If Andy Burnham is serious about becoming prime minister, then there are a series of questions he needs to answer before anyone can sensibly judge whether he offers a genuine alternative to the current government, or merely a different personality pursuing much the same agenda.

The questions need to go beyond personality, competence, or electability. They need to establish what he believes, what he would do, and how he understands the challenges the UK faces.

Here are 52 questions, including one final critical one, I would like him to answer.

And, of course, the man just about to take over the entire country is going to spend time respondiong to the Sage of Ely, right?

The post Impressive, impressive first appeared on Tim Worstall.

So, is Andy Burnham’s credo of business-friendly socialism a contradiction in terms –

No. What it is is fascism.

Note this is different from spiffy uniforms and invading Poland. The fascist economy was one in which capitalists, business, were nominally independent as long as they did what government told it. Which is what Willy and Andy are proposing here.

So, it’s fascism.

The post Well, no first appeared on Tim Worstall.

Because the light fantastic trip from “society” to “capitalism” is a tiny step for these people. So, once it is agreed that it’s society then abolish capitalism becomes the cure.

It’s another excuse that is.

The post No, this isn’t bonkers, it’s perfectly rational first appeared on Tim Worstall.

Starmer expected to resign on Monday

On the other hand there’s a deffo whiff of his enemies saying this to the newspapers so as to force it.

So, you know.

The post So it is claimed first appeared on Tim Worstall.

The organisation of education and work into narrow subject silos, reinforced by neoliberal ideology,

That people do grievance studies classes – thus learning nothing of history, economics, literature or science – is neoliberal?

The post Eh? first appeared on Tim Worstall.

There were quite a lot of heated, and sometimes furious responses on LinkedIn to my suggestion in a recent video that concerns about the level of the national debt in the UK were completely misplaced because the UK could never go bust. That was because, as a matter of fact, the UK government could always create the sterling currency required to repay the UK’s national debt whenever it wished.

You can print as much money as is necessary. But what is the value of that money you’re printing going to be? We do, after all, have a number of examples of money not being worth the paper it is printed upon.

Alternatively, if it were to do so, then the country would be so awash with cash that hyperinflation would result.

Well, yes.

What this would require is that the government extract more money from the economy through taxes than it injects through spending each year, meaning the government would effectively act as a perpetual brake on economic activity in this country. Income, growth, investment, and the size of the UK economy would all shrink annually under this policy.

That would be the inevitable consequence of effectively imposing such a policy on the economy. In addition, all the consequences of reducing the availability of UK debt, noted previously, would be incurred as well, with the impact being spread over a longer period, but nonetheless resulting in the same net long-term outcome.

That is, govt must never, ever, run a surplus. Which will be a hell of a surprise to MMT types. And Keynesians, in fact. For within both theories is the insistence that at tims – like, say, when inflation is high – govt *must* run a surplus in order to reduce inflation.

But that means curbing spending which is something Spud doesn’t agree with therefore cannot even begin to allow to be assumed.

One of the – one – problems with Spud is that he adamantly refuses to consider the implications of his own theories.

The post Of course this is true first appeared on Tim Worstall.

The BBC could be our best weapon against Trump, Musk and fake news. Here’s how that could work
Jane Martinson

The BBC. A weapon *against* fake news. Eh?

The post Your weekend laugh first appeared on Tim Worstall.

A politics of care does, therefore, have to provide or identify the purpose that markets inherently lack.

You’ll not be allowed to have what you so obviously, by your actions, want. But what The Great Potato will allow you to have.

Fun times ahead, eh?

The post So, planning then first appeared on Tim Worstall.

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.

As the Two Minute Hate idea showed, humans unite against enemies. So the politics of care, without an enemy, is not going to motivate now, is it?

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.

And how many would be motivated by “neoliberals” as the enemy?

The post So, ineffective then first appeared on Tim Worstall.

Three economic heavyweights have been brought in to advise Andy Burnham as he attempts to reassure the markets before his return to parliament and possible challenge to Keir Starmer.

Burnham is understood to be getting advice from Andy Haldane, a former Bank of England chief economist, as well as Richard Hughes, a former chair of the Office for Budget Responsibility and Jim O’Neill, a crossbench peer and former Treasury minister who worked on George Osborne’s “Northern Powerhouse”.

They’re all neoliberals who have not read the taxing wealth report. D’ye see?

The post Expect a volcano in Ely first appeared on Tim Worstall.

Highlighting the update, Mottley said that “the compensation for gender-based violence and assault on family” is “no different from the compensation that has been awarded to other nationalities such as the Japanese”.

By the Japanese, perhaps.

The document, which is still to be rubber-stamped by Caribbean governments, makes it clear that Caricom is demanding monetary compensation, in addition to other forms of repair such as a full and formal apology, from Britain and other European countries, and education and training.

“Caricom demands monetary compensation as reparations from enslaving nations, monarchies, churches, institutions, corporations and families, for loss of life and uncompensated labour, loss of liberty, personal injury, mental pain and anguish and gender-based violence, for the victims of Indigenous genocide, the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved Africans and chattel enslavement of Africans, which constitute grave crimes against humanity,” the document says.

And more generally, no, fuck off to this naked grift.

The post Erm, no Love first appeared on Tim Worstall.

We must be alive to the dangers of a UK social media ban – and the way to really help young people
Rosie Parkyn
A ban alone will have limited impact and could make things worse. A good strategy needs more educational content – and more money

A Lanyard writes – give me more money.

Ho Hum.

The post Lanyard Alert! first appeared on Tim Worstall.

Dust events, when thousands of tonnes of fine sand whipped up from the Sahara are dumped over Europe, are becoming more intense. These sometimes produce “blood rain” that leaves visible red streaks, and while generally harmless, the dust is not sterile but brings a freight of microorganisms.

We get them here in the Alentejo, they’re common that another 100 miles south in the Algarve. And of course they bring bugs with them. Obviously.

When the wind blows the other way, out into the Atlantic, they also fertilise the ocean. Iron being the missing element for the bottom of that ocean foodchain, often enough. So you get an algal bloom, then more fishies eating it and so on.

It’s why iron fertilisation of the ocean would work to beat climate change, d’ye see?

That’s also why international law says you’re not allowed to even experiment with this because that might be a solution that doesn’t involve socialism and medieval peasantry…..

The post D’Oh, yes, ‘s obvious first appeared on Tim Worstall.

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.

Hang the Lanyards, Sink the Boats and Pave the Green Belt.

Should about cover it, no?

The post Well, OK first appeared on Tim Worstall.

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.

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.

This is all such mild blather that it doesn’t actually say anything. From those statements we cannot derive anything at all about where the line is between government and civil society, what tax rates should be, what levels benefits should be set at, who should own the water companies or anything else.

So, it’s all just blather.

The post Well, why not? first appeared on Tim Worstall.

Why I oppose unworkable wealth taxes

QED.

The post Because they’re not my idea first appeared on Tim Worstall.

A fraudster has been jailed after making £300,000 by doing university students’ coursework and exams for them.
Shahid Adnan, a “highly educated” Amazon delivery driver, sat students’ online exams while posing as them and charging £250 a time.

Well, it would work for me if I knew enough about any subject to be able to pass an exam in it. Which, obviously, I can’t. I mean, really, what was the effect of Mary Seacole upon Britain’s aviation industry?

The post Works for me first appeared on Tim Worstall.

A recent analysis by the Financial Times found that six institutions in England admitted more than 50% of their UK-based student intake without qualifications such as GCSEs in 2024-25, including three that took on more than 60% – Ravensbourne University London, Bath Spa and Leeds Trinity.

Bath Spa used to be Bath Technical College (plus the arts school outta town). Which, to be fair, is about the right sort of place for those without even the one GCSE.

Gotta say tho’, not sure that Bath Spa is going to add much to that education…..

The post Hmm first appeared on Tim Worstall.

White supremacists with links to banned neo-Nazi groups are helping to fund Restore Britain.
Rupert Lowe’s party could hold the balance of power in Thursday’s Makerfield by-election by splitting the Right-wing vote with Reform UK, clearing the way for Labour’s Andy Burnham to win.
Some of Restore’s supporters are so openly racist that Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, the far-Right activist detained last week under counter-terrorism laws, has questioned whether the party is too extremist.

But over and above that, the mimic that response Simon Hoggart got once. The country’s full of people like that and in a democracy they’ve every right to take part in politics, to gain representation.

The post Pecunia non olet first appeared on Tim Worstall.

The kind of regulation we need is not new: a licensing regime that requires a minimum safety standard before a system can be built and released. This is how we handle nuclear power, airplanes, buildings, elevators, hairdressers and sandwich makers. Is it too much to ask of trillion-dollar AI corporations, who claim to be building the most dangerous technology in history?

You need this to apply to all models, globally, forever. Which ain’t gonna happen, is it?

The post Yeah, but…. first appeared on Tim Worstall.