Funding the Future

Could Andy Burnham call a general election before Christmas 2026? In this video, I examine the rumours and ask why an early election might appeal to a Prime Minister whose government already has a substantial parliamentary majority.

Burnham inherited Labour’s majority from Keir Starmer, but he does not have his own electoral mandate. I consider whether an election now could give him that mandate and potentially secure another five-year term, or whether it would be an extraordinary political gamble.

With the Greens, Reform and Lib Dems on the ropes and the Tories newly confident, but not with much extra support, he may take a gamble on going to the country. 

That said, Labour could lose its majority in an early election while potentially remaining the largest party. That raises the possibility of a hung parliament and negotiations with parties such as the Liberal Democrats and SNP.

That could make electoral reform crucial. The Liberal Democrats might demand proportional representation in return for their support, while other parties could have their own conditions. But Burnham might calculate that losing Labour’s majority now could still provide longer-term political opportunities.

There is also the economic situation to consider. I argue that the world economy faces significant risks between now and the currently scheduled election in 2029, and any serious downturn could transform Britain’s political landscape and consign Labour to history as punishment for ending up in charge when a crash happens again, unless PR happens first. Burnham might realise that and want to get the order of events right to secure Labour's long-term future. 

I also look at David Cameron’s 2010 coalition with the Liberal Democrats as a possible precedent. A coalition lasted for five years before Cameron subsequently secured a Conservative majority in 2015.

None of this means an early election will happen. But there are political reasons why Burnham might consider going to the country sooner rather than later. The question is whether he believes the opportunities outweigh the considerable risks.

Democracy requires much more than voting every few years. It requires people to have the time, security and mental capacity to understand political choices, consider competing arguments and participate meaningfully in society. In this video, I argue that too many people are losing that capacity.

Work, caring responsibilities, insecure housing and financial pressures consume enormous amounts of people’s time and attention. Meanwhile, constant media distraction increasingly reduces complicated political questions to slogans, reactions and instant opinions.

This is not simply a problem of individual political interest. It is a political economy problem. How we organise work, distribute income, provide housing and fund public services directly affects people’s ability to participate in democracy.

Time and attention are also unequal. Some people have considerable freedom to engage with politics, while others have little capacity left after work, caring responsibilities and dealing with economic insecurity. Economic inequality can therefore create political inequality.

Democratic rights only work when people have the capacity to use them. The right to vote matters, but meaningful democracy also requires people to understand their choices, develop informed opinions and have enough security to think beyond immediate survival.

Disagreement is essential to democracy. The problem is not that people disagree, but that too many people are being denied a meaningful opportunity to participate in that disagreement.

If we want to save democracy, we need secure incomes, housing, reliable public services, reasonable working conditions and enough time away from work to participate in society. And with AI increasingly shaping how we receive information, the question is whether technology will expand that democratic capacity or diminish it further.

Why should a tiny minority receive the rewards from resources, knowledge and institutions that are ultimately part of our common inheritance?

In this podcast, I talk to Professor Guy Standing, best known for developing the idea of the precariat and for his longstanding advocacy of universal basic income.

Guy argues that neoliberalism has created a growing class of people living without the security, rights and occupational identities that previous generations could often expect. But precarity is about more than insecure employment. It means becoming dependent upon employers, landlords, bureaucrats and others simply to get by.

That insecurity is having profound political consequences.

Our discussion moved from the precariat to Guy’s idea of the commons: the natural resources, knowledge, education, institutions and other forms of common wealth from which private interests increasingly extract rents.

Guy argues that those profiting from the commons should compensate the commoners, of whom we are all one. That revenue could be placed in commons capital funds and used to provide everyone with a social dividend, helping underpin a universal basic income.

We discussed as a result why basic income could act as a “social vaccine” against economic uncertainty, why security can increase freedom rather than discourage work, and why reclaiming the commons might offer the basis for a radically different progressive politics.

This is ultimately a discussion about something bigger: who owns our common wealth, who should benefit from it, and what is the economy actually for?

Inflation means that prices are rising, but knowing the inflation rate does not tell us why prices are going up. In this Understanding Economics video, I argue that identifying the cause of inflation is essential if we are going to choose the right policy to tackle it.

Economists traditionally distinguish between demand-pull inflation and cost-push inflation. Demand-pull inflation happens when spending exceeds the economy’s capacity to supply goods and services. Cost-push inflation happens when essential costs such as energy, food and materials rise because of supply shocks.

I also identify a third form: “greedflation”. This happens when companies use their market power to increase prices by more than their costs have risen, increasing their profit margins in the process.

These different causes require different responses. I argue that raising interest rates might suppress demand, but it cannot create more energy, food or other scarce resources. Higher rates also increase mortgages, rents and business costs while discouraging the investment that could increase productive capacity.

Instead, policy should match the cause. Excessive demand can be managed through taxation. Excess profits can be tackled through regulation and taxation. Energy shortages require investment in domestic energy, while other supply shortages require investment in the capacity needed to produce more.

Inflation policy is therefore about much more than changing interest rates. We need to ask what is causing prices to rise, who is gaining, who is losing and which policy actually addresses the underlying problem.

There is no single solution to inflation because there is no single cause. Understanding that is essential if we want economic policy that works. This is what Understanding Economics is all about.

When will modern monetary theory actually be put into practice? My answer is that politicians will adopt MMT when they desperately need an alternative to the economic ideas that have failed them.

History suggests that major changes in economic thinking happen during crises. Keynesian economics gained influence after the failures exposed by the Great Depression. The Beveridge Report helped prepare the foundations for the post-war settlement. Neoliberal thinkers were ready when the economic turmoil of the 1970s created their political opportunity.

The same happened after the 2008 financial crisis. Tax Justice campaigners had spent years developing arguments and practical reforms that suddenly became politically useful when governments needed answers.

MMT needs to be equally prepared. Importantly, I argue that MMT does not require us to invent a new monetary system. It describes how the existing system already works: government spending creates money, taxation removes money from circulation, and government bonds provide a savings mechanism.

The real change is therefore in how politicians understand and manage the economy. Instead of asking whether government can afford something, MMT asks whether we have the real resources required to deliver it.

A new hospital, for example, requires land, materials, builders, doctors, nurses and other staff. Money itself cannot create those resources. The challenge for government is to mobilise available resources while managing genuine shortages and inflationary pressures.

I believe another major economic crisis could force politicians to reconsider the economic assumptions they currently rely upon. Financial instability, war, AI, climate change or recession could provide that catalyst.

We should not want such a crisis. But if one comes, an alternative must already be available. MMT needs a clear, practical political narrative explaining what governments can actually do. When politicians need an economic life belt, MMT must be ready.

Is neoliberalism beginning to collapse under the weight of its own failures? In this video, I argue that the unrest we are seeing in France, alongside growing political tensions elsewhere in Europe, raises that possibility.

France is experiencing widespread protests involving students, teachers, workers and parents. I argue that their anger reflects something much broader: deteriorating public services, economic insecurity and growing resistance to demands for yet more austerity.

Neoliberalism promised that markets, competition and economic reform would deliver growth, prosperity and greater freedom. Instead, I argue that many people have experienced insecurity while governments continue to prioritise fiscal rules, competitiveness and the demands of financial markets.

The contradiction is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain. Policies that have failed to deliver are being followed by demands for more restraint, more austerity and still greater deference to financial markets.

France’s experience in May 1968 offers an interesting comparison. The government survived those protests, but French society changed. Political systems can therefore be transformed even when the governments confronting protests remain in office.

Today’s conflict is also about democracy. Who should ultimately determine how society’s resources are used: elected governments and their citizens, European institutions, or financial markets?

I argue that neither continued neoliberalism nor the politics of the far right provides an adequate answer to the underlying problems of housing, healthcare, education, investment and economic insecurity.

France may simply be confronting these contradictions before other countries. If people withdraw their consent from an economic system they believe is repeatedly failing them, the neoliberal era could be approaching its end.

The Conservatives are using their party conference to put inheritance tax back at the centre of political debate. In this video, I question why Kemi Badenoch is focusing on a tax that affects only a small minority of estates when millions of people face much more immediate economic pressures.

According to the figures discussed in this video, just 4.72% of deaths resulted in an inheritance tax charge in 2023–24. More than 19 out of every 20 estates therefore paid no inheritance tax at all.

The headline 40% inheritance tax rate can also be misleading. Allowances mean substantial amounts can potentially be passed on without inheritance tax, while the 40% rate applies only to the taxable portion of an estate above the available thresholds.

I argue that the bigger question is why inherited wealth should receive greater political protection than income earned through work. Inheritance is wealth received because of family circumstances rather than something the recipient has earned through employment.

Meanwhile, Britain faces problems with housing costs, insecure work, stagnant wages, struggling public services, poverty and substantial inequalities of income and wealth. Cutting inheritance tax does little to address those problems.

There can be legitimate debate about how inheritance tax should operate and whether it needs reform. But making it a flagship political issue tells us something about the priorities being placed by the Tories  on inherited wealth compared with the economic insecurity experienced by many households.

The question is not simply whether inheritance tax should change. It is whose economic problems politicians choose to prioritise.

Kemi Badenoch has set out her vision for a new Conservatism in ‘The Right Way’. Its central argument is that government should do less while individuals, families, communities and businesses take greater responsibility. In this video, I explain why I think that argument is fundamentally flawed, and just wrong.

Badenoch argues for lower taxes, less government spending, less regulation and greater reliance on markets and individual responsibility. But I argue that responsibility is only meaningful when people have the resources and security required to exercise it.

People need decent incomes, secure employment, affordable housing, healthcare, education, transport and protection against risks they cannot reasonably manage alone. Reducing government provision does not make those needs disappear.

There is also a problem of power. Markets do not bring everyone together on equal terms, but Badenoch seems to believe that they do. Employers can have more power than workers, landlords more power than tenants, and large corporations more power than individual consumers. Removing regulation can therefore increase rather than reduce these inequalities.

I also challenge Badenoch’s definition of freedom. Freedom cannot simply mean freedom from government. Someone unable to afford their rent, obtain healthcare or challenge an employer has few meaningful choices, however small the state might be.

Real freedom means the ability to do things, and that requires security, resources and the opportunity to make genuine choices. Individual responsibility therefore depends upon collective provision rather than being an alternative to it.

Badenoch believes previous Conservative governments were not conservative enough. I argue that pushing still further towards markets, deregulation and individual responsibility fails to answer the most important question: who provides the foundations people need to live genuinely free and secure lives?

What is tax really for? Most people assume that governments need to collect tax before they can spend. But for a government like that of the UK, which issues its own currency, that is not how the monetary system works.

The UK government creates new money when it spends. Tax then takes money back out of the economy. That means we need to think very differently about why taxation exists.

In this video, I explain six reasons why we need tax.

Tax gives the pound its value because people need pounds to settle their tax liabilities.

Tax helps control inflation by withdrawing spending power from the economy.

It can reduce inequality by redistributing income and wealth.

It can change prices to discourage harmful activities and encourage socially useful ones.

Fair taxation can strengthen democracy by reinforcing the obligations we share as members of society.

And tax is one of the government’s most important tools for steering the economy.

Understanding this changes the way we think about government spending, deficits, inflation and economic policy.

Tax is not simply the government’s piggy bank. It is one of the most powerful economic policy tools we have.

This video is part of my Understanding Economics series, explaining economics as it actually operates in the world around us.

How do you actually change the world?

In this Funding the Future podcast, I talk with my old friend and fellow Tax Justice Network co-founder John Christensen about what 24 years of campaigning have taught us.

Our argument is simple: problems without solutions breed despair.

Campaigning cannot just identify what is wrong, explain who is responsible or make people angry. Successful campaigning has to describe what a better future might look like and then develop credible proposals for getting there.

John and I discuss how this approach shaped our work on tax justice. When we first met in Jersey in 2002, we began developing what became country-by-country reporting. That campaign eventually contributed to major changes in international tax transparency.

We discuss what we learned from that experience: imagine the outcome you want; develop workable policies; understand your opponents’ arguments; build networks; create a story people can understand; engage with political power; and have the persistence to keep going.

We also consider how solution-focused campaigning could be applied to today’s problems, from social care and the NHS to inequality and climate change.

For decades we have been told that there is no alternative.

There are always alternatives.

The challenge is to imagine them, make them credible and build the support needed to make them happen.