Ni rise not going to grow economy as promised1 Dec 2024 11:00
For anyone who was expecting the UK to be emerging as the “fastest-growing economy in the G7” by now, as the Labour Party promised during the election campaign, it has turned into a sobering week.
Stellantis announced it was closing its van-making plant in Luton, mainly in response to the Government’s crazy targets to ban the sale of any petrol powered vehicles in only six years from now.
EasyJet announced that it was cutting the number of domestic flights, blaming the Chancellor’s decision to impose a steep rise in air passenger duty on connections within the UK. With £32 in duty on a return ticket, it reckons the demand simply won’t be there to fill all the seats. "Indeed, Begbies Traynor, the UK’s largest insolvency specialist has already reported a spike in business, while this week RSM reported a 5pc increase in company closures in the hospitality sector.
The list goes on and on. Companies are shutting plants, cutting back on their operations, or else closing completely.
True, businesses expand and contract all the time, and the economy always fluctuates. And yet, there is a common theme to all those stories. They are just the start of Reeves’s shrinking economy. Extraordinarily, each and every one of those closures can be directly traced back to a decision that either the Chancellor herself, or one of her cabinet colleagues, have deliberately taken.
Led by its fanatical green commissar Ed Miliband, the Government is pressing ahead with a ban on petrol cars and vans by 2030 (even if it was watered down slightly on Friday) making it impossible for Stellantis to carry on with business.
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