WeeklyWorker

28.08.2025
William Hogarth ‘Prentices at their looms’ (1747)

Class composition in a snapshot

Britain is a very large offshore financial centre with a moderately sized productive economy attached to it. What does this mean for class and class consciousness? Mike Macnair completes his two-part study

Last week I attempted to make a very rough assessment of the relative sizes of social classes in the UK analysed in Marxist terms - that is, in terms of the relations of class members to wages, rents and profits.1 This week I approach the problem from a different angle. I begin with what people do for a living - drawn from the Office for National Statistics ‘Jobs’ data for March 2025.2

This dataset finds just above 37 million jobs - significantly more than the data used last week, probably because it counts jobs (reported by employers) rather than self-reported workers, so includes large numbers of part-time jobs. The data is classified into 20 heads, some of which involve rather arbitrary linkages: for example, “Electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply” or “Wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles”. Others are so general as to have limited informative value: for example, “Professional scientific and technical activities” or “Administrative and support service activities”.

Having noted the limits of the categories: the largest sector is “Human health and social work activities” with over 5.1 million jobs (13.9%). Next comes “Wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles” with 4.7 million (12.7%).3

Below 10% of jobs, but above 5%, are seven categories. “Professional scientific and technical activities” has 3.5 million (9.5%). The primary common element of this category is ‘social status’: it includes lawyers, accountants, corporate head offices and management consultants, architects, civil engineers, scientific and social-scientific researchers, advertising and market research, specialist design consultants, professional photographers, translators, environmental consultants, quantity surveyors and related professions, and vets.4

“Education” has over 3.1 million (8.4%). “Administrative and support service activities” has just over three million (8.1%). This miscellaneous category includes vehicle, machinery and household goods leasing; intellectual property licensing; employment agencies; travel agencies; private security and private investigation; office cleaning and other forms of office support; call centres; trade shows; landscaping; debt factoring and related activities.

“Manufacturing” has 2.6 million (7%); “Accommodation and food service activities” (in other formulations in news stories, ‘the hospitality industry’) has the same approximate number and percentage. “Construction” has 2.25 million (6%); and “Transport and storage” 1.9 million, just above 5%.

Below 5%, but above 1%, are “Public administration and defence; compulsory social security” with 1.74 million or 4.7%;5 “Information and communication” (1.6 million, 4.4%); “Financial and insurance activities” (1.17 million, 3.16%); “Arts, entertainment and recreation” (1.15 million, 3.1%). “Other services” has 984,000, 2.66%. This category includes employment by membership organisations, including trade unions, and by churches; ICT and household goods repairs; and various services such as laundry and dry-cleaning, hairdressing, funeral services, etc. “Real estate activities” has 731,000 (2%).

At 1% or below are “Agriculture, forestry and fishing” (348,000, 1%); “Water supply, sewerage, waste and remediation activities” (248,000, 0.67%); “Electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply” (139,000, 0.38%); “Private households” (primarily domestic servants) (61,000, 0.16%),6 and “Mining and quarrying” (51,000, 0.4%).

Implications

This data has not passed without recent leftwing comment. Notes From Below’s 2022 pamphlet, Class composition in Britain, though mainly based on the group’s ‘signature method’ of workers’ inquiries (the responses are not numerous enough to be representative, so as to base any serious argument on them), contains a useful chapter on the LFS and ONS Jobs data, displaying what has changed since 1981.7 The solution offered is, of course, a priori the ‘survey method’ as a road to organising.

“Raymond (Haringey)” has a much shorter piece in the Socialist Workers Party’s Pre-Conference Bulletin No3 for November 2024, looking at changes over 1971, 1984, 1995, 2008, 2023 from the Business Survey of Employment, at occupational groups in 1994-95, 2009-10 and 2023-24 using the LFS, and at nominal and real wage movements 2009-23. Union density has fallen, while wages have also fallen, and a survey by the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development found 25% of respondents had experienced workplace conflict. His proposed response is in the first place to recognise that “The idea that working class revolution is the answer to the crises [meaning, chronic problems - MM] they [protestors] see requires a fair degree of abstraction. It’s not like 1972 when the power of workers was plain to see.”

Secondly, his proposal is to carry the SWP’s political priorities - eg, Palestine - into the workplace, “not necessarily through the unions or by union members, as neither exist in their workplace, but by providing the materials and guidance for building workplace solidarity groups”.

In essence, both comrades recognise that the conditions that supported the mass syndicalism of around 1970 are gone. NFB’s solution is at the end of the day to do consciousness-raising work among workers in the currently dominant employment sectors: their pamphlet contains chapters on healthcare, education, the charity sector (this seems to be merely ‘where we have contacts’ rather than actually a major sector of employment) and retail, and hope that syndicalism will reappear. SWPer Raymond’s proposal is merely to extend what the SWP is already doing to ‘workplace’ groups.

At one level what the data shows us is merely the common observation that services have displaced manufacturing - or, in the bourgeois economists’ and geographers’ bullshit, that the economy naturally moves from dominance of the “primary” sector (agriculture and mining - today in Britain 1.4% of employment) or the “secondary” sector (construction and manufacturing - 13%), to the “tertiary” sector (services).8

I say “the bourgeois economists’ and geographers’ bullshit” because in the early development of capitalism services - transportation and related finance - dominated the “secondary” sector. Further, the alleged shift depends on methodological nationalism. It is certainly true that in some industries high levels of capital intensity and correspondingly high levels of labour productivity radically reduce employment within the country. In others, however, production is ‘offshored’ and production within the country replaced by imports. At the level of the closed economy - which is the globe - this aspect is not a transition that marginalises primary and secondary sectors in favour of the tertiary.9 And, indeed, locally, deindustrialisation as a result of offshoring produces large areas dominated not by the tertiary sector, but by mere decline and welfare dependency.

Secondly, however, the picture shows part - only part - of why trade union density has declined and the morale of the working class as a class is at a relatively low ebb. USDAW has 360,000 members, a membership density of 8%. It has been recognised all the way back to the 1950s that union organising in retail is seriously difficult due to small workplaces and numerous employers. The same is true of the hospitality industry. The reorganisation of employment since the 1980s has meant not only that retail is a higher proportion of employment, but also that this form, of small workplaces and numerous employers (though behind the numerous employers stand a much smaller number of shadowy ‘private equity’ operators and so on), has been reproduced across the private sector.

Productive

In itself, this is merely a return to the patterns of before ‘Fordist’ mass production, World War II and the cold war. But there is an additional demoralising element. Talking About Socialism comrades’ draft programme for the Forging Communist Unity discussion insisted that workers produced all the goods in the world. CPGB comrades polemicised against this as a mistake, among other reasons because it attempts to marginalise micro-businesses and family farms.10 It has nonetheless to be said that the working class’s self-consciousness of its own dominant role in production has been an important element of class consciousness. Going back to Marx’s late summary of ‘Marxist’ politics in the 1880 Programme of the Parti Ouvrier, the core claim is:

That the emancipation of the productive class (“la classe productive” in French) is that of all human beings without distinction of sex or race;

That the producers (“les producteurs”) can be free only when they are in possession of the means of production (land, factories, ships, banks, credit);

That there are only two forms under which the means of production can belong to them:

(1) the individual form, which has never existed in a general state and which is increasingly eliminated by industrial progress;

(2) the collective form, the material and intellectual elements of which are constituted by the very development of capitalist society;11

Self-consciousness of being the producers of goods and services that people need, that society needs, is a substantial element in the basis of working class political, as well as trade union, self- and class- consciousness. Domestic servants are now marginal, but in the 17th-19th centuries were very numerous; they have never given rise to persisting trade unions, where building workers did so as early as the 1420s.12 People who live by begging or small-scale theft are both propertyless and oppressed by the society - but, again, have not tended to form effective collective organisations.13

What does ‘productive’ mean for this purpose? Marx pretty clearly in his political-economic work treated “productive” work as work that produced profit for capital.14 However, in the present context, of “productive” versus “unproductive” as affecting class-consciousness, the mere fact of producing profit for capital is not enough. What is involved is the sense of producing something useful to society. The ‘something’ can be a service (eg, hairdressing, teaching or medical treatment) as much as a physical product; but it does need to be a use value.

People in managerial positions include some who contribute to the production process - for a single example, quantity surveyors in construction - but also many in one or another sort of what David Graeber called “bullshit jobs”.15 The morale issue - can I think of myself and my fellow-workers in the same sort of job as doing something useful to society? - poses itself not only in relation to these, but also, for example, in relation to quite a lot of workers in retail (compare Gerald Ratner’s 1991 comment that products sold by his high street jewellery chain were “total crap”;16 how many more humble retail workers must have similar opinions about what they are selling?17).

A secondary issue is that a job may be productive of use values, but ones supplied only to the exploiting classes. For example, gamekeepers, or workers in firms producing executive jets or Lamborghini sports cars, are dependent on the extraction of profits elsewhere, and this is perfectly visible to them.

This question is larger than at first sight appears. The Notes From Below comrades draw attention in their pamphlet (p8) to the fact that the Covid lockdown exposed a difference between work that had to be carried on, in spite of the risk of infection, and work that could be ‘furloughed’. (I noted last week the related point that lockdown exposed the large extent of ‘sham self-employment’.) What is involved is degrees of utility of use-values. For example, it is indispensable that food should continue to be supplied. It is agreeable, but not necessary, that there should be coffee shops (and so on).

The consequence is that we need to try to ‘unpack’ the statistics, starting with the core necessities (food, clothing, housing, power/fuel, water/sewage provision, childcare, health services …) and derivative necessities (transport, warehousing, sufficient education and training for skills to operate these …) to ask the question, how the UK population gets these, before moving on to the ‘agreeables’: because it is the material surplus product over ‘necessities’ that allows for the ‘agreeables’, as well as for the unproductive jobs. Some are domestically produced; some are imported; how are the imports paid for?

As with the discussion last week, all I am capable of is to attempt very rough approximations and impressions, and it is to be hoped that someone else can do a better job. In addition, the sheer range of relevant information means that it is only possible to discuss a limited sample of sectors even at this very superficial level.

Imports

In 2020, the UK imported 46% of the food it consumed.18 The source of this information, the UK food security report 2021 (updated to 2024), is a mine of detailed information. It is unlikely that there is much space for further expansion of UK food production, since 71% of UK land is in use for agriculture; the largest element is grazing for livestock, but a lot of land used for grazing (Scottish and Welsh hilltops, and so on) could not be practically diverted to arable. The UK has not been self-sufficient in food since around 1750, when the population was under eight million.19 (Tractors, incidentally, are mainly imported.20)

Less than 3% of clothing worn in the UK is domestically manufactured.21 This again has a long history. The rise of the British cotton industry, starting in the 18th century, was already a shift into import-dependence, since cotton will not grow in Britain.

The construction industry is by its nature primarily domestic. However, building materials are extensively imported: as of the fourth quarter 2023, £5.3 billion in imports, and £2.05 billion in exports - the imports principally electrical gear and timber; the exports principally electrical gear and paints.22 Construction also depends on immigration for workers, with 10% of construction workers immigrants as of 2019.23

Water and power are both low-employment sectors because of very high levels of production automation. Water and sewage is notorious for its present problems. Water treatment involves the use of chlorine, which is partly dependent on imports.24 As to waste, which falls under this head in the jobs statistics, it should be noted that the UK is said to be the world’s third highest waste exporter.25 Power and fuel involves substantial importing. Domestic oil production was down to 31 million tons in 2024, while net imports (imports minus domestic production) rose to 20 million - mainly from the USA.26 Gas is also dominated by imports.27 In the second quarter 2024 20% of electricity demand was met by imports from Europe.28

Like construction, health work is by its nature primarily domestic. But it is inescapably engaged in international trade. Pharmaceuticals is one area in which UK exports outweigh imports.29 As far as medical instruments are concerned, exports of £2.5 billion are outweighed by imports of £4.6 billion.30 The NHS is, like construction, dependent on immigrant workers, with around 18% of NHS staff not holding British nationality as of June 2023.31

I have limited these examples to core necessities. I can add as a mere observation that in transport, road transport is (obviously enough) dependent on oil imports; and car exports 2024-25 amounted to £26.9 billion, car imports to £45 billion. Imports of rail equipment exceed exports by £5 billion as of 2023‑24. There are a very wide range of imports beyond these sectors.

Exports

How are the imports paid for? UK trade in the 12 months ending in June 2025 showed £888.5 billion in exports and £931.7 billion in imports - a deficit of £43.2 billion. Exports of goods were £360.1 billion and of services £528.4 billion. Top categories of goods exported were diesel electrical generator sets (£34 billion), cars (£30 billion), medical and pharmaceuticals (£24.5 billion), non-ferrous metals, primarily from scrap recycling (£15 billion), and aircraft (in reality mainly aircraft parts - £12.4 billion).32

The top category of services exported were “other business services” at £191.8 billion. This category “comprises professional and management consulting services, including legal, accounting, management consulting, public relations, advertising and market research; technical and trade-related business services, including architectural, engineering, and scientific services; and research and development services”. Second is financial services at £107 billion. Then some way behind come “travel services” at £69.3 billion; IT services at £46.7 billion; and transport services at £33.8 billion.

These figures are showing us a picture in which goods imports are primarily paid for by the supply of financial and management ‘services’. Putting architecture, engineering and scientific services into this category is fairly plainly a ‘cover’: for example, architecture’s export income was £524 million or 0.3% of the total in the category.33

Even so, there is still a £43.2 billion deficit. This is also reflected in a different form in balance of payments deficit - rather lower. The ONS website comments that:

A current account deficit, which the UK has experienced each year since 1984, places the UK as a net borrower with the rest of the world. This indicates that overall expenditure in the UK exceeds national income. The UK must attract net financial inflows to finance its current (and capital) account deficit. This can be achieved through either disposing of overseas assets to overseas investors, or accruing liabilities with the rest of the world.34

Put another way, the UK is (a) selling assets to overseas investors (like someone who has capital assets, but is making persistent losses, who sells his home furniture, and so on, in order to stave off short-term bankruptcy); and (b) borrowing on a large scale. The borrowing on a large scale is feasible because the UK is an attractive place to ‘park’ money, for two reasons: low taxation and light regulation; and in addition because the UK ‘offers’ unwillingness to devalue the pound by borrowing further than the level acceptable to financial markets. It was a threat to break this last requirement that destroyed Liz Truss’s government in 2022.

Subsidies

The other difficulty with the perception of jobs as productive is the extent of public subsidy, which indirectly gives us the same picture of dependence on finance.

Some examples: agriculture is subsidised with about £2 billion35 and in addition is exempted from business rates. The freehold-mortgage housing regime was subsidised from the 1940s by mortgage interest relief in the tax system. As soon as mortgage interest relief was tapered out, domestic property ceased to be revalued for local tax purposes (last valuation 1991).36 Since average house prices have quadrupled since 1991, the result is that central government funding paid to local authorities to keep council tax down subsidises homeowners (as mortgage interest relief did before it). This subsidy indirectly supports demand to the benefit of developers. Private landlordism is subsidised by housing benefit - £26.8 billion in 2021-22.37

The water companies were sold off free of debt (allowing the asset-strippers to load them up with debt to pay themselves back) and continue to be subsidised, and - as is clear with Thames Water - the government is ‘on the hook’ for their insolvency. Power supply is subject to a ferociously complex pseudo-market, whose purpose is to prevent gas-fired power stations going bust.38 Transport is subsidised to the tune of around £20 billion in revenue and £20 billion in capital expenditure in 2024-25 estimates.39

A more complicated story is that of benefits - as of 2023, £265 billion in the budget, with 22.6 million or 33% of population in receipt.40 These are, of course, in a certain sense for our benefit as pensioners, as the sick, as housing benefit recipients, and so on. But, just as housing benefit is a subsidy to landlords, if we ask what would happen if benefits suddenly stopped being paid altogether, the answer is that before the death of lots of people, a great many small businesses who have significant numbers of customers on benefits would go bust, as would a good many employers who rely on paying wages below the reproduction cost of labour-power on the basis that the employees will be able to claim benefits. So benefits are not merely for the benefit of recipients, but also a subsidy to (smaller) businesses relative to what a pure free-market regime would produce.

Where do the funds for these subsidies come from? The answer is partly taxation and partly government borrowing. Borrowing I have already discussed. As for taxes, the Office for Budget Responsibility’s 2025-26 forecasts are available ‘tax by tax’.41 Aggregating these produces £650.2 billion of income taxes (income tax and national insurance; capital gains tax, which is actually a special lower rate of income tax on speculation in stocks and shares and in land; onshore corporation tax; North Sea oil and gas taxes; ‘bank levy’); £253.6 billion in consumption taxes, (mainly VAT, but there are eight others); and £106.8 billion in property taxes (council tax, business rates, stamp-duty land tax, inheritance tax). There is also “other income” (for example, “interest earned on its assets, such as foreign exchange reserves and student loans, while public corporations generate some income”) - in 2024‑25 £125.5 billion.42 The income from consumption taxes obviously depends on the maintenance of domestic demand,43 and therefore on the subsidy regimes.

The Revenue’s figures for 2020‑21 show that the top 50% of income tax payers were liable for 90.5% of the total tax paid, and the top 1% were liable for 29.1%.44 In other words, the British state already does ‘tax the rich’ (and in 2020-21 under a Tory government). It just does so less than other countries, thereby attracting ‘hot money’. The City of London claims, plausibly, that financial services in 2023 contributed £110.2 billion in taxation.45 In FYE 2022 “London raised the most revenue (£194.3 billion) and the South East raised the second largest (£148.8 billion).”46

As with the story of imports and exports, the story of the subsidies and their funding is one of the UK productive economy being supported by financial and related managerial and professional services sold abroad, and by sale of capital assets to overseas investors and borrowing. The subsidies produce multiplier effects in the economy, but are based ultimately on the inflow of revenue from London skimming the money take on production carried on overseas.

Trends

As I said at the beginning of last week’s article, what I am offering is no more than a snapshot of UK class composition in the mid-2020s; the radically changing world order means that trends cannot be projected forward with any confidence.

I posed at the end of that article the question of how the UK economy could support large unproductive classes (managers and petty rentiers). The first part of this article posed the same question in relation to productive and unproductive sectors. I asked how far this was merely an effect of the absolute productivity of labour increasing (the argument of believers in natural movement from primary to secondary, to tertiary sectors), and how far it was a matter of the ‘offshoring’ of material production. The evidence of the role of imports and the trade balance, and of the system of subsidies and tax income, is that it is to a considerable extent the latter.

The UK is at the end of the day a very large offshore financial centre (and coordinator of a network of offshore financial centres47) with a moderately sized productive economy attached to it. The inflow of surplus value from the offshore financial and related operations does not in an absolute sense pay for the productive economy. But it inputs subsidies to productive activities, both directly and by demand multiplier effects, which allow them to continue in spite of the fact that they are internationally uncompetitive.

This context imposes savage limits on the policy of British governments - seen in the failure of Liz Truss and in the ‘immobilism’ of both Tory and Labour governments. As far as the working class is concerned, the problem is that - as I have argued before - it is hard for it to become fully conscious as a ‘class for itself’ without at least symbolic internationalism.48 This is all the more the case for the British working class, precisely because the extent to which the class is enmeshed in structures of subsidy built on British financial income makes it hard to self-perceive as “the producers”.

The return of the mass syndicalism of the 1940s-70s is not impossible, but it is unlikely. That is not to say that there will be no unions or strikes; merely that circumstances have changed adversely to this sort of struggle. Political action of the working class can, potentially, mobilise very large numbers; but to pose a real strategy it will need to break with the illusions of ‘national roads to socialism’ and of the ‘law of uneven development’ and national revolutions ‘maturing in their own time’ in a country utterly dependent on international production.

  1. ‘Class composition in a snapshot’, Weekly Worker August 21 (weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1549/class-composition-in-a-snapshot).↩︎

  2. See www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/datasets/workforcejobsbyindustryjobs02. The Labour Force Survey data (www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/datasets/employmentbyindustryemp13), though a quarter more recent, is plainly unreliable and acknowledged as such at the site.↩︎

  3. Motor vehicle repair is around 246,000 or 5% of the total in the category: www.reportlinker.com/dataset. The only justification I can see for its inclusion is that car dealerships commonly offer both sales and service/repairs, so that it would be inconvenient to disaggregate sales and service employees; however, this is also true of ICT and domestic appliance repairs, which are classified among “other services”.↩︎

  4. The classificatory structure in general is available at www.ons.gov.uk/methodology/classificationsandstandards/uksic2007.↩︎

  5. A footnote (un)helpfully tells us: “This series is not exclusively a public sector series, as it includes some private sector jobs.” It appears from the general rules (see UK standard industrial classification of economic activities 2007 (see the pdf at note 3 above), that the point is that the administration of private pension schemes is included, because participation is required by the state on social security grounds. It should follow from the application of the point that forms of compulsory liability insurance (motor, employers) would also be included. But they are not; in reality, this is an arbitrary inclusion.↩︎

  6. The definition also includes what remains of smallholding production for self-sufficiency, reflecting the fact that this is a common EU scheme of categories. Most of the very small numbers of UK smallholdings are market-facing, not for pure self-sufficiency: www.gov.uk/government/publications/73rd-annual-report-to-parliament-on-smallholdings-in-england/73rd-annual-report-to-parliament-on-smallholdings-in-england.↩︎

  7. Online at notesfrombelow.org/issue/class-composition-project.↩︎

  8. About 29 million hits on Google for “primary secondary tertiary sectors”. “Quaternary” and “quinary” sectors are obvious bullshit, because looking up only a few hits shows that there is no agreement among promoters of the categories on what is part of either of them.↩︎

  9. See the recent and very useful discussion by Michael Roberts: thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2025/08/14/intangibles-does-it-change-things.↩︎

  10. Discussion, with quotations, in J Conrad, ‘Nature’s goods and services’ Weekly Worker July 24 (weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1548/natures-goods-and-services).↩︎

  11. www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/05/parti-ouvrier.htm; French from materialisme-dialectique.com/le-programme-marxiste-de-jules-guesde.↩︎

  12. Domestic servants: a short-lived example is discussed by L Schwartz, ‘“What we think is needed is a union of domestics such as the miners have”: the domestic workers’ union of Great Britain and Ireland 1908-14’. Twentieth Century British History vol 25 (2013), pp173-98. This, of course, existed at the high point of British syndicalism before World War I. Building workers: shown by the very early anti-union law, the Confederacies of Masons Act 1425.↩︎

  13. ‘Beggars’ guilds’ appear to be mainly fiction.↩︎

  14. Eg, elaborate discussion in the 1864 draft chapter 6 of Capital, at www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1864/economic/ch02b.htm. There is a very extensive literature on the issue, which I do not propose to explore here. It cannot have this meaning in the Programme of the Parti Ouvrier, because “the producers” can be emancipated either through peasant and artisan possession (dying out) or through collective appropriation of the means of production (communism), and the production of surplus value for capitalists is relevant to neither. The underlying point is that, in Marx’s political economy writings, the object of study is the source of surplus value; hence a narrow use of “productive” adapted to this question.↩︎

  15. D Graeber Bullshit jobs: a theory London 2018.↩︎

  16. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Ratner.↩︎

  17. Googling “selling a shit product” produces 57.6 million hits …↩︎

  18. www.gov.uk/government/statistics/united-kingdom-food-security-report-2021/united-kingdom-food-security-report-2021-theme-2-uk-food-supply-sources.↩︎

  19. Self-sufficiency: www.agr.kyushu-u.ac.jp/foodsci/4_paper_Colman.pdf. Population: 6m in England (www.campop.geog.cam.ac.uk/blog/2024/10/31/urban-society); 1.26 million in Scotland (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Scotland); 500,000 in Wales (www.bbc.co.uk/wales/history/sites/themes/guide/ch13_early_modern_wales.shtml), making a total of 7.76 million. This, of course, excludes the Six Counties.↩︎

  20. blog.howdeninsurance.co.uk/tractors-where-are-they-manufactured.↩︎

  21. www.fashioncapital.co.uk/insights/the-state-of-uk-fashion-manufacturing-a-sector-poised-for-resurgence.↩︎

  22. www.gov.uk/government/statistics/building-materials-and-components-statistics-february-2024/construction-building-materials-commentary-february-2024.↩︎

  23. www.citb.co.uk/media/4utptf25/migration_uk_construction_2020_summary.pdf.↩︎

  24. www.wcs-group.co.uk/wcs-blog/one-stroke-at-a-time-addressing-the-chlorine-shortage-for-uk-pools.↩︎

  25. www.letsrecycle.com/news/uk-is-third-highest-exporter-of-waste-says-cleanhub.↩︎

  26. assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/688a0827a11f859994409228/DUKES_2025_Chapter_3.pdf.↩︎

  27. assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/688a0938a11f85999440922e/DUKES_2025_Chapter_4.pdf.↩︎

  28. www.drax.com/press_release/power-surge-uk-spends-250-million-each-month-importing-record-volumes-of-electricity-from-europe.↩︎

  29. www.abpi.org.uk/international-trade-and-ip/international-trade.↩︎

  30. oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/medical-instruments/reporter/gbr.↩︎

  31. commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7783.↩︎

  32. This and the next paragraph from www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uk-trade-in-numbers/uk-trade-in-numbers-web-version.↩︎

  33. committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/124578/pdf.↩︎

  34. www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/balanceofpayments/bulletins/balanceofpayments/januarytomarch2025.↩︎

  35. capreform.eu/agricultural-policy-reform-in-england-and-the-2024-uk-budget.↩︎

  36. ifs.org.uk/sites/default/files/output_url_files/Summary-Revaluation-and-reform-bringing-council-tax-in-England-into-the-21st-century.pdf.↩︎

  37. www.bigissue.com/news/housing/housing-benefits-government-spending.↩︎

  38. assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/67e569c66078e12e2c8c9bd5/Final_report.pdf.↩︎

  39. researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CDP-2025-0139/CDP-2025-0139.pdf. This omits road policing and non-trunk road repair costs charged to local government, and road accident costs charged to the health budget.↩︎

  40. www.bbc.co.uk/news/explainers-63129705.↩︎

  41. obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend.↩︎

  42. obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/brief-guides-and-explainers/public-finances.↩︎

  43. VAT on exports is generally zero-rated, while on intermediate production it will just be transmitted into consumer prices.↩︎

  44. www.gov.uk/government/statistics/income-tax-liabilities-statistics-tax-year-2020-to-2021-to-tax-year-2023-to-2024/summary-statistics.↩︎

  45. www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/supporting-businesses/economic-research/research-publications/total-tax-contribution-of-uk-financial-services.↩︎

  46. www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/publicsectorfinance/articles/countryandregionalpublicsectorfinances/financialyearending2022.↩︎

  47. N Shaxson Treasure islands London 2012.↩︎

  48. Revolutionary strategy London 2008, pp138-40, 154-55; and the last part of t-k-p.net/yurukoglu/lectures/fortress_the_west.pdf (2006).↩︎