Funding the Future

My word of the year

As Christmas approaches, I reflect on my word of the year: pleonexia — an ancient Greek term describing the insatiable desire to take more than your fair share, even when it harms others.
Once you understand pleonexia, you start to see it everywhere: in big tech, in bond markets, in tax avoidance, and in government policy that treats human suffering as an accounting inconvenience. This video argues that much of what we excuse or defend in modern economics is, in fact, a moral failure hiding in plain sight.
If we want an economy based on care rather than cruelty, contribution rather than entitlement, we first have to name the problem. That is where political economy begins.

The right way to tax wealth in 2026

The push for wealth taxes has been one of the defining economic debates of 2025. The question now is whether we want policies that work.
In this video, I argue that the fastest, fairest way to tax wealth is through higher taxes on the income, gains and transfers that wealth generates — not through complex and slow-to-deliver wealth taxes.
This approach raises more revenue, strengthens compliance, exposes hidden wealth, and keeps open the option of a wealth tax later if it is still needed.
If we are serious about justice, democracy and effective government, this is the path we should take.

Christmas is weird

Christmas is economically strange. We stop working. Spending surges. Profit stops mattering. Time off is normalised. Family and care come first.
And we accept all of this without question.
That should make us pause. Because if we can suspend the rules of economics at Christmas, then those rules were never inevitable in the first place.
This video is not about religion or ritual. It is about what the Christmas season reveals about our economic choices. It shows that we can pause economic activity, value rest, prioritise care, and organise work around life rather than the other way around.
Christmas proves that life is more than money — and that a better economy is possible.
The real tragedy is not Christmas excess. It is forgetting the lesson in January.

What's really wrong with the NHS?

Is the NHS really in crisis because of money — or because we are asking the wrong question altogether?
In this video, I argue that the central failure of the NHS is not underfunding alone, but the way illness itself has been turned into a consumer product. Chronic conditions now dominate healthcare, patient demand has exploded, and pharmaceutical profits shape treatment pathways, often at the expense of prevention, patient agency, and genuine cures.
I explore why GP consultations have doubled, how medical intervention can itself create harm, and why lifestyle-based prevention is systematically sidelined. I also ask the question no politician wants to answer: who benefits from a system that manages illness rather than reduces it?
This is a political economy critique of healthcare, not an attack on doctors or patients, and it challenges the idea that simply spending more money will necessarily fix the NHS.

Tax is not theft

Is tax theft? Many people think so — and that belief shapes how we vote, how we treat public services, and how democracy functions.
In this video, I explain why the popular claim “it’s my money, why should the government take it?” is based on a fundamental mistake. Income does not exist before the state. Jobs, wages, money, contracts, and property rights all depend on government systems that come first.
Tax is not punishment. It is not confiscation. It is a macroeconomic tool that stabilises the economy, controls inflation, shapes markets, reduces inequality, and sustains democracy itself.
If you care about public services, economic stability, or democratic accountability, this is the conversation we need to have.

Economics is not about money

Most people think that economics is about money, that government spending is constrained by tax, and that public services must always come second to “balancing the books”.
All of that is wrong.
In this video, I explain why money is not scarce, why governments create it, and why treating money as the central economic constraint has led to unemployment, inequality, wasted lives and environmental damage.
Economics is not about money.
It is about people, resources, care, and planetary limits.
When we put money first, we get injustice.
When we put people first, economics starts to make sense again.
So the real question is simple:
Do we want money in charge – or justice?

Inequality is a political choice

Inequality is not an accident. It is not natural. And it is not inevitable.
According to the United Nations’ World Inequality Report, inequality results from deliberate political and institutional choices. This video explains what that means for the UK – and why extreme concentrations of wealth now threaten democracy, climate stability, and social cohesion.
I examine the evidence behind the report, the role Britain has played in designing inequality at home and abroad, and why progressive taxation and redistribution are proven tools for change.
The question is no longer whether alternatives exist.
It is whether our politicians are willing to choose them.

What if growth is over?

For 50 years, Western politics has rested on a single promise: growth.
But what if that promise can no longer be kept?
In this video, I ask a question almost no politician dares to face: what happens to democracy when growth flatlines permanently? I explore stagnant wages, finance-driven “growth”, asset bubbles, pensions, public services, and the political risks of a collapsing economic myth.
If growth cannot return, we must change the purpose of the economy itself — or risk losing democracy along with it.

Tackling bosses' excessive pay

Chief executives in the UK and the US are now paid hundreds of times more than the people who actually create value in their companies. This is not innovation or entrepreneurship – it is extraction.
In this video, I explain why extreme executive pay is a driver of inequality, weak productivity, falling morale, and political corruption. I also show how tax can be used not to raise revenue, but to change behaviour – by making excessive pay expensive.
Drawing on proposals I developed for the TUC and current legislation proposed in the United States, I explain how fair pay ratios could be enforced through the tax system, why shareholders – not society – should bear the cost of excess, and why democracy itself is at risk if we do nothing.
Tax exists to shape outcomes. This is one outcome that it must shape.

Is Trump at war with Europe?

Has Donald Trump effectively declared war on Europe? His recent statements suggest exactly that.
In this video, I explore how Trump’s racist rhetoric, his support for far-right parties, and his attacks on migrants are being used to divide Europe at the very moment inequality and social pressures are rising.
Migration is not destroying Europe. Racism is.
And when racism is normalised, democracy crumbles.
This is the defining political choice of our time: fear and exclusion, or dignity and solidarity.
Which Europe do you want to live in?