Funding the Future

Is Farage a fascist strongman?

Is Nigel Farage the strongman who could deliver fascism to the UK? Or is that the wrong way to understand the danger he represents?
In this video, I examine what fascism actually requires: ideology, discipline, institutions, and the willingness to rule. By those standards, Farage fails the test.
But that does not make him harmless. Farage’s role is not to govern, but to corrode democracy, normalise cruelty, and weaken trust in institutions. Fascism often arrives after the wreckers, like him, have done their work.
This is a video about why getting this distinction right matters, and why Farage remains a serious threat even without the qualities of a fascist leader.

Is your pension safe?

People assume pensions are “saved money” — a pot with their name on it, safely invested for the future. They aren’t.
In this video, I explain how UK pensions actually work, why defined contribution pensions are inherently risky, and why most pension money fuels speculation rather than real investment.
I look at the state pension, defined benefit schemes, and defined contribution pensions and explain who really benefits from the current system, why it is unjust, and why reform is now unavoidable.
This is not pension advice. It is a political economy explanation of why pension insecurity is being built into the system by design.

AI does not care

We are told that artificial intelligence can replace human judgment. It cannot.
In this video, I explain why AI does not care, why it cannot exercise judgment, and why deploying it at scale embeds neoliberal values into decision-making by design.
Algorithms prioritise efficiency, cost reduction and rule-following. Judgment requires care, context, responsibility and democratic accountability.
This is not a technical debate. It is a political choice about the kind of economy and society we want to live in.

Neoliberalism was not an accident

Neoliberalism did not just “happen”. It was planned, funded, and carefully rolled out over decades.
In this conversation with John Christensen, co-founder of the Tax Justice Network, we trace how the post-war economic settlement worked, why it delivered rising living standards and falling inequality, and how it was deliberately dismantled.
We then discuss the role of think tanks, banks, tax havens, the Washington Consensus, and offshore finance in shifting power away from democracy and towards wealth extractors. And we also ask why neoliberalism survived even after the 2008 crash, before addressing what must replace it if democracy, equality and functioning markets are to be restored.
This is not abstract economics. It is about power, politics, and the choices we were told we did not have.

Are you the media now?

People keep asking me what they can do to help change the conversation about economics, politics, and power. The answer is simpler, and more important, than most people expect.
Social media now decides what people see, hear, and believe. If our ideas are not present there, they effectively do not exist. Silence is not neutral; it cedes the space to those who already dominate it.
In this video, I explain why liking, sharing, commenting, and eventually creating your own posts are now forms of civic action. I also explain how algorithms really work, why perfection is not required, how AI can help without replacing judgement, and why consistency matters more than scale.
This is a practical guide to becoming part of the conversation and shaping it.

Why are empires failing?

The world is being shaped by three power blocs: the USA, Russia and China. Their politics look very different, but I  argue in this video that they have something profound in common. They are all built on division.
America’s founding constitutional promise of equality was never universal. Marxism defines justice through conflict between classes. Neoliberalism claims wealth is merit and poverty is failure. All these systems end up privileging some people, excluding others, and turning difference into justification for domination.
That is not sustainable. If we want a stable world, we need a politics of inclusion, not exclusion. We need a politics of care. And we need the world’s “middle states” to embrace it, because good ideas are the only real counterweight to imperial power.

Neoliberalism is dying: what's next?

Are we living through the end of the neoliberal era?
I think we are, and I think the moment it became undeniable was Mark Carney’s speech at Davos.
Neoliberalism wasn’t an accident. It was a deliberate ideological project built around the myth that “freedom through markets” would deliver freedom for everyone. Instead, it delivered:
rent extraction
precarity
instability
a hollowed-out state
rising inequality and insecurity
In this video, I explain how neoliberalism was constructed, why it relied on weakening democracy, why it evolved into rentier capitalism, and why it is now collapsing in plain sight, economically, socially, and politically.
And then I ask the real question: what replaces it? Is that a politics of care — or authoritarianism?

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