As we approach the quarter year mark there’s as ever no shortage of news, the Chancellor’s Spring Statement, the Signal scandal and Donald Trump’s clumsy political posturing and tariffs stunt dominating the airwaves. But a bit less of this due to the massive earthquake having hit Myanmar and Thailand, rescue operations in the former likely to be even more challenging due to the military dictatorship there. Over 1,000 have died, with this number expected to rise over the coming days. ‘… the worst of the damage was in Myanmar, where four years of civil war sparked by a military coup have ravaged the healthcare and emergency response systems. Junta chief Min Aung Hlaing issued an exceptionally rare appeal for international aid, indicating the severity of the calamity. Previous military regimes have shunned foreign assistance even after major natural disasters’. But here’s another by-product of Trump’s America First policy – an announced intention to help but ‘some experts were concerned about this effort given his administration’s deep cuts in foreign assistance. The Trump administration’s cuts to the United States Agency for International Development have already forced the United Nations and non-governmental organisation to cut many programmes in Myanmar’. Let’s hope that help promised by the UN, EU, Russia (!), India and China pick up some of this US-induced slack. And chase up whether Trump’s ‘intention’ to help has actually resulted in anything tangible.
Debate continues to rage in the UK over the Spring Statement, the government defending its welfare cuts and the Conservatives saying they would have gone much further but also illogically claiming that they wouldn’t have targeted the most vulnerable. ‘Rachel Reeves was accused of balancing the books at the expense of the poor in her spring statement, as official figures showed three million households could lose £1,720 a year in benefits. The chancellor confirmed welfare cuts of £4.8bn, but insisted the government’s priority was to restore stability to the public finances in the face of rising global borrowing costs’. But this isn’t all – economists have warned that Rachel Reeves could be forced to come back with more tax rises in the autumn, with the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) saying that any tariffs imposed by Donald Trump may upend their forecasts.
It’s clear the government is still hoping that the 25% tariffs to come into operation soon will be rescinded. While even a day is a long time in Trumpland and there’s a chance he could change his mind for the UK it’s more likely he will follow through on his tough talk. With his strong desire to attack other nations he considers unfair for bringing about trade deficits, Trump doesn’t seem to understand that his tariffs will hurt the US economy. The Week has a good quote from David Kelly, a J P Morgan employee: ‘the trouble with tariffs…is that they raise prices, slow economic growth, cut profits, increase unemployment, worsen inequality, diminish productivity and increase global tensions. Other than that, they’re fine’.
Reverting to the Spring Statement, has any Tory made a credible stab at explaining what they would do differently? Disingenuous Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride, forever trotting out the lie that previously the UK had been ‘the fastest growing economy in the G7’, has been unnecessarily rude and unfair about Rachel Reeves eg ‘came into ‘office without a plan and talked down the economy…she’s not an economist, she’s lost control of the economy’ etc when the cause of so much of the shortfall was Tory mismanagement of the economy over so many years. Former (hopeless) Conservative Party chair Ric Holden (who was parachuted into a safe seat at the last election) floundered on this week’s Question Time when, for once, Tory presenter Fiona Bruce challenged him about the extent of cuts the Conservatives would have made – twice as much as the government. But it’s not only Tories opposed – numerous Labour MPs have spoken out against the benefits cuts and over 30 are predicted to vote against the government. Meanwhile, many of us are puzzled as to why the Chancellor is sticking so rigidly to her fiscal rules and why Labour didn’t impose a wealth tax on coming into office.
The huge cynically emotive backlash about ‘disabled people’ from the Tories (who’d do much worse but under the radar) and right wing press has partly sidestepped the significant growth of mental health related claims, when even some of those claimants admit to the oft-cited ‘over diagnosis’ syndrome which has effectively become a trap for them. Of course a proportion of these claimants has a serious psychiatric diagnosis and need to be properly supported but many of those now claiming would not have been deemed unable to work until relatively recently: it’s often not mental ill health people are experiencing as such but natural reactions to the frightening world we’re living in, poor prospects, a neglected environment and poverty. Non-medical interventions such as social prescribing have proved valuable in these situations.
Several claimants interviewed in the media have explained that they (rightly) use their PIP to pay for things which help with their condition, including counselling. But as often said here, this should be available on the NHS but rarely is because of long waiting lists and the massive move in primary care to short-term cognitive behavioural therapy when most people need and want relational therapy. Furthermore, it’s still not well known that counselling and therapy are not statutorily regulated in the UK so seeking private help can be a risky and expensive experience.
Another key issue which often goes unnoticed (I’ve only seen one article properly discussing it – see below) is poor management within the workplace: employers need to step up to understand that with the right support employees can work at least part-time and not feel compelled to leave due to incompetent and/or bullying managers. But as the article points out, many of these managers have been put into these positions with no training themselves so it’s hardly surprising that they don’t all cope with mentally unwell and neurodivergent subordinates.
In five years the number of people out of work due to ill-health has increased by 714,000, to 2.8 million. This is a serious problem for government finances. Within five years, spending on incapacity and disability benefits is forecast to grow to more than £100bn a year. Britain will soon be spending twice as much on incapacity benefits as it spends on secondary schools. For all those saying there should not be cuts we have to be realistic about the dramatic rise in young people’s PIP claims: between 2020 and 2024, the number of new claims for the main health-related benefit (the PIP) by under-18s in England and Wales more than doubled. It’s quite shocking that many are moving seamlessly from study to benefits – if the situation continued we’d get a sizeable cohort of young people with no experience of the workplace. But we do have to question the nature of that workplace – people are no longer prepared to put up with what they did years ago.
The New Statesman opines: ‘Once young people arrive in work, they encounter a product that is still very much made in Britain: a shitty boss. Ineffective, selfish and rude, the Great British Manager might appear to be the real villain of the labour market, but it’s not necessarily his or her (but usually, let’s face it, his) fault. A 2023 study by the Chartered Management Institute found that 82 per cent of people newly recruited into management positions were not given any management training. Half the employees surveyed who had an ineffective manager had said they planned to quit within a year.
This is not just something we like to gripe about. It is a serious defect in our economy’. When young people are interviewed about work the management problem comes up very strongly. ‘They are often told by younger people working in areas such as hospitality that they don’t know who their manager is, or have no regular communication with them. Contrast this with the experience of a young person at a university with tutors, on-site counsellors and staff dedicated to pastoral care’. Definitely something we should be ‘griping’ about. I wonder if these researchers ever properly interview the ‘ineffective managers’. Years ago one of the many I experienced said people should just get on with their jobs – in other words they want the manager’s salary without carrying out the duties associated with the role.
Another excellent initiative we haven’t heard half enough about, suggesting that the benefits system makes the fundamental mistake of focusing on what people can’t do rather than what we can, documents examples of how young people have been supported. The new Keep Britain Working Review initial report reveals an increase of 1.2 million young people with work limiting health conditions. ‘Former John Lewis boss Sir Charlie Mayfield examines the factors behind spiraling levels of inactivity, and how government and businesses can work together to tackle the issue’. He says (and there are more stages of this review to come) ‘Even at this initial stage of the review, we have found inspiring examples of employers making a difference that’s literally life changing for some people. We need more of these on a greater scale and, in the next stages of the review, we will be engaging with many organisations to establish how that can be achieved’. Following this press release introduction there’s a long statement from Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Liz Kendall but…. I know she has to do it but I do wonder if all the Green Papers and projects she cites will truly address what is wrong. I get the feeling she doesn’t get it, for example talking up the NHS talking therapies provision when those of us in or recently in the business know how poor it actually is.
Many will have been flabbergasted this week by the appalling White House security breach, whereby the editor of the Atlantic journal was invited to join a Signal group used by Trump’s Cabinet, the leaked messages illustrating the astonishing contempt they have for ‘freeloading Europeans’ and detailing a planned US attack on the Houthis in Yemen. Trump’s colleagues seemed oblivious of this embarrassing reflection on their performance and the danger posed by such exchanges via an insecure medium. It got worse because participants insisted to the Senate Intelligence Committee that ‘no classified material was shared in that Signal group’ when it patently was. Trump’s press secretary also doubled down and of course Trump himself claimed to know nothing about it. How Putin must be laughing at this bunch of incompetents. An X user rightly said: ‘Trump has no concept of the nation or of its security. This is not an insult to his intelligence. These are just not cognitive categories for him. He can’t care about national security because it’s not a thing in his world’. Another said: ‘The thing about Trump is that, because he is entirely consumed by his own needs, he is unable to process anything that is not directly relevant to them’. Meanwhile the world is forced to dance attendance on his hugely damaging mental and emotional deficiencies.
Further ‘flabbergastation’ will have been felt at Trump and J D Vance’s outrageous claim to Greenland, citing US ‘national security’ and clearly confusing need with want. If his previous statement was sinister (‘we need it and I think we’re gonna get it, one way or another’) the latest is positively belligerent: ‘I think Greenland understands that the United States should own it…And if Denmark and the EU don’t understand it, we have to explain it to them’. Of course Greenlanders ‘understand’ no such thing and Denmark and the EU won’t be in the business of accepting one-sided ‘explanations’. We hope – at least Canada’s Mark Carney is doing a good job of standing up to Trump. Quite a few including me have been asking why the Greenlanders even accepted the ‘visit’ of Vance and his wife – their plane should have been turned back.
Back in the UK, the need to increase NHS and defence spending has seen another casualty in the form of significant cuts to the civil service. ‘The government is targeting a 15% cut in “admin” costs of the civil service by 2030, saving £2.2bn and leading to about 10,000 job losses’ although some commentators suggest the plans will cost as much as they save for some years, due to redundancy payments and the cost of a ‘transformation fund’ to drive forward public service reform. It could be thought that former Starmer Chief of Staff Sue Gray, brought down, some believe, by certain colleagues and the media, was attempting to get her own back by making the cuts the subject of her House or Lords maiden speech. Talking up the skills and commitment of civil servants, she said: ‘What these and other civil servants are doing is central to the government’s – and the nation’s – mission to bring growth back into our economy and security to our society. That is why I would caution all of us to be careful, not only about our decisions but our language also. When we hear phrases with ‘blobs’, ‘pen-pushers’, ‘axes’, ‘chainsaws’ and other implements, they hear it too. Difficult decisions are needed, of course, and the civil service will be keen to be part of any reform journey, but we need them and other public servants to succeed. I will continue to support a progressive civil service. I hope others will do the same’. Oof.
I won’t be the only one disgusted by clips (the full thing on Laura Kuenssberg’s Sunday morning programme) of former Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby’s first media interview since his resignation last December. Before you even consider the appalling content his pretentious delivery (eg heavy emphases on certain words and theatrical pauses) is enough to set your teeth on edge. Welby said that the sheer scale of the problem was ‘a reason – not an excuse’ for his failure to act after taking the job in 2013 when the scale of the abuse committed by John Smyth and others was first known. An independent report suggested that around 100 boys both in the UK and Africa (where Smyth had moved to) were victims. Their mental health will have suffered considerably because of the abuse itself and the cover up. ‘Every day more cases were coming across the desk that had been in the past, hadn’t been dealt with adequately, and this was just, it was another case – and yes I knew Smyth but it was an absolutely overwhelming few weeks…It was overwhelming, one was trying to prioritise – but I think it’s easy to sound defensive over this’. Too right – I find it appalling that this man occupying the Church of England top job had allowed this overwhelm (leading to passivity and turning a blind eye) for so long to take priority over dong the right thing, that is involving the police.
His apparent humility is belied by condemnation of ‘judgement’, which many will feel quite entitled to make. ‘The reality is I got it wrong. As Archbishop, there are no excuses…I think there is a rush to judgement, there is this immense – and this goes back half a century – immense distrust for institutions and there’s a point where you need institutions to hold society together’. Right – like the Church of England has held society together? I’d say ‘the reality is’ that there’s a good reason why there’s such distrust of institutions. But this is an institution that has seriously brought itself into disrepute: after Christmas the media went quiet on this but the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, has effectively been acting Archbishop of Canterbury prior to a permanent appointment being made, yet Cottrell himself was involved in cover-ups. One or two brave bishops were interviewed in the media and were firmly of the view that he also should have resigned but just as many other Church interviewees danced on the head of a pin to defend the Church and its clearly faulty safeguarding policies. Surely the Church will lose all credibility if Cottrell is appointed to the top job.
It’s always interesting to hear what goods are admitted or excluded from the basket of commonly purchased items, this basket of 752 items being the way the Office for National Statistics estimates inflation. Newcomers include virtual reality headsets (it sure must beat actual reality at the moment), yoga mats and pre-cooked pulled pork, whereas gammon joints, DVD rentals ad ads in local papers are out. You could ask what took them so long…
Finally, on a cheerful note, this time of year gives us lovely sights of dancing daffodils, masses of cherry blossom and magnolias about to burst into flower.
Politics and mental health - the missing link? 