The evidence

The argument is only as good as the receipts. Every figure below is real and sourced. Where a number is disputed, the dispute is shown. Where a critic of the thesis has conceded the point, that is shown too.

Living standards · the decline is real

Poorer than Mississippi

UK output per person is now only just above America's poorest state, and below it once you leave London. Median household income overtook Germany's in 2007, then fell behind. The Resolution Foundation calls it 15 years of stagnation that has left low and middle earners far poorer than their French and German counterparts.

Sources: OMFIF, Resolution Foundation, The Economist analysis

Public finances · the debt trap

~£3tnpublic debt, close to the size of the whole economy

Public debt sits near 100% of GDP, up from around 35% before the 2008 crisis. Debt interest alone ran to roughly £105bn in the year to 2025, more than the schools budget. This is the "chained to a wheel" claim in hard numbers: less room to act every year.

Sources: OBR, IMF, TaxPayers' Alliance

Immigration · control that never arrives

41,000small-boat arrivals in 2025, from about 300 in 2018

The asylum backlog peaked above 175,000 in 2023. Of everyone who has crossed by small boat since 2018, only about 4% have been returned. Asylum accommodation, first forecast at £4.5bn to 2029, is now projected by the National Audit Office to reach £15.3bn.

Sources: Migration Observatory, Home Office, NAO

Contested: hotel use and the backlog have both fallen through 2025 under tougher enforcement, which critics say shows the system can be gripped without constitutional change.

Rights without a budget · SEND

25,000SEND tribunal appeals in 2024/25, up eightfold in a decade

Councils lose 98 to 99% of these appeals and keep fighting them anyway, spending an estimated £99m in a single year defending cases they expect to lose. High-needs deficits are heading toward £8bn. This is the clearest test of the claim that law cannot weigh a right against a budget.

Sources: IFS, MoJ Tribunal Statistics, LGA

Bankrupt councils · equal pay

£1.1bnpaid by Birmingham in equal-pay settlements since 2012

A projected further liability of up to £760m triggered a section 114 notice in 2023, effectively bankrupting Europe's largest council, which owes lenders £2.9bn. The case began with a 2012 Supreme Court ruling and has run ever since.

Sources: Local Government Chronicle, Birmingham City Council, BBC

Contested: the government's own commissioners later called the £760m a maximum "not a real number." The settlement came in far lower, and 30-plus academics argue the council may never have been truly bankrupt.

Nothing gets built · HS2

~£100mfor a single bat-protection structure on HS2

Phase one of HS2 needed more than 8,000 separate consents. The Sheephouse Wood bat structure became the symbol: to satisfy one environmental body and one planning authority, the builders "reached for the lawyers" and went over the council's head.

Sources: New Civil Engineer, HS2 Ltd / DfT, BBC

Conceded across the aisle: Labour Chancellor Rachel Reeves cited the "£100m bat tunnel" as proof Britain has made building "far too expensive and far too slow."

Government by decree · net zero

A single figure changed

The legally binding net zero 2050 target was created by amending one number in the Climate Change Act, 80% to 100%, through a statutory instrument in June 2019. No new Act of Parliament. No impact assessment. It now shapes energy, planning and industrial policy for decades.

Sources: legislation.gov.uk, House of Commons Library

Cross-party note: the target held cross-party consensus until the Conservatives withdrew support in 2025, which is itself evidence of how a major commitment was locked in with little debate.

The unelected state · quangos

603central-government arm's-length bodies by 2025, up from 474 in 2015

The TaxPayers' Alliance counts 438 quangos taking about £391bn in 2023/24, close to a third of managed spending, employing roughly half a million people. Bodies that ministers fund but do not run day to day.

Sources: ICAEW / Cabinet Office, TaxPayers' Alliance

Read with care: the single biggest item in that £391bn is NHS England, so "a third of spending outside ministerial control" includes frontline health, not only obscure bodies.