Reem Ibrahim Calls To ABOLISH The Minimum Wage

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]We've heard many different takes on the Alan Milburn report, but this one takes the biscuit. Libertarian Reem Ibrahim said this.

[00:00:09]More than 1 million 16 to 24-year-olds are not in education, employment, or training in Britain. This is not a coincidence. It is the direct result of government policy. We should abolish the minimum wage, abolish the employment rights the employment rights act, and reverse the national insurance hike.

[00:00:27]Reem Ibrahim's solution to the unemployment crisis is to make workers poorer.

[00:00:33]A race to the bottom where the minimum wage should be scrapped along with workers protections. It's worth pointing out that she works for the Institute for Economic Affairs, right-wing libertarian think tank that opposes government taxes and regulations. Who funds them? Well, we don't know exactly. They are quite shy about telling us who their donors are, but the Tufton Street-based organization did admit they received money from the oil giant BP.

[00:00:58]2018, the think tank admitted that it had received funding from the oil and gas supermajor BP every year since 1967.

[00:01:09]IEA spokespeople have also been publicly critical of the government's net zero target while advocating for the continued exploration of fossil fuels.

[00:01:19]Takes money from oil companies, critical of net zero. Funny that.

[00:01:24]Many businesses have also cited the minimum wage increase and increase to employer national wage contributions as as another reason for the increase in youth unemployment despite Milburn and the report stating otherwise.

[00:01:37]Um so, Curtis, what do you make of Ibrahim's solution to youth unemployment?

[00:01:43]>> Reem Ibrahim is wrong about almost everything.

[00:01:46]Um she as you pointed out, she works at the IEA, the Institute of Economic Affairs.

[00:01:52]It is a libertarian think tank.

[00:01:53]Libertarians have absolutely no clue about anything. They're someone who live in their own theory, but they can't apply their their world view to the real world, to reality.

[00:02:05]Um so it's again, it's it's Thatcherism neoliberal economics, which is well, unemployment is high, therefore if we're nicer to businesses, therefore people are going to employ more people.

[00:02:17]Richard Tice said something similar. He suggested that the minimum wage should be cut uh for young people because that was his idea of getting young people into work. And as I've pointed out once again, the rich, the the the CEOs, they are not the job creators.

[00:02:35]So if they're not the job creators, why are we making lives better for them in order to to create jobs? That's not what happens. So I feel like I'm going to repeat myself, but it's uh it's true. Um if you have more investment in people, if people have more money in their pockets, they can go out and spend money. That's a multiplier effect.

[00:02:54]Once you you'll have more jobs.

[00:02:57]But this top-down approach, this neoliberal agenda that we've had for the last 50 damn years, people are arguing for the same thing.

[00:03:08]Now, funny to to point it what you were saying about cutting the minimum wage, right?

[00:03:14]If you cut the minimum wage, what do you think is going to happen to the benefit bill?

[00:03:19]So as I pointed out earlier, uh there are many people who are in work who are also on universal credit.

[00:03:26]Because wages are already too low, the state has to subsidize employers who don't pay people enough.

[00:03:33]The government is literally stepping in to allow businesses to pay people so poorly. So if Reem Ibrahim says, "If we just abolish the minimum wage, what do you think is going to happen?"

[00:03:45]Okay?

[00:03:47]You're going to have more jobs, maybe. I mean, there might might be a slight slight increase in jobs, but what does it matter if you're getting paid £2 an hour? You're still going to be using benefits because and the benefit bill is going to go even higher because employees don't pay people enough. That's why we need collective bargaining. Um and more importantly because Reem Ibrahim, she's a libertarian. She's against any kind of state intervention.

[00:04:14]Uh libertarians literally want to get rid of the state. That's why she's like get rid of the minimum wage. Um not because she thinks it particularly work.

[00:04:20]I mean, maybe she believes it, but her her perspective Sorry, her prospectus isn't come from whether she thinks it works or not. Her ideology is I'm just against the state. So, she wants all regulations gone. She wants all taxes gone.

[00:04:33]>> wild. Like that's what >> libertarians believe.

[00:04:36]>> That is what I was going to ask. It's like I almost want to like I need more context to that tweet. Not like because I think it's a good idea, but it's like Okay, so like [clears throat] what does that look like? You get rid of minimum wage, you get rid of all these other things that she was saying to get rid of. Like what does that actually look like?

[00:04:52]>> libertarians believe in a world in which um they think the state is anything run by the state or the government is authoritarian. And markets and private industry, that's all freedom. Like the way you ask her >> individual business essentially should just set their own like wages, rules.

[00:05:11]>> Well, she she and libertarians think that the free hand of the market will sort itself out. The reason why we have such a bad economy, why wages are low, whatever, is because there's too much government bureaucracy. The government is involved in the economy too much.

[00:05:22]That's what they think. Is which is why you ask a libertarian when you critique capitalism she will tell you it's not capitalism, it's corporatism. And it's like no, corporatism is a direct result of capitalism because monopolies happen under capitalism. And what Reem Ibrahim doesn't seem to understand is that governments can step in to break up monopolies. There's something called antitrust laws and anti-monopolization laws they have in America where you you know, states can block mergers for example. If you see one company and another company merging, sometimes I don't think it's used effectively enough, but sometimes governments can step in and say, "Look, there's too much consolidation of power, therefore the state steps in." If the state pulls itself back and monopolies happen, that is a natural occurrence under capitalism.

[00:06:07]Capitalism breeds monopolies, which is so ironic when capitalists say, "We love the free market. We love competition."

[00:06:14]Yet capitalism hates competition.

[00:06:15]Capitalists themselves hate competition.

[00:06:18]They love a planned economy. Do you think the CEO of a particular company wants competition? No, he wants to make sure he can buy up all the competition, so nowhere no one has anywhere else to go. That's why monopolies happen. That's why uh retail shops, they'll buy each other up because if people have no nowhere else to go, the profits are guaranteed for you. So, capitalism absolutely hates competition, and libertarians believe that we should get rid of all kind of government. That is literally all kind of laws, which is ironic. So, when you ask a libertarian what their views are views of age consent, they dig themselves in a hole because they're like uh uh uh exactly, we have laws. We we have to intervene. Um and you just extend that with the economy. They Reem Ibrahim constantly talks about abolishing the NHS cuz she seems to think, "Oh, if we let the market do everything, then it will somehow sort itself out." For 50 years, we've had that level of thinking. Not only has the market pulled away Sorry, the the government pulled away. I mean, they haven't spending, but they you know, haven't intervened in the economy.

[00:07:21]They've also privatized public industry to allow, you know, the private sector and firms and shareholders and CEOs to get even more richer that we sold our public institutions and sold it and put it into the market. How has that worked? We now have public services that are [ __ ] screwed. We have [ __ ] in our waters, and we're paying so much money for transport. So, her worldview, her libertarian and neoliberal worldview is absolutely deranged. It's absolutely deranged.