Labour are gaslighting us about growth
ANDREW GRIFFITH
Pity Peter Kyle, the latest cabinet minister to convince himself of Labour’s commitment to grow the economy while presiding over a cacophony of policies destined to achieve the opposite.
You can’t entirely blame him, he signed up to a manifesto that spoke of growth, he’s stood alongside the Prime Minister and Chancellor at countless events proclaiming the ‘obsessive’ mission of growth, yet, of course, given that sustainable growth only comes from the private sector, he has almost no experience of what growth actually looks like.
Real growth, the kind measured as a real-terms increase in GDP per capita, comes from entrepreneurs taking risks, employers hiring to grow their businesses and Britain competing internationally. All of this is anathema to the actual policies Labour have spent 18 months enacting. They are gaslighting the country, but first they managed to delude themselves. Imagine the bewilderment when last week the IMF said the UK was on course to grow slower this year than Greece, Albania and Mexico.
Yesterday the Government launched the latest salvo in the long-running, job-killing saga that is their (Un)Employment Rights Bill. Now an Act of Parliament after the Liberal Democrats conspired with Labour to pass it through the House of Lords, the Government is beginning to implement the bill. It’s a perfect example of how the Government talks growth one day, and then presses on with disastrous, job-killing legislation the next.
This week’s instalment is misleadingly branded a ‘ban on fire and rehire’. This has taken place in the wake of a vanishingly small number of high-profile cases that might sound reasonable, until one remembers that the law most often passed in Westminster is the law of unintended consequences. The consequence of this law – as laid out in the regulations – would make it impossible for an employer to adjust pay, change performance measures, set new targets or alter hours and shifts. The result will be that companies that need to make cuts to survive in today’s fast-moving, competitive global landscape won’t be able to do so until it’s too late. It’s a charter to offshore jobs in the same way that Ed Miliband’s eye-wateringly expensive energy policies have done so.
There’s also a plan to give trade unions access to any business with over 20 employees, a physical ‘right to roam’ into any business, which they’ll be able to exercise 52 times a year. All told, there are 26 consultations for the implementation of the Act, demonstrating that for all the criticism, the Whitehall machine retains world class productivity in churning out red tape with no thought for its consequences.
All of this comes on top of the rise in National Insurance Contributions, the Chancellor’s business rates fiasco (over 95% of high street businesses won’t benefit from her micro U-turn on pubs), and those soaring energy costs.
Even ‘never-here’ Keir’s international strategy falls more on the side of being anti-growth once you dig into the detail. For all the talk of trade deals, he’s about to sign us up to Europe’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, which is one of the biggest trade barriers of all time; a highly protectionist tariff by another name.
A bunker-like ignorance of the realities businesses face is the root of Labour’s growth problem. While the Conservative benches are packed with people who have had successful private sector careers, built businesses and created jobs, finding an equivalent on the Labour benches is like waiting for rain in the Atacama Desert.
As it ponders the fate of its current Prime Minister, Britain needs its next government to stop gaslighting, and really put growth at the top of its agenda, with a clear set of plans and a team to deliver them. We have not had that for some time, but reversing almost all of the self-harm that this Government is inflicting will be a promising start.
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This article (Labour are gaslighting us about growth) was created and published by CapX and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Andrew Griffith
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