The usual chorus goes up: “Live within our means,” “ditch net zero,” “cut benefits,” “stop wasting billions on foreigners,” “Reeves is the new Healey,” “Labour always ends with an IMF bailout.” You’ll find the same slogans splashed across the front pages of the right-wing press, dutifully echoed by the terminally biased in every comment thread. It’s a greatest hits album of half-truths and outright fantasy, trotted out as if saying it loudly and often enough will somehow turn it into economic fact.
What makes it all so rich is the hypocrisy. These are the very people who egged on the decisions that created the mess. They cheered austerity, which slashed investment in infrastructure, health, education and housing – the things that actually underpin long-term growth. They waved flags for Brexit, which drove up trade barriers, hammered small exporters, and introduced red tape where none existed before. They celebrated “taking back control” without ever admitting that control was handed straight to markets, who now demand higher interest on our debt than Germany or France. And now, having clapped along at every step, they dare to pretend it’s Labour overspending that put us in this hole.
The truth is uglier. Those policies didn’t just hold the economy back – they funnelled wealth upwards. Austerity crushed wages and demand, but kept asset prices buoyant for landlords and shareholders. Brexit created chaos for small businesses, while hedge funds bet billions on sterling volatility and cleaned up. Years of ultra-low interest rates inflated property and stock markets, enriching those who already owned them while renters and wage-earners stood still. Energy drift left households with volatile bills while oil and gas majors booked record profits. And tax policy, tilted towards capital, ensured the burden fell hardest on wages and consumption, not accumulated wealth. Britain’s stagnation has been a racket that paid out handsomely – just not to you.
Let’s look at the reality. Britain isn’t on the brink of an IMF bailout. In 1976 the pound was collapsing, inflation was running out of control, and Britain had run out of foreign currency reserves. Today debt is high but serviceable, the pound is steady, and markets aren’t fleeing. Gilt yields are elevated, yes, but they reflect inflation persistence and low confidence in our growth prospects, not imminent bankruptcy.
And growth – or rather the lack of it – is the real problem. For forty years Britain has had one of the lowest levels of investment in the developed world. Productivity has flatlined since the financial crisis. Wages have barely moved in real terms for over a decade. An ageing population and rising long-term sickness have shrunk the workforce. Brexit lopped another few percentage points off GDP by cutting goods exports and deterring investment. Energy remains expensive because, despite being a windy island, we can’t get enough renewable power through a grid designed for the 1950s. None of that is down to some supposed Labour splurge in 2024. It is the accumulated bill for decades of short-term politics designed to keep the wealthy comfortable while the country slowly corrodes.
The spending picture tells the same story. Reeves hasn’t “blown the doors off” public finances – she has stuck rigidly to fiscal rules that limit borrowing to investment, not day-to-day spending. There is no “Magic Money Tree.” The bulk of extra outlay is debt interest – over £100 billion a year, thanks to high inflation and high yields. Overseas aid, the favourite whipping boy of the tabloids, is barely 0.5% of national income. You could scrap it tomorrow and it wouldn’t even cover one month’s debt servicing. Benefits like Universal Credit aren’t giveaways either – most claimants are in work, their wages too low to live on. Cutting UC wouldn’t suddenly magic up savings, it would just deepen poverty while businesses still rely on cheap labour topped up by the state.
As for net zero – scrapping it isn’t a saving, it’s a cost. Abandon renewables and you lock Britain into volatile global oil and gas prices, which is exactly why bills spiked after Putin invaded Ukraine. Net zero is investment in energy security. The fantasy that more drilling in the North Sea will slash household bills is precisely that – a fantasy. Oil and gas are traded globally, not ring-fenced for the UK.
So what are the solutions? They’re not secrets, they’re staring us in the face. Britain needs a serious programme of public investment to modernise infrastructure, upgrade the grid, build homes, and support innovation. It needs a reset with Europe to strip away pointless trade frictions that hobble exporters. It needs to tackle long-term sickness with a properly funded NHS and support to get people back into work. It needs a migration policy based on economic reality, not tabloid headlines. And it needs to put energy security at the heart of net zero – more renewables, more storage, faster grid build-out. That’s the route to growth, not the pantomime cuts and gimmicks peddled in the press.
But Labour, boxed in by its own political caution, won’t say it. They’ve shackled themselves to fiscal rules, sworn off reopening the Brexit wound, and promised to look “tough” on migration. Which means the real levers of growth stay untouched, while we drift on.
And when the Mail, the Express and the Telegraph rail against the “crisis of Labour’s making,” remember this: they were the cheerleaders for the cuts, the champions of Brexit, and the megaphone for every slogan that brought us here. The same goes for the commentators who now shake their heads on TV panels – they were in the studio when these policies were sold, nodding along, ridiculing anyone who pointed out the obvious. They are not innocent bystanders. They are not mere journalists. They are the architects of decline, the propagandists of stagnation, and the hypocrites of our present malaise. They didn’t just help steer Britain into this rut – they helped make sure the rut paid dividends for the rich.
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