lets clarify things
If the UK is complaining of no growth, we need to see empirical evidence to show how statistically they've dropped from so and so year, to so and so year. If there has been no growth, is it in terms of productivity from industries and firms, or the growth rate is on the part of the citizens unwilling to work due to grands they enjoy from government,
a business can grow by having less employee's. for instance by mcdonalds moving from walk-in face to face with staffed service, to a model of drive-thru AI assisted order taking.. mcdonalds can actually make more profit due to less expense and then use that profit nationally to add more restaurants in the country
yep reducing expenses can lead to more profits which can lead to expanding production amounts which leads to growth in a society of less employment
because the thing is that, if people are not working government obviously won't be generating enough revenue to sustain the system not to talk of paying citizens that are idle.
uk unemployment benefit is £90 a week (£4.68k/yr) so with 60m working age people in UK and 4% are unemployed(2.4m) means the unemployed budget is only $11.2b
the UK treasury has a revenue of £1trillion. which if they just kept hold of 2023 budget to spend in 2024-25 year, and hold it in an account offering just 1.2% interest, the interest alone would fund the unemployment costs
infact the UKGI separately manages £1.3trillion of government assets in its portfolio and it generated £33b in last fiscal year
So for me, I think we need to see empirical evidence of how the UK has been growing over the years and how that growth has stunted lately according to your analysis. London is the Heart of UK and if they are still doing well based on your assertion then, there is still much hope at the end of the dark tunnel.
the evidence is just looking at the highstreet and seeing all the vacant/boarded up store fronts. where by local, national and international businesses are no longer interested in serving the uk populous. which then doesnt excite the economy to grow
less stores to sell goods, less goods sold, less goods produced, less employment creating goods
yes london SEEN a unnatural bubble of property growth, but thats the fake finance game of the property market, unnaturally held up by making weird policies to deny new property builds, new policies of "15 minute cities" to make fake(pricing) demand for properties due to lack of real growth of new housing(physical asset number count)