Funding the Future

The politics of grievance has dominated debate in both Britain and the United States. Nigel Farage, Rupert Lowe and Donald Trump have all built political narratives around anger, blame and the promise that someone else is responsible for people’s hardship.

But is that politics now running out of road?

In this video, I argue that grievance can win attention, mobilise anger and even win elections. But it cannot govern. It cannot build houses, restore public services, fund healthcare, educate children, tackle climate change or create security. Eventually every politician has to answer one question: what are you actually going to do?

The problem for Farage and Trump is that their answers remain deeply neoliberal: lower taxes, smaller government, more markets, and more blame. That does not solve the grievances they exploit. It recycles the same failed model in a more extreme form.

The alternative is a politics of care, coupled with an economics of hope. That means understanding people’s anger, and then using the capacity of government to address its causes. I think this is the moment to move beyond grievance and build something better.

The UK savings system is dominated by ISAs and pensions. Together, they account for most personal savings. But are they delivering what the country needs?

In this video, I argue that they are not. ISAs receive generous tax relief. Pensions receive even more. Yet the result is not the investment in productive capacity that economic theory says savings should deliver. Instead, much of the benefit goes to the City of London, while savers often get disappointing returns and society gets too little investment.

The real purpose of saving should be capital formation: building the assets, skills, infrastructure, public services and ecological systems that make life better. That is not what our current savings system is doing.

I suggest that the government should offer new, safe savings products through National Savings and Investments. These could be linked to real social purposes: health, housing, education, green investment, regional development and long-term public need.

This would not be about clever marketing. It would require real accountability, with savers told how their money had been used.

Savings should not just preserve private wealth. They should help create public value.

People often ask me what difference Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) would actually make in practice.

The surprising answer is that, in many respects, MMT already describes how the UK monetary system actually works. The government already creates new money when it spends, through the Bank of England. Taxes do not fund spending in the way most politicians and economists claim. Instead, they remove money from circulation and help manage inflation.

So if that’s already true, what difference does MMT make?

The answer is that it changes how we think about policy.

Using the current debate over defence spending as an example, I explain why cancelling infrastructure projects to “pay for” defence makes no economic sense. Roads are built by different people with different skills from those who design advanced military equipment. Destroying one part of the economy does not magically create capacity somewhere else.

The real constraint is never money.

It is always people, skills, technology, energy and other real resources.

MMT encourages governments to ask the right question: do we have the resources to do this? If we do, then financing them is not the obstacle politicians pretend it is.

This changes everything from defence to healthcare, housing, climate policy and public investment.

Whether you agree with me or not, this is one of the most important economic debates taking place today.

Please join the discussion in the comments and vote in today’s poll.

If you enjoy these videos, please like, subscribe and share them. Your support really does help the channel continue producing independent economic analysis.

Most discussions about economics begin with money. I think that’s a mistake.

Britain is constantly told there isn’t enough money.

We’re told there isn’t enough to build council housing. Not enough to improve transport. Not enough to invest in local communities. Not enough to repair public services.

Ignore modern monetary theory for a moment, and ask instead, what if that isn’t the real problem?

In this video, I examine HMRC’s latest tax gap statistics, and they reveal something ridiculous. According to HMRC’s own figures, around £17.3 billion of corporation tax owed by small companies is not being paid. That is part of a total corporation tax gap of around £21 billion, and it raises serious questions about whether Britain is choosing not to collect money that is already legally due in tax.

Andy Burnham says he wants to invest much more if he becomes Prime Minister, but he also says he will stick to Rachel Reeves’ fiscal rules. If he believes government needs more money before it can spend (even if that is not true), then recovering tax that is already legally owed surely has to come before introducing entirely new taxes.

In this video I explain:

• what the tax gap actually is;

• why the small company corporation tax has become the fastest-growing part of it;

• why HMRC’s own figures point towards an explosion of non-payment by small companies;

• why honest businesses are being placed at a competitive disadvantage;

• how £17 billion could fund around 50,000 new council homes every year;

• why I drafted legislation over a decade ago that would have tackled much of this problem.

This isn’t simply a debate about tax.

It’s about whether Britain still believes in enforcing company law, maintaining fair competition, supporting local economies and encouraging honest business to invest by ensuring that everyone plays by the same rules.

The media thinks government debt will cause the next financial crash.

I think they’re looking in entirely the wrong place.

The UK government cannot run out of pounds to repay debt denominated in pounds, so government debt is not where I believe the real systemic risk now lies. Instead, I think the danger has been quietly building in US stock markets, where global investor concentration is now higher than at any point in modern history.

Foreign investors now own around $22 trillion of US shares. Pension funds, insurance companies and investment funds across the world have become increasingly dependent upon rising American stock prices. The AI boom has accelerated this trend, drawing ever more money into a relatively small number of companies and creating a level of concentration that should concern us all.

If those markets suffer a major correction, the consequences will not be confined to the United States. The effects could spread rapidly through pension funds, household savings, and banks and financial institutions around the world, including here in the UK.

In this video I explain:

Whether you agree with my analysis or not, these are risks that deserve far more attention than they are currently receiving.

Where do you think the next financial crash will come from? Let me know in the comments below.

I’m back.

An unexpected week away from making videos—thanks to a kidney stone that I wouldn’t wish on anyone—gave me something I almost never have: time to stop and think.

For more than twenty years I’ve written about Britain’s economy and politics. For the last two years we’ve talked about them here, almost every single day.

Together we’ve explored why neoliberalism has failed, why living standards have stagnated, why our political system no longer seems able to meet people’s needs, and why so many people have lost faith in politics altogether.

But being forced to step away made me ask a different question.

Should this channel change?

Not because the issues have gone away. They haven’t.

Not because exposing failure no longer matters. It does.

But because perhaps the time has come to spend more of our energy asking a different set of questions.

What should replace neoliberalism?

How should we reform tax?

How should we reform money?

How should government work differently?

What would a politics of care actually look like?

How do we build an economy of hope instead of an economy of fear?

Those are the questions I increasingly want to explore.

The question is whether you want to explore them with me.

So this isn’t an announcement that I’ve already decided to change direction.

It’s an invitation for you to help decide whether we should.

Please vote in the poll, leave a comment, and let me know what you think. I genuinely want to hear your views, because they will help shape the future direction of this channel.

Thank you for being part of this journey.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates that around 14 million people in the UK currently live in poverty. Burnham acknowledged this reality and built his entire pitch around improving lives for ordinary people across the North and Midlands. But he cannot do that while accepting fiscal rules that prevent investment, refusing to raise taxes, and targeting a GDP figure that goes up when people's bills go up. The arithmetic does not work, the logic does not hold, and the speech answered none of the questions a serious alternative economic programme must answer.

The fact is that growth is the wrong target. Wellbeing, full employment, and the elimination of poverty are the right ones, but Burnham is not there yet, and Britain cannot afford a Prime Minister-in-waiting who is still this confused about economics.

For fifteen years, politicians have told us the same story.

They say Britain’s debt is too high. Government spending must be cut. Public services must be squeezed. Austerity is necessary because debt must come down.

There is just one problem. It ha never worked.

Before the financial crisis, UK government debt was around £500 billion. Today it is more than £2.8 trillion. Every year of austerity was supposed to reduce borrowing and reduce debt. Instead, debt rose year after year. It's never stopped. 

So why are the same economists, newspapers and politicians who promoted austerity still demanding more cuts?

In this video, I examine the evidence. I explain why austerity can actually increase debt, why cutting spending reduces economic activity, why tax revenues fall when growth is suppressed, and why attempts to balance government finances often end up producing the exact opposite result.

If a medicine makes a patient sicker every time it is prescribed, doctors stop using it. So, why do economists keep prescribing austerity?

The numbers are clear. The evidence is clear. Debt-cutting has failed.

The question is why so many people refuse to admit it.

Most of us think we know what is true. We hold opinions, beliefs and convictions that feel self-evident. But what if many of the things we call truth are actually stories that we tell ourselves?

In this video, I explore the difference between truth, fact, belief and narrative. I argue that our identities are shaped by stories about nationality, faith, politics, family, culture and experience. Those stories help us make sense of the world, but they can also persuade us that our beliefs are facts when they are not.

I explain why certainty can be dangerous, why context matters more than we often admit, and why understanding other people’s narratives is essential if we want to change minds, reduce conflict and create a more caring society.

This is a video about humility, doubt, critical thinking and the importance of recognising uncertainty in a world where everyone claims to know the truth.

Do facts exist? How much of what we believe is actually true? And how should we respond when other people see the world very differently from us? These are big questions. And how do we work out the answers?