UK Unscripted

UK politics without the script. Beyond the headlines. Beyond the party lines. Facts, context & straight-talking views on the issues affecting everyday Britain.

[UK Unscripted @UKUnscripted]

@MoneyTelegraph Buyers finally read the small print.

The market did the rest.

[UK Unscripted @UKUnscripted]

Four boroughs down and rent rises slowing. Nice while it lasts.

The Renters’ Rights Act is only just starting to work through the market, while small landlords are already selling and bigger operators are taking more of the stock.

Fewer landlords. Less competition for tenants. More influence over the going rent.

So that “good news” about slowing increases?

I’d probably hold the champagne.

[UK Unscripted @UKUnscripted]

Five facts for renters.

Here’s Fact 6:

Small landlords are already leaving.

The bigger operators aren’t.

So renters get more rights on paper, but fewer landlords to choose from in reality.

Less choice. More concentration. More pressure on rents.

Then Government will eventually discover the rental market has become too expensive and too concentrated…

and announce another reform.

Fix one problem.

Manufacture the next.

[UK Unscripted @UKUnscripted]

What London needs?

Someone you barely hear from.

No daily outrage. No pointless rows. No audition for the next job.

Just someone in the background making the place work.

Homes getting built. Trains turning up. Streets feeling safer. Businesses staying open. Problems getting fixed before they become press releases.

No cult of personality required.

Frankly, if the Mayor is doing the job properly, most people shouldn’t need to think about them that much.

A strangely radical idea:
quiet competence.

[UK Unscripted @UKUnscripted]

James Cleverly says London needs less posturing, fewer petty political rows and more delivery.

After 18 years in politics, Cabinet jobs and enough X squabbles to keep a sixth-form common room entertained, that’s quite the rebrand.

Fortunately, voters don’t need the campaign brochure.

They’ve got the receipts.

London’s already seen the product demo.

[UK Unscripted @UKUnscripted]

Two blunders? Two accidental truths.

“Continuity” kills the rebrand.

Then Healey, who quit demanding faster defence spending, reaches the Treasury and discovers why it wasn’t being done.

One day. Two sentences. Entire sales pitch dismantled.

Remarkably efficient.

Most governments take months to manage that.

[UK Unscripted @UKUnscripted]

Corporate capitalism.

Stop calling it an unintended consequence.

SMEs employ 60% of Britain’s private-sector workforce.

Yet vacancies at firms with 1–9 staff are DOWN 16.1%, the lowest outside Covid since 2014.

Small employers retreat. Small landlords sell. Independents disappear. Capital concentrates.

Government piles tax, employment costs and regulation onto the bottom. Scale absorbs it at the top.

Then comes the insult:

SME support. High-street support. A Regulatory Taskforce. Reviews into why challengers struggle to enter and scale.

Create the conditions. Fund the casualties. Commission a review into the result.

That isn’t the free market failing.

It’s the State redesigning it.

Big State. Big Business. Fewer independent owners in between.

And with nearly £3tn of debt, Britain needs that productive base getting stronger, not hollowed out.

Eventually lenders price the direction too.

Apparently monopolies are dangerous.

Much safer when Whitehall helps build them.

[UK Unscripted @UKUnscripted]

Interesting idea, IF the responsibility follows the money.

Grow the economy, run the region well and decide people are better off having some back? Great.

But Britain’s council finances should cure us of the idea that moving money locally magically creates competence.

Hand us £200 today, neglect investment and expect Westminster to fill the hole tomorrow? Taxpayers haven’t saved £200.

We’ve just paid ourselves back.

Nice rebate. Shame we bought it ourselves.

[UK Unscripted @UKUnscripted]

And here’s the irony.

Squeeze the small landlords with tax, paperwork and regulation and the big operators gain the advantage.

Then, when the market becomes too concentrated, Government will no doubt arrive with another tax, another regulation and another “reform” to fix the last one.

Meanwhile renters get more rights on paper… and potentially fewer choices in reality.

Create the problem. Regulate the problem. Tax the problem.

Repeat until solved. Or broke.

[UK Unscripted @UKUnscripted]

Funny old system, Westminster.

MPs and peers have a group looking at whether we’re getting value from the hundreds of billions the Government spends every year.

Very sensible.

Helping support that group is Efficio.

Efficio makes money advising government and councils on how to spend that money and award contracts.

And we're talking real money, earlier this year it won a £7.7m procurement contract from publicly owned NESO.

It also helps support the parliamentary group looking at public spending, including its admin, events and overseas research trips.

But why stop there?

Efficio also pays a company owned by Lord Porter, a member of the House of Lords, to advise it on dealing with councils.

Now look at the circle.

Efficio makes money from public spending.

Efficio helps support the MPs and peers looking at that public spending.

Efficio pays a peer to advise it on dealing with the councils spending the money.

You don’t need to be a Westminster expert to see why that doesn’t look right.

The people making money from the system shouldn’t be helping support the people scrutinising the system.

Yet here we are.

And you?

You just provide the money.

Perhaps the first thing the Public Sector Efficiency group should review is who’s helping the Public Sector Efficiency group.

[UK Unscripted @UKUnscripted]

🚨 PUBLIC MONEY. PRIVATE MILLIONS.

We went back through the accounts of one company inside Britain’s asylum accommodation system.

Stay Belvedere Hotels.

2017: net worth -£36K
2018: -£156K
2019: -£285K
2020: -£275K

It was filing micro-company accounts.

Then it entered Britain’s taxpayer-funded asylum accommodation supply chain.

Watch what happened next.
2021:
£104.8M turnover | £8.5M pre-tax profit
6 months to Mar 2022:
£308.8M turnover | £27.7M pre-tax profit
Next 6 months:
£395.8M turnover | £35M pre-tax profit

From £285K in the red to nearly £400 MILLION turnover in six months.

Follow the money:
Taxpayer → Home Office → Clearsprings → Stay Belvedere.

Clearsprings is one of Government’s main asylum accommodation contractors. Stay Belvedere was its subcontractor.

By 2025, Stay Belvedere was managing 51 asylum hotels + Napier Barracks.

At one point, 70% of Clearsprings’ subcontractor spending across southern England was going to this ONE company.

Then the Home Office ordered Stay Belvedere OUT, saying significant elements of its behaviour and performance fell below what was expected of a Government supplier.

Parliament later concluded the Home Office had not maintained adequate oversight of the subcontracting arrangements.

The minister herself described the controls as “quite weak.”

So there it is.
Public money.
Private millions.
Weak controls.
Inadequate oversight.
Eventually removed.

The taxpayer had already paid.

£35M pre-tax profit in six months.

Who says Britain doesn’t reward enterprise?

[UK Unscripted @UKUnscripted]

@PolitlcsUK There’s something wonderfully government about this.
HMRC keeps you on hold for 30 minutes, so the taxpayer compensates the taxpayer because the taxpayer-funded service kept the taxpayer waiting.
The accountability bit we like. But maybe just answer the bloody phone.

[UK Unscripted @UKUnscripted]

Over 90% of the losses relate to investments made in the bank’s first three years. Some firms later received further taxpayer-backed investment before ultimately collapsing.
The bank has since tightened its approach and talks about “lessons learned”.
Yet the independent review didn’t go back and examine those individual investment decisions.
Quite difficult to learn the lessons if nobody independently checks the homework.

[UK Unscripted @UKUnscripted]

Interesting when you bring this into 2026.
If AI and automation deliver the productivity boom we’re promised, the real question is who gets the benefit?
Lower prices? Higher real wages? Bigger profits?
Because productivity means very little to ordinary people if they never see the gain.

[UK Unscripted @UKUnscripted]

🚨 £104 BILLION!

Government says it has secured a RECORD amount of private investment to rebuild Britain’s water system.

Brilliant.

Private investors are footing the £104bn bill then?

NO. YOU ARE.

They provide the finance.

YOU repay it through your water bills.
YOU pay the financing costs.
THEY get the return.

Ofwat actually admits:
“Ultimately the money that is being invested is from customers.”

Read that sentence again.

After decades of billions being paid out in dividends, Britain’s water system needs rebuilding and somehow we’re paying for that as well.

Yet Government trumpets:

£104 BILLION OF PRIVATE INVESTMENT.

While its own regulator says the money ultimately comes from us.

You really couldn’t make it up.

Another Government masterpiece in creative accounting.

[UK Unscripted @UKUnscripted]

This could be very good news.

But what a business model: billions out in dividends, billions left in debt, infrastructure needing billions more.

Then hand the keys back to the public and say “you fix it”.

Somebody has to be held accountable for that.

The proof will be in the pudding.

[UK Unscripted @UKUnscripted]

@saintly_jim @AllisonPearson Absolutely. Invest in them and make them better.

Just don’t get rid of what we still need before they’re ready to replace it.

[UK Unscripted @UKUnscripted]

@StocksandDares Why wouldn’t you give billions away?
You get the credit. The taxpayer gets the bill and the next generation gets the debt.
Quite a deal… when it’s not your money.

[UK Unscripted @UKUnscripted]

Housing. Here’s a thought.

We’re putting billions of taxpayers’ money into building homes anyway. So why not make that money work for the taxpayer more than once?

Use suitable public land. Create a publicly owned, commercially run housing company. Tender the actual building to private firms, workers get paid, suppliers get paid and builders make a fair profit.

Then sell some homes, rent some and keep some for social housing.

Sale profits? Build more homes.
Rental surplus? Build more homes.
Homes retained? The taxpayer owns the asset.

No external shareholders. No dividends. No share buybacks.

No huge executive rewards while taxpayers subsidise the development.

And make it accountable: publish the costs and compare them with private developments.

If it doesn't deliver value, change it.

Private builders still make money for doing the work.

The difference is the long-term return stays in housing and works for the taxpayer.

House builders already make this model work for their shareholders.

Why can't we make it work for British taxpayers?