Funding the Future

Austerity failed: debt increased

For fifteen years, politicians have told us the same story.
They say Britain’s debt is too high. Government spending must be cut. Public services must be squeezed. Austerity is necessary because debt must come down.
There is just one problem. It ha never worked.
Before the financial crisis, UK government debt was around £500 billion. Today it is more than £2.8 trillion. Every year of austerity was supposed to reduce borrowing and reduce debt. Instead, debt rose year after year. It's never stopped. 
So why are the same economists, newspapers and politicians who promoted austerity still demanding more cuts?
In this video, I examine the evidence. I explain why austerity can actually increase debt, why cutting spending reduces economic activity, why tax revenues fall when growth is suppressed, and why attempts to balance government finances often end up producing the exact opposite result.
If a medicine makes a patient sicker every time it is prescribed, doctors stop using it. So, why do economists keep prescribing austerity?
The numbers are clear. The evidence is clear. Debt-cutting has failed.
The question is why so many people refuse to admit it.

What is true?

Most of us think we know what is true. We hold opinions, beliefs and convictions that feel self-evident. But what if many of the things we call truth are actually stories that we tell ourselves?
In this video, I explore the difference between truth, fact, belief and narrative. I argue that our identities are shaped by stories about nationality, faith, politics, family, culture and experience. Those stories help us make sense of the world, but they can also persuade us that our beliefs are facts when they are not.
I explain why certainty can be dangerous, why context matters more than we often admit, and why understanding other people’s narratives is essential if we want to change minds, reduce conflict and create a more caring society.
This is a video about humility, doubt, critical thinking and the importance of recognising uncertainty in a world where everyone claims to know the truth.
Do facts exist? How much of what we believe is actually true? And how should we respond when other people see the world very differently from us? These are big questions. And how do we work out the answers?

Are specialists finished?

The world is trapped in silos. We built an education system, an economy, and an entire political culture around a single skill, the ability to store and retrieve knowledge, and then we called it intelligence and expertise, and we built whole careers and the structure of society based on it. AI can now do much, if not all, of that faster and more accurately than we can, at very low marginal cost. Britain has no plan for what happens next.
None of this is an accident. Neoliberalism actively reinforced the silo model because isolated specialists who see only their own narrow domain are far easier to manage, market to, and exploit than people who ask questions across disciplines and understand how the system actually works. The result has been generations of workers and a current political class that knows a great deal about very little, and is now being outcompeted by a machine that doesn't need a salary, a pension, or a lunch break.
The skills that survive the AI age are not the ones Britain's institutions are teaching. They are:
Curiosity, which is the ability to ask good questions rather than store correct answers.
Critical thinking, which is the ability to challenge what the machine produces and ask what is missing, and
Care, which is the recognition that human well-being is interdependent and that no silo ever captured that truth.
A politics of care embraces these ideas. It is not a soft alternative to economic policy. It is the only rational response to the world that is already arriving.

Everything they told you about money is wrong

What if almost everything you’ve been told about government money is wrong?
Most people are taught that governments must tax before they can spend, that borrowing funds public services, that national debt is a burden on future generations, and that there is never enough money to do everything society needs. These ideas are repeated by politicians, journalists and economists so often that they are rarely questioned.
But what if those claims are not true?
Modern Monetary Theory, or MMT, challenges many of the assumptions that dominate economic debate. It argues that governments that issue their own currencies work very differently from households, that spending comes before taxation, that government borrowing plays a very different role from that usually claimed, and that the real limits on public spending are not financial but physical. The true constraints are the availability of labour, skills, technology, raw materials and the risk of inflation.
In this video, I explain why I created the MMT Source Book, a free 400-page guide to the ideas that have shaped much of my economic thinking over the last decade. The book brings together more than 100 topics covering money creation, government spending, taxation, inflation, interest rates, banking, public finance and the operation of the Bank of England.
I also explain why MMT sees tax very differently from conventional economics. Tax is not simply about raising revenue. It can control inflation, reduce inequality, tackle harmful activities, encourage beneficial behaviour and help create a fairer society. Understanding that changes the way we think about economics, politics and the role of government.
The MMT Source Book starts with the basics, but it also provides detailed technical explanations for those who want to explore the subject in much greater depth. It addresses many of the most common objections to MMT, including questions about financial markets, government borrowing, investor confidence, exchange rates and inflation.
If you have ever wondered how politicians should answer the question, “How are you going to pay for it?”, or why it makes no sense when governments claim there is no money available for essential services, or why economic debates often seem trapped within such narrow boundaries, this video is for you.
The book is completely free to download. Read as much or as little as you like. Explore the ideas, challenge your assumptions and decide for yourself whether conventional economics has been telling the whole story.
Download the MMT Source Book and join the discussion. The way you think about money, tax, government spending and the economy may never be quite the same again.

Has neoliberalism captured you?

Loneliness is rising. More people feel isolated than they did a decade ago. Young people are particularly affected. Politicians talk about the problem. Commentators blame social media. Others blame technology, changing lifestyles or the decline of community.
But what if the real cause lies deeper?
What if loneliness is not an accident, but a consequence of the way we have been taught to think about ourselves?
In this video, I explore the idea that neoliberalism has not only reshaped our economy and politics, but has also captured our minds. We have been encouraged to judge ourselves by our income, our status, our careers and what we own. We are told that success is measured by consumption and achievement. We are encouraged to compete rather than connect with one another.
The result is a society in which many people feel they are never good enough, never successful enough and never wealthy enough. At the same time, relationships, community and simple human connection are pushed into the background.
Using data on loneliness in the UK, I examine why this crisis is growing, why young people appear particularly vulnerable to it, and why loneliness is increasingly affecting our relationships, our work, our politics, and our sense of well-being.
Most importantly, I ask what we can do about it.
The answer begins by recognising that neoliberalism is not just an economic system. It is also a set of values that many of us have internalised without realising it. Once we understand that, we can begin to challenge those values and replace them with something better.
The alternative may be found in a surprisingly simple idea: enough.
Knowing when we have enough frees us from the endless pressure to accumulate more. It allows us to focus on relationships rather than possessions, on people rather than status, and on well-being rather than wealth.
If neoliberalism has captured us, recognising that fact may be the first step towards freedom.
What do you think? Has neoliberalism changed the way we think about ourselves and each other?

This wealth tax won’t work

The Global Justice Report from the World Inequality Database promises a great deal: climate stability, global income security, and justice through global wealth taxation.
It suggests that the world could dramatically reduce inequality, raise living standards, and remain within environmental limits, all through a coordinated system of global taxes on wealth and income. That sounds attractive. It sounds ambitious. It sounds hopeful. But there is a major problem. The proposal assumes away the practical, political, legal and administrative obstacles that make its plan unworkable.
In this video, I explain why a global annual wealth tax is not a realistic route to tax justice. The report assumes unprecedented worldwide cooperation between governments that often cannot agree on far simpler issues. It ignores the continuing existence of tax havens, overlooks the realities of tax competition, and pays little attention to the political power that wealth already exercises over many governments and institutions.
The proposal also assumes that wealth can be easily identified, valued and taxed. In reality, wealth is often hidden behind trusts, companies and complex ownership structures that stretch across multiple jurisdictions. Even when wealth can be identified, establishing a fair value for it is frequently difficult, contentious and expensive. The report ignores these practical challenges.
Most importantly, it fails to deal with the most basic issue of all: wealth is not the same as cash. Owning an asset does not necessarily provide the income needed to pay a tax charge based upon that asset’s value. Homes, private businesses, works of art and many other forms of wealth may have significant paper values while generating little or no cash flow. That creates a fundamental problem that the report does not adequately address.
Tax justice matters. Wealth inequality matters. The power of the wealthy matters. But reform has to be deliverable. A tax that cannot be assessed, collected or paid is not a solution. It is make-believe economics.
In this video, I explain why the Global Justice Report misunderstands the realities of taxation, valuation and wealth ownership, why its proposed wealth tax would struggle to work in practice, and why there are more realistic ways to increase tax revenues from those with the greatest ability to pay.
If we want genuine tax justice, we need proposals that confront reality, not ones that assume inconvenient facts away.

The UK can’t go bust

The Daily Telegraph claims that Britain’s £3 trillion national debt could lead to an IMF bailout. That sounds alarming. There’s just one problem with that claim. It is total nonsense.  The UK cannot go bust.
In this video, I explain why Britain is fundamentally different from a household, why governments that issue their own currency cannot run out of money, and why comparisons with the IMF crisis of the 1970s are deeply misleading.
Back then, Britain faced a very different set of circumstances, including foreign currency obligations that no longer exist.
Today, UK government debt is overwhelmingly denominated in sterling, and sterling is a currency that the UK government, working through the Bank of England and the banking system, can always create. The idea that the government might somehow run out of pounds is simply wrong.
I also explain how government spending actually works, why taxes do not fund spending in the way most people imagine, and why government borrowing serves a very different purpose from the one usually described in newspaper headlines. The conventional story about government finance is not just incomplete; in many respects it gets the sequence of events completely the wrong way round.
The video also explores the role of gilts, or government bonds, in the UK economy. Far from being a dangerous burden, as the Daily Telegraph claims, government debt provides the safe assets on which pension funds, insurance companies, banks and financial markets depend and on which they build their businesses. Without government debt, much of the financial system would struggle to function as it does today.
I also ask why these realities are so often ignored. Why are debt scares repeatedly promoted? Why are claims of national bankruptcy used to dominate political debate? And who benefits when people are persuaded that government cannot afford to support public services, invest in the economy, or help those most in need?
The truth is simple. The claim that a debt crisis is looming is not serious economic analysis. It is a scare story designed to create fear about government spending and to justify a particular political agenda.
If you are tired of hearing politicians, newspapers, and commentators compare the UK government to a household with a maxed-out credit card, this video explains why that analogy is wrong and why understanding government debt matters to everyone of us.

Why are banks abandoning us?

Banks are closing branches across the UK. Post offices are disappearing. HMRC no longer offers local tax offices. Local authorities increasingly expect everything to be done online. Face-to-face support is becoming increasingly hard to find.
We are facing the disappearance of functioning communities, the loss of public services, and the growing assumption that efficiency matters more than people.
In this video, I ask why so many institutions are retreating from local life. Why is it becoming so difficult to get help with banking, tax, benefits, council services, or basic advice? Why are people increasingly expected to navigate complicated systems alone? And why are decisions being made that leave many people feeling excluded from the services on which they depend?
The people who most need help are often those who are being hit hardest. Older people, those without easy internet access, people dealing with complex tax, benefit or banking issues, and many others are finding that the support they once relied upon has simply disappeared. What was once available on a local high street now often requires endless telephone calls, online forms, automated systems, and frustrating delays.
I argue that the people making these decisions rarely experience the consequences themselves. They can afford professional advice. They do not spend hours in telephone queues. They are not excluded by digital systems. As a result, they often underestimate the human cost of withdrawing services from local communities.
I also propose a practical alternative: Public Finance Hubs. These would bring together banking services, HMRC, DWP, local authorities and Citizens Advice under one roof, restoring face-to-face support to every town and community. They would provide help when people need it, where they need it, and in a way that respects dignity, privacy and accessibility. And banks should be required to pay for them as a condition of their licence to operate here in the UK.
The real question is simple. Should public services serve people, or should people be expected to serve institutions?
And if banks and public bodies benefit from public support, should they not also have a responsibility to remain present in the communities that make their existence possible?

Is talent going to waste?

Is Britain wasting its talent?
I think the answer is yes.
Every day, people with ability, creativity and ambition are prevented from becoming who they could be. Not because they lack talent, but because they lack opportunity.
For generations, poverty, discrimination and privilege have limited people’s chances in life. Many never receive the education they need. Many are forced into work that leaves no room for personal development. Many find their ambitions fading because society has decided that simply having a job is enough.
The result is a loss that we can never measure.
We cannot count the discoveries that were never made.
We cannot count the businesses that were never created.
We cannot count the works of art that were never produced.
And we cannot count the lives that might have been transformed if people had been given a fair chance.
This is not an argument for equality of outcome. People have different ambitions, talents and aspirations. The issue is whether everyone has the opportunity to realise their potential and become who they are capable of being.
Too often, the answer is no.
In this video, I explore how poverty, inequality, discrimination and privilege continue to waste human talent in Britain today, and why a politics of care would instead seek to nurture potential wherever it exists.
A society that wastes talent makes itself poorer.
The question is simple: how much talent are we wasting, and what could we achieve if everyone was given the chance to flourish?

Should we stop and stare?

We’re told to be busy.
We’re told to produce results, meet targets, hit deadlines and keep moving. We are taught that activity is a virtue and reflection is a waste of time.
I think that is one of the biggest mistakes modern society makes.
In this video, I use William Henry Davies’ famous poem Leisure to explore why creativity, imagination, innovation and good judgement all require something that our culture increasingly discourages: time to stop and think.
From schools and universities to workplaces, charities and politics, we have become obsessed with measurable activity. We reward action even when it is misguided. We celebrate busyness even when it produces poor outcomes.
But many of the best ideas in human history emerged because someone took time to stand back, reflect and ask questions.
Perhaps what Britain needs now is not more activity, but more thought.
Maybe we need to stop staring at our screens and start staring out of the window.