Funding the Future

Austerity is as close to political madness as any policy gets. What it guarantees is that things that could be done are not done, and that is bound to lead to political failure.

Rachel Reeves thinks the economy has to grow to make everyone better off. But is she right? And in a finite world is growth on the scale she wants even possible?

Rachel Reeves’ Spring Statement either doesn’t add up, or it reveals a deeply dangerous economic policy, and it may do both.

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. 

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?

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. 

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?

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?

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?