I am on LBC Radio with Matthew Wright at 8 am this morning. It is here on the web.
I have been asked to discuss whether Andy Burnham's plans for extra state spending, nationalisation and more will require additional taxes. The framing is that of the household analogy.
I am bound to be on with someone else. No doubt they will be claiming that the analogy is true.
This could be fun.
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Good luck and do have fun!
I did
I will try to post a clip
I’m elsewhere (online) at 8am (a Beirut church) but I’ll catch that LBC clip later.
In the past three days I’ve seen critical references to the household analogy in the Guardian, Crispin Flintoff and Byline Times. Then there are developments in Japan this week with the Japanese PM getting threatened with a Liz Truss moment for upping government investment and getting a grip on the central bank. Is macro-economics getting its cage rattled? About time. Hope all went well at LBC.
It was fun. It went well.
They think they should walk away and let the private sector do it. They’ve destroyed a great deal of our public services as a result
the fundamental mistake that all our politicians make, and this I have to nail down: the government is not a household.
The government can make our money….Look at your £5 note and see who made it. Look at the money that was created to pay for COVID. Look at the money that was created to pay for the global financial crisis. It was government created money.
The government’s job is to put the resources in this country to good use. The reason why we have poor public services is the government will not spend to put our resources to use.
the Bank of England’s goal, is to create unemployment
over £2 trillion sits in bank accounts. No bank lends that money out. This is again one of those fundamental misunderstandings people have. Banks do not lend their depositors money. Banks create money when they lend. Deposits are created by lending, the same as the government creates wealth by spending, because the money they spend ends up in private people’s pockets.
There’s two sides to every entry. We aren’t going to leave debt to future generations. The lucky people in the future will inherit our national debt…Owning the national debt is indication of private wealth. It is the way we generate private wealth…our private wealth is all misused by the City of London for speculation, idle usage in financial engineering, no real creation of jobs, no investment in new companies, new housing, how to deal with climate change
We spend £80 billion a year subsidising private savings.
I think I said all that…
Were you listening?
Yes! (The original post is trying to give highlights within the word limit!) Well done! You covered alot of ground!
Thank you.
You did and it was a fun listen.
GlobalPlayer
https://www.globalplayer.com/catchup/lbc/uk/episodes/BUshnNVzUEUp1VnvLHWLdU52c/
+1:14:15
Thanks
At about 9.30 they had a piece on about Scotland raising the rate of personal taxation on those earning >£125k pa to 48% and that it had cost the Scottish budget £20million in lost revenue. The chap who was talking about it was gloating all the while and once again the tone was sneering.
I don’t know if the reporting is accurate, but given that attribution of income in the UK could easily be fudged as not earned in Scotland, what could be done to improve this situation. We have so few financial levers in Scotland (by devolution design, if course).
That was Dan Neidle. An exceptionally wealthy tax lawyer who claims to support Labour but who has leads hated tax justice.
Matthew Wright’s dismissive response, ending up with asking again the question you’d just answered, was very disappointing. Fortunately a caller later in the program spoke at length in support of at least some of what you said, and I was encouraged by that.
But I worry that a statement like yours will have little effect when not bolstered by an immediate discussion giving a change to ram points home and actually directly contrast them with the other views.
Paul
Agreed
And thank you.
I had to think for a while before sending the following comments. Since finding your blog a few months ago I have come to greatly respect your knowledge and expertise, your determination to continue pushing for a better government in the UK and the considerable work you have done towards that aim. I am aware that I have made no such efforts myself, But…
Having listened to the broadcast I was disappointed. Matthew Wright himself said he would need to listen to your comments again at half speed to understand what you said and I agree. I have experience of the excitement that can overtake you when talking to a live audience and this was clear this morning. Your presentation was fast and breathless, like an overexcited puppy desperate for attention. The content was excellent but needed to be said more slowly and with a greater sense of the gravitas it both required and deserved.
This criticism is meant to be entirely constructive. Just saying “yeah, great. Brilliant, loved it” achieves nothing.
keep up the good work!
Kit
Very politely, I knew I had limited time, a lot to say and an interviewer I had to stop interrupting or nothing would have been achieved. Your comment is in that case very misplaced, and not constructive.
Link to
Matthew Wright
LBC UK
https://www.globalplayer.com/catchup/lbc/uk/b8FPjUy/
Show on
Sunday, 26 July
https://www.globalplayer.com/catchup/lbc/uk/episodes/BUshnNVzUEUp1VnvLHWLdU52c/
First mention of Richard Murphy around 01:09:42
First on is Angela Knight
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Knight
Before I looked up her wikipedia I had no idea just how steeped in Banking, financial services and The City of London she is.
She says there is no easy answer but has a pat easy answer and by advocating for ‘digitalising’ everything and for reducing staff.
Richards segment begins around 01:14:09
😉
Many thanks
Thank you.
Angela was my boss for nearly 5 years, 2008 – 12. She employed some socialists.
🙂
I do not know for sure but I would be surprised if Mr Wright studied much about economics as part of his English and Drama degree at Exeter. Like so many journalists these days, they pontificate and criticise without having any real understanding of the subject matter they are supposed to be covering. As a lawyer, I have seen this time and again when it comes to press reports on court cases. When I first started out as a prosecutor over 40 years ago my colleagues and I used to play a game to see if one of our catchphrases could make its way into the local evening paper. We knew when the journalist were going to be in court and many journalists were pressed for time so were happy to latch on to anything that sounded headline grabbing. If it did, then the rest of the team would buy you a drink come Friday night. My particular catchphrase was “a catalogue of appalling crime”. It seems to me that the supposed “household budget” and “there’ no such thing as a magic money tree” fall into a similar simplistic catchphrase category.
Hi – I just wanted to say how much I enjoy reading and listening to Richard. More than that I meant no offence whatsoever when I said I would listen again at half speed. What’s more Richard’s machine gun style is highly entertaining/effective and I’d hate him to change. Ok. Love to all x
Many thanks, Matthew. Appreciated. Talk soon.
So great to hear this on LBC. Breaking through the rinse and repeat cycle of red herrings and misunderstandings on broadcast media, about money, tax, government and public spending, is so necessary. Hopefully some listeners will be inspired to read this blog. It’s been a major education for me so far. Can’t believe how little i understood for all these years.
Thanks
I listened this morning and thought it both entertaining and informative, even given the time constraints. Mathew is not versed in economics, yet I believe he is on our side, as is James O’Brien on weekdays. I think Dan Neidle was just playing around with figures and usually misses the point of what policies are trying to achieve. He is also apt to repeat the lie that rich people will leave the UK for good if they have to pay more tax. We know this is not true; wealthy people do move around the globe with residences in more than one tax domain, but most retain their main residence in their native country.
Thanks
I’ve just listened to your interview. You’re right that you had to make the points quickly, and I thought, contra Kit W-N, very engagingly. Ok, the devotees of your output understood it and the hinterland of thought you’ve put in behind it, we don’t need ‘converting’. Ok Matthew Wright didn’t but he might actually go over your contribution again and dig deeper. But, the important thing is that perhaps this time someone with influence, may have heard, may be intrigued, may find out more, and may start a genuine discussion leading to a paradigm shift in political thinking. And if not this time then perhaps next.
As an aside I’m afraid I shamelessly use your Jane Austen allusion to explain the double entry public debt point to people. It works!
Thanks, Greg
Hi Richard. I’ve just listened to your interview on LBC and I must say that it was coherent and paced exactly as you explained, to get your points over in a very limited time slot. And thanks for describing Angela Knight’s comments as nonsense or some such thing. If Angela Knight really believes that the economy should be run like a household she should not be invited to comment on solving our economic problems. Is she really unaware that austerity (running the economy like a household) has crippled the economy? Didn’t Thatcher, who said the government has no money of its own, go on to make B of E created money available for asset purchase? The truth is there but there are none so blind as those who don’t want to see, or in this case, listen to you. Matthew Wright seems a decent sort of chap but he hasn’t the understanding to appreciate the importance of what you said and, for example, call for a full programme – of Panorama scale – on the truth about government spending.
Thank you
I think Matthew understands more than you think.