Starmer is not going. I believe him.

Burnham has no idea what to do, and wants 100 days to work it out. I believe him: he does not know what to do.

The Cabinet are showing no sign of moving. Convictions and decisions are beyond them.

The neoliberal circus is delighted with Burnham’s choice of advisors: nothing is going to change. He has made that clear.

Dithering indifference, incompetence and prevarication  is the order of the day.

True New Labour, then. Everyone, only worrying ability themselves and their CV, too worried to do anything.

Without exception they suffer internalised neoliberalism.  See yesterday's video.

Each of the political parties you have listed has a foe they oppose – the establishment, the foreigner, the hand-wringer

I am wondering if the politics of care has a foe or if it is a system without any. To support something, it is helpful to know what it is not. Or maybe this philosophy is just ‘for’ things

Posting in the spirit of exploration.

I thought that was a good question and had to give the response some thought, and so bought myself some time by saying I would post this response this morning

Having reflected, I do not think the politics of care needs a human enemy in the way many political movements do. There is a good reason for that. As I have often pointed out, much modern politics depends upon identifying a group to blame. The politics of care does, instead, begin from the assumption that most people are trying to make sense of the world as best they can.

That said, it will have opponents, the most important of which is neoliberal-inspired indifference to others.

More specifically, the politics of care inevitably opposes systems, structures and ideologies that deny our interdependence whilst pretending that human beings are isolated, self-sufficient individuals who owe little or nothing to each other. That means that the politics of care is opposed to:

• neglect,
• exclusion,
• exploitation,
• domination,
• and the idea that some people do not matter.

In economic terms, it challenges the belief that markets alone should determine value.

In political terms, it challenges the idea that power is an end in itself.

In social terms, it challenges the notion that success is solely an individual achievement.

But I would not want to turn any of those into a caricatured enemy. The purpose of the politics of care is not to defeat an opponent. It is to create the conditions in which people can flourish.

So if it has a foe, it is not a person, a class, or a nationality. It is, instead, the neoliberal mindset that says, “I am all that matters”, and the institutions built upon that belief. That is the opposite of care. That is the enemy of the politics of care, if there has to be one.

What is the role of the market in a politics of care?

One of the questions that my promotion of a politics of care gives rise to is what role might markets play in that form of political thinking?

The question matters because many people assume there are only two options. They think that either society is organised around markets, as neoliberals suggest, or markets are somehow abolished. I think both assumptions are wrong.

In my opinion, a politics of care would not be anti-market. Human beings are creative creatures. We make things, exchange things, invent things, and cooperate through countless voluntary arrangements, and markets can help facilitate those processes. They can provide a space in which creativity, initiative, experimentation, and innovation can occur.

The problem, though, is that markets have no purpose of their own. Markets are just mechanisms. They have no ethical compass. Left to themselves, they do not know whether they are promoting human flourishing or environmental collapse. They do not know whether they are supporting democracy or undermining it. They do not know whether they are building resilience or fragility.

A politics of care does, therefore, have to provide or identify the purpose that markets inherently lack. Markets can, for example, be useful discovery mechanisms. They can also help reveal preferences, coordinate activity, and encourage innovation. However, what they cannot do is tell us what is worth wanting, what should be protected, what obligations we owe each other, or what sort of future we should seek to create. Those are political and social questions that the politics of care embraces.

It does so by beginning with a vision of a good society and then asking how various economic institutions can help achieve it. In that context, markets must be judged according to whether they contribute to that goal. This means that markets are not merely constrained by care; they must be and are embedded within it.

Markets' purpose, in that case, is to help deliver the outcomes that a caring society seeks. Those outcomes include security, opportunity, creativity, participation, sustainability, belonging, minimum levels of well-being, and people's capacity to live meaningful lives.

This is also why a politics of care has no commitment to markets in the abstract. Where markets help create resilience, diversity, innovation, and the freedom to flourish, they may be valuable. Where they create dependence, insecurity, exclusion, monopoly power, ecological damage, financial instability, or political or social capture, they fail.

The key distinction from neoliberalism is therefore not that one likes markets and the other dislikes them. It is that neoliberalism starts with the market and assumes that social good will somehow emerge from it. A politics of care starts with a conception of human flourishing and asks what role markets might play in helping achieve it.

Markets are not, then, the foundation of society in a politics of care. They are just one institution amongst many within society, and their legitimacy arises from their contribution to the common good, and not from any intrinsic virtue arising from the exchanges they facilitate within themselves.

The contrast can be summarised quite simply in this table:

The differences in approach are profound.

Neoliberalism begins with the assumption that if markets are left alone, desirable social outcomes will follow.

A politics of care begins with the assumption that society has a responsibility to decide what outcomes it values and to then design institutions, including markets, to help achieve them.

Markets may have an important role within a politics of care, but they can never define its purpose. That task belongs to us.

I then added:

Do I need to add a great deal more?

It seems to me that giving in to Trump's demands on defence right now, and the demands of former Labour ministers who have bought into the demands of that military-industrial complex, would be utterly irresponsible and a massive strategic and political mistake.

For the sake of the record, this was the result there:

In Scotland, the SNP held the seat in Arbroath and Broughty Ferry:

They lost that in Aberdeen South, where Stephen Flynn had been the SNP MP:

The first factor that is most obvious in both these other results is the collapse in the Labour vote. The Burnham effect only goes so far, and certainly does not reach Scotland.

The second is the oil effect in Scotland. The Toris will not forget this. Wanting to burn the planet plays well for them.

And then there was a swathe of council by-election results. I cannot show them all, but this was indicative of a trend:

In Essex, the swing back to the Tories from Reform was very marked, having seen how useless Reform had been in office.

The single transferable party is not dead yet.

Reform had a bad night, though. And for other parties, except Plaid Cymru, who hung on to a string of seats under immense Reform pressure, there was little to celebrate. And Labout needs to take note: Burnham is the exception, not the rule.

Debate Ammunition

The MMT Source Book

Funding the Future | June 2026

Today’s topic

Why you need the MMT Source Book.

The video that this Debate Ammunition supports is available here.

The MMT Source Book is available here.

The Core Argument

Richard Murphy has produced a free, fully searchable MMT Source Book of more than 400 pages, covering around 100 sections, all on Modern Monetary Theory.

The significance of this is that the public is consistently misled about how government money actually works. The book exists precisely because the conventional story, that tax and borrowing fund government spending, is false, and because almost nobody, including most politicians and journalists, understands the alternative.

Anyone who wants to argue about government spending, tax, debt, or interest rates needs to know what is in this book, because it answers the objections before they are even raised.

The Argument Structure

Step 1 — There is a free, searchable answer to almost every question on government money: The MMT Source Book brings together around a decade of Richard Murphy's writing on Modern Monetary Theory into a single PDF of more than 400 pages, organised into around 100 sections with a working interactive index and live links. It is free to download, with no obligation to donate.

Step 2 — It exists because the conventional story about government finance is false: We are told that tax funds the government, that borrowing funds the government, that government must be smaller, and that higher interest rates stop inflation. MMT challenges every one of these claims, and the Source Book sets out, in detail, why they are wrong.

Step 3 — It explains how government spending and taxation actually work: The book explains that the government creates money when it spends, authorised by Parliament and carried out by the Bank of England under powers that have existed since 1866, and that tax then removes money from circulation to control inflation rather than to fund spending. Tax also redistributes income and wealth, tackles market failure, and can be used to encourage beneficial activity.

Step 4 — It answers the standard objections directly: The Source Book deals head on with the questions usually thrown at MMT: what if financial markets object, what if the foreign exchange market reacts badly, what if investors lose confidence. It shows these fears rest on a false understanding of the economy, and that growth has never put off an investor.

Their Argument → Your Rebuttal

The One-Liner

“There is now a free, fully searchable, 400 page guide that explains exactly why tax does not fund government spending and why almost everything you have been told about the public finances is wrong; if you are going to argue about this, read it first.”

Further Reading

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.

This is the audio version:

The Debate Ammunition for this video is available here.

This is the transcript:

We recently promoted my book on fifty economic thinkers here, and 2000 of you downloaded it as a result. And thank you very much for doing so, and if you made a donation, for doing that as well. But that made me realise something.

We have completely forgotten to promote another recent book of mine here, so it's time to put that right. I think you also need my MMT Source Book. In fact, you might need my modern monetary theory, or MMT, sourcebook even more than you need my book on fifty economic thinkers, so I want to talk about it.

The MMT Source Book only came out a few weeks ago, maybe a couple of months, and it's available, as is the book on economic thinkers, as a free download from my blog. We'll put a link in down below. We'll put a community post up as well. And although I talk about modern monetary theory quite a lot here, we've hardly mentioned this book at all, and that seems rather odd now, so it's time to make amends.

This book is something that I put together based upon my writing about modern monetary theory over the last 10 years or so, and that exists because, as a matter of fact, much of my economic thinking, which underpins this channel, is influenced by MMT. Regular viewers will already know that.

And they will also know that I do not agree with everything that MMT advocates. Nor do I agree with every modern monetary theory policy prescription. I try to keep an open mind on economics, but I think the core principles of MMT are right.

MMT says the government creates money when it spends. Taxes then remove that money from circulation within the economy to control inflation. Governments do not need to borrow to spend, and government bonds are better understood as banking or deposit arrangements. The conventional story on all of these things is wrong as a result. And at the same time, MMT also adds that interest rates should be kept as low as possible. Governments can spend while resources are unused, and inflation will not result. And so labour and productive capacity are what matter most when it comes to economic management, and real resources are the constraint we need to look at, and inflation is a warning sign that we're overusing the resources of the world, which then means the government should stop and reassess what it's doing.

All of this creates a framework for economic management that I think matters. It's a different type of economics, one in which the government need not live in fear of the City. And public policy gains much greater freedom. And the focus shifts to what can be achieved rather than what we cannot do for fear of upsetting financiers. And that changes almost everything.

And tax is one of those things that behaves very differently in an MMT world. It is no longer just about funding spending because it isn't about funding spending. That's not its purpose in MMT. Tax exists to take money out of circulation and to control inflation. And at the same time, it can do some other essential jobs.

It can redistribute income and wealth.

It can tackle market failure on things like alcohol, tobacco, carbon, and so on, those things that cause us harm.

At the same time, it can be used to stimulate beneficial economic activity by delivering tax subsidies, and those are a benefit.

And as a consequence, it can change behaviour in desirable ways whilst at the same time discouraging harmful activity; gambling, for example.

And all of that is the case because tax does not fund spending, but becomes an instrument for social as well as economic policy instead.

This is important, and most people have never heard this story. It's not what we are taught as children. It's not what the media tells us. It's not what politicians usually say, and familiar narratives say the exact opposite, and those narratives are deeply entrenched.

We are told that tax funds the government, we're told that borrowing funds the government, and all of that is, and let's use some technical language here, a load of old hogwash. Those are not true.

The fact is that we are told, because of those narratives, that government spending must be cut. And we are told that government must be smaller, and we're told that higher interest rates stop inflation, and they never have. And we're told that there is never enough money, and we must therefore ration ourselves. We are told that markets must be obeyed. And MMT challenges every one of those claims and shows why they are either wrong or can be in most situations.

However, these are the narratives that are known by journalists. They always repeat these stories, and we see that in almost every political interview. They define what is considered sensible, and they determine which questions are asked. And one question that appears time after time is "How are you going to pay for it?" And the fact is, almost no politician answers that question honestly or correctly.

They should say, "We'll pay for this item," whatever it might be, "by getting Parliament to approve the spending on it." Doing that authorises the government to create the money required. And that is possible because the government owns the Bank of England, and the law that passes the budget to allow this expenditure to take place, in turn, authorises the Bank of England to make the payment for it. We don't have to go and borrow from anybody. We don't have to tax first to be able to do this. We are allowed to spend under powers that have existed since 1866. But almost nobody says that because almost nobody knows that, and that's why we're in a mess, because people do not understand how government funding works.

My MMT Source Book explores all of those issues. That's what it's about. It provides a broad overview of MMT in around 100 sections over more than 400 pages, despite which it's entirely free.

It starts with the basics, and it contains detailed technical analysis as well. It explains government financial flows, and it explains how money moves through our economy.

It covers far more than I can here, and that's why I think you need it.

It also addresses many common objections to MMT, such as what if financial markets object? Or what if the foreign exchange market reacts adversely? And what if investors lose confidence? What would happen then? Those questions are answered directly and straightforwardly because they're all based upon a false understanding of how the economy works, and none of them talk about a crisis that will ever happen. MMT will stimulate our economy, and no investor has ever been put off by growth.

So, this book is designed to be used. It might include 400 pages, but the important point is it's highly searchable. It has an interactive index, and the links within the book should all be live. It's a PDF that you can download, and therefore you can stray far from the source material and go into the background elsewhere on my blog and in other areas as well. Finding material should be straightforward; that was my aim.

And the whole book is free of charge, so you can give it a go without any form of risk. You'll be asked if you want to consider making a donation; if you want to, we'd be delighted, but it's entirely optional. You can skip that stage, and you can have this book for free.

Take what you need from it. Whether you want to start with the basics or aren't frightened of complexity, there's going to be a lot to read. Go get it and enjoy it. Please give it a go. MMT is really important. Your world will be different when you understand what it says, and that matters because we need a new economy, an economy of hope based upon a politics of care, and MMT is the underpinning of all of that.

That's what I think. What do you think? There's a poll down below. Let us have your opinions. Please like this video if you do, and if you'd like to buy us a coffee instead of making a donation for the book, well that would be great as well.

Poll

Andy Burnham won resoundingly, increasing Labour’s share of the vote in the Makerfield constituency by winning 55% of the vote, leaving Reform trailing in second place with 35%, far below expectations.

Restore did get more than 6% of the vote.

In combination, the far right got 42% of the vote, Labour 55%, and the other major political parties under 4% between them.

Nothing in this result changes the analysis that I provided yesterday. The Burnham effect increased the Labour vote by 31%, and reduced that of Reform by 16%. People flocked to beat fascists. It was an exceptional factor. People in Manchester voted in the hope that Manchester would get a Prime Minister. That situation will not recur.

And so, what now?

Burnham says Labour must change, but has chosen a group of economic advisers who are neoliberal to their core, including a former director of the Office for Budget Responsibility, Andy Haldane, formerly from the Bank of England, and Lord Jim O’Neill, once of Goldman Sachs. In summary, nothing will change with people like that on his advisory team.

Let’s not pretend otherwise. Burnham is going to play to the markets, not to the people, continuing with Labour Party policy that long ago forgot what the party’s roots were and whom it is meant to serve. Ignore the rhetoric of the victory speech. Look at the man’s intentions based upon the people he’s already chosen to advise him.

No one can doubt now that Burnham will be Prime Minister. Starmer has to decide today, or at the very least over the weekend, whether to allow an orderly progression or instead create a messy situation which cannot help Labour. But whichever happens, nothing changes the fact that if Burnham chooses to be neoliberal to his core, he has no answers relevant to the people of Makerfield or the UK as a whole. In that case, come 2029, Labour will face just as many difficulties and the same potential annihilation as it does now under Starmer.

In summary: everything changed, and nothing changed. The single transferable party is still in charge.

The risk is something that I have faced for a long time. I was a co-creator of the Tax Justice Network. I created its most successful idea in the form of country-by-country reporting. I represented it in negotiations at the OECD and many other fora. As a result, I helped deliver massive tax reform a decade ago that fundamentally changed the operations of many tax havens and multinational corporations. I was, however, always aware that my deeply technical and analytical approach to tax justice, which was always pragmatic in the sense of being based upon analysis of the realistic prospects of effecting change, never won the hearts and minds of all in that movement.

Why? That was because there were many in the tax justice movement, then and now, who were more dedicated to their own gesture politics than to tax justice. They believed identity signalling and political positioning are much more important than achieving real-world outcomes. I was not willing to bend to that way of working, which now dominates the tax justice movement, even though the takeover of that movement by those with these priorities has resulted in the deliberate destruction of much of its effectiveness.

For example, the desire of idealists who had never worked in tax to deliver solutions for global tax justice through the United Nations, which has no capacity to make such changes, rather than through the OECD, which they see as the rich countries’ club and, therefore, an unacceptable ally, has led to a global fight over process on tax justice, and a loss of any momentum towards change.

John Christensen and I, on the other hand, worked with, or through, the OECD and delivered far more change than we could ever have reasonably expected as a result. The change in focus has led to the current collapse in the tax justice movement's effectiveness and to its failure to make any real progress for maybe a decade, with that failure remaining highly likely as no mechanism for delivering success exists. The focus on process rather than outcomes is failing.

That has consequences. The current Piketty and Zucman plan is one of those: they can put forward a patently unworkable plan, knowing it will never happen or be tested in reality. Abstract academic thinking can replace real demands for reform when you don't expect to change anything, as this movement no longer does, given that it has destroyed the opportunity for that change by creating conflict between the UN and OECD, with neither being capable of delivering progress as a result.

The same is true in the UK domestic environment. The call for a wealth tax is a deliberate sideshow. It is probably politically undeliverable by anyone right now, whereas the proposals I made in the Taxing Wealth Report can be put in place without difficulty, with much greater revenue potential as well.

Wealth taxes have emotional appeal within gesture policies, but pragmatic reform of existing taxes is likely to be much more effective. It is, then, an unfortunate fact that, for much of the tax justice movement, playing to emotion would appear to be much more important than actually delivering real-world change for the benefit of people at large.

Pointing this out has had a high price for John Christensen and me. Neither of us is now welcome in tax justice circles, and so on much of the left anymore. We are outsiders, rockers of the boat, non-conformists, heretics, or just bloody awkward. We are even thought to be just nasty for pointing out that there are better ways to do things, even if they are not quite as pure as many on the left would demand. Because we placed our focus on realistic ways to transform the well-being of people around the world by changing tax systems for their benefit, we have both been ostracised by much of the tax justice movement.

Trust me, it would be much easier to play along with these changes in the tax justice movement than to criticise them. It would also be much easier to go along with the calls for a wealth tax rather than say there are better options available. If I were looking for a quiet life, that is exactly what I would do.

I do, however, remain completely committed to tax justice, and I am not, and never will be, a gesture politician. My aim is to effect change. One of the ways in which I wish to do so is by using the real expertise I have in tax and tax system design in ways that can tackle the problems that we face, including around wealth. If, when doing so, I have to be candid about proposals that will distract from the achievement of real progress, which is what I am doing by criticising proposals for undeliverable wealth taxes, then so be it. I have no intention of changing my opinions to secure popularity.

It was only through the dogged determination of John and me that the tax justice movement was sustained for long enough to create the gains we secured. I am not now changing tack to win the support of that movement as it now is when doing so would, I think, be at a cost to the people of the world who need real tax reforms, and not gesture politics. And it is for the reason of that same dog determination that I will now criticise proposals that I think unhelpful, and not apologise for doing so.

So, I repeat, I knew the risks. The comments on my video suggest it has not been very popular and that the sentiment is that I should work within the tax justice tent rather than criticise it as it is now, but that is something I could not do with a clear conscience. That is because, in my opinion, the tax justice movement, as it is now, has become incredibly successful at just one thing, which is sustaining the current economic status quo. It does so by distracting attention from reforms that are possible and instead diverting focus into campaigns that can never, and I do mean never, deliver any real-world benefit.

I am amongst the very few people in the world who have the experience to make that claim. I delivered real changes at a world level intended to create tax justice. I know how to do that. A world wealth tax cannot deliver it. Nor is a focus on one in the UK very useful when many better options are available. In that case, do not expect me to change my mind on wealth taxes any time soon. That is not in my plan.

None of these ideas comes together overnight, nor do they appear without the need for subsequent revision.

However, the following piece builds directly on those that I have already published, as it relates directly to the issue of identifying narratives that lead to a politics of care.

Comments would be welcome.

For much of the twentieth century, two great political stories competed with each other.

Labour

Labour, as its best, argued:

• We achieve more together.
• Everyone deserves dignity and security.
• Wealth should serve society.
• Public services express solidarity.
• Progress comes through collective action.

Conservatives

The Conservatives argued for much of their history that:

• Society is fragile.
• Institutions matter.
• Change should be cautious.
• We inherit responsibilities.
• We should conserve what works.

Points of agreement

Notice that these stories disagreed, but that they shared some things that were important. Both assumed:

• Society matters.
• Institutions matter.
• We owe obligations to others.

This commonality laid the foundation for what this blog has called 'the single transferable party' that these traditions gave rise to this century.

Then came neoliberalism.

Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism argues that:

• People compete.
• Markets know best.
• Success is individual.
• Growth solves problems.
• Government should get out of the way.

This story did not merely challenge Labour. It challenged Conservatism as well.

It hollowed out Labour’s traditional belief in solidarity.

It hollowed out Conservatism’s traditional belief in stewardship.

And that is where much of today’s confusion begins.

Labour increasingly accepted the market story. It stopped talking about solidarity and started talking about competence. The result was New Labour.

New Labour

Tony Blair's Labour Party, which we still very largely have, argued that:

• Markets create wealth.
• Government should manage the consequences.
• Growth comes first since it creates value.
• Public services depend on growth as a result.
• Labour should be trusted to run things competently.

The problem is obvious. This is not really a story. Nor is it a set of beliefs. It is, at best, a management strategy.

When Labour once told people what society was for, but when it had morphed into New Labour, it mostly told people that it could administer society more effectively than its opponents.

The Conservatives faced a different problem.

The Conservatives now

After Thatcher and the rise of neoliberalism, the Tories also morphed. They now say:

• We value tradition.
• We support markets.
• We want lower taxes.
• We want stronger communities.
• We want less government.

The difficulty is that these ideas often pull in opposite directions:

• Markets frequently undermine traditions.
• Deregulation often weakens institutions.
• Individualism can erode communities.

The party does, as a result, oscillate between two impulses:

• We must conserve what matters.

and

• We must free the market.

Until Johnson expelled many MPs, it was very rarely clear which story came first. No wonder the party tore itself apart.

And then, into the vacuum these two parties created by their inability to reconcile what their members thought they were with what their leadership demanded they be, stepped the challengers.

Reform

The Reform narrative is simple, which is why it is effective:

• The country no longer works for ordinary people.
• The people in charge do not listen.
• Britain has lost its way.
• Common sense should be restored.
• The people should take back control.

This is a story of loss and restoration. Its power comes from recognising that many people feel ignored. Its weakness is that it says relatively little about the future beyond restoring an imagined past.

The Greens

In essence, the Greens have traditionally argued that:

• We depend upon nature.
• Endless growth is impossible.
• Well-being matters more than consumption.
• Future generations matter.
• We must live within ecological limits.

This is a story of ecological responsibility. Its strength is its coherence. That the message is less obvious now is both a potential strength and a weakness of its current position.

Its challenge is persuading people that limits can be a source of hope rather than fear.

Another story

Running alongside these recognised political stories, though, is something else.  I think another story is now emerging.

It is not really Labour’s story.

It is not really Green politics.

It is not traditional Conservatism.

It is certainly not neoliberalism.

Nor is it from the far-right,

It begins somewhere else, and is the politics of care

The politics of care

The politics of care suggests:

• We are social, caring, creative and interdependent creatures.
• We flourish through relationships of care.
• The purpose of society is to help everyone realise their potential.
• The purpose of the economy is to support that task.
• The purpose of the state is to help society achieve it.

This story starts in a different place from all the others.

• Neoliberalism starts with the individual.
• Conservatives start with institutions of power.
• Reform starts with belonging.
• The Greens start with nature.
• Labour started (when they had ideas) with the solidarity of working people.

The politics of care starts with a suggestion about what human beings are, and if that claim is true, then everything else follows:

• The economy exists because people need to flourish.
• The state exists because people cannot meet all their needs alone.
• Markets are tools to assist flourishing, but not objectives.
• Growth may be a means, but not an end.
• The environment matters because human flourishing depends upon it.

The politics of care, then, suggests that politics may no longer be about a supposed split between the left, right, and far-right over how best to facilitate market outcomes. It may instead be about a split between those who believe society exists to facilitate competition, as all neoliberal-inspired parties do, and those who believe society exists to facilitate care.

That feels to me like the argument that is now waiting to be made.

We knew that this would be a contest between Andy Burnham, rather than Labour, and Reform. Perhaps the only surprise has been that the Restore candidate is supposedly winning around 8% of the vote, which is more than the margin between Labour and Reform in the latest opinion polls.

Lessons from the by-election

From the by-election itself, whatever the result, three stories emerge.

The first is that Andy Burnham has a brand in Manchester which everyone else in Labour must stand in awe of. But, the point has to be emphasised, it is personal and almost certainly non-transferable. In other words, significant as it is at this moment, it will not work for Burnham again. If he wins here, he is thereafter a national politician. And if he loses here, his brand is broken in Manchester. This is, therefore, a one-off event. It will not be repeated. It is not available to anyone else. There is no national lesson for Labour to learn as a consequence, therefore.

Second, Reform is a force in British politics, yet it is apparent that they have not run a good campaign and did not select a good candidate. Their weaknesses are as apparent as any strength they have as a result of the alienation of people from Westminster government, whether run by the Tories or Labour.

Thirdly,, there is an openly racist and deeply neo-fascist factor in this election. We cannot pretend otherwise. It might just let Burnham win by splitting the far-right vote, but the reality is that it exists, and we cannot pretend otherwise. On this occasion, the existing political parties do not know how to deal with it. Its rise does signal the need for what I call a politics of care. There is no sign at all that those existing political parties understand that.

The after effects - proporrtional representation 

That, then, is the scene in Makerfield. What will the scene be tomorrow morning? There are, in many people’s eyes, only two scenarios to consider, but I think that is wrong. I think that there are at least four.

The first thing to note, the reality of which will become clear in the morning, is that the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Greens have hardly featured in this election, whether by choice or not, although they are very clearly capable of winning seats elsewhere. The message is obvious, and is that people are not voting for candidates they want, but are instead voting against candidates they dislike.This is not a secure foundation for democracy in the UK. Democracy is about representation, and when people are forced to vote against candidates by voting for those whom they can tolerate but would not otherwise choose, democracy in the UK is in a very poor place. We need proportional representation, and we need it now.

The after effects - political funding

Secondly, whatever happens, Restore has proved that it can have a national presence in this by-election and, given the enormous amount of funding that Rupert Lowe’s party appears able to depend upon, much of it seemingly emanating from Elon Musk, the extreme toxicity of this party might be a factor in elections to come.

However, the fact that Restore is being funded by far-right individuals from outside the UK again indicates that our democracy is in a deeply dangerous place. The same is also true of Reform. They, too, rely exceptionally heavily on foreign-based billionaires with toxic products to sell.

The message from this election, then, is that donations from people outside the UK must be banned within UK politics. In addition, donations from all companies and from individuals above an agreed low limit must also be banned, whilst it should become a criminal offence to take part in an arrangement that disguises such flows of funds. If our democracy is to be representative, which is essential, the distortions within it that these donations create must end, for good.

The after effects - Reform

The third scenario to consider is what happens if Reform wins, and it might.

Ignore, for a moment, that a deeply unsavoury person, with attitudes that will be considered offensive by many people across the UK, will have been elected to Parliament. He will not have been the first, or the last, of his type. After all, Lee Anderson is already in Parliament, representing Reform.

Ignore, too, the issue around money just mentioned.

And ignore as well the fact that Nigel Farage has been so reluctant to appear during this campaign because of his lack of willingness to address questions around his own personal donation of £5 million prior to his return to politics in 2024, meaning that he did not participate in this campaign to the full, and that it was lacklustre as a result.

Ignore, as a consequence, as well the fact that the limitations of Reform as an electoral machine without Farage are exposed as a consequence.

Consider instead that, despite all these noted facts, Reform will have secured the support of a very large number of people in Makerfield. This will be despite the fact that it has revealed its own incompetence. This will also have happened despite the fact that the policies that it is promoting are highly likely to be detrimental to the best interests of most of those people who will have voted for the party.

Three questions arise, then, whether or not Reform wins.

The first requires that serious consideration be given as to why this alienation exists, with an associated demand that the causes be addressed.

The second is why racism is now such a powerful rallying call inside UK politics, and to ask what can be done about it.

The third is to consider why people, and most especially men, are so willing to vote against their own best interests at this moment, knowing that they, or people they know, might suffer as a consequence.

Unless these lessons are learned and acted upon, the far right will remain a force in British politics, and a Reform victory in this situation will only confirm that and increase the possibility of a far-right government in this country in due course.

I stress that I am not saying that a Reform victory here guarantees Reform’s continued progress. We know that opposition party by-election victories do not indicate this in the UK political environment. But support on the scale now being indicated for Reform does demand that the issues I note be addressed.

The after effects - Labour

And then there is Labour. This is the fourth situation to be considered.

Let me deal with the easy option first. If Labour lose, the party is over. With the best available candidate, extraordinary resources being thrown at the campaign, and no hiccups of note during the course of it, if Labour cannot win this seat now, it does not matter who its leader is, everyone in the party will know that its time is up, and that it will be time-serving until it faces an election in 2029 at the latest, when almost all of its MPs will be rejected. A loss in this election would signal the end of a century of Labour in government. I find it incredibly hard to interpret such a possibility in any other way.

In that case, let me turn to the more complex possibility, which is that Burnham wins despite, and not because of, Labour. What then?

This is where the situation gets very confusing, so let me stand back and try to cut through the noise.

The signal would be very clear. Burnham stood in this election to challenge Keir Starmer as leader of the Labour Party. We know that challenge will come. The only question is how that process will be managed.

Will Starmer quit? His inclination will be to stay. He has always been politically tone-deaf, but even so, McSweeney, and maybe others, might persuade him to go despite that fact.

Will his hand be forced by ministerial resignations? Burnham is apparently asking those inclined to create such a situation to hold their fire for the time being to give Starmer the room to resign. My suspicion, however, is that the signals of resignations to come will be sent, and not very quietly.

Will the likes of Wes Streeting give up their own leadership aspirations? I suspect so. His performance since his resignation has been weak, at best, and incoherent in general. If he is lucky, he, like Angela Rayner, will return as a minister under Burnham. He would love a high office of state, although Burnham would be unwise to give it to him.

I expect, then, that Burnham will face a coronation, and not an election, and become Labour leader sooner than most people expect. In that case, the question to ask is: so what? What is it that Burnham might offer that Starmer has not, excepting just a little more personality and a hint that he might support proportional representation? The answer, so far, is very clearly nothing at all.

He is neoliberal.

He does not understand economics.

He has no clear left-of-centre instincts.

He says he is aware of the need for fiscal rules and embraces a commitment to them, meaning we can expect no major change in domestic policy.

He is, like Starmer, a long-term supporter of Zionism and, therefore, unlikely to change any foreign policy stance.

Is there, given all this, any chance that the necessary lessons that I have suggested this by-election requires to be learned by Labour and others will happen in a Labour Party under Burnham’s guidance? My answer is that I cannot see that happening. In that case, Burnham is as likely, in the event of his winning, to be the last Labour Prime Minister as Keir Starmer is today.

The end - and what happens next

This is a seismic by-election. However, the reality is that the fact that it might deliver a new Prime Minister is not the reason why that is the case. It is seismic for indicating the potential end of Labour, and for raising questions with regard to our democracy which neither Keir Starmer nor Andy Burnham is likely to answer. That is why this election matters.

In itself, it will not provide answers. What it does do is indicate a democracy in a state of flux and raise questions about what happens next.

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 is the audio version:

The Debate Ammunition for this video is available here.

This is the transcript:

Are you living your own life, or has neoliberalism stolen it?

Do you think that you only matter if you have enough money, sufficient status, and can demonstrate your well-being through conspicuous consumption, your latest iPhone, your fashionable clothes, or whatever else it might be?

If that is what you think about yourself, I'm going to suggest to you that you have internalised neoliberalism, and that is the dogma that's probably grinding you down.

This is a terrible situation. It afflicts large numbers of young people, in particular, because they have never known another political system, bar neoliberalism. And the consequence of a life lived in a neoliberal way is real loneliness.

Loneliness is the consequence of neoliberalism. Wealth is not; loneliness is. And loneliness is now a social crisis, and it's getting worse. And this video is about how we got to this point and how we get out of it.

Internalised neoliberalism means the ideology is inside you, owned by you and driving you. It's not just around you. It's possessed you. You judge yourself by your income, your job title, and what you own. Your opinions come from the mainstream media and not from your own thinking. Simple pleasures have been stripped away and taken out of your life. If you don't pay for it, you don't think it counts. That's really worrying. And relationships become much harder in this situation because everything you have and do is measured by your self-interest. The end point of all of this is people living alone inside a silo, in relationship with AI and no one else.

And look at this chart. It shows you how this problem is growing. Right at the bottom, those who are really lonely, the figures are rising. And this data is only plotted between 2016 and 2025.

And right at the top, the number of people who are actually genuinely happy with their state of play and are never lonely, is declining.

Right across the age scale, we're seeing the problem too. In 2016-2017, nearly half of all adults were already reporting some degree of loneliness in this data produced by the Office for National Statistics.

Since then, the proportion feeling lonely often, or always, has risen from 5% to 7%. Those saying they never feel lonely has fallen from 24% to 19%. Loneliness is not just rising at the extremes, then; it is spreading across the whole population. And young adults are most affected, but I stress that no age group is immune.

Even the 70-pluses are impacted by this, and you would expect them to be because many of them have lost their partner, for example. But as you will note, the biggest problem is amongst those aged 16 to 29. These are the children of Thatcher's children, and they are lonely because they are truly neoliberal.

Loneliness is then the signature crisis of our time, and it does have real consequences; that's what I want to make clear. Unhappy people don't work.

We are seeing that amongst the so-called 'NEETS', those who are not in employment, education, or training.

We're seeing it amongst young people who can't get relationships.

We're seeing it in political alienation, which is giving rise to the rise of reform.

We're seeing it in the fact that young people are reported to be having less sex. We are seeing it in the falling birth rate.

There are real social problems arising from loneliness, which I think is the consequence of internalised neoliberalism; the creation of false goals for living.

But is there anything we can do about this?

The first step is to simply accept that this problem exists. We have to name internalised neoliberalism for what it is. That means questioning the values we have been told to take for granted. We need to open our minds to the possibility of living differently. We can't solve the problems we've got by using neoliberalism because it is neoliberalism that is causing the problems. It is telling us to become lonely and isolated, to pursue our personal goals, and that is the cause of our unhappiness.

We do therefore have to find other ways of measuring a good life, otherwise we can't move forward. That is why recognising the problem is necessary. Awareness is not the solution to this problem, but it is certainly the precondition for getting to that point.

Then we have to call out what is happening. Advertisers, for example, sell us expensive experiences and say they are "making memories". I always yell at the television when I hear that phrase. It annoys me intensely because they are right that memories matter, but they're wrong about how they are made.

Memories are not made by spending money. Memories are made by people. You do not need to go far away or spend a great deal to create a good memory. A conversation, a shared look, a walk, these are the raw materials for making memories. And these things cost almost nothing and last forever.

A meaningful life does not require a faraway destination. It requires a conversation, an exchange and presence with other people. A quiet smile, a held hand, a shared sense of awe at the world. These are enough to build memories. These things can happen on a walk outside your front door. Whether that door happens to open onto a city street or a country field, it makes no difference. The capacity for a rich life is already available to all of us. We do not need what neoliberalism says or what it has to offer, however much it seeks to indoctrinate us.

And the Beatles were right about this 60 years ago, when I was very young. They sang, "Money Can't Buy You Love", and they were right, but it's not only love that money can't buy. Money can't buy you health, although I admit it can help on occasions, and it most certainly can't buy you well-being, because in fact, the obsession about money can destroy well-being. There is no amount of money that can guarantee to buy you happiness, and that is a real-world fact.

But saying that, I recognise that sufficient material well-being and sufficient status, and therefore, sufficient money to guarantee those things, do have some importance in life; I'm not pretending otherwise. We have a hierarchy of needs; Maslow talked about this, and sufficient money, material comfort, and respect all matter.

But neoliberalism ignores that word 'sufficient'. It says we can never have enough, and that is where neoliberalism goes wrong. The antidote to neoliberalism is to be found in that single word 'enough'.

Years ago, I registered a website called enoughness.com. I still own it, in fact. And I believed in this concept then, and I still do now. Recognising that you have enough is the beginning of freedom. It doesn't solve poverty; I recognise we have to do that. But once we're out of poverty, this concept of enough is when you can start to live. Once you recognise you have enough, you are free to stop accumulating.

You can step back from the endless quest for another promotion, more money and more stuff.

You can build relationships instead.

You will have time to stop and look at the world around you or just look out of the window, and sometimes that's really important. That's when you reach your understanding about what things are and how things work. That is what makes things possible. 'Enough' that you do that.

But the neoliberal machine works hard to stop you from seeing this. Every political message, every media narrative, every form of advertising says that what you have is not enough, and that is deliberate. It is how neoliberalism sustains itself.

But those in genuine poverty do not have enough, and that is a serious concern. But they are not the concern of the neoliberal. They say that's their own fault. My comment is, we need to protect those who don't genuinely have enough and then we need to say sufficient is good enough.

That is the point; neoliberalism is telling us a lie. And recognising what it says is a lie is in fact an act of resistance in itself, and it is the precondition for living differently. Those who know they have enough can reject neoliberalism. They can live better, and at the same time, they can make a difference to others. They can freely support redistribution, whether by tax, or directly, because they know they have more than is needed. That generosity is what moves us beyond the neoliberal framework.

That's where we need to go. Neoliberalism is not just economically destructive; it is literally soul-destroying. I think it corrodes everything that it touches. Knowing you have enough is how we begin to build something better. It's how we get beyond neoliberalism and into a world that cares.

That's what I think. What do you think? This is a difficult subject. Let us know your opinion in the poll below. Let us have your comments. Please do share this video if you like it. And please, if you're willing to buy us a coffee, because that's all we'd like, then please do buy us one. There's a link down below.

Poll

But, and I have made this point very many times before, one-month inflation data is always a little unreliable. In fact, just about everything from the Office for National Statistics now is a little unreliable, as they themselves would admit. Nonetheless, this is also a little surprising.

Fuel prices have increased dramatically in the last month, and they are a component of inflation, so an increase might have been expected. They did not, though. The message from this would appear to be clear, because it is impossible that those increases will not work through into inflation indices.  The result is that the impact of the war in the Gulf, temporary ceasefire or not, is most definitely ongoing, and we have not, as yet, seen anything approximating the last of it.

Traders might be reducing spot prices for oil right now, but we know from experience that there is a significant lag between spot prices falling and retail prices following suit, and meanwhile, the impact of higher prices, and continuing global uncertainty, is going to continue to work through the economy for some considerable time to come, even if this peace holds good, and my doubts on that remain.

DEBATE AMMUNITION

THIS WEALTH TAX WILL NOT WORK

Funding the Future | June 2026

TODAY’S TOPIC

This wealth tax will not work.

A critique of the Global Justice Report from the World Inequality Database, written by Thomas Piketty, Gabriel Zucman and colleagues, which proposes a global wealth tax and global income tax to fund a worldwide income guarantee and limit global warming to 1.8 degrees by 2100.

The video that this Debate Ammunition supports is available here.

THE CORE ARGUMENT

The Global Justice Report's plan for a global wealth tax is fantasy, not policy: it assumes away tax havens, tax competition, the impossibility of valuing and locating wealth, and the fact that owning wealth does not give you the cash to pay a tax bill on it. Real tax justice comes from reforming existing income, gains and corporate taxes, which can raise more money, more fairly, and can actually be collected.

KEY STATISTICS

THE ARGUMENT STRUCTURE

Step 1: A fantasy built on global cooperation: The report assumes every country in the world will agree to impose a global wealth tax and a global income tax on top of existing local taxes, with no country opting out. With around 70 tax havens already in existence, and states routinely captured by wealthy interests, that level of cooperation is simply never going to happen.

Step 2: Wealth cannot be reliably found, owned or valued: The plan assumes that ownership, location and valuation of wealth are all straightforward, when in reality wealth sits behind layers of trusts and companies spread across jurisdictions, and the value of assets such as art, antiques or even a London home shifts the moment a tax liability is attached to it.

Step 3: Owning wealth is not the same as having cash to pay tax: Most wealth, from family homes to early-stage shareholdings, generates little or no income. A homeowner with a £1.5 million London property would face an annual tax bill with no income stream to pay it from, and a billionaire whose wealth is based on a company's future earnings, illustrated by Elon Musk and SpaceX, cannot sell or borrow against shares without collapsing the very valuation the tax depends on.

Step 4: This is wealth confiscation dressed up as tax: Because the tax cannot realistically be paid in cash, the only honest description of what is being proposed is the transfer of ownership of assets into a global fund: in other words, nationalisation. The report should say so plainly instead of pretending this is a tax. A fairer and far more deliverable route is reform of existing UK income tax, capital gains tax, inheritance tax, National Insurance and corporation tax, which the Taxing Wealth Report shows could raise far more revenue using information the tax authorities already hold.

THEIR ARGUMENT → YOUR REBUTTAL

THE ONE-LINER

“You cannot tax wealth you cannot find, value or turn into cash, and pretending otherwise is not tax justice, it is wishful thinking dressed up as economics.”

FURTHER READING

By doing so, they are saying that I am wrong.

They are saying that the war in the Gulf is over.

They are saying that oil supplies are going to return to normal.

They are saying that there will be no oil crisis.

They are saying that the disruptions to trade, food supplies, commodity supplies, and the threat to business and economic stability will pass.

As a result, they should also expect that the threat of rising interest rates will pass as well.

And they are saying that because they believe Donald Trump, and even more, they trust Benjamin Netanyahu.

They think Trump will keep his word.

They think he can control Netanyahu.

They think neither of them will provoke Iran again.

But they have believed that before, and they were wrong.

I did not believe them when they thought that before now, and I was right.

I wish I could share their optimism now, but I don’t.

As Trump has done before, he has engineered some stability for the moment, for the sake of his birthday celebration, for the sake of the G7 Summit, and for the sake of appearing to be a man in charge of his destiny. But appearing to be in charge of his destiny, and actually being so, are very different things.

I may be wrong. The world’s markets may be right. But really? Are they that naïve? I think they might be, but for once I would like to be persuaded otherwise, more in hope than expectation.