What is actually happening:

• In 2025, around 383 million oil trades were recorded in the UK, each covering roughly 1,000 barrels of oil at over $100 a barrel
• The total value of those contracts runs into the tens of trillions of pounds, dwarfing the value of all UK share trading
• The post-Ukraine energy price spike that devastated household budgets was not caused by a gas shortage; it was caused by financial speculation of this sort, and it is happening again

The tools to control the damage from this trading already exist, but the government just refuses to use them:

• The London Stock Exchange already charges 0.5% Stamp Duty on share trades, raising over £4 billion a year. A financial transaction tax on oil trading could work in exactly the same way and potentially raise more money.
• Alternatively, a tax of this sort could, as Nobel Laureate James Tobin, who proposed it in the 1970s, said, "throw sand in the wheels" of the speculative machine, and that is what is needed.
• Even a fraction of a per cent on commodity trades such as those in oil, wheat, rice, and soybeans would reduce trading volumes, cut price volatility, and protect household budgets
• A windfall tax on wartime trading profits would claw back what BP and others are extracting from the crisis

This is not complicated. It is a political choice to permit wartime profiteering. And it is now a necessary political choice to stop it.

This is the audio version:

This is the transcript:

BP, British Petroleum of old, is profiteering directly from the wars being waged by the USA and Israel at present. Its profits have grown exceptionally this year, and the source of that growth is oil trading.

In the first quarter of 2026, BP, on its own method of accounting, made $3.2 billion compared to $1.4 billion last year, and these are not profits from selling more oil; they are profits from trading in oil.

Meanwhile, households are facing rising energy costs and a worsening cost of living. That is being driven by the fact that oil prices are going upwards. And the very trading that is enriching BP is what is causing that inflation here in the UK.

We are living in a wartime economy, and that is now producing wartime injustice.

We cannot allow war to become a mechanism for corporate enrichment of public expense. Households are facing shortages in fuel and energy, the very products that BP supplies, and rising oil prices driven by trading activity are feeding broader inflation, including in food.

The cost of this war is then being socialised. The profits are being privatised. Without action, exploitation will follow this crisis as a matter of course. We must then restructure how the economy is working to ensure that economic justice will prevail.

Two specific measures must now be applied to a company like BP. First, the tax on its profits derived from wartime trading must be increased. Oil companies already pay relatively high rates of corporation tax; that I admit. But trading activity is not taxed at those high rates, and that gap must be closed. The mainstream corporation tax rate payable on wartime trading should be raised right now and Ministers should be given powers via secondary legislation to act to tackle the profits of any company that is seen to be profiting in this way as a consequence of war, to ensure that a company that has excess profits pays more tax to ensure that it contributes to the overall well-being of the country and does not act only in the interest of its shareholders.

The second measure we must look at is something potentially much more controversial, but something much more significant at this time. It is a financial transaction tax on commodity trading.

Now, financial transaction taxes are things that most people are not familiar with, but we do, in fact, have one already in the UK, which proves that these things can work. Whenever shares are traded on the London Stock Exchange, a Stamp Duty at a rate of 0.5%, that's half a per cent or one 200th of the price of the share, is paid as a consequence of somebody buying that share.

This doesn't kill trading on the London Stock Exchange, and it does raise over £4 billion of tax revenue for the government each year. It should be more because there are £5 trillion worth of trades on that stock exchange each year, which would imply that the amount of tax paid should be around £25 billion a year, but there are too many exemptions, and so revenues are lower than they should be. But the principle is the point here. The principle is proven. Such a tax works and can be made to work better in that case.

The scale of oil trading in this country vastly exceeds the trade in shares. That's my point now, and that trade in oil also exceeds by a vast scale the amount of actual oil that is ever delivered to anyone in the UK or anywhere else around the world.

Around 383 million oil trades were recorded in the UK in 2025. That was an increase over the previous year, and when we consider that each of these trades covers around 1,000 barrels of oil, and each barrel of oil is trading at more than $100 a barrel at this moment, the value of these contracts runs into tens of trillions of dollars. I haven't got a precise number. I don't pretend that that is very significant at this moment.

The point is that the value of this trade vastly exceeds the value of the trade in UK shares, and much of this activity, just like that on the London Stock Exchange, is purely speculative. It produces nothing of social value. No oil is delivered as a result. Traders are trying to exploit the market so they may push the price of oil up at cost to us, and that is not a social value. That is a social cost, and that is why we need to tackle this trade.

It was this speculative trade in oil that inflated BP's profits so dramatically in the first quarter of this year. BP did not make extra money by selling more oil. It made more money by trading in oil, and that oil wasn't even delivered. They were simply speculating in the value of oil, which pushed the price up to the levels that are now being reflected in the price we are paying at the petrol pump.

The volatility created by this trading fed directly into market price movements. Those price movements are feeding through into inflation, and that's my point. A financial transaction tax charged on this oil trading at this moment, even at a fraction of a per cent on each trade, could raise billions of pounds. But more importantly, it could eliminate much of this wasteful and socially destructive activity.

That was, in fact, the purpose of a financial transaction tax when it was first proposed by the Nobel Laureate economist James Tobin in the 1970s. His aim, he said back then, was to throw sand in the wheels of the speculative financial machine. Note, he did not say oil, which would've made it go faster. He wanted to throw sand in the wheels because he wanted to slow down the whole process of speculative trading, because he thought society would be better off as a result, and so do I.

After the war broke out in Ukraine in 2022, remember that prices shot up with regard to oil and other commodities like gas, wheat and other things. A year later, they were all back where they started, but in the meantime, we suffered inflation. What happened then? There were no disruptions to supply. There're going to be this time, but there weren't then. The reason why we got inflation was purely because of financial speculation, and that is why we need to slow this whole process down and even eliminate as much of it as possible, because it is deeply harmful, and that is why this tax would do such a good job at this moment.

The intention of this tax is to reduce trading volumes, to reduce price volatility, and so reduce inflation. We are seeing exactly the same antisocial effects now as Tobin did with regard to oil trading way back in the 1970s; he was right then, and this tax will be right now.

It is appropriate to talk about such a tax at this moment, and the same argument could apply to other commodity markets as well, and not just oil. Trading in wheat, rice, soybeans, and cooking oils could all follow this pattern, and there are other markets as well, things like orange juice, where there's an enormous speculative trade.

These trades in food commodities are also driving up prices for the poorest households at this moment, and a financial transaction tax on charges on speculation in these commodities could also be applied, with the result that we could reduce the transfer of risk onto ordinary people through inflation from these markets. That's the goal that we're trying to achieve here. Anybody who is serious about tackling the cost of living must engage with this agenda now. That's what I'm saying, and that's my message to the current Labour government.

There are three reasons, though, why governments have avoided these markets. First, people do not understand them, and politicians reflect that ignorance.

Secondly, those operating in these markets claim they provide efficient risk management. They do not talk about the speculative profits. They claim that what they do is protect traders by ensuring there's always a ready market for the goods that are being traded. That is not true. I've already explained what happened when war broke out in 2022. The risk in these markets was transferred onto the public, and the cost was enormous; and no gain arose to any of the traders except for the profits that they earned. There was no actual impact on real product supply. That happened because of the efforts to maintain supply through the war situation undertaken by others and not by oil traders, not one of whom will ever go near a barrel of the stuff.

Thirdly, the government is too frightened to take on the banks and oil majors who benefit from this trade. That is the biggest point here. The very bastions of neoliberalism, our banks and our biggest companies, are behind this trade. They know they profit from this trade at cost to the rest of us. They want this transfer of value out from the general public into the coffers of these largest companies, and they will fight tooth and nail to oppose any such tax of the sort I'm talking about.

What that means is that this is the time for political courage. We must stop these large companies from exploiting us. Taxing these trades will quite deliberately reduce the volume of socially harmful activity that large companies undertake, and that reduction in volume is a feature and not a flaw of this proposed policy and tax. The goal is stability for ordinary people, not liquidity for speculators.

This is the moment, then, for a financial transaction tax on oil and other commodity trades. The case is clear. The economic justice is visible. The mechanism is understood; we have such a tax already. The policy exists as a precedent and can be implemented through existing frameworks. Wartime profiteering by BP and others is not an accident. It is a policy choice to permit it. Continuing to permit that profiteering is also a political choice and one that must be challenged.

So my question is this: which political party will be the first to say, “Enough of all of this”, and begin to act and say, as I do, that now is the time to tax these trades?

That's what I think. What do you think? There is, as ever, a poll down below. Leave us your comments. Please like this video, if that's what you do, share it with whoever you want, and if you would be so kind as to give us a donation, we'd be very grateful.

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