Planes, trains and autocrats  Growing pains are making me dizzy

But apparently manifestation can help – the economy succumbed to the badgering and did grow at the end of 2024, and again in February. Perhaps if they’d start banging on about sunshine, the Brits would complain less…

Anyway, back to the G-word. Job done? Far from. GDP might have shimmied on upwards, but the Bank of England’s growth forecast for 2025 isn’t sunny – cloudy with a chance of US-tariffs-and-high-inflation category storms. We’d better get our umbrellas out. Raincoats could become a growth industry.

Meanwhile, financial directors across the UK are trying not to buckle from the amount of tax they are now reluctantly relinquishing to Rachel from accounts.

I just hope she can keep track of it all. For it seems counting isn’t a strength of the chancellor for the exchequer, so there’s a chance she’ll check it wrong. Because speaking of broken records, her employment record is one more thing that got slightly miscounted over the years.

Oh well, the PM stuck her in Number 11 (that’s the one after ten, Rachel), so, since she’s got our community chest, we’ll give her a chance. Oh look, advance to Pall Mall (straight to 116 if you know what’s good for you); if you pass Go, collect £200. That £200 will be around half of what your train ticket costs to get here. And, no, you won’t receive compensation when the train is cancelled due to engineering works. There’s a bus replacement service, but the government hasn’t got around to assessing street repairs yet, so it’ll likely be a bumpy, pothole-filled ride.

Trainspotting used to be what the resident nerd got lambasted for. Now it’s an extreme sport. I’m campaigning to add ‘inventing teleportation’ to the outcomes of the Industrial Strategy.

For now, we’ll have to settle for the expansion of Heathrow, which will at least make it easier to run-a-way from here. Apparently, it will create 100,000 jobs and possibly boost UK GDP by 0.43% by 2050. Great, growth indeed, prepare for take-off!

But wait, what’s that we hear? Choo-choo, it’s the ghost of HS2 past in all its half-completed glory. Or half-baked gory? Don’t worry Rachel, a government would never repeat its past mistakes, you’ll be fine. You’ll only have to reroute two junctions of the M25, remap the entire UK airspace, and demolish hundreds of homes to pave the way for runway 3.0.

Hang on. Demolish hundreds of homes? Isn’t there a target to build 1.5 million new affordable homes over the next parliament? Yes! And they will free up some protected green-belt land to facilitate this.

Wait, what? Building on protected green land? Don’t we have environmental targets? Yes – including reaching net zero by 2025, and 95% clean power by 2030. What’s that? 95%? Didn’t it used to be 100%? And wouldn’t increasing air traffic be quite bad for the environment?

I’m dizzy. It turns out you wait 50 years for a new runway and two come along at once. They’ve found an extra landing strip at Gatwick that was there all along. Turns out, it’s not plane-spotters you need, but runway spotters.

It seems the only thing that’s really growing here is the pressure to compete on the global stage. Because while the government is responding relatively well to the ad lib, some other world players have gone totally off-script. If the curtain call comes any time soon, it could well be iron. Clowns to the left of us, jokers to the right, it’s not the first time Europe has found itself stuck in the middle of an East-West hegemonic rivalry.

Only last time Russia was brandishing its claws, the West was secure knowing the US was onside. Now we have a president with an erratic agenda and a potent Musk administrating like a bull in a China shop. Quite literally – the world’s second-largest economy is prime target, and he’s seeing red. Meanwhile, Donald’s ducked out of the Paris Climate Agreement, is saying no to Nato, accusing Europe of abandoning Western values, and has tried cuddling up to the grizzly bear in an attempt to negotiate a peaceful end to the Ukraine war. (Yet all he has achieved, it seems, is to poke the bear). At the same time, with his drill-baby-drill mantra, he doesn’t seem to be committed to a green land – at least not at home. Not to mention he has been conducting tariff warfare by throwing darts at the map where every country he deems ‘unfair’ is bullseye.

It’s not quite yet bye-bye to our American ally. Yes, Trump drove up the levies, now the levies are high. Them good ol’ boys with their whisky and rye are facing 10% tariffs on exports to the Land of
the Not So Free Anymore, unless they bend to The Donald’s will. Or will not – he has a fun habit of changing his mind last-minute.

But we do have a deal. The news came in the form of a filmed phone call of what sounded like the mutual admiration society. “No Keir, this is all down to you.” “No Donald, we’re the best of friends.” Though come to think of it, is this not just a deal that alleviates some of the pain Donald inflicted in the first place?

Something’s not adding up here. The UK might be one of the more stable governments out there. But we’re still relying on Starmer to fix its shaky foundations, something that could prove somewhat labour-intensive. Because Labour isn’t really working, not with roughly 11 million people out of work. And to make things interesting, Reform UK is inching up the polls in line with the global rise of the right. Or wrong, depending on your politics. Kemi is attempting a Tory rescue party. The Greens are less party and more intimate gathering. And the Lib Dems? Perhaps silent disco is most apt.

The opposition might be scattered and split. But the government is betting its political life on growth, seeing it as key to re-election. Growth is indeed under the spotlight. Although, given the tiny figures involved, perhaps it should be under the microscope?