The UK is facing its highest unemployment rate in a decade, according to fashion designer and businessman Jeff Banks, who has accused the government of “crippling” the economy through policies that have left employers unwilling to hire young people. Speaking in a video circulated online, Banks claimed the overall jobless rate now stands at 5.2 per cent, with youth unemployment reaching 16 per cent — a direct consequence, he argued, of the recent hike in National Insurance contributions.
Unemployment and the National Insurance link
Banks said the rise in National Insurance had effectively pushed up the minimum wage, making it prohibitively expensive for businesses to take on younger workers. “It meant that employers are not going to employ young people whom they would otherwise have employed,” he claimed. Official figures from the Office for National Statistics show that in the three months to March-May 2025, the youth unemployment rate for 16- to 25-year-olds stood at 14.2 per cent, with 628,000 young people out of work. That compares with a rate of 13 per cent in 2010 (929,000), which fell to 12 per cent by July 2018 as the overall unemployment rate dropped to 4.0 per cent — its lowest since the 1970s. By contrast, the wider unemployment rate reached 7.9 per cent in December 2010. Banks’s claim of 5.2 per cent overall and 16 per cent for youth would mark a significant deterioration from the lows seen in the late 2010s.
National debt
Turning to public finances, Banks asserted that the UK has “the highest level of debt that we’ve had, standing at something like £94 billion.” He added that the interest paid on that debt each year is “bigger than the economy of the NHS, defence, and all the rest of it put together.” While Banks’s figure of £94 billion appears to refer to annual interest costs rather than the total debt stock, official data from the Office for National Statistics shows that public sector net debt (excluding public sector banks) reached an estimated £2,927.7 billion in November 2025, equivalent to 95.6 per cent of GDP — a level not seen since the early 1960s. The debt-to-GDP ratio has risen steadily from 64.7 per cent in 2010. Interest payments on that debt have indeed climbed sharply in recent years: after falling as a share of GDP in the decade to 2019-20 due to historically low interest rates, they surged in 2022-23 as inflation and borrowing costs rose.
Energy costs
Banks also claimed the UK is paying “the highest energy cost of any country in Europe” as a result of policies pursued by former Labour leader Ed Miliband. He cited a cost of £0.26 per watt of electricity in the UK, compared with £0.16 in France and £0.16 in America. Official comparisons from the second half of 2023, the most recent period for which EU-wide data is available, show that UK household electricity prices were indeed the highest among the 27 EU member states, at £0.36 per kilowatt-hour. However, UK gas prices were among the lowest, ranking ninth cheapest in the EU. Historically, UK domestic electricity prices were comparable to the EU median but began rising significantly above it from 2020. Miliband, who serves as Labour’s net zero spokesperson, has championed the “Clean Power 2030” plan, which aims to reduce fossil fuel electricity generation by expanding wind and solar capacity. Critics have warned that the associated subsidies and levies could push electricity costs up by 80 per cent by 2030, though Miliband has argued that clean energy is “the only route to financial security, energy security, and indeed, national security.”
Bond market and international perception
Banks concluded with a warning about the UK’s standing in global financial markets. “The outside world looks on us as being a mistrustful country,” he said, pointing to trouble in the bond market. UK 10-year government bond yields, which reflect the cost of government borrowing and investor confidence, have recently stabilised above 5 per cent — near their highest level since 2008. As of 2 May 2026, the yield on the benchmark 10-year gilt stood at 4.972 per cent. The spread between UK and US 10-year government bonds was 59.4 basis points, indicating that investors demand a higher premium to hold British debt relative to American bonds. This is a marked shift from the period after the 2008 financial crisis, when UK 10-year yields fell from 3.7 per cent in May 2010 to a low of 0.577 per cent in August 2019, reflecting the era of ultra-low interest rates.
