What if the real economic madness of this moment isn't trying something new but refusing to do so?
Austerity has failed. Inequality is rising. Yet our politicians cling to the same broken ideas.
In this off-the-cuff, spur-of-the-moment video, I ask a simple question: What's the harm of trying something different?
Why not invest? Why not tax wealth? Why not admit that government spending creates money?
It's time to stop pretending and start trying.
This is the transcript:
What is the harm of trying? That's something I actually said to Thomas about an innovation we are using this morning in production of our videos, and it's an experiment, and it may not work, but Thomas said, "That's a great title for a video. Why don't we make one called, What's the Harm of Trying?" And in a sense, that's the whole theme of everything that we are doing on this channel.
What we are saying is, when everything is failing, and it so obviously is, literally all around us, what is the harm of trying something else? Albert Einstein is reputed to have made the observation that keeping on doing something when you know it's already failed in the hope that something might go better next time is one of the definitions of madness, and that's the economic loop that we are stuck in.
Our politicians keep on trying austerity, and it keeps on delivering misery. That's the outcome of everything they do. And somehow they're continually surprised by this, as if the outcome of austerity is going to be news to them when it is inevitable.
So what is the harm of trying something different?
Why shouldn't we understand that the government can create money?
Why don't we want to believe that public investment is actually the route to prosperity?
Why is it that we won't tax wealth more, when so glaringly obviously we need to, because those without resources need them and would spend their money into the economy and as a result, create growth, jobs, and everything else that we want, including, as far as the government is concerned, taxation revenue?
Come to that, what is the harm of actually believing that government spending comes before taxation when, glaringly, obviously, that is true, because otherwise, where did the money come from to pay taxes in the first place? And yet the government won't try.
And that's an extraordinary accusation to make.
I can remember teachers at school saying, "If only you tried, Murphy." Well, I did try, and I did eventually seem to make a success of the show. But the point was that during most academic years, I didn't bother that much because I was one of those rather annoying kids who could pass exams and didn't have to bother too much about the coursework. Sorry, my apology is in there, but the point is, I found out a system that worked. And our politicians aren't willing to try to find out a system that works.
And that is where we are. That's a definition of the crisis we are in. We aren't trying.
It's got to be worth a try to do something different, hasn't it? Why aren't we doing that?
If any politician wants to come on here and explain why, doing everything the same again is what they believe is the right thing to do, they're very welcome. I invite any of them, well, except Reform, because I don't invite fascists on here and frankly, half of the Tory party as well, for exactly the same reason, but those who are serious about politics rather than about abusing people, they're welcome to come on here and explain why it is they won't try, because that's why they're failing us.
What do you think? Do you think our politicians are trying? Or are they like the kids at the back of the class, trying to sit there, getting away with doing as little as possible, pretending that everything is working okay, somehow or other, despite the very obvious fact that it isn't? Let us know. There's a poll down below.
Poll
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You are absolutely right ( again). It would indeed be a good idea to try something different. My worry is that an awful lot of people have come to that conclusion and have decided to give Reform a go. The difficulty is that Farage makes his solutions simple and emotionally appealing ( even if that appeal is to our worst emotions) Explanations which require the application of the intellect are no match for ones that appeal to gut instinct. It is one of the many downsides of democracy. That is why the current government’s claimed strategy of making people feel better off, so that they have something to LOSE by upsetting the apple cart and voting in a right wing government has merit. The trouble is that people don’t feel better off and so the strategy is not working ( yet). Will it? Increasingly, looking at the state of the world I fear not. We need a much more radical overhaul of our economy and society. But how do we prevent that overhaul coming from the right?
Just look at what happens to those who get out of line.
“The state has got its boots on
It’s coming out to play,
If you dont agree with us
We’ll stamp on you today.”
Sung to the tune of, “The sun has got its hat on”.
(Eg:
Jeremy Corbyn MP
The Lawrence family
Asa Winstanley
Chris Hedges
Sarah Wilkinson
Diane Abbott MP
Rachael Maskell MP
Craig Murray
>1500 “cardboard terrorists”
Climate Protesters
Josie Stewart (FCDO)
Richard Medhurst
Trevor Birney
Barry McCaffrey
Charlotte Lynch
Various NHS staff returned from Gaza
…
et al – there are many more)
These cases used to make headlines, now the MSM mostly ignore them. Which is why you may not recognise some of the names.
Thank you.
I think maybe ‘Pressure from the wealthy and markets’ and ‘Their fear of losing power or control’ are two sides of the same coin. The former gives rise to the latter.
“If any politician wants to come on here and explain why, doing everything the same again is what they believe is the right thing to do, they’re very welcome.”
“what they believe is the right thing to do,”……………………………..
“Belief” in 2010 led to austerity and circa 130k dead people by 2015. Frankly, I’m not interested in hearing politicos & their “beliefs” (& I don’t think they have any – beliefs that is – oh they have a desire for power, & they have bullshit narratives and fairy stories which they tell themselves – but beliefs? nah).
What politicos need is the ability to recognise and deal with
the real world
real people & their real needs
and then take actions that have impacts on the real world and real people and real needs …….& which are measurable.
Beliefs? they can stick em’ where the sun doesn’t shine, I’m sick of beliefs and the blathering imbeciles that offer them – & yeah Deform I’m thinking of you, followed by the Tories and the LINO morons.
I didn’t say what I would do with their beliefs
Asking Labour politicians to come on here to discuss, or to explain is asking them to break their golden rule : ‘never discuss’, ‘never engage’. Even their own MP’s have complained about this.
Their authoritarian instinct – as when their faction took over the party, must compound their fear of opening up their economic perspective to alternatives.
It really has come to something when ‘public investment to boost the economy’ is a thought crime.
Sounds like my labour MP, who the local green party candidate for MP told me is a career Starmerist. I’ve received no reply to any emails I’ve sent him on a number of topics, for example, the need to take water back into public ownership.
My previous Tory MP always, even if it took some time, replied to my letters or emails, even though he strongly disagreed with nearly everything we corresponded about.
Impressive eh?
One of things I say to the people who ring me up for tech support is ‘can you make it any worse?’ If the answer is no, we try something else.
Unfortunately the the answer to that question for politicians and business leaders, seems to be,’Yes, we could make it worse. We’d lose our grip on power’.
🙂
I agree with all you say however, “Everything is failing, what is the harm of trying something else” is exactly what people I know who are thinking of voting Reform have said to me……
So the rest have to change as well to respond to that.
Agree and would like to explain why but apparently to justify my migration status I have to reach A Level English so have maybe only 6 months to cover all of Bronte and Shakespeare
This is so stupid….
It’s another pathetic attempt by the Thatcher loving home secretary to appease right wingers.
Do the frequently violent ‘protestors’ outside hotels housing refugees who are threatening them, the police and counter protesters have A-levels? Or even speak English as well as a lot of the refugees? Do they bollocks!
I think it’s actually their fear of losing power or control from pressure from the wealthy and markets!
George Bernard Shaw said “Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”
Muhammad Ali said “He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.”
Most politicians live in their gilded cages, with their own narrow beliefs and “are like the kids at the back of the class, trying to sit there, getting away with doing as little as possible” – they cannot admit that things are not “working OK”, presumably because they are afraid of admitting the “very obvious fact” that things are not OK as they would have to admit to having taken some wrong turns (policies) during their tenure.
How many politicians do we hear actually changing their minds, let alone admitting to such a change?
And in re “like the kids at the back of the class”, too many MPs behave more like kindergarten age than mature human beings, so what can one possibly expect?
Thanks
Brilliant post Richard.
Every day I think why, in the corporate media, does no one stand up and ask that simple question – how do we do things differently – we deserve better there must be other ways.
Today, I listened to The Trawl podcast with Zach Polanski. Now… It was good to a point but then a moment came towards the end when they asked him about the economy and ‘the debt.’ He expressed ideas that you have impressed on us, the house hold analogy etc and the hosts – rather than follow up on that – (because surely it would be wise to explain that or query the narrative) the
female host bulldozed on asking some inane question about doom scrolling.
Thats what we are up against. 🙁
Agreed
I am currently embroiled with BBC Complaints regarding this self-same issue regarding Zack Polanski and Victoria Derbyshire on Newsnight some weeks back. These presenter ‘journalists’ are not the least interested in encouraging informed debate that might actually help deepen the understanding of the public at large but would rather pursue a ‘how clever am I’ gotcha moment.
Thanks Richard. I fear you are rather too trusting and have too good a heart. Perhaps it IS working for some – as you have pointed out in the past – transferring wealth from the poor to the rich. Assuming, as I have done most of my life, that the “Political Class” is acting in the Country’s interest, may credit them with greater integrity than they actually have. As I the VIP Lane for PPE.
Most politicians aspire to join the establishment which values maintaining the existing order.
To be open to new ideas is a betrayal of core beliefs.
It’s only outsiders with a moral mission which ignores the existing order that can conceive of new ideas.
And putting them into action requires 3.5 % of the population to be on your side.
Google 3.5%.
Your approach is better than cosying up to politicians.
Why change a winning formula? Especially when sticking to tried and trusted neoliberal ideas is going so WELL!
Build Baby BUILD!
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/15/labour-housing-memo-leak-steve-reed
There seem to be no problem you can’t solve with a red baseball cap and a slew of broken promises.
Who could possibly have been so cynical as to imagine that Labour might:
Ignore tenants and local residents…
Cover up its pathetic performance on completed or even started housebuilds in London and nationally…
Break all its promises on housing…
Cut the proportion of “affordable” houses required from developers…
Channel even more central government public housing subsidy towards increasing the profits of big private developers…
Suspend the pesky profit-reducing levy developers get burdened with for unnecessary socialist extravagances like GP surgeries…
Move away from that embarrassing and burdensome commitment to social housing (who benefits from THAT? It’s just SO 1930-40s, who needs Homes for Heros NOW?)…
Who would do that?
Steve Reed MP/New housing minister, thats who.
Still, the leaks are a small sign that there is some resistance somewhere inside the system.
As we know “trying something different” will not happen without a struggle. The struggle against neo-liberalism (Macron and the ‘Macronistes’) and (importantly) the far right is taking place in the French Parliament now. The media in the UK talks about the ‘lack of stability’ (or something like that) in France, but the demonstrations and what is unravelling is this very struggle which has forced Lecornu (/ Macron), to suspend the Pension Reforms until the next 2027 elections. It is attacking neo-liberalism. Macron is hanging on to power, refusing to choose the Prime Minister from the Left Coalition’s relative majority since he was last re-elected. Logically, given the number of MPs in parliament and the vote share, he should have nominated a Prime Minister from the Left Coalition. He did not. The Socialist Party (who is pretty thin on the ground but still around) is not abandoning the idea of ‘austerity’ and is not supporting the ‘no confidence vote’ organised by the Left Alliance which is fighting the neo-liberal agenda and the far right, in Parliament and in the streets. So you have a small Socialist Party which is a bit like the Labour Party in government here in the UK, which is still neo-liberal at its core… But there is a whole movement in Parliament which is wedging its struggle against neo-liberalism, while confronting and trying to contain the far right… In a strange way I wish something similar was already happening in the UK. I know it is a very different country, but what we are enduring here is ‘grinding’ and it feels as if “we have no grip”… and I hope so much that the Greens with Zack Polanski’s leadership, are going to step into the breach…. as it seems “Your Party” has gone silent.. or have I missed out on something?
YourParty is slowly getting organised, with the beginnings of local regional meetings. I’m signed up for info but have not yet joined. Still unsure. And here in Bristol, Greens are the credible alternative to Labour and Reform, they already control Bristol City Council.
Robert, is there any need for Your Party when the green party is already firmly in the left, and in an increasingly good place to take votes from labour?
It is obviously something to do with not just the pressure from the wealthy – it’s about funding from the wealthy. There is a link. So if money is involved – it’s corruption.
Let us not forget that it was the wealthy who bankrolled BREXIT – something else that Starmer seems to not want to deal with head on (the queues at Dover are now just a fact of life now apparently).
‘Just trying’ something does not happen if there are powerful people holding others back. And ‘just trying’ something is not the attitude of a government and its civil service who are addicted to austerity which is about ‘less’, not more.
‘Just trying’ something will end your career here in a country that is driven by the back seat drivers in the Establishment.
Back in the days when Brexit was being bankrolled there was good coverage of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-43465968
But it made no difference. The poisoning of Facebook and latterly, all the other social media outlets, continues to this day. The election-robbing trials of data harvesting based microtargetting of campaign videos and bot farms were run in African countries, then applied in earnest in USA 2016 presidential election and UK Brexit referendum.
And they got away with it, dissolved a few embarrassing companies, replaced them with new ones, the key big players all slithered away and prospered mightily, and now its mainstream, and we are paying the price.
(I was campaigning for digital privacy at the time, and not many people were paying attention).
I think you should ask someone from each of the five main parties to come and debate their economic policies with you.
Probably the only one that would agree to come on would be Zack Polanski.
Then you could say the others were invited, but declined.
As others have said, Labour MPs are not engaging with anyone who disagrees with Labour policy. I have emailed my Labour MP on several occasions and have not received a reply.
When I had a Tory MP, he always used to reply, if only to say that he didn’t agree with me, and try to set out the reasons why.
I will think about this.
Your experience with your MP is identical to mine Graham. My ex tory MP nearly always (about 98%) of the time to my emails/letters, even if he nearly always disagreed with me, especially about Brexit as he was a convinced Brexiter. He wass a self-described ‘Essex boy done good’ who got his start in politics from David Amiss, so I could sympathise with him on a human level.
His labour replacement has not replied to a single email I’ve sent him, issues such as Thames Water, the right to protest, and so on. In fact, this is the standard reply from their automated response system:
“To ensure efficient handling of correspondence, please be aware that emails sharing political views on the Government will be assumed your valued feedback is for information only and my team will not respond or take further action due to limited resources. ”
I appreciate my emails were standardised templates from groups such as We Own It, and MP’s do get vast amounts of emails etc, many offensive or threatening, but I take gresat care never to fall into the last category. So basically the above is saying ‘get stuffed leftie’. Thanks labour.
Contempt rules.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20190513-it-only-takes-35-of-people-to-change-the-world
see also wiki on 3.5%
I agree
Interesting info on the Chinese approach to competition and innovation:
“Pfizer’s CEO says China is overtaking the U.S. in biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, and that a key reason behind this is because “we spend more time trying to think about how to slow down China rather than think how we can become better.”
Here’s the whole quote: “They filed more patents this year than the U.S. That’s never happened in history. Five years ago, the split was 90%-10%… The gap is closing, but they probably will become [better than us] unless we get our act together. We spend more time trying to think about how to slow down China rather than think how we can become better than them. We need to have regulatory changes here. We need to have stability. Tariffs and pricing was not helping.”
He’s right of course, and it’s an argument I make constantly myself: you don’t get better by wishing ill will on others, but by improving yourself for the sake of your own people. It’s common sense, and when you hear all the “China bad” talk it’s more often than not a way to deflect from the fact that they’re not working on “ourselves good.”
Another interesting aspect here, though, is that China overtaking the U.S. in pharma innovation completely undermines the pharma industry’s decades-old narrative that astronomical drug prices are necessary for R&D.
If China – with very low government-negotiated drug costs – can file more patents than the U.S. and close a 90%-10% gap in just five years (!), it’s painfully obvious that innovation doesn’t require American consumers to pay multiples more than patients in other countries.”
“The EU may require Chinese companies to transfer technology when investing, responding to concerns over economic security and previous rules mandating joint ventures in China https://reut.rs/4n6pp8U”
From:
@RnaudBertrand
CEOs of Wells Fargo and Pfizer caution the U.S. could lose its edge to China without innovation
Thanks
Very interesting, thank you. So big US Pharma companies aren’t actually much good. Which makes you wonder why labour caved into their demands that the discount the NHS gets be reduced because they weren’t making enough money here. Which Richard noted last week.
So it’s time (in the medium/long term) to replace these greedy inefficient profiteers with their Chinese competitors or better still, with a UK pharmaceutical industry based on research and funding by the UK state. Why not a NPS, owned, run and funded by the UK government?
Oh of course, silly me, only the ‘wonderful’ private sector aka the ‘holy free market ‘, can generate wealth.
I think it may be prudent for us in our ‘neo-liberal West, media controlled environment’ to review the narrative that we are fed about China.
We all of us have no option other than to live in our time and for the best part of 50 years now our ‘time’ has been pretty s**t for most of us.
Contrast this with this (from Jason Hickel)….”the World Values Survey consistently shows that over 90% of people in China report “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of trust in the national government. In 2018, the most recent wave, trust was at 94.6%, one of the highest levels in the world.” and “According to the most recent report (2024), people in China have positive views of their political system, with 91% saying that the government serves the interests of most people (rather than a small group), and 85% saying all people enjoy equal rights before the law,”
There is good analysis regarding survey control questions and state oppression but the upshot is” none of this is to say that China does not have problems and internal contradictions that must be overcome. It does, just as all countries do. But these studies point to an important reality that we must grapple with: the Chinese people have a much higher regard for their government, and much higher support for their political and economic system, than people in the West tend to assume.”
Worth a read.
https://open.substack.com/pub/jasonhickel/p/support-for-government-in-china-is?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1v0a6q
I’m more than surprised that THE most obvious conclusion is never visited – i.e. that since we are now subject to Electionism (pretence of democracy – you go through the motions only) any politician in cahoots with power, is a). No democrat, and B). serving a world order that’s frankly anti-democratic.
You are correct about this. I had similar thoughts a couple of years ago when there was a statement in the news, that had allegedly come from someone in Rishi Sunak’s government that said “we are trying everything, but nothing is working.” When they said everything they were saying everything that neoliberal dogma permits, which isn’t very much. So the first problem is that the people making decisions are blinded by the dogma they have been taught. The second problem, I suspect, is that the people who now get in to high positions in government have little experience of failure. They are very intelligent people who sailed through their education, with a bit of application and effort, then got good jobs in politics or the city and rose through the ranks there without too much effort, before being selected to run for parliament or a lofty position in the civil service. So how many of them have good experience of failure, of things not going well, not turning out as planned and having to develop their thinking and put in more effort to overcome difficulties? If there are people in government with experience of failure are they willing to speak up and admit past failures?
No, in a word.
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/10/15/what-is-the-harm-of-trying/comment-page-1/#comment-1048399
“Robert, is there any need for Your Party when the green party is already firmly in the left, and in an increasingly good place to take votes from labour?”
Do I think that 800,000 people should be free to create a political party if they feel the need?
Yes.
Do I see any residual value in Labour?
No.
I’ve already seen one attempt at political obliteration of progressive politics be very successful, 2016-20, from the Labour right (see the current serialisation of “The Fraud” in The Canary https://www.thecanary.co/the-fraud/ ). I have no intention of contributing to another.
At present we have a plethora of neoliberal parties all with the same basic destructive message.
We are just beginning to break free.
In Bristol, Greens are the credible alternative but here, they suffer from an “incumbency” problem now that they are actually running the city.
In other areas, they are nowhere – so there is a need for other progressives.
These new parties should be willing, to be VERY pragmatic and co-operative, until we can get rid of FPTP. THEN they can differentiate, and push their particular agendas to get elected under PR, then get pragmatic again AFTER a PR election, when it comes to forming governments. Jamie Driscoll seems to understand this up in the NE.
We are in a unique situation in UK, as we still have FPTP but it is dying (hopefully fast).
We need to learn how to do party politics with Labour dying on their feet but still in power.
Having suffered political censorship under Labour, being told I HAD to vote for Starmer to stop the Tories, I’ve had enough of being told what to do. I never voted for Starmer, but he still won, and what have we got? A Tory leading a parliament of Tories. I want rid of Labour and I want rid of Reform. I don’t trust Orange book Lib Dems – I was betrayed in a LibDem/Tory marginal in 2010 – result – austerity.
Am I a suspicious type? You bet. I wish Zack Polanski well, I might even vote Green again, but no one gets a free ride, and it is far too early to be writing off or trying to destroy YourParty.
Thanks Robert, that is really interesting. I loathe the arrogance and stupidity of labour when they tell progressives ‘you gotta vote labour ‘, (no matter how right wing they are)., because they won’t change our rotten voting system to PR, and refuse to share power by being in a coalition. Stupid bastards.
I wrote a (very) brief letter to The National on exactly this issue last week, pointing out that a compelling case could be made for Scottish independence by focusing on the lunacy of this policy of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Unusually for one of my epistles they didn’t publish it.
A letter I wrote on the same day regarding the impossibility of achieving lasting peace in the Middle East without addressing the ongoing and accelerating ethnic cleansing in the West Bank actually was published.
Maybe my mistake in the former letter was to imply that the SNP’s latest 91 page manifesto for gaining independence is neither accessible enough nor engaging enough to make any impact on the electorate! They had probably had as many SNP-bashing letters as they could handle for one week.
I concur with the comments above that failure to grasp this nettle from a “progressive” perspective risks ceding the change agenda to the far right.
The establishment who rule this country are terrified of the creation of a socialist party. There is little in the media about Your Party. There are a lot of words regarding the growth of the Greens. Media who claim to be on the Left are critical . They can’t directly attack the proposed party as there is no agreed procedure, structure , rules or programme. However, the opposition knows that a Corbyn like party will be real democratic socialists. The UK will cease to be an American vassal. The recent past has revealed just how complicit my country has been in unbelievable crimes all over the world. Millions have died and more injured by our alliance with the USA. That must end. Most of the world hates America and now the UK. I am utterly ashamed of our armed forces participating in inhuman slaughter. The new party will resurrect Britain by spending public money as happened after1945. There is no shortage . Read Richard Murphy. Social housing will be a priority. Taxation will be fair. The commanding heights will be nationalised . Countries who have been successful in recovering have ALL done it by public spending. Private capital will never bring about a really successful state. The Right have shattered this country in the last 45 years. They have nothing to offer the voters who are suffering in a way unthinkable in the decades after 1945. Corby and his colleagues have a lot to offer.