I watched a reasonable amount of the news last night.
It kept being said that seven prime ministers in 10 years is unacceptable. Questions were asked. But no one that I saw made the obvious point. Everyone of these people was or is a neoliberal.
And the reality is neoliberalism has failed. Of course, no prime minister can deliver a failed idea. That is impossible. But until that point is made in, and accepted by, the media we are going nowhere.
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The ideologues couldn’t possibly blame their ideology, it pays too well.
What’s NOT in the news today, is what depresses me.
1. No suggestion of any party election process to choose the next STP/LINO leader or suggestion that such a process might be desirable (the last Labour coronation was Brown after Blair, the last Tory one was Sunak after Truss. Those are not encouraging precedents for stable government).
2. No policy debate. (We did have a signficant policy debate prior to Starmer becoming LINO leader, but it was based almost entirely around his lies – 10 Pledges).
3. No variations on the necessity of more failed neoliberal macro-economics.
4. No discussion of the foreign policy mess we are in (USA, Israel, EU), especially our complicity in war crimes.
5. No challenge to “musn’t spook the bond markets” (see 3).
6. No challenge to the inevitability of austerity (see 3).
7. No challenge to the tyranny of “debt/deficit” arguments (see 3).
8. No concern that possible future PMs seem as immune to rigorous questioning and challenge, as Fa***e is, on his £5m bung.
9. The reviews of Starmer’s rise and fall completely gloss over the Labour Together Fraud (mainly because the Fraud continues virtually uninterrupted, and is now imposing Burnham, with Darren Jones as backstop).
10. Starmer won big in 2024 on a tactical anti-Tory vote. Burnham arguably won big in Makerfield on a tactical anti-Reform vote. To suceed, a PM needs popular informed party and public enthusiasm for a well argued policy platform. If they avoid that, they will fail, because the status quo IS failure.
Two things that are going out of fashion fast – policy debates, and elections.
KTTT! (Keep Taking The Tablets)
Rather than watch the news yesterday – as it became a monotonous loop, I tuned into Peston last night.
The chap from Compass gave me hope but good grief – the reform lady!?
What really frustrates me watching this is how Peston interrupts before whoever is speaking finishes. It’s like I’ve got to get my opinion in first. Perhaps we should allow people to express their view – life experience rather than attachment to ideas? But it’s so self defeating.
Like I say, at least the Neal Lawson? From Compass offered some light to the conversation.
– I now await to be shot down on here by wiser minds! 🙂
Neoliberalism” isn’t really any sort of definition anymore, if it ever was. What definition can put Starmer and Truss in the same category, apart from “White European”?
Neoliberalism does.
That is why it is useful.
Have you not been paying attention Jennifer? That is exactly what defines them, politically. The rest is just camouflage.
In other news
https://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/sport/26215030.watford-manager-prime-minister-left/
Has somebody written the Ipswich Town version?
Not sure
But not sure about much right now.
Neoliberalism was actually mentioned by Lord Hain on Newsnight last night as an answer to that question, although it was not fully explored. I nearly fell off my sofa!
I was well out of it by then.
“It kept being said that seven prime ministers in 10 years is unacceptable.”
Is it??? Is this not how a parliamentary system works?
Would love to get rid of the Orange Person tomorrow but we are stuck with him for 2.5 more years no matter who controls Congress.
You will not have seen https://www.mainstreamlabour.org/publications/the-productive-state
Its supposed to be an exposition of burnhams thinking and manchesterism.
I interrogated and suggested how the ideas of Richard Murphy could be incorporated.
You may be interested in the results:https://claude.ai/share/7e49a41c-6d53-4d9d-a3a9-fc8a8eba8ee1
Hi
I finally got to your comment. I did read the paper in hospoital.
The summary you provides is good and worth reading. The killer line is “The framework is a better account of why the problem persists than of how to fix it. ”
As usual…..
Thanks
How about a slogan, something like this.-
THE NEOLIBERAL ECONOMIC EXPERIMENT IS A FAILURE.
Our last 7 Prime Ministers have failed because they have been trying to make the Neoliberal Economic experiment work.
The Neoliberal Economic experiment has been proved to be a failure.
The failures of our last 7 Prime Ministers are evidence of this.
Margaret Thatchers failed experiment with the British economy is there for all to see.
Surely we need no more evidence to prove Neoliberal Economics is a colossal failure.
Now is the time for a complete change.
I am sure something like this can be improved.
That’s a good starting point for a slogan like MAGA. How about NEEF – Neoliberal Experiment has Failed. Just as Woke has been weaponise by the far eight perhaps the left could adopt something along this line. NEEF. Anyone think of something better?
A good acronym would be NAF but I can’t think what the A would stand for.
Philip Maughan – Neoliberalism Always Fails
not able to reply to a comment
When I use the term neoliberal many people look at me blankly. They understand the ‘household’ analogy but I say to them, “how many households do you know that can print their own money and go out and spend it without ending up behind bars and how many households do you know that can tax their neighbours?” The answers is usually “none”. To which I then ask “then why do you believe a government that can do these things has to behave like a household?” They are usually intrigued at this point. I feel that if people are to be moved away from neolibralism then a simpler/plain message is needed for the majority to overcome the ingrained veiw that the country should be run like a ‘household’. The household message, although plainly wrong, is so powerful because it is so relatable to the majority, as most understand how limiting running a household is on limited funds.
Do I need to revisit this?
What I like about Tony’s approach, is that is based on asking good questions, which then create curiosity and provoke discussion, inviting explanations.
I think maybe we need better questions, rather than better answers. We already have good answers but our friends are not curious enough to ask for them.
Noted.
There are powerful vested interests dependent on the continuation of neoliberalism I’m afraid.
Had Corbyn won in 2017 (when the neroliberal establishment soiled themselves as he was so very close) and then won the follow up in 2022, he would still be PM and we would not have had Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Suna, Keir Starmer and now Burnham. Imagine how different things could have been.
So true, such a lost opportunity.
And a country we could enjoy living in!!
@ Jason Matthews
Alas, I have to disagree, not on whether things might now be better had Corbyn won in either 2017, or in a putative further victory in 2022, but on his surviving.
I believe he would have lasted a fortnight before being toppled in a CIA-managed “A Very British Coup”, & clapped in the UK’s Guantanamo, HMP Belmarsh, & the country run by a “puppet” appointed by the Crown, under martial law, with no reference to Parliament.
The Deep State with its Single Transferable Party charade isn’t willing to be blocked from reaching the trough, as would have happened under Corbyn.
They’ve probably only turned on Starmer now because his incompetence has made the Deep State worry he would let in the real crazies of Reform and Restore, for fear they’d be less biddable and controllable than the other Parliamentary “usual suspects” of the STP and other Parliamentary Parties.
I do not, and never have believed stories if this type, which I think to be close to nonsense. You are forgetting the power of people – I do not think there is any chance this would have been accepted.
Indeed. We even had video of the army using his photo for target practice. The Zionist state would have toppled him.
I wonder if enough people understand the meaning of, and therefore the threat posed by, ‘neoliberalism’. After all it sounds fresh and modern. Unless it is clearly associated with the damage caused to the country and the economy by its zealots over the last 15 years isn’t there a risk that too few people will bother to fight it?
What needs to be done to educate them?
It is a question of being able to find joy in repetition and repeating the challenge/counter arguments over and over again.
This is about robust research and persistence.
The Neo-liberals are very good at the ‘persistent’ bit but that is all.
Start with the schools? ‘Give me a child ’til he be seven and I’ll give you the man.’ as someone once said. Unfortunately that would really be looking long into the future but it really is a matter of education. Perhaps targeting sitting MPs might be a possibility though many of those are ideologies. Campaigning for all MPs to be schooled by the BoE in the facts of money as in the two 2014 papers on the BoE website. For me, that would be a minimum regulation of becoming MP.
There’s a saying I once read which explains neoliberalism and which I found helpful. It went something like, ‘A liberal economy is a system in which businesses provide services which benefit the public, while a neoliberal economy is a system in which the public provides services which benefit businesses’ The former description could be seen as describing the free market economy, while the latter might be described as the ultra free market economy (UFME – sounds a bit like fuck me).
May I suggest George Monbiot’s “The Invisible Doctrine”. It is very small (A5 I think), very cheap (£12.99 I think) and very readable. I put a copy in each of my grandchildren’s Christmas stocking (all of voting age!).
🙂
I happen to agree. To the layperson, neo and liberal both sound like great things. Whereas, Modern Monetary Theory sounds like an academic concept.
I try to use phrases like ‘how money really works’ and the ‘myth’ that market forces will solve problems.
Richard has this covered – https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/11/21/alternatives-to-neliberalism/
I’m fairly certain that the general public (only “working people”, obviously) are very well aware that something is desperately wrong in this country. They may not be able to articulate it, perhaps because they are either in poverty or angry. Or both. One of those groups is by necessity mute – no money despite working 3 jobs, no secure housing, no hope – and the other group is noisily flailing around looking for someone to blame for their – equally dire – emiseration.
It’s all very well us saying “neoliberalism has failed”. But what do those words actually mean to those two groups of people? Nothing. Just more incomprehensible soundbites from some part of the ether of Government. An example. Contrary to what the Government is trumpeting, actual NHS waiting lists are not down. The numbers do not represent completed treatment, with a healthy person at the end of it. Hundreds of thousands of people have been shuffled sideways to, for example, physios, when they should have been seen by a consultant. They are either rerouted or kicked off a list.
Activity does not mean progress.
The answer is to call neoliberalism something else. Not some variation of an “ism”. Decades ago, Frank Luntz successfully stifled the whole climate debate by suggesting that Bush said “climate change” instead of “global warming”. That protected the Bush oil interests in Texas and neutered the whole climate crisis.
We would do this country a great service by finding an entirely different word for neoliberalism. One that lands. One that explains. One that points the anger in the correct direction.
Austerity?
Or what?
Herewith a few possible alternatives to the anodyne ‘neocapitalism’ – mostly verging on the outlandish, but it was fun to distract myself with this on a very hot day:
Fat-cattery; fuck-you-ism; neo-feudalism; privatised profiteering; licensed/legalised looting; crony capitalism; rigged-marketism; merciless marketism; ; mass exploitery; bond-age; hedge fundism; unequalism; Trumpism; extractivism; immoralism; selfishism; greedism; market capitulatery; unthinkery; fiscal dysthinkery; extractive elitism.
This might inspire a blog post.
Thank you.
How about “rigged-market capitalism”?
Rigged would potentially resonate.
Once you mention capitalism people write you off as some lefty socialist who will quickly ‘run out of other people’s money’.
Likewise, talking about ‘the wealthy’ backfires because nearly everyone believes there is some chance that they too, somehow, could one day be wealthy.
One point that I think does resonate is the idea of unfairness.
The ideas that stick (regardless of the reality) are that benefits pay just as well as work, which is unfair. Migrants are taking jobs/benefits, which is unfair. Long-term care and SEND spends more per head, which is unfair.
This leads to resentment of individuals (the unemployed, sick, children) when it’s really the system that’s unfair.
Neoliberalism ensures an unfair society, where money flows from workers to the super-rich.
I think if you paint the narrative as “neoliberalism has taken something away from you”, aka made you less in someway, it naturally provokes an anger, shame response. This means people want to lash out and kick someone or something to protect themselves. We are never going to take that out on someone bigger than us (those in power) as we know we will look foolish and get an ass beating. So we take it out on someone smaller, less powerful. Hence the punching down.
How can we rearrange the narrative in a succinct way to say instead. That we’ve been asked to carry the burden, had the pressure placed on our shoulders. An example being during COVID we had front line workers, we supported them, brought people together. This then, is more empowering and provokes a different response. One of stop attacking the little guy!
Near
Neat
Perhaps if it were mandatory to have a general election if a party wanted to change leaders they might think twice. Alternatively, If the party thought that the incumbent leader couldn’t win an election, and the next one could, they should put their money where their mouth is.
10 Downing Street. 10 Chefs. Same Recipe.
Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, Starmer.
Different faces, different voices, different promises.
But each one walks into the same kitchen and is handed the same recipe.
Cut the ingredients. Lower the heat. Serve less.
We’re told its discipline. We’re told it’s necessary.
So, the meal gets cooked again. And again. And again.
Each time it comes out worse, smaller portions, lower quality, more people left hungry.
And what does the country do?
We blame the chef. We replace them. We hope this time will be different.
But the recipe never changes.
So, the outcome never changes.
Until we, the country, question the recipe itself, nothing will.
Very good.
That might inspire a blog post if I feel well enough.
With Jamie Oliver as a script consultant.
Such a relief Richard that you are still here. Don’t think I have ever opened up at 9 am and seen absolutely nothing from you with today’s date. Not even to say you are still in hospital, or taking it easy at Welney, or cooling off in the cathedral..<p>
Get well soon.
Thanks
Last night was grim. And that was being kind to it.
I heard Enhland had an off night, too.
I discovered whern the morphine kicked in.
Learning you’re pain free and getting better is what we all want the most.
Get well soon
Thanks
Has anyone suggested the wisdom of flogging a dead horse?
Burnham is likely to listen to his new advisers, and so he’ll work hard not to spook the markets etc. Therefore, unless he surprises me, I don’t anticipate any positive initiatives which require significant new funding. Pretty much business as usual, but without the tone-deafness which characterises Starmer. But I live in hope.
The least Burnham can do is extend an olive branch to the departing PM and his supporters. Given that so many people claim Starmer is such a respected figure on the world stage, perhaps Burnham could offer him a top job. I suggest UK Ambassador to the United States.
You’re joking aren’t you? About Starmer, olive branch, UK ambassador?
I couldn’t think of anything Starmer would enjoy less. Of course, he’d have to clear the vetting process.
After the clown show of Johnson and later Truss I thought Starmer would be a good, stable force for good. In fact he appears to be a generally good chap who has been completely overwhelmed by the pressures and requirements of being party leader and Prime Minister. Which would be an accurate description of me in such a role.
If Burnham is to have a chance of changing the status quo, he needs to stand up and ask the question “who governs the UK?” A few unseen gurus in the autonomous city of London or the elected members of the parliament? Every electorate should be encouraged to ask their MP to explain their position on that question. The humpback in the swimming pool here is the special legal status of the square mile which must be well past it’s sell-by date.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/oct/31/corporation-london-city-medieval
I have to disagree.
Starmer always knew he was a Trojan Horse, aiming to take over ande destroy Labour. There was nothign benign about him. He is, was and always will be a conman.
Sorry. I should make myself clearer, I should have said – Has anyone suggested that continuing to pursue Neoliberal economics is flogging a dead horse. I hesitate to say this because it is almost too obvious to us. But not to the media, and many MPs.
Morning, Richard, Well, I’ll take myself as having been firmly slapped down by someone whose judgement I value very highly, and fortunately my thesis has not been put to the test.
It remains a fact, however, that the US administration was highly critical of, and hostile towards, Jeremy Corbyn.
In 2019 the Secretary of State in 2019, Mike Pompeo, citing Corbyn’s alleged antisemitism and foreign policy publicly pledged that the United States would “push back” to prevent Corbyn from ever reaching 10 Downing Street – the stance that led me to form my hypothesis.
As to your faith in the power of the people, I do so hope you’re right, but the numerous large, peaceful protests against what is happening in Gaza, and with the whole Palestine Action farrago, do not as yet seem to have significantly moved the dial on government actions and attitudes, as legislation is ramped up to narrow eve further the scope for peaceful protest.
I’m afraid I’m deeply pessimistic about the future, and not just Gramsci’s “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will”, but with reference to people power generally.
I do hope your reading of things is correct.
PS: I hope you are in better sorts now, after your recent hospitalisation. Go well all four of you – you, Jacqueline, James and Thomas. What you do is so helpful and inspiring.
Thanks Andrew. Sorry if I have a slap dowm. Pain is disinhibiting, as I demonstrated rollinf in agomy on the floor of A&E last night, unable to do anything else.
You say:
“In 2019 the Secretary of State in 2019, Mike Pompeo, citing Corbyn’s alleged antisemitism and foreign policy publicly pledged that the United States would “push back” to prevent Corbyn from ever reaching 10 Downing Street – the stance that led me to form my hypothesis.”
MIke Pompeo talked a lot of shit. Sorry, but that’s my response to that. I accept they would have made noises. Our probelm is no one still does abut Trump, whom he served.
The character assassination of Corbyn started as soon as he was nominated for the leadership in 2015. (I don’t deny his weaknesses). It was later expanded into a vicious purge of the party membership, candidate selections (I was there and saw that up close), and the intimidation of MPs by bodies such as the Board of Deputies (see 2020 leadership election). It continued and accelerated under Starmer’s party leadership, and premiership, and was extended to academia, and public services, esp NHS, and is now aimed at the streets, social media and free expression generally. Starmer was an integral part of it, with lies, betrayal and complicity in war crimes.
Please read “Fraud” by Paul Holden, and “Complicit”, by Peter Oborne both from OR Books. They may change your view of Starmer.
Burnham’s remarkably smooth rise has been facilitated by people at the heart of that evil. Burnham is in debt to THEM, and not to us.
Talking last night to a few family and friends… ‘they hate us, the gov really do, it’s more of the same, they don’t care about Us. Labour have backtracked on everything and how can we pay for anything… Life is just getting increasingly worse, nothing’ Burnham is one of them, carrying out the WEF agenda. Am working to standstill,.it’s not sustainable…’
That sadly is what we are up against.
People feel defeated – where do you start with that?
You can point them in the direction of your words, tell them to research, suggest a few books… they just aren’t that bothered.
They have hardened attitudes and utter cynicism. You can’t blame people, but we have to have some hope… Or????
People need to be offered something tangible and quick to show that good politicians can actually make a difference. Mandani is showing this already in New York.
My suggestion for any incoming leader in the UK. Slash energy bills. If that means emergency legislation to change how the market is structured e.g. ending marginal pricing so be it.
I asked google AI for the opposite of neoliberalism.
‘The exact opposite of neoliberalism is state socialism or a command economy. While neoliberalism promotes free markets, deregulation, privatization, and minimal government intervention, its opposite centralizes economic control, ownership of resources, and wealth distribution entirely within the state or community.’
Looking at how this comes across I am personally struck by the underlying message, one approach is presented as freedom and the other is presented as control.
Using a grown up child/parent conversation, one says do you prefer the freedom to make your own choices without parental interference or consequences and the other says do you want your decisions to be made for you by me your parent with responsibilities and conseqiences for not following my household rules. Good parents try to find a balance but inevitably most adult children will only hear the ‘freedom’ part.
What many do not realise until too late is by choosing (neoliberal) freedom, invisible chains, in the form of various rent extractions, are attached that eventually bind and weigh them down to the point they have become enslaved. It is at this point that most of us gain a feeling that our parents protected us to the best of their abilities from a game rigged in favour of the wealthy few, who understand the game only too well.
I unfortunately assumed that I could pass on the message that is well reasoned on this site without adaption for my audience. As someone once said to me to ‘assume’ you understands me is to make an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me’.
Most people have a feeling they are slowly but surely being pushed towards and over a cliff but without understanding the route cause.
Good comment.
The problem is neoliberalism is actually freedom in chains.
Something I realised during the pandemic is that the process of law and regulation is entirely based on the principle that you can only protect one freedom by denying another. What the anit-mask protestors in the US (plus a few idiot followers here in Australia) failed to understand was that under such unusual circumstances the government had decided to try to protect the rights of the sick and elderly to go out and buy groceries without contracting a fatal disease by denying everybody the right to walk about in public without a mask on. We protect our right to cross the streets in town centres with some degree of safety by denying ourselves the right to drive through town at 200MPH and, in some countries, we protect the right of our children to go to school without being shot by denying ourselves the right to carry firearms in public. Many such balancing acts are obvious but the politics of law-making is largely an argument about the right balance in less clear-cut examples.
It has become clear over the last 40 years that the freedom to accumulate wealth by almost whatever means you want has seriously denied the right of the majority to have access to many of those things we consider essential to a decent, modern life. But too many people seem determined to vote for the freedom to be poor for the whole of your life, the right to be hungry, the right to suffer for years on end from curable diseases and the right to be ruthlessly exploited by those relative few people who have the capacity to exploit everyone else. Somewhere there is an acceptable, sweet-spot balance between Thatcher and Xi. Which particular Yellow Brick Road will get us there is, I regret to admit, beyond my understanding.
Thanks, Kit
Thank you for keeping on keeping on!
Might this succession/procession of Neoliberal prime ministers be a consequence of our governance not being really democratic/reasonably close to being democratic but being plutocratic with a democratic facade/democratic make up?
”A pig with lipstick is still a pig.” (With apologies to genuine pigs)
It is a consequence of a rigged democracy.
Starting with Margaret Thatcher, has any British Prime Minister presided over a government which has not favoured the wealthy?
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