No Answer Andy is still standing in the centre ring promising control, the Treasury clowns have misplaced another £8.1 billion, the immigration contortionists are performing positions previously thought anatomically impossible, and somebody has apparently released the balloon marked GROWTH without remembering to tie a string to it.
If Labour hoped for a quiet week before its conference, the circus gods had other ideas.
The most politically explosive spectacle came in the Channel, where 781 people arrived in 10 small boats on Wednesday, the highest single day total so far.
The Government’s answer is increasingly elaborate. Britain’s “one in, one out” arrangement with France has cost around £56,000 for each person returned, according to Shabana Mahmood’s evidence to MPs. More than 1,400 people have reportedly been returned under the scheme, and Mahmood argues that the cost compares with keeping somebody in an asylum hotel for a year. However, some of them area already back. Do we the British taxpayers just have to keep paying again and again and again? France was a safe country the last time I checked right?
Only Labour could devise an immigration policy that requires a paragraph explaining why £56,000 to send one person back each time across a 21 mile stretch of water represents value for money. Somewhere beneath the Big Top, an accountant has presumably collapsed into the sawdust.
And the absurdity becomes harder to ignore when set against the wider numbers. Tens of thousands have crossed the Channel since the election, while Britain’s regular Army is itself only tens of thousands strong. The comparison does not mean migrants and soldiers are equivalent populations, of course, but it illustrates the extraordinary scale of the crossings over time. These young men now outnumber our armed forces. Meanwhile this Labour government has committed £88 million in humanitarian assistance for Palestinians while Army training has faced reported efforts to save around £30 million.
Do they not realise the first duty of any government includes national security? If Labour can find money for priorities abroad, the sight of our own Armed Forces economising on training inevitably raises questions about priorities at home. Will someone in Manchester please give No Answer Andy a talking to?
Then came the Treasury act, and what an act it was.
Official figures show borrowing in the financial year to August was £8.1 billion higher than the Office for Budget Responsibility had forecast. August borrowing alone reached £18.3 billion. The ONS says central government expenditure during the first five months of the financial year was £7.4 billion above forecast.
This is where the Labour circus becomes even less amusing, because every billion that appears unexpectedly on the borrowing side of the ledger has consequences somewhere else. No Answer Andy can promise investment, public services, welfare, defence and help with living costs, but eventually the Treasury contortionist runs out of limbs.
The OECD has supplied another unwelcome prop, forecasting UK growth of 1.1 per cent in 2026 and 1 per cent in 2027. Growth of one per cent while government spending pressures continue to mount is not much of a safety net for a Chancellor preparing a difficult Budget.
Which presumably explains why the Treasury keeps peering through the curtains at everybody’s pockets.
Savers are already being dragged into paying tax on their interest as frozen allowances combine with higher savings returns, with forecasts suggesting the resulting tax take could reach record levels. It is a peculiarly British form of encouragement. Work hard, save responsibly, put something aside for a rainy day, then discover the Treasury standing outside with a bucket because apparently your rainy day has become one of its revenue streams.
Energy provides another little masterpiece. The VAT cut on electricity has now taken effect, yet household energy bills can still rise because VAT is only one component of the final bill. That distinction matters, but try explaining it to somebody opening a more expensive statement after being told the Government was making energy cheaper.
“Good news, your tax has fallen.”
“Why has my bill gone up?”
“Ah.”
Roll out the contortionists.
Motorists have also been introduced to Labour’s vision of the future through new transport rules intended to support net zero objectives. Decarbonising transport is a legitimate policy objective, but governments have to remember that millions of people use cars because they need them, not because they spend their evenings plotting the destruction of the polar ice caps. The nurse finishing a night shift, the tradesman carrying tools and the family living somewhere with three buses a fortnight are not ideological obstacles to be overcome. They are people trying to get somewhere.
Then there is welfare. Figures highlighted this week showed foreign national households receiving £11.9 billion in Universal Credit in the latest annual period cited. Such statistics require care, because “foreign national” covers people with many different immigration statuses and circumstances, including people lawfully living and working in Britain. But with the overall welfare bill already under enormous pressure, ministers cannot reasonably be surprised that voters want to understand who receives public money, on what basis, and whether the system is sustainable.
And just as the immigration circus appeared incapable of becoming any more contorted, Angela Rayner attacked elements of the Government’s proposed migrant crackdown, particularly changes affecting people such as care workers who have established lives here.
So now we have the magnificent spectacle of a Labour Government trying to persuade the country it is tightening immigration policy while senior Labour figures argue against parts of Labour’s tightening of immigration policy.
Ladies and gentlemen, behold the human pretzel.
That, really, is Week Ten.
The boats are still crossing, although fewer people have arrived this year than at the same point last year. The Treasury is borrowing billions more than forecast. Growth forecasts remain weak. Savers are paying more tax. Energy bills remain troublesome. The Government is wrestling with welfare costs. The Army is facing questions over training resources. And Labour politicians are arguing amongst themselves over immigration while the public watches from the cheap seats wondering who, precisely, is running the show.
No Answer Andy remains beneath the spotlight, naturally. Behind him the Treasury jugglers are throwing borrowing forecasts into the air, the immigration contortionists are tied in a knot, the net zero clown is measuring the family car for a smaller parking space, and the economic balloon modeller is proudly presenting Britain with another magnificent creation labelled GROWTH.
Unfortunately, it appears to have a puncture.
Ten weeks into the new act, the circus is still promising control.
The audience might settle for somebody finding the steering wheel.
READ ALL ABOUT IT: Links to this week’s top Labour circus acts below:
