David Craig, on February 21st, 2025Friday-weekend blog
After Reeves’s ‘recession made in Downing Street’ budget, for me one of the most revealing comments came from Darren Jones, Rachel Reeves�s deputy. Darren Jones, also known as “the human zit”, is the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. In his infinite wisdom and deep understanding of the complexities of a modern economy, Darren Jones suggested that businesses hit by the �20bn+ National Insurance tax increase�should �suck it up�.
It’s often said that not a single member of lawyer Starmer’s government has ever worked in a company where they had to produce some goods or services which someone else wanted to buy. So they have absolutely no understanding of how businesses actually work.
Darren Jones’s comment that businesses would just have to “suck up” the massive tax hike he and Reeves imposed in their October 2024 budget seems to me to confirm our worst fears about this incompetent, business-hating government. Mr Jones seems to believe that all businesses are run by fat, evil, cigar-smoking capitalists brutally exploiting poor downtrodden workers in Britain’s dark satanic mills:
Darren, old chap. Those dark satanic mills don’t exist any more. They don’t exist mainly because of Britain’s political and media elites’ absurd obsession with the ludicrous Net Zero. This has given Britain the world’s highest energy prices. So energy-intensive companies have been closed and production mainly moved to China with its more than 3,000 coal-fired power stations giving Chinese companies energy that costs less than a quarter of energy in Britain.
Of course, the Chinese are astonished at our stupidity and probably can’t stop laughing at our economic suicide:
Darren, most private-sector employees in Britain work for small and medium-sized companies (SMEs). The government’s statistics show that in 2023 SMEs employed 16.7 million people in the UK, 61% of the total number of people employed by private sector companies. These businesses – shops, restaurants, pubs, small manufacturers – aren’t brutally exploiting their employees. But after being hit by the national insurance increase, a rise in business rates and LibLabCon’s eye-wateringly expensive energy costs Britain’s businesses are struggling.
Darren, I can imagine that, after Reeves presented her budget, there was a big celebration at the Treasury as you all gleefully celebrated squeezing around �40bn from the hated rich capitalists, supposedly ‘multi-millionaire’ farmers. parents daring to send their children to private schools and all the other groups Labour hates. But Darren, what will really happen after your economically-illiterate budget will be a deepening recession, tens of thousands of business closures, hundreds of thousands of workers losing their jobs, a massive increase in welfare payments and a shortcut to national bankruptcy. And, of course, as the economy shrinks into recession, you won’t get your �40bn or anywhere near it. Darren, why not try Googling “The Laffer Curve”? You might actually learn something about economics?
Darren ‘human zit’ Jones, I believe you are stupid, arrogant, incompetent, self-serving, full of class hate and, like your boss Rachel the cv liar Reeves, you are a disaster from which the British economy will never be able to recover. But hey, that’s just my opinion and I’m a nobody while you’re (unfortunately for Britain) a very important person.
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This is an excellent piece and describes exactly why Britain and many other countries are failing. Your second paragraph describes the purpose of businesses – they provide services or goods that people want to buy. They can only make correct business decisions when there is a free, competitive market to provide feedback on their business decisions. When governments add taxes to fund their own activities, businesses suffer.
I recently bought a kettle. It was designed in Australia, made in China and then transported to the UK. I also bought some shower spray cleaner. That was made in New Zealand and transported to the UK.
We need to be asking why we have to import these goods. It is because our salaries are too high, our energy costs too high and our taxes are too high. That also means that if we produce anything the costs will be too high and similar goods can be bought elsewhere – we cannot export them or sell them here. We are a failing country, and that is also due to a lack of natural resources. We cannot even produce the food we need and are making that even worse with the treatment of farmers, and the supermarkets forcing down prices play a big part in that.
This is the gift of socialism which has been extending its grip for over 100 years. But it also creates state dependency and many people now depend on that so will not vote against it. Socialism will always collapse when they run out of our money. We were warned.
Everyone was so fed up with the Tories after far too many dud PMs and their cabinets. Unfortunately many people forgot that Labour has always been so much worse. This shabby government is very possibly the most dire that we have ever had.
Just another lawyer who at 38 lacks experience of life and seems to be filled with ideological purities. What part of this young mans cv says suitable for senior finance position.
Sadly as Elon pointed out it seems the UK is a bureaucracy and not a democracy and the hopelessly out of touch state is bewitched by supranational organisations which are corrupt and incompetent. Like a fly to shit. I think it was Janet Daley in the Telegraph who wrote how all bureaucracies tend to drift to communism eventually as group think takes hold and pushes more extremes. They all need shutting down and interesting to hear Trump talk about dangers of postal voting – it seems US/UK are rare exceptions in allowing so much postal voting and clearly it leads to cheating. The communists cannot play fair so best to stop all postal voting as it is so devalued and linked to fraud.