Do you recall this lot?
- Margaret Thatcher,
- John Major,
- Tony Blair,
- Gordon Brown,
- David Cameron,
- Theresa May,
- Boris Johnson,
- Liz Truss,
- Rishi Sunak ,and
- Keir Starmer.
You might be able to add Andy Burnham to that list very soon, and nothing about what I say here will change.
They all made big claims for themselves. They were:
- Different people.
- Different personalities.
- Different political parties.
- Different promises.
And yet, in one vital respect, they have all been very much the same.
Each arrived in Downing Street claiming that they could make Britain work better.
Each suggested that they had a solution to the country's problems.
Each promised some version of renewal, reform or transformation.
And then each accepted the same economic constraints imposed by the Treasury, the Bank of England, the City of London and the neoliberal economics profession.
Those constraints are now so deeply embedded in our political culture that they are rarely recognised by most politicians, commentators or people beyond the Westminster bubble. As a result, they are almost never questioned.
They all told us that:
- The government has no money of its own, when that is not true, as quantitative easing proved.
- Public spending must be constrained by tax revenues, which is, again, not true, as quantitative easing has proved.
- Deficits are dangerous, yet they all ran them over their time in office.
- Debt, as they call savings lodged with the government, is a burden, but none of them repaid any in net terms over their time in Downing Street.
- Financial markets must be appeased, and
- Growth is the answer to almost every problem.
Their language changed a little, one from another.
The details were varied slightly.
Their political branding was different.
But the underlying economic story remained absolutely constant.
There was very little in most cases to choose these people, excepting maybe their relative competence in delivering the single agenda they all shared, and still share in the case of those still alive, and which they still demand be delivered.
Those outcomes they delivered were remarkably familiar:
- Public services were allowed to deteriorate.
- The NHS kept declining.
- So, too, did education.
- Infrastructure decayed.
- Housing becomes less affordable or simply unavailable.
- Insecurity increased.
- Wealth accumulated at the top.
- Communities were left behind.
- Environmental obligations were deferred.
- Social care was neglected.
- Privatisation and asset sales to shrink the state continued.
- People noticed the continuing decline in their absolute and relative well-being.
The result has been all too obvious.
The public has become frustrated.
We have blamed each of these prime ministers.
We blamed their governments.
We voted them out, but replaced them with another set of politicians who promised that this time things would be different.
But why was that ever the case?
If the diagnosis remained the same, and the prescription was similar, and both were wrong, why should things have ever improved? And, they have not.
The problem facing the UK is not simply that we have had poor leaders, although that cannot be disputed, and some have been worse than others. The deeper problem is that all of them accepted an economic narrative that has repeatedly failed.
That narrative is neoliberalism. It is the belief that:
- Markets know best.
- Government is largely a problem.
- Public provision is inherently inefficient,
- Taxation is a burden, and
- Economic success is best judged by the rate at which GDP grows.
Forty-five years on, the evidence is clear. Neoliberalism's promises have not been delivered. But despite that, much of the UK's political debate is still about choosing between politicians who accept this story rather than asking whether the story itself is true.
Until we question the narrative, changing the politicians will change very little.
The issue is not who occupies Number 10.
The issue is whether we are finally prepared to abandon the failed economic ideas that have occupied Whitehall for more than four decades.
We need a new politics and a new economics. A politics of care and an economics of hope.
Those supporting Andy Burnham right now take note: he's just the next link in this chain, destined to fail like all others of his kind.
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Absolutely correct analysis. LINO is not going to change. Burnham has started badly and its not going to get better. The PLP has not changed either these are hand picked Starmer supporters and will do the same for Burn-em. The corruption has started already! Talk about Democracy! Not a mention about policy (except to row back on non committal refences to privatisation). We are about to be served up a PM elected by one constituency, with no parliamentary election, with no policy debate and look who he picks as his right hand “man”. This is a joke, surely! The Labour party is not the party of care, it has not been so for more than 50 years and it will continue to disappoint and alienate.
Burnham’s pick for chief of staff led firm that advised BP, Apple and Amazon | James Purnell | The Guardian
Complex stuff. I’m in full agreement we need to move on from simply critiquing the neolib story. And that we need to work out our own story that is appealing and meaningful for a wide group of people. But it’s not just about an alternative economic metaphor. Is it? MT’s metaphor was only in part about economics. It presented a deeply resonant image of family and a traditional social context of hard working parents trying to make ends meet having experienced the chaos of much of the 70’s. Although an economist myself, I don’t think the economic model is the right entry point to create our story. What is the chaos that we have faced that has made people fed up? Inequality? Rubbish jobs? Social divisions? Hate and abuse becoming normalised? How then does an alternative economic view feed into the answers to those issues rather than frame our proposition as a mainly economic metaphor?
Good questions
Anyone want to discuss what this could look like outside of the blog comments?
There is a lot of ambiguity in that suggestion. Whar are you proposing, more precisely?
Richard. You refer to my question containing ambiguity. Apologies. Late evening messsging!!! So I had made a comment posing some questions to help create a new story that is an antidote to the neoliberal ‘household’ nonsense. My comment was to see if anyone might be interested in exploring the questions. Probably best done via eg a zoom call rather than in the blog.
Understood
Richard you changed that recipe very nicely.
For anybody who still thinks Andy Burnham is the messiah. I must draw those people to the rumoured Rachel Reeves replacements. Yes she is bad but Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood.
In all this Starmer stuff somebody on the MSM quoted a poll that said Sunak was worse than Truss. Again not great but Liz Truss made a brief appearance on the podium of her count, after a long wait and then vanished. Proving her critics in one move. Even Jacob Rees-Mogg had the grace to stay on the podium and the only reason I did not hear his losers speech was the BBC cut to the Labour shin dig.
Lets give Starmer some credit he promised change and he delivered.
We changed one set of Neoliberal ( insert rude description of choice ) with a different lot.
This is the first chance I have had to wish you and Tom a speedy recovery. No doubt at some point your mind will want to do more than your body allows.
Already, but thank you
I’m actually getting angry ( I don’t get angry often) reading endless articles about the dangers of scaring the bond markets, like this latest one
‘Walking a tightrope’: Burnham’s borrowing plans clash with fiscal realities | Andy Burnham | The Guardian
It also mentions the Liz Truss episode as a reason to be scared of the bond markets.
When did the bond markets become king?
It’s like spreadsheets ruling over the needs of real people. Models of reality taking precedence over reality, or the left hemisphere of the brain thinking its the master, when it’s just the emissary, as Iain McGilchrist would say.
Is it true? Are bond markets the ultimate authority and the biggest existential threat is to scare them? IS there a way of Burnham carrying out bold policies without scaring them, or are we in groundhog day?
Right now, Groundhog Day.
Some questions for our conversations with colleagues, neighbours, communities, families.
How has Britain been failing, and how has that affected you and your neighbours?
What explanations has gov’t given for those problems, and do you accept their excuses?
What would you like gov’t to do?
What excuses do they give you for not doing it?
If you were Chancellor, and the Bank of England had to give you the money you needed, to deal with the problems you have identified, what would YOU spend it on?
Can you think of times when the gov’t HAS come up with the cash, even when they said they couldn’t afford it?
How did they DO that?
Where do you think the money we use, to pay our taxes to the government, comes from in the first place?
Where does the gov’t say it comes from?
Do you believe them?
Different groups respond to different “good questions” – we must really listen to THEIR answers, & to THEIR questions – the ones we hope OUR questions will provoke – because Reform UK Ltd. have successfully exploited that people have got used to NOT being listened to, but being constantly lectured to.
These questions are NOT so we can provide OUR answers, but so we can hear THEIR answers and be genuinely interested in what they say to us. We are after hearts and minds, finally getting it about “Money” so they can see a politics of care and economy of hope, might work – not so we can win arguments.
2 final questions for our friends:
What would they expect a “politics of care” to look like?
What would they expect a Chancellor or PM to do if they believed in an “economy of hope”?
This will be part of a blog post very soon. Thank you.
Liz Truss was actually different in that she rejected the monetary orthodoxy / fiscal rules. Not for investment sadly but to fund tax cuts mainly for the rich. That rejection of fiscal rules is what finished her off.
Like the United States, the UK is enduring a lack of investment in infrastructure, housing, education. Both nations are collections of many cities and states, many with no resources. In the face of dismantling of government and financing at the federal level, we ask how to generate local wealth, we ask who thinks about the earth’s and the people’s wellbeing. I ask how long will it take to recreate an international economy in which the US and the UK perform a helpful role in restoring the earth, joining the climate efforts of the rest of the world?
Indeed, the neoliberal catechism is the credo of a death cult.
‘Saw a Robert Bresson film today – The Devil, Probably (1977) – and just one line that seems to sum up our age:
“To reassure people, all you have to do is deny the facts”.
I agree with most of this, but under Blair and Brown the NHS did improve significantly. They massively increased the number of consultants and got waiting lists right down. I know you are going to say PFI and yes that was a disaster, but clinically the NHS was working and I remember needing a non urgent procedure and getting a date within weeks of being referred.
But it was icing on a neoliberal cake.
I guess so, but people could get to see a GP without waiting several weeks and there weren’t the massive delays in hospital treatment we currently have.
I do hope you finally get sorted today. Kidney stones are incredibly painful and I remember as a student nurse being told that drug addicts often faked it to get some pethidine.
I thought the Neoliberal aim was to dismantle the post war state which succeeded in rebuilding Britain, made people healthier, educated them and provided housing and work.
They have almost finished that job under the guise of economising to live within our means.
People have understood that concept so they have accepted the pain. But it wasn’t necessary and the vast majority of the population doesn’t realise what is being done to them.
And the liked of Farage are making it even worse by heaping blame on the immigrants who help to make our public services tick.
I think you are slightly mistaken !
“They have almost finished that job under the guise of economising to live within our means.”
OUR means have suffered badly, my means in the 70’s compared to now requires a salary of £150K.
The £ devalues by approx 50% every 10yrs and the Cons devalued it by 30% over their 13/14Yr period.( OBR ) figs.
So those of us earning in the 70’s can testify to all that we are being conned, and now the continuing use of Austerity telling you “WE have no Money”is down to to “Snake Oil Salesmen/women” if you believe anything then “Flying Pigs” should be in view ! Rgds.
I watched an episode of Newsnight this week in which a collection of politicians and “experts” of different persuasions discussed how Burnham might or might not be able to do to change the country for the better. The inability of the panel to think outside the neoliberal straitjacket was truly depressing. Of the five or six mostly forgettable people on the panel, only the venerable (Lord) Peter Hain seemed capable of imagining a future that might not necessarily be ruled by the bond markets. Perhaps he was the only one who could remember a time before economics became fossilised.
I entirely agree. It occurred to me this morning that maybe what we actually need to do (counter-intuitively) is talk about money less and more about outcomes. As it comes down to it, the debate with journalists always seems to be about “how are you going to pay for it” for any new idea, instead of discussion of why the idea is good or bad and whether it will work or not. Teachers will bring us smaller class sizes and it will immediately be dismissed as too expensive. Better staffed maternity wards may have saved a lot of lives in Nottingham, but the people running the QMC likely self policed before they even thought about asking for more money for staff. Our whole society is brainwashed to think asking for money is sinful, and asking for more resources is immoral.
Let’s get back to when being a bean counter was an insult and we needed less of the them in government (no offence Richard). The problem is actually that government talks about costs far too much and outcomes hardly at all.
If you have poor outcomes then any cost will have been poor value. When you have good outcomes, whatever the cost was it becomes less relevant anyway. We need to stop talking about how much things cost and start talking about what the country needs. We basically need to make talking about government spending the last thing that gets done instead of the first.
Whenever there is a debate about a public service and someone brings up cost, politely redirect the conversation to the outcome we want to achieve instead. Let’s make talking about government costs socially unacceptable in polite conversation. We should be talking about people, and the outcomes we want to achieve, costs be dammed.
You have suggested a line of thinking I was working on over several weeks recently. It will begin to see th3 light of day this morning. Thank you
Interesting review of a new film about de Gaulle and comparisons with the situation we find ourselves in now in the UK and global north generally:
“We know the rough basis of solutions to these dangers: taxing wealth in a way that becomes progressively international; ending subsidies to fossil fuels, putting a substantial global price on carbon and investing massively to decarbonise our energy consumption; regulating AI for the benefit of all (medical research: yes; non-consensual nudes at anyone’s fingertips: no); charging those responsible for war, genocide and ecocide with crimes and sanctioning them until justice finally arrives.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/25/france-charles-de-gaulle-film-free-france-nazi-occupation-politics
Dear Richard
First, I’m really sorry to hear of your health problems – I hope you will be fully recovered soon.
Second, have you seen this article from INET – ‘Sovereign Money is not Debt: Why Central bank Accounting Must Change’ by Biagio Bossone and Massimo Costa.
I think it’s putting some of your core arguments into different language. I’d be grateful to know if you agree, and if you think its way of putting things could be helpful.
Denis
I have read that paper and broadly it is heading in the right direction. But, I do not have the energy to comment.
Richard
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