Funding the Future

Reeves is in a mess

What was important about the Spring Statement from Rachel Reeves was what it did not say -  like mortgage rates are going to rise by at least one percent, alongside house prices. We really are in a mess. 

Jeremy Vine and Rachel Reeves

Is Rachel Reeves constrained by the City?

Is the City really stopping Rachel Reeves doing what Labour wants, or is she just using it as a convenient excuse for her neoliberal austerity?

Are MPs worth £94,000 a year

I was interviewed on BBC Look North on 25 March 2025. This is an audio recording of the interview made as it was being recorded from my computer and from me, live into the microphone. 

There are no such things as fiscal rules

Fiscal rules are works of fiction. They are as made up as fairy tales are, and yet the Chancellor is asking us to believe that she should manage the economy by complying with them. Why is she so deeply misguided, whilst taking us for fools?

Can Trump turn government off?

The thing about government is that it is meant to outlast any political administration and even us. It is meant to be permanent; the bedrock on which we build country, an economy and even an identity. What happens when a politician treats it as peripheral to the point that it is expendable? Can we survive that?

What Reeves should do on Wednesday?

Ravel Reeves thinks she is facing an economic crisis. She’s wrong. She and Labour are facing a political crisis that demands that she spends. But will she realise that?

Why is Trump stoking animosity?

If politics is always about resolving the conflicts within and between groups in society so that they can co-exist, even if one is favoured over another, why is it that Trump seems intent on stoking animosity and conflict? Is he even doing politics?

Medicine is under-politicised in the UK

UK ministers are claiming ill health is over-medicalised in the UK. It isn’t. It’s under-politicised instead. It’s neoliberalism that is making us ill, but they refuse to recognise that fact.

I’m angry. Are you?

Anger has a bad name. Too often we’re now told being angry is unacceptable. That though is just the forces of power trying to impose control and order. In the world of growing injustice in which we live being angry is absolutely essential if change is going to happen.