Starmer is doing his best to talk up the economy – but 2025 has been a dud

On a weekend, if Arsenal are playing at home and Keir Starmer is not abroad for talks about something or other, our anywhere-but-Britain prime minister can be found at the Emirates.

Given the length of time he’s followed his favourite team, and not forgetting he still occasionally likes to kick a ball around himself, Starmer must be able to judge the scale of a victory or a defeat. Or so you’d think. This week, he described a new trade deal with South Korea as “a huge win for British business and working people”.

How much extra will it bring to the UK economy? Says the Treasury: £400m.

That has the feel of a triumph for his beloved Gunners over the likes of, er, Doncaster Rovers. Even the most fanatical Gooner would struggle to match Starmer’s glowing assessment.

Of course, South Korea is not Doncaster, and it is an agreement with a trading powerhouse. But what is less spoken about is that this pact merely replaces an existing arrangement. That deal was struck in 2019, post-Brexit, and is worth more than £15bn a year. The part that is actually new will generate the £400m. So they are virtually the same. The add-on covers the export of some cars, cans of Guinness, and Scottish salmon. Not a lot there. Still, these are British businesses employing working people, so that works. A win is a win, as they say on the terraces.

This was Britain’s trade minister, Chris Bryant, on the new London-Seoul alliance: “Today’s agreement secures the UK as a global leader in digital trade and innovation while boosting our world-class services sector, supporting iconic brands, and giving cast-iron protections to our key industries to speed up economic growth as part of our Plan for Change.”

Nik Jhangiani, interim chief executive of Guinness’s owner Diageo, said the new trade arrangement would support export growth for Guinness. How much Guinness do they consume in South Korea? Also, isn’t Guinness really made in Dublin, and canned in Runcorn and Belfast?

Questions, but still, South Korea joins the US, India, the EU, and other trading partners the government struck deals with in 2025 that form part of Labour’s “further and faster” delivery of economic growth. No matter that most of these arrangements are not exactly transformative, and in some cases merely replace ones that were already there – for instance, the partnership with the EU that was lost when we chose Brexit.

Possibly, there are some wins – but nothing jaw-dropping, nothing huge. What also tends to be less emphasised, lest we forget, is what the other country (or bloc) receives in return.

In the same week that Starmer and Bryant were crowing, the US announced that the £31bn Tech Prosperity Deal with Britain was being suspended. When that arrangement was unveiled, Starmer said: “This Tech Prosperity Deal marks a generational step change in our relationship with the US.” Technology secretary Liz Kendall said the compact would “transform lives across Britain” and was a “vote of confidence in Britain’s booming AI sector”. Not today it isn’t, since the US has stuck it on hold.

This is part of a pattern we have witnessed this year, of every small pro-enterprise step being lauded to the heavens while closer inspection reveals that little has changed. That partly explains the frustration among business leaders, who see a government that makes a lot of noise about helping but in reality is not matching its words with deeds.

The dissatisfaction goes beyond this: it’s an administration that in their eyes is anti-business, that has actively sought to target the private sector. A premier, chancellor and ministers who say one thing and do another.

We were assured that they were going to galvanise the housing market – the building of 1.5 million homes during their first five years was a manifesto pledge. That does not look likely to happen. Property sales are flat, new-build figures are dismally low, and the country is in the grip of a homelessness crisis.

Projects have been unveiled as being exciting and radical when they are nothing of the sort. The nation remains mired in discussing Heathrow expansion; HS2, now much truncated, lumbers on; there is a scheme to link Oxford and Cambridge, and plans for a nuclear power station, and that is about it. No vision, no execution of the sort that business craves and the economy so desperately needs.

We have an energy policy that is hard to fathom. Is it renewables or non-renewables? You decide. Meanwhile, the UK is dangerously vulnerable to disruptions in fuel supplies, and exposed to high market prices.

Which leaves the Budget. For four months, we were treated to a drip-drip of leaks – some speculative, some apparently well sourced, few denied. Businesses – as ministers would know if they had ever spent serious time working in firms charged with making profits – want certainty. It’s what governs their decision-making and commitment. Without it, they can and will do nothing.

Instead, what we got was a buildup that caused activity to stop. It was chaotic and bizarre. Then, just as Rachel Reeves stood up to speak, her Budget was published by mistake.

As for what it contained, the answer is very little that would galvanise the economy. “Further and faster” it most definitely was not. We should not complain. Doubtless, we would do well to remember a famous advertising slogan from yesteryear: “Guinness is good for you.”