𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

In the last two years 30,000 shops will have closed in the UK. Legitimate businesses forced into administration because of Rachel Reeves’ business tax and cost hiking budgets, along with mad Miliband’s net zero fanaticism pushing up energy prices. Yet Turkish barbers, nail salons and other beauty stores have managed to open – nearly 250,000 since 2010. How is that? What is their secret? How are they thriving when other shops aren’t?

Walking past, it’s difficult to understand on the face of it. They hardly appear awash with customers and when you consider a shop owner needs to find approximately £48,000 a year just to cover rent, rates and utilities for a small shop in Manchester, it’s hard to figure out how these shops even cover their basic costs, let alone create an income for the owner.

Many of us have therefore concluded that lots of these shops can’t be legit, and that is born out by research which estimates up to half of all vape shops and convenience stores have links to crime as do one in four takeaways and one in three American Candy stores. The Chartered Trading Standards Institute and Anti-counterfeiting Group put the top 10 hot spots for dodgy shops as Birmingham, London, Bradford, Liverpool, Leeds, Manchester, Coventry, Sheffield, Huddersfield and Brighton.

Unfortunately, this Labour government won’t face up to the scale of the black and shadow economy in the UK. The shadow economy (cash in hand, jobs on the side with people not paying tax) is assumed to be about 10% of the entire economy – some £300billion per annum – and the cost of the criminal, illegal market between 0.5% to 0.7% – about £15billion per annum. I have a feeling that’s a huge under-estimation.

HMRC estimates illegal tobaccos and vapes alone cost the UK at least £2.2billion in lost taxes last year and walking around in some cities, the only thing high on the high street must be the people, the smell of pot is so strong.

It isn’t just shops, food fraud is on the up too, and gambling has gone from having no issues in the UK, to now one in every 10 bets placed being in the black market, a figure set to double in the next few years as Labour loads more regulatory burdens on legitimate businesses.

Worse still, Labour’s failure to smash the gangs and cancelling the only deterrent for illegal immigrants, the Rwanda Scheme, on day one of coming to office, has seen 78,000 enter since Starmer became Prime Minister. Where on earth does Starmer think these people are going to work?

Trading Standards in Newport, South Wales, discovered those arriving illegally by small boat into the country were working in a shop within a week. It doesn’t take a genius to conclude that those arriving at the hands of criminal gangs could be roped into other criminal activity to help pay for their passage like selling illegal cigarettes, vapes, alcohol and drugs.

Criminals are literally running rings around this weak government. And for all Starmer and Reeves talk of growing the economy, the only economy I see them growing is the black one.