A leading economic forecasting group has warned that Britain’s sluggish economic growth, combined with rising energy prices, will result in over 160,000 jobs being lost this year, raising further questions about the left-wing government’s net-zero green agenda.
Projections from the ITEM Club, which uses the same economic models as the British Treasury, indicate that more economic hardship is coming down the pike for the working people of the country, with high-energy industries such as construction and manufacturing set for the largest losses, The Times of London reports.
According to the forecasts, 163,000 jobs are likely in jeopardy this year, mostly as a result of slow economic growth and the rising cost of energy, which, although greatly influenced by global events such as the conflicts in Iran and Ukraine, are also drastically higher than they would be otherwise if not for the myriad of green agenda taxes imposed by the government.
Indeed, despite the outbreak of war in the Middle East, the left-wing Labour Party government found it necessary to carry on with planned hikes of the Climate Change Levy on electricity and gas, which rose by 3.4 per cent last month and is set for further increases next year to a cumulative increase of 6.7 per cent.
While the expected 0.4 per cent in unemployment, which would be in addition to the 4.9 per cent already out of work, is expected to hit industrial manufacturing and construction the hardest, ITEM Club noted that this will also likely spill over into other sectors, such as retail, given the loss of disposable income for many workers.
ITEM Club advisor Tim Lyne added that lower-income regions will also be hit the hardest as consumers “typically have less rainy-day savings, which will reduce spending in the retail and hospitality sectors.”
Despite having campaigned on prioritising a return to economic growth after years of stagnation under the high-tax agenda of the former Tory government, Prime Minister Starmer’s Labour administration quickly abandoned such plans and has alternatively spent the past two years in office hiking taxes even further.
Unsurprisingly, this has done little to spur the British economy, with official figures reportedly set to show a 0.3 per cent growth rate in the first quarter of the year. Although up from the tepid 0.1 per cent in the final quarter of last year, the anaemic growth rate is unlikely to win the government any plaudits from the public.
Defenders of the Net Zero project — which seeks to cut Britain’s carbon emissions to ‘net zero’ by 2050 — often attempt to shift the blame for the UK having among the highest energy costs in the world on outside forces, noting that the base cost of fuel is set on the International market, this ignores the raft of levies and taxes at multiple levels of the supply chain imposed by the government.
The UK is also particularly vulnerable to global price shocks as a result of attacks on domestic energy industries: the former Conservative government banned fracking for natural gas, and the current Labour government imposed a ban on all new licences to explore oil and gas fields in the North Sea.
A report last year from the Offshore Energies UK industry body found that at least half of Britain’s gas and oil demands could be met using domestic supplies under the “right business conditions”.
However, it is unclear if such arguments will break through the apparently ideologically captured government, with Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy previously proclaiming that supposed man-made climate change represents a greater threat to the UK than Islamic terrorism or Communist China.
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