Funding the Future

Is defence about more than weaponry?

This week, the world exploded, but what really shocked me wasn’t Trump.
Trump was predictable. The chaos was published in advance. Project 2025 made the method and the objective plain: disruption as strategy, empire as the goal.
What has truly appalled me is this: despite vast defence budgets and vast intelligence capabilities, Western leaders have appeared totally unprepared. They clung to the “rules-based order” as if rules might still have meaning to a man who rejects legality.
So, in this video, I argue something many will find uncomfortable:
Defence isn’t fundamentally about armaments. It’s about legitimacy.
If people do not believe a society is worth defending, then no quantity of weapons will save it. And neoliberalism, which is designed to reward the few, cannot now demand sacrifice from the many.
That is why I think the only credible defence policy now is a politics of care: a society that values everyone, delivers for everyone, and earns loyalty by legitimacy.
This demands pragmatism, compromise, and coalition. The world we must create will be messy, but that will be its strength, and not its weakness.
There’s a poll below. What do you think?

Who must pay for war with Trump?

Donald Trump has declared a trade war on Europe, and he might still be threatening physical conflict over Greenland and Canada. That forces a question most politicians will dodge: how do we pay for a war economy, even if no shots are fired?
John Maynard Keynes tackled exactly this issue in 1940. He argued that the real constraint is not money. The real constraints are resources, inflation, and fairness.
In this video, I explain why Keynes believed wartime sacrifice is unavoidable, why inflation is a political danger, and why the burden must fall most heavily on those best able to carry it, who are the wealthy, through taxation, organised saving, and controlled interest rates.
We are entering an era in which resilience matters more than market efficiency. The neoliberal model cannot survive this transition.

Will 2026 be brutal?

Andrew Bailey has warned MPs that substantial risks are building in global markets — and for once, I agree with him.
Trump’s attacks on the Fed, the escalating threats around Greenland, and the weaponisation of tariffs are turning political instability into financial instability. That’s already showing up in equity sell-offs — and it won’t stop there.
In this video, I explain:
- Why political risk is now systemic financial risk
- Why equities fall first, and bond markets follow
- How Keynes’s “animal spirits” and the paradox of thrift can trigger recession
- Why AI is not protected from a downturn; it’s exposed
- Why the UK is not insulated from risk
- Why austerity would be catastrophic now, and why we need a politics of care instead
 

Time for a new world order?

We are living through fascism. That is the first message of this video.
We are therefore living through unprecedented chaos. That is the second message.
And the US is no longer our ally — which means NATO is over. That is the third message.
Trump’s incoherence is not simply personal. It is being weaponised as policy, backed by the machinery of the American state. The result is a dangerous collapse in the world order, where coercion replaces diplomacy, and conquest is normalised.
In this video, I explain what this means, why Europe must face strategic independence, and why we need clarity, naming, and countermeasures — now.

Is Trump evil?

Trump's threat to Greenland is an emergency, and it must be treated as one.
This is not just a territorial dispute. It is a deliberately chosen test of whether coercion can be normalised and then repeated to spread an empire in a way and for an aim that can only be described as evil.
This video sets out:
Why Greenland is symbolically massive.
Why diplomatic understatement now is denial of the political reality of this moment
Why propaganda and intimidation are central tools of authoritarian expansion.
Why democracies must regain moral clarity and plan countermeasures now.
The question is not “can we negotiate?” The question is: will we resist, and in time?

MMT isn't theory: it's fact

People keep asking: “When are we going to do MMT?”
That question is built on a misunderstanding.
Modern monetary theory is not a manifesto, and it’s not a magic “print money” promise. It is an explanation of how the monetary system already works, in the UK and elsewhere. It describes what government spending really is, why taxation does not fund spending, and what “borrowing” really means in a sovereign currency system.
In this video, I explain:
- That the UK government creates the pound.
- Why government spending must come before tax.
- What tax is actually for (inflation control, demand management, and resource shifting).
- Why government bonds are a savings product, not borrowing.
- Why deficits create private sector net financial assets.
- What the real constraints on the economy are.
- Why austerity is always a political choice
MMT doesn’t tell you what to do; it tells you what’s true. And once we understand that truth, we can finally have an honest debate about policy, democracy, and the society we want.

Does GDP extend life?

We’re constantly told that people in rich countries live longer and that GDP growth is therefore the route to health, well-being, and social progress.
But the evidence is far less simple than the slogans.
In this video, I use 2022 data to show four versions of the same relationship between GDP per person and life expectancy, and explain how the way economists present that data can create a misleading story.
The key point is this: the link between income and life expectancy is non-linear. Once basic needs are met, the curve flattens. Beyond that point, what matters most is not GDP but inequality, housing, healthcare access, stability, and social care, or, in other words, the politics of care.
This is why GDP fetishism is not only intellectually empty. It becomes politically dangerous.

How do we manage AI?

AI is happening. We are not going to stop it, and we shouldn’t pretend we can.
But we can manage the economy that AI will reshape. And we must.
In this video, I explain what it means to manage the AI economy through regulation that makes AI pay its full resource costs and through an investment-led programme to cut inflation structurally while creating the jobs AI cannot replace, most especially in energy, housing, skills, transport, and care.
This is not about surrendering to market forces. It is all about the government staying in charge.

Is the dollar failing?

Is the US dollar losing the trust required of a global reserve currency?The dollar isn’t just America’s currency. It is the plumbing of global trade—the world’s settlement mechanism, safe haven, and store of value. But Trump’s tariff agenda, political interference in the Federal Reserve, and broader institutional instability are changing how the rest of the world assesses US credibility.This video explains:- Why reserve currencies depend on trust, not “strength”- Why the US deficit is not an accident but a structural feature of the system- Why one-currency global trade has become fragile- What Keynes proposed instead: the bancor- Why the BRICS alternatives don’t solve the core design problem- Why the IMF / World Bank have failed to lead reform- Why we now need a neutral clearing system for global tradeThe question is not “does the dollar collapse tomorrow?”It’s whether the world should keep accepting a reserve system built around one national currency—and one increasingly erratic politics.

What are we defending?

Westminster’s new “common sense” says defence spending must rise and that the price must be paid in cuts to care, public services, and social security.
But that isn’t realism. It is ideology dressed up as prudence because if we hollow out the state to fund missiles and weapon systems, we don’t strengthen national security, we undermine it. A society built on insecurity, collapsing services, and rising poverty is not a society people will defend.
In this video, I ask the most important question in the entire debate: what exactly are we defending, and for whom?