The new British Prime Minister, being a creature of the Labour Party, is doubling down on Labour's laundry list of leftist policies. One of these is the continuation of the ongoing argument against what the party calls "fake discounts" and "subscription traps." These things include, yes, annoying practices like default auto-renewal of subscriptions and first-term discounts on rates that explode upon renewal. Nothing new here.
The problem is that the new PM seems to be rushing to adopt fixes to these things without consulting the people that will be hit hardest by their proposed rules.
The Prime Minister has proposed to ban businesses from advertising “rip-off” discounts and said he will accelerate existing plans to make subscriptions easier to cancel.
These two pledges come as Burnham prepares to embark on a cost-of-living tour of the UK, where he will set out a series of “everyday fixes” which he claims will make Brits feel better off in the short term.
But some businesses which rely on subscriptions have criticised Burnham’s move to accelerate its crackdown on the payment model, which they said came without sufficient engagement with firms.
This isn't anything new; leftist governance in particular seems to consist in large part of people who have never worked in the private sector, who have never run a business, who have never had to make a payroll, issuing edicts punishing those who have.
The News Media Association, which represents publishers including The Sun, The Times and The Guardian, said it was “deeply disappointed that the government has “rushed ahead” with this crackdown despite providing “repeated assurances about a proper implementation period”.
“Ultimately it is consumers who will be short-changed, as the businesses providing services enjoyed and relied upon by millions are left scrambling to adapt to an entirely arbitrary new deadline – diverting valuable resources that would otherwise go into building better products,” said News Media Association chief executive Theo Bamber.
The Burnham effort, begun by PM Burnham's hapless predecessor "Two-Tier Kier" Starmer, echoes similar efforts on the part of Joe Biden and, more recently, New York's commie Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Any economic policy or business regulation pushed by those two should be viewed, to put it mildly, with extreme suspicion.
Some time back I stumbled across another fundamental law of the universe, now known as Clark's Law of Laws, which states, "Any time someone says 'There oughtta be a law,' no such law should be written or implemented." This is another such case. Yes, these subscription tricks and traps can be annoying. Yes, people do get suckered into paying more for things than they may otherwise have, had they been paying attention. But since when is it the proper role of government, any government, to get this far down into the weeds of protecting people from themselves?
Britain, mind you, is going to all this effort to save British consumers an estimated £14 per month, on average. That's a tad short of $19 American. That's hardly going to break the average limey's bank account, and when you consider all the idiocy that the Labour Party has put in place that is driving the average British household's expenses skyward - just look at their energy policy, for example - this seems like nothing less than an enormous waste of time. And never mind my usual caution about watching Europe, because they'll try it here next. They already are.
It's not the proper role of government to protect people from the consequences of their own bad decisions. When said government does that capriciously and without even speaking to all the parties affected, that just makes it all the worse - and that's precisely what Andy Burnham is proposing to do.
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