Funding the Future

It’s back to work day for most in the UK, Keir Starmer included. If he any sense he’d have one priority for 2025, which is making the UK government work again.

The only goal that we really know that our Labour government has is growth, but no-one really knows why that is, and they have never explained. So, I’ve set out 14 questions they need to answer to explain just what it is that they think growth will do for us.

It’s fashionable to lay the blame for all that is wrong in our economy on the state. But that’s a mistake. The state is only failing because it is being run by politicians who have set out to undermine it. We need a properly functioning state, and have been denied it for too long.

Wes Streeting has made clear that no action on social care will be taken during this parliament by setting up a commission to report on the issue by 2028, when it will be too late to do anything about it. Is that because he just hasn’t got the ability to think about issues this big?

The UK has the highest domestic energy prices in Europe, and it’s all down to poor regulation, political dogma and the fact we haven’t got nationalised energy companies.

The claims economics makes about itself as a subject for study can in no way be matched with the value-laden, neoliberal way in which much of it is now practiced.  It’s the practice that needs reform.

I have been asked to define the way in which I use the term ‘far-right’. I do that in this video and, at the same time, explain why I think Reform fits my criteria for describing it as such.

2025 is a year when I can do what I want – as technically I will have retired. And what I want to do is make educational videos.

2025 is not looking good in 2025. Trump will be in the White House. Europe is in disarray. Starmer is already a lame duck. What chance have we got of anything going well?

2024 was a year when political certainties disappeared – and not just because of Trump. Politics as we’ve known it for a long time went into meltdown.