Britain's Economic Model Is Collapsing—Here's Why

Hello, I'm Richard Murphy and this is another of the podcasts that we are running where I talk to a guest who has a particular expertise in an area of interest. And today I'm talking to my old friend John Christensen. He's been on here before. John and I co-founded the Tax Justice Network and worked very closely together for over a decade on running that organization, thinking about how we could take on the world of tax havens. And that meant we spent more than a decade of our lives working together to fight neoliberalism. And neoliberalism is the

subject of this podcast in broad terms. John, welcome. >> Hi, Richard. Good to be back. >> John, where do we start? Do we start with neoliberalism or do we go to the post-war consensus and talk about where neoliberalism came from and why it was in opposition to that world that we were both brought up in. >> Well, let's start with the postwar consensus. You and I and many many other people enjoyed the benefit of what was from kind of late 1940s onwards through to the late 1970s a a pretty much um wellestablished consensus ac across

most countries that the state had a massive role to intervene to redistribute wealth and income to help support uh the market economies by constructing infrastructure promoting research and and and and and and development of new product ideas. The state was highly interventionist and in Britain we had what everyone thought of as a from cradle to grave welfare state. Um and during that period which I think run ran from the early 1950s right the way through to the 1980s to the time when Margaret Thatcher was uh elected in 1979 and Ronald Reagan came in the following

year. until that time that consensus which was built around the idea of Lord Mayard Kanes pretty much held good and as I said the consensus helped to to help countries by building infrastructure educating and training skilled workforces funding technology and and and new research redistributing wealth and income through higher taxes particularly obvious obviously on the wealthy people maintaining market competition by taking an activist stance against monopolistic power. Generally restricting the power of capital amongst other things by by protecting trade unions and indeed supporting trade unions. Maintaining tight credit controls to prevent banks from inflating property

prices and and such like. maintaining capital controls to curtail capital flight and protect the currency. This consensus held true for 30 years and it's known in France as glorier and in North America it's known as the glo golden age of capitalism. Um >> which is quite perverse in a way. >> Well, the state provided the golden age of capitalism. There we go. >> Hanes did not set out. He was definitely not a Marxist. No. um nor was he in that much of a chimpeterian. Kane set out to protect capitalism from itself. And he watched that

period through the 1930s when capital and capitalists aligned with the fascists. Um which is what we're seeing now. Um a and you know after World War II he wanted to prevent that from happening again. Uh so he saw it as absolutely necessary to have strong states and strong trade unions to block that to block a recurrence. Um and and and Richard, you and I both have been quite involved over many years with the New Economic Foundation. It's interesting that new the New Economic Foundation quite a few years ago actually pinpointed 1976 as the high point

of capitalism when most people had the best standards of living for most workers in in the industrial west at least better access to health and to education and to general welfare. Uh and equality or inequality was at at its lowest point. Equality was strong. um that left the New Economic Foundation pinpointed 1976 as the high point of of post-war capitalism. And I I I and I've seen their research. I I guess you have as well >> and I agree with them. And I went to university that year and began reading this the general theory John

Maynard Kanes which was still taught and in fact I think this is a 1976 printed version um which is just kind of curious because it was 40 years of course after Kanes had published it. It was 200 years after Adam Smith had published the wealth of nations and it was 200 years after America was founded and we reached the high point of capitalism. And it's been a downhill progress ever since. It's worth mentioning, of course, John, that we actually saw significant growth in that period, much better growth than we've ever seen since. Oh, >> yes.

I mean, if you look at the the long-term trends, the growth during that period was phenomenal. But we have to remember coming out of the 1940s, some incredible technology shifts were were benefiting average people. We we saw then the arrival of fridges for everybody, televisions for everybody, cars and mass mobility for everybody. By the late 1970s, the jet jet transport was so well established. Jet airlines have become, you know, so well established that the Boeing 747 changed everybody's access to holidays. Um it really was a period of spectacular growth and by and large the people

who lived through that that period that the kind of boomer generation also had the underlying security of proper pension provision um health services access to education. I don't know about you, but I was able to dip in and out of training state sponsored uh training programs right the way through um for for much of my career. Um so we never had it so good to coin um Harold McMillan's phrase it was a period but I wouldn't want to paint too glossy a picture. the cracks were showing because by that stage that or rather by the

stage of the late 60s and the early 70s the rates of profit particularly in North America and in Europe were beginning to collapse and the decline seriously returns to capital were declining and they were declining partly because we had increased competition coming through from new emerging economies Japan being one you know everybody was buying Japanese electronics and cameras and cars and motorcycles and this stuff and the other and then Korea and a whole host of others and then of course China began to come through later on but let's be clear John John Germany had reestablished

its position in the world economy by then as well. >> Oh absolutely. In fact Germany was becoming dominant in some sectors obviously cars but in other sectors as well. Um and and and and and Britain I mean it seemed to me that that that through that period Britain was already beginning to suffer from the finance curse. By which I mean that the the the the um investment in productive activity, genuine productive activity was declining. Um and investment in financial engineering and and and in speculation and in rent extraction or rent extractive activities was already on

the way up. And that was because it's particularly once Margaret Thatcher came came onto the scene. Uh the sense was that Britain's future lay in the city of London. That was the goose that would lay the lay all those lovely golden eggs and financial capitalism became ascendant. Um but it it meant the policy mix that followed on from the post-war consensus. um the policy mix we know know as neoliberalism completely flipped that post-war settlement. >> Okay. So where did it come from? Where do you think it came from? How did it get here? Why was

it so successful in in invading the intellectual the political the narrative space? >> I think we have to go back quite a long way. I mean many many political economists go back to 1947 and the a little known event that happened in Switzerland at the at Mont Pelaran the first meeting of the Mont Pelan Society headed up by um by von Hayek but also with Milton Freriedman and others. Um we could actually take it even earlier to a a colloque as they say politely in France a colloquium which happened in Paris in 1937. Um the

I think it's called the Walter Lipman colloquium. Yes. >> Why was why was that important? That was important because already before the war, um, a bunch of economists and bankers and others were starting to push back against Roosevelt's New Deal, which they saw as a a an amazing and powerful threat to their vested interests. But by the war intervened 1947 they met at uh at Mont Pelar and coming out of Mont Peller they started a very longterm and exceedingly wellfunded program funded funding went into creating think tanks the entire Atlas network across the world think

tanks like the institute of economic affairs in this country the heritage society in in the United states, Adam Smith Institute, one could go on and on, but they were replicated gradually through the 70s and 80s across the entire world because there was so much money involved and that money was coming from a a large variety of sources, many of them banks. Banks were interested in toppling things like credit controls and and pushing back against capital controls. uh billionaires, the Koch brothers for example and fossil fuel sector, they were pouring money into it in in in

Britain um a character called Anthony Fischer who made his money from boiler chickens um was >> unbelievably >> well he he had a lot of money to begin with. He inherited a fortune but you know but boiler boiler chickens was part were part of that kind of post-war affluence. you know, suddenly most families were able to afford a roast >> on Sunday and and and Buckstead Broer chickens were were the thing. Um, very popular at that time. So, it it it wasn't something that happened spontaneously or suddenly. It was a long slow burn of getting

academics into into university departments, of getting journalists into key newspapers, influencers right, you know, right the way across the spectrum, think tanks, academics, um, journalists and of course politicians. >> But you the implication involved, Richard, were absolutely huge. >> Yes. The implication of what you're saying is that this was all planned. There wasn't an >> I think it was very carefully planned. I mean it would be trit to describe it as a conspiracy. It was a very well planned long-term exercise with a great deal of money and coordination and that coordination came partly from the

Mont Pelaran Society and partly from other sources. something. Heritage Foundation, Heritage Foundation was talking about the things that Trump has just implemented in his um project 2025 project. They were talking about that way back in the 60s and 70s. >> Yes. Yes. Absolutely. When we were first coming across them, when we were working together on tax havens, these things were very definitely on their agenda. There's nothing surprising about project 2025, >> I think. very important which is tax havens um >> right well tax havens are one of the features I want to talk about clearly

and the other I suppose is the Washington consensus because to some degree they're used in parallel to spread the ideas of what the whole of the neoliberal project is about so you were working in Jersey for 11 years you were a Jersey man of origin how did all this impact tax haven life and how did it change it and what was the role of the tax haven in the delivery of neoliberalism. >> Right. Well, um, yes, you're right. I'm a Jerseyman and for for various reasons, I thought correctly, as it turned out, that a period

working offshore would help me to kind of do a deep dive into the way in which neoliberalism was working, you know, at the coldface. um and and and I worked for a while with um a division of Deoites, the one of the big four accounting firms and then for over a decade I headed the government economic service in Jersey. So I really was there kind of at the heart of offshore uh in one of Britain's most prominent um secrecy jurisdiction stroke tax havens. Um let's talk about the Washington consensus. Um it's called Washington Consensus because

it is very very closely associated with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and both of them were very um heavily involved in promoting the ideas of the Washington census of neoliberalism um particularly in the global south but also it has to be said in the global north and not least in in Britain in 1976 when the IMF was called in. I think there are 10 maybe a dozen key pillars of the Washington consensus but I want to just focus on four of them. Um and the first one I think is the one which

um triggered the the greatest change and that was financial market liberalization. Mhm. >> Um now, um the postwar consensus had a very strong uh emphasis upon credit controls and not allowing the banks to let rip with credit into into the domestic economy as a means of controlling inflation and and other things. Um and capital controls. In other words, the the emphasis was on mobilizing domestic capital and trying to maintain dem domestic capital by restricting the opportunities for um for capital flight. Um capital flight of course had devastated many countries in the 1920s but particularly in

the 1930s after the Wall Street crash and they were very anxious to avoid a duplicate you know that happening again. So financial market liberal liberalization was one of the key goals of all those banks that were putting huge sums of money into the uh the the neoliberal projects into the neol the more panel society and and its various offshoots. But also attached to that was a strong push for trade liberalization and not just liberalization of trades in goods and and commodities but liberalization of trade in services. Above all, the big banks wanted to be able

to move internationally to establish branches everywhere. um and and and they were keen to have a general agreement on trade in services to match the general agreement on trade and tariffs which had primarily applied to goods and to commodities. Um and this enabled them to become the global bimoths that they they have have now become. So financial market liberalization pillar one, trade liberalization pillar two. Pillar three was privatization of publicly owned assets. Um and that was important because through the period of the 1940s,50s and beyond. Um many um many utility services have become nationalized. um

not just water but energy, transport, uh telefan, telecoms generally blah blah blah and the whole load of very major and utilities have become nationalized and for very good reason because in many cases they are natural monopolies. Uh and if they're left in the private sector, they tend as we've seen with water in this country, they tend to become wealth extracting and they don't invest at all and you know the gigantic ripoffs. And there were many many um very wealthy companies and uh wealthy individuals sitting out there rubbing their hands wanting to get a a a

hand on these utility services to privatize them and turn them into wealth extraction companies. We are in the mess we are now with water companies because of the pressure they were bringing in the 1960s and 1970s and their long-term campaigning to privatize. Now the the fourth of the pillars that uh I think are key to the Washington consensus was to to to radically shift tax regimes. Um and and and here what's happened what happened was the post-war consensus which in many cases had fairly progressive tax regimes which did a lot of put a lot of

emphasis on on redistributing income and wealth. That consensus was flipped and the so-called supply side economists said no no no we're doing it all wrong. What we got to do is we've got to incentivize investors to invest. And in order to do that, we have to chuck them as much sugar candy as we possibly can, cut the taxes, and they will invest. Um, >> and did by the way, substitute value added taxes and other other consumer taxes for for the the tax losses from cutting taxes on profits and on capital gains and all of that

substitute um value added tax, which is highly regressive in most countries. It's even fairly regressive in this country, but food and other things are are exempted, but in most countries, they're not, particularly in the in the global south, and value added tax became an a highly regressive tax. >> Mhm. Agreed entirely. Although major institutions like the IFS, the Institute for Physical Studies in the UK would argue not completely bizarrely. They base it on purchasing rather than on income. whereas all tax progressivity is related income. I I just beg to differ and you know I don't

think they they've done much to explain why we've become such unequal societies but anyway you know with those four pillars in place but there was another thing in in in in place in order to batter down the the consensus the postwar consensus around taxation and and and and nationalization and so the um capital had already shifted offshore in very large sums, in huge amounts. They shifted offshore through the 60s and 70s and and they created these things called tax havens where they could operate in a relatively deregulated, not unregulated but deregulated environment um and uh

with very little enforcement, but they could also act without, you know, make huge profits without paying taxes. Um, and what what that enabled them to do once they shifted capital offshore, it enabled them to play one country off against another. It started this race to the bottom. It started this whole competitiveness agenda of saying, well, if you don't give us tax breaks and deregulate, then we will go somewhere else. >> Yes. >> There's always going to be a Luxembourg or Cayman Island where we can go. Um, so, uh, you're going to have to deregulate. You're

going to have to cut. And in that respect, I see tax havens as having been the battering rams which push down the walls of the postwar consensus. >> Oddly, I always thought they were the aircraft carriers from which the assault on mainland democracy took place, but doesn't really matter. Both metaphors work. Um they were clearly in the front line of this assault on the choice of people to have run a system which did have progress progressive taxation at its core for so long and which suddenly was literally destroyed by finance. The bankers played an enormous

role in this. I mean you keep on saying that and their motivation I think was twofold wasn't it? One was obviously they wanted to expand their market but two they actually wanted the state out of their market. They didn't want the state to be a provider of finance anymore. They wanted to be the source of control even over the state by pretending that they funded the state through lending to it. So everything changed. They were literally trying to take control of the agenda. Would you agree with that idea? Was that one of the things that

was going on here? >> I I totally agree. And that was partly because the banks were were having by they were having to compete with state-run institutions, National Savings Bank and so on. A and they they didn't like that because that was um under undermining the very large profits that they could could make uh had they not been operating in a competitive environment. Bankers don't like competition. And the interesting thing about capitalism of course is they whilst they all talk about competition and and and you know it's the core of microeconomic theories of the firm

that they all compete the last thing they want to do is compete. And there was a another and I think really important and fairly topical part of this neoliberal uh battering down or bombardment from an aircraft carrier call it what you will of of postwar consensus. And that part not coincidentally happens in Switzerland. It happens at a place called Davos. It's called the World Economic Forum. And it is super important because the World Economic Forum performs a number of functions. First of all, it provides the so-called supposed intellectual uh basis for the the the competitiveness

agenda that they use their um competitiveness index as a battering ram to force countries to lower their regulation, lower their enforcement, lower their tax rates. And they say all of that's a good thing because that way you'll attract more capital. um and they don't look at the the broader consequences. They've played a huge part in extending neoliberalism. They've also played a very significant part and it's kind of nauseating to watch this in putting politicians, elected politicians into the same arena as the world's most powerful bankers and just bankers, financiers, private equity operators and also other

industrialists, big tech most prominently in the last few years and telling the politicians, you're going to have to sit there and listen quietly. whilst they tell you what they want from you and that's what actually happens at Davos. So they've sh you know they they they have played a very very important part in shifting the power away from democracy to the tech bros and the big banks and so on and it's they who are these days telling politicians what the politicians can and cannot do. >> How long did it take though? Because if we say

neo the neoliberal era began in near enough 1980 um Thatcher 79 Reagan 1980 how long was it before the world was panicking? Now I didn't pick this message up probably as soon as you did but you were in Jersey and I wasn't I was in London and I wasn't dealing direct with directly with finance at the time but even then I felt the ramifications very clearly by the late 80s. When were you beginning to sense this? And what was the political reaction? Because you lived through that, you saw it. >> Yeah. In in some respects,

I see Jersey, where I was obviously in the government service uh and as an economist, right at the core of this. I I think Jersey provides a microcosm and I became really aware of it. Now, I had already been kind of nudged in this direction by a meeting in 1978. And the meeting was in London at the School of Oriental and African Studies. And at that meeting, I met for the first and only time an extraordinary professor, Professor Susan Strange from the London School of Economics. And and she she of course became known best known

for her work, you know, her book Casino Capitalism. But she was talking about offshore and and said talking about the dangers that offshore represented to the then post-war consensus still more or less struggling struggling along. Um and she was saying the these offshore tax havens are kind of the weak link. This is where capital, particularly the big banks, are able to force politicians to deregulate and undermine the post-war consensus. And so I went up went offshore to Jersey with that in mind. And that's exactly what I saw because what I saw in Jersey was an

extremely weak polity. uh no no no kind of visible opposition no to to to the power of the financial services sector. Um pol politicians who saw this as their role effectively and to act as the the political committee in in the in working in the interests of the big banks and the the big big finance. um and many of the my colleagues in the civil service um saw it as their role to do exactly the same and and and and you know at the time I thought oh my god this is exactly what Marx described

in the communist manifesto when he saw the state as being essentially the executive of the bourgeoisi um that's that's more or less the term he he used and that's what I saw in Jersey I saw comprehensive state capture and comprehensive judicial capture But by the mid 1990s, the well, in fact, a little bit earlier, there was the Gordon report in the in America a long time earlier. Let's ignore that because it did attract very little attention if I'm honest. But by the mid1 1990s, the world was beginning to be worried. We know that the European

Union reacted. It had something called the code of conduct committee which from reported for the first time in 96 or 97. uh Dorm Primmerolo, a British MP, sec chief secretary to the treasury I think for some years um chaired it um when it came out with its code of conduct which was aimed at tax havens and then of course we had the OECD coming in on the act in a sense slightly surprisingly because of course the OECD was closely linked to the Washington organizations in many ways and yet saying harmful tax competition was a problem

for the world. It never defined what was beneficial tax competition. Of course, a point you and I have discussed many times over. I'm well aware and you and I became intimately involved with the discussion around these issues, including knowing some of the players quite well. Jeffrey Owens at the OECD jumps to mind. Um, and he was the man who was very much behind that particular report. But by then the awareness of the damage existed and yet here we are near as damn it 30 years later neoliberalism is still around. So what's the narrative? Why has

it survived for so long? John, >> I think it's survived partly because of the huge amount of money that's been poured into keeping it going. You know, think about the the, you know, the Tutton Street think tanks in this country which kind of almost totally shaped the agenda not just of Truss's disastrous government but also the preceding governments and and more recently I mean it seems quite clear that they are still um at at the very least guiding some of the actions of the Stalma government in this country. I want to go back to something

you said, you know, why why was it why why in the 1990s did Western countries, particularly United States, you me you're right to mention the Gordon report, why did they suddenly get scared of what was going on? Well, partly because the United States found itself threatened by tax competition from other countries. In other words, what they'd set in motion in Latin America and in Africa and elsewhere using the IMF as the kind of battering ram in in those countries to force through tax cuts particularly for multinational companies but also for for local billionaire elites. Um

that was beginning to come home to roost and and they were suffering as a result. they they needed to protect their own tax base and they also recognized that deregulation was starting to undermine the the banking sector. Um uh and and and of course that just kind of continued through late 1990s and beyond to 2008. But I think the warning sites had warning signs had been picked up a long time earlier. >> They had but London didn't heed them. Gordon Brown clearly did not act in the best interests of the country at that period and

we were engaging. >> You will remember that you and I were regularly meeting Gordon Brown's team. >> Yes. >> Um now Gordon Brown's and and and and of course his predecessor Anthony Blair were enthralled to something called the third way. You might remember that very well. >> Very wishy-washy kind of unspecified thing coming out of the London School of Economics. Um and and and and and and they totally bought into the idea that the markets know best about everything. >> Um and and and that that was the curse of new labor because the markets had

they actually stopped to listen in the city itself, the markets were flagging up the crisis a long time before it actually happened. And you and I were flagging that to the Treasury at the meetings we had at the Treasury and they were going they were saying you're living in the fair, you know, a fairy world. It's not happening. The markets will self-correct and they didn't. >> Well, let's also be clear that was also happening in the States. Bill Clinton had delivered that and of course then he was followed by George W. Bush. Um, but Bill

Clinton in particular did that by removing the GlassSteagall Act, the last sort of bastion of the defenses of the post 1930s reaction to keep bankers in their box and he took it away and let them out in a way that was really dangerous to the world and clearly has had consequences. I do remember I mean and you're right to refer to a lot of meetings that we had during this period and there were a lot um all over the place including in number 10 at some points. Um, I remember a meeting I had with very

senior HMRC people sometime soon after 2009. It might have been in 2009. And one of the people present was Melanie Doors, now Dame Melanie Doors, who's now the chair of Ofcom. And I asked her at the time when she was one of the permanent secretaries at HMRC, why was the government so intent in putting neoliberalism back on the wall because Humpty Dumpty had fallen off and was broken? and why restore him to his place is the way I even think I put the question to her. And she said, "We don't have any choice. There's nothing

else to put back on the wall." And that was kind of scary. And I don't know whether she still believes that, but it was she who said it now. And I think it's long enough ago that I can break that confidence now. But what is the replacement? We've seen the damage, John. We know that it's there. We can see the consequences. We can see the growth in inequality. We can see the breakdown in society in a very real way. The fact that we do have societ a society which is not now just have yachts and

have nots. It's just have a roof over your head and have not. It's have food on the table and have not. It's very very much more than have a yacht or not, which is what the joke was way back in the day. What we're still in this situation where we've got neoliberalism. What comes next? And how do we remove this peri penicious influence of the bankers? >> Yeah, good. I mean, first of all, I I I think that the reply was there was nothing else. There were no alternatives. It's totally inadequate because there were plenty

of alternatives at the time. Um and and and and one of the the worst things that happened post financial crisis was because the politician now you and I working at tax justice network we had a whole bunch of policy proposals we put forward and and they eagerly uh grabbed them because they they had they hadn't been doing any thinking at all. And I think, you know, it's legitimate to point to to left-leaning um organizations and think tanks and institutions and say, "Why weren't you prepared for this?" Because the right was, but the right went into

full distraction mode. You know, mobilizing UK, mobilizing Brexit, mobiliz pinpointing immigrants as the problem. They went full-on fascist and and it went on fairly early fairly early early in that direction. more recently, very recently indeed, um, you know, there's been proposals again coming out of London School of Economics where the third wave emanated all back all those decades ago for something called the London Consensus. I've just read the con the London consensus book which was published last October and find it very unconvincing um because um you know it's basically yet another attempt to put Humpty

Dumpty back together again by >> that's what I think that's what I think >> we agreed on that I wasn't sure um but you know um and and Trump of course has taken things in a very very different direction um uh Trump um is it seems to me he's involved in a project which which isn't so much to put capitalism together to boost capitalist product capitalist profitability. It's more about kind of handing out massive possibilities to two selected clicks, the tech bros for example, cryptocurrencies. Um I I don't think his project is so much about

trying to get capitalism again by breaking the power of organized labor uh or anything like that. Um the London um consensus however does there's one area where I do agree and it in in that it it seems to recognize that economics is not detached from politics um uh and therefore the state needs to have a new role. I think we need to talk about how the state can massively and not just the state but all the international institutions that have been allowed to wither on the bind and I'm particularly thinking about the United Nations how

they can all be reinvigorated recreated to meet the needs. So I think there are three areas three key areas which we need to talk about. How as a matter of urgency do we restore democracy? How as a matter of urgency do we restore market quality? And how as a matter of urgency do we restore some semblance or start back on the on on track towards restoring equality and and removing the obscenities of wealth re wealth malddistribution that we have at the moment and I think they all overlap to a very large extent. So I mean

one could go through a shopping list and I've got one you know in my mind here about how to restore democracy. I mean, we need to, for example, completely stop the ability of billionaires and powerful corporations to fund politics. >> You know, we've got to get that money out of it. Uh, it has become obscene. It's obscene to see our politicians not just do using revolving doors, but, you know, even having their suits pay for them. It's pathetic and stuff. We need to remove the power of billionaires to control print and broadcast and social media.

They completely control the media which are so crucial to democracy. And that's got to stop. And that that in this country means neutralizing, as far as I'm concerned, mutualize the BBC. Do it now and do it comprehensively. >> Um go on if you want. I mean ban the revolving doors between private sector and political office particularly for ministers and that's obscene and and and has led to so much corruption. Um we need we talked about um funding of think tanks we need to require full transparency of funding of so-called think tanks. when we know that

they're funded by big oil and they're funded by big tobacco and they're funded by big farmer and yet they're on the BBC all the time and I can't believe it but someone from the BBC's told me that they think that one of the most prominent think tanks is funded by farmer and oil and and and and banks is leftleaning. I think you I mean where do they come from? >> That's quite strange because most of the left do publish a lot of information about their source of funding. As indeed we have I mean I voluntarily

put my own personal accounts including a full analysis of where the income comes from on the web through company's house so that people can find out how I'm funded quite deliberately. I mean there is no real bias in my case you know but I've always shown who gave me grants or whatever else and I think that's fundamental to pride at tax justice network that you know when we put out our accounts we came at the very top of the index of you know transparent um quite right transparent organizations NOS's um and I I think that

was a matter of great pride for us >> but can I go back to something you said a little earlier John and I do think this is important because I don't think we win just by these techniques although They're important. I do think we have to win the battle of ideas. And you mentioned the fact that many leftleaning think tanks were unprepared for 2008. We definitely were prepared for 2008. Um we did put a lot of ideas on the table and I actually just to use an example and you and I were both involved in

this the Occupy movement. Um I do remember seeing um a picture of you being carried um by friendly police officers out of Vodafone. I think there was one on each limb. Um I didn't do that same way. I acted as expert witness for some of those however who um were carried out when they appeared in court. But the point was we had materials available. We promoted the idea of the tax gap. We promoted ideas around tax havens. We talked about how there could be a change in narrative. And in fact the occupier movement did eventually

adopt an agenda for policy demands which were remarkably similar to those that you and I have been talking about. we did have a way to tackle the issues and that led on to of course 2012 and David Cameron adopting the whole idea that he was pushing forward through the OECD which led to the whole of the profit shifting and capital flight program there and trying to expose all this stuff. So it is ideas that matter. You still see a poverty of ideas on the left. I feel I have still got that poverty. >> I I

I I totally agree. It is ideas that matter. Um though I disagree with Keynes's idea, you know, Keynes's notion that it's ideas, not vested interests that shape politics. I think it's vested interests that shape politics. Um but the only weapon we have is is to fight back with ideas. But the problem I have with so much leftwing thinking is it's so abstracted um and and and so devoid of really precise pinpointed policy measures when what's needed in the moments of crisis is very carefully worded green papers and indeed white papers. I remember, you know, when

we talked about country bycountry reporting the first day we met, um, within a matter of weeks, you had actually come up with a rather precisely, um, worded proposal for an international financial reporting standard on country by country reporting. And that's the way we move forward. And that's what I think is missing from so much of the progressive agenda. They're very precise policy proposals. So a politician could say, "Well, it's already written for me. I'm not going to carry this one forward." >> Well, we did that. I mean, we presented bills to parliament. We did, as

you say, um, work on country by country reporting. When somebody wanted it, the OECD wanted it. There was the the working paper you can develop from, and indeed they did. um when we're talking about tax havens back to restoring democracy because you know what what's happened of course is that so many politicians are captured by the vested interests funded by the vested interests and so on and and you only have to look at the health secretary you know and and and and you know what who who seems unabashed about you know fact that their private

office is funded by big American health insurance companies and it's wrong and it's corrupt. and we should call it out. But what I think we need to do to restore democracy is to remove that totally from the equation, but also to push back against the massive centralization of power. We need to restore in this country and in many other countries the abilities of local initiatives, municipal initiatives at local council level. And I'm thinking about things like for example, you know, pushing back against climate crisis by housing insulation, which is just isn't happening. and you know

uh renew installing renewable heat sources. This needs to happen at municipal level. >> Well, that's where it started. Let's be honest, John. If we go back to where energy systems started in the UK, they were all local authority funded. Where did transport start? All local authority funded. Where did public health start? All local authority funded. All of those. >> Who in who installed the um the mains water and whoities the sewers? It was the local authorities and it had to be local authorities because let's face it, if you're going to install a main sewer, >>

you need to dig the the road up, the entire road. You don't do it one house by one house and >> and you need to take the community with you and that we haven't got the ability to do now because the community and the local authority hardly know of each other. And I think I think that's >> there's another thing in at the same time as pushing back against the centralization into the kind of the nations Westminster in this country or Washington. We also need to reinvigorate the international institutions and in particular the United Nations

which of course has been undermined mainly by United States, United Kingdom and others for decades now um because um they they've been using the security council to veto so many initiatives over such a long period because those initiatives didn't suit their best interests. So we need to push back against on the one hand the uh board of peace initiative of Donald Trump and the complete atrophing of the of the of the u the the uh the United Nations processes. We need to reinvigorate the United Nations and that and that includes initiatives like the International Monetary

Fund and that should be removed physically removed from Washington and take >> absolutely agree Joeberg or somewhere like that in the in the global south and the World Bank should move to >> I don't know Sa Paulo or or >> Mumb American hegemonic control over the international rule making process uh scrap the United Nations uh security council veto just get rid of it um a and properly democratize at that level as well. So here we are agreeing in that sense with one part of the London consensus which says for heaven's sake reconnect politics and economics

because that's essential but don't apologize for doing so is absolutely core and what I feel about that book on the London consensus is that it's apologizing for this as if oh I'm sorry to have to interfere slightly. No, we're not saying that we're apologizing for this. We're saying this is absolutely essential to rebuild things. John, we've been talking for, according to the clock on my screen, 46 minutes and 30 seconds at this moment, which may or not be precisely accurate by the time Thomas has done an edit, but I don't think there's much he's going

to chop out of what we've had to say here. We've come a long way. We've come from 1945 or even 1938 to today. We still have neoliberalism. There is still a finance curse. Would you come back and talk about the finance curse? I'd like to do in fact I'd love to do that. I'd also like to talk a little bit more at the later stage about how we can go about the process of restoring market quality which I think is something the London consensus is totally inadequate on. I also think that they're somewhat inadequate on

restoring equality. They're acknowledging that we need to restore quality, but they're little bit weak on the substance there. And I think you and I have quite a a lot to say about that. But >> well, I think everybody's weak on the substance of that, including all those who keep on campaigning for wealth taxes without having the slightest idea as to what a wealth tax means, who it's going to be targeted at, how they define wealth to be, where it's located, what they're going to actually do in terms of an assessment process, and why taxing a

few billionaires actually won't change the consumption profile of the world. because these people aren't spending that money anyway. And what is more, it isn't even represented by cash. Why all of that matters as well? I'm not saying they don't matter, but I'm saying that isn't enough. >> Well, again, I think what you've done is you've pinpointed an inadequacy of some of the progressive um organizations. Yes, you you can shout wealth tax from from the and it'll be very popular. to shout it from the rooftops. But unless you come forward with a very detailed white paper

about exactly how you can tax wealth and you can tax wealth in many many ways um including property taxes and capital gains taxes and so on but but far better as far as I'm concerned is to tackle the underlying problem which is that wealth is accumulating in the hands of a tiny minority because they have been able to create pinch points where they are able to extract enormous ous amounts of value super profits by having control of organizations like Amazon and this or whatever and that is the problem. >> I I I think that's really

a key point and I think it's where you and I who have shocked people along the our path through this career um can still do that. I I'm you mentioned about health and you talked about where's streeting at health secretary. I was interviewed only a week >> names. >> Oh, didn't you? Well, I did. >> I mentioned health secretary though. >> I I was interviewed only a week or so ago by the British Medical Journal. And those who've been watching this might want to have a look at actually a podcast that I did for for

them. Um and they told me it was going to be 10 minutes when it was broadcast. It was actually 35 minutes. They cut out about three minutes in total of what we'd actually recorded because I think they were so shocked that I actually did exactly what you've just mentioned which is to talk about where's the power problem in health. They thought I was going to go and talk to them about how do we solve the problem of cues in the NHS and I went and talked to them about the fact that it's actually the fact

that the NHS is being used as a a wealth extraction tool from the government that is the problem and that the only reason why the NHS exists at the moment is to inflate GDP by doing unnecessary procedures. This kind of got them. Um but it's this radical. Let's get back because I I I think the next time we meet I hope we're going to be talking about the finance curse and I want to talk about the film uh that we're imminently I think going to be releasing called the finance curse um in which we don't

so much look at the health sector but we look at the the incursions of wealth extractors into the care sector. We use the care sector as a as a case study. And there it's particularly blatant. And there's as much of a care crisis as there is a health crisis caused by the political failure to push back against these wealth extraction companies who are extracting wealth through the care sector on a an enormous basis. Um and and and and there seems to be no political initiative to block that. That in a way is a very neat

point to end on because there's no political initiative to block wealth extraction. Wealth extraction the very core of what neoliberalism I'm going to get there again. Neol I can't say neoliberalism anymore for some reason. I've run out of the word this afternoon. We're right out of stock. Absolutely at the core of this project and yet there's no political will to tackle it. And that's what we need to talk about and that's why you need to come back and talk about the finance curse. John, thank you. I think we made a lot of progress this afternoon,

but this conversation needs to be continued. Let's do it soon. Thanks a lot. >> Pleasure as always.