If, as expected, Rachel Reeves increases employers’ national insurance next week, and she doesn’t compensate the NHS, education, local authorities and other departments for the cost, then the impact on public services is going to be very big – and in some cases bigger than any budget settlement they might get.…

The UK economy is now a mess built on the foundations of everyone sub-contracting everything they can whenever they think that possible. The result is that we have an economy made up of middlemen, all of them raking off their own bit of profit.Por Richard Murphy

Labour ministers have been talking about ‘black holes’ in the government’s finances ever since they got into office, but technically such a thing is an impossibility. Isn’t the most basic thing we should expect of them is that they be competent? So, why aren’t they?Por Richard Murphy

Rachel Reeves wants growth, and it’s thought she’s going to seriously increase employers’ national insurance contributions, which is most likely to stop that happening. Why is she adopting such an absurd approach to the economy?Por Richard Murphy

Keir Starmer is desperate for foreign money to fund British investment, but that makes no sense at all.Por Richard Murphy

To pretend that there is almost any similarity between how small and big businesses is absurd. Small businesses have to serve us, or they fail. Big business tries to entrap us in debt to ensure that they keep growing ever bigger. We need to rethink what we think about the private sector – and what parts of it we want to promote.…

Starmer wants high-tech investment in the UK that will demand massive new electricity supply and water supplies we simply have not got, and all for not many new jobs. Why doesn’t he grow UK small business instead?Por Richard Murphy

Keir Starmer has said he wants a bonfire of red tape. That is the same goal that ended at Grenfell when David Cameron promoted it. What it actually means is that consumers take the risk in society and those who create the risks don’t and there’s not an iota of sense in that.Por Richard Murphy

Having to clear my late father’s home recently it became very apparent how the material focus of economics is wrong. What he had mattered for little in the end. The memories he left did. So why does economics get this so terribly wrong?Por Richard Murphy

My interview on BBC Radio 5 Live on 18 OctoberPor Richard Murphy

Some people seem to think that modern monetary theory (MMT) is a set of policy options a country might adopt. It isn’t. It’s a description of how the economy of the country we live in really works. What’s powerful about it is that it describes actually happens – and so leads to better decision making.…

Thirty-eight per cent of young people who could work are not doing so. They’re not lazy, or indifferent. Nor have they dropped out. They just can’t fit into the machinery of conformism that modern employers demand of them. As a result, vast numbers of talented young people aren’t delivering of their best for this country.…

The national is nothing more than the savings of people with money to spare. It’s not a threat to our wellbeing. It won’t bring the economy down. It doesn’t need repayment. Our grandchildren (if we have them) are not threatened by it. That money just needs to be put to good use.Por Richard Murphy

Keir Starmer is inviting the world to the UK to invest here, but he’s looking for the wrong type of investment. We don’t need his ‘big ticket’ schemes that will become white elephants as we head for a world where sustainability will matter most of all. What we really require is investment in the diverse skills that the people of this country have b…

Most of the data being used when discussing the economy is hopelessly incorrect. We even have up to six figures for the national debt in the UK – and all of them are wrong. It really is time for Rachel Reeves to start publishing decent data so we can have a proper economic debate in the UK.Por Richard Murphy

The world might already be at a tipping point when it comes to climate change and yet our leaders still seem to be in denial about the reality that we have to face. So, how late is too late when it comes to making the changes required if human life is to survive on Earth?Por Richard Murphy

In the run up to the budget I have seen claims that as many as one in five people are planning to leave the UK because taxes are too high. If they are, they’re in for a shock. The well-off and the wealthy get a great tax deal in the UK that they’re going to find hard to replicate anywhere else.Por Richard Murphy

New research shows that those in their later 60s now are sicker than those in their late 80s were at the same point in their lives. Why isn’t prosperity delivering wellness, and what can we do about it?Por Richard Murphy

It’s said that states that have suffered hyperinflation prove that modern monetary theory is not true. However, the exact opposite is the case. They demonstrate that the conditions that MMT says must exist for a well-managed economy to function are correct.Por Richard Murphy

I’ve been accused of repeating myself on this YouTube channel. And that’s true. I have. But it’s only by honing our stories about what a decent, sustainable world looks like that we can persuade people that it’s possible to have one.Por Richard Murphy

Keir Starmer has appointed Sue Gray as envoy to the nations and regions after her resignation as his chief of staff. What does that mean? And what is he thinking?Por Richard Murphy

The idea that government surpluses are good because they create piles of cash waiting to be spent in the event of a national emergency is absurd. All money paid in tax is cancelled on receipt by the government. So, all government surpluses actually do is reduce the amount of cash in the private sector economy.…

Most people assume that we tax to fund government spending, but we don’t in economies like that we have in the UK. Instead, we have an economy where the government spends by creating new money and tax then takes it out of circulation, and that creates a need for very different economic management from that we’re being offered.…

Left versus right seems like deeply antiquated politics from another era to me. The fight between labour and capital makes no sense when we have to live in a mixed economy. Much more important now is the question “do you care?” because that’s the question that now decides how resources are allocated in our society. Which side are you on?…

UK company law exists to protect society and honest traders from fraudsters, but since no one has the job of properly enforcing that law it might as well not exist. This failure represents a massive failure on the part of successive governments that needs to be addressed now.Por Richard Murphy

Everyone but the national government of a country can run out of money. They can’t, because they make the stuff. So, in that case why are our politicians obsessed with running out of money when they should instead be obsessed by services that are not good enough and unemployment?Por Richard Murphy

When being interviewed on the radio I was told by the broadcaster that £90,000 was only ‘middle class income’ and not enough for MPs. She was, very clearly, out of touch with reality.Por Richard Murphy

Wes Streeting’s plans for the NHS all have one purpose, and that is to increase the role of the private sector and big pharmaceutical companies within it, at cost to us, the patients. He should not be trusted.Por Richard Murphy

For literally hundreds of years the Tories have been one of the two parties that have at all times dominated UK politics. The other might have changed from time to time, but the Tories have been a constant. That, though, can no longer be assumed to the case. Now they might be heading for extinction. Does that matter?…

The Bank of England is selling about £100 billion a year of government bonds it bought during the Covid crisis back into City financial markets. There’s no need to. It’s making massive losses doing so. But worst of all, that £100 billion is preventing the government from spending on the investment in the real economy we really need. QT has to stop,…

As far as most people know, the job of the Bank of England is to control inflation, which it has proved itself utterly unable to do. Meanwhile its essential roles in money creation, government funding, and bank and financial services regulation are almost all ignored, when they are really important. We need a Bank of England that concentrates on th…

If Labour was really a party interested in reform they would be radically overhauling the UK constitution and the way in which the government is managed. But it isn’t. And as a result, they are sending out the strongest possible signal that nothing is really going to change on their watch.Por Richard Murphy

The speech Keir Starmer gave to the Labour Party conference on Tuesday was profoundly disappointing, including, I suspect, to most in Labour if only they were honest about it. So, I decided I should write my own version. This is it, with only slight apologies for it being almost as long as his was.Por Richard Murphy

I had few hopes for Keir Starmer’s speech at Labour Party conference, and he managed to match none of them. That is how bad it was. Let me run through some of his failings…..Por Richard Murphy

Rachel Reeves budget speech was a vacuous re-presentation of what she had said during the general election campaign, mixed with arrogant smugness, meaningless rhetoric and a total absence of narrative or ideas. I wish there was something good to note in all this, but before she celebrates being the first woman Chancellor of the Exchequer shouldn’t …

Labour gave no positive clues on where they might raise revenue during the election campaign. So, what might they do in the October budget?Por Richard Murphy

Politics is the art of the possible, and not about the creation of ideal solutions, about which few are likely to agree in any case. It’s important that this is understood, because far too many political debates argue over the pursuit of goals that are unachievable.Por Richard Murphy

With a Cabinet made up of supposedly highly qualified graduates, all of whom would claim to have a social conscience, you would expect Labour to be able to think critically about the solutions required to the problems created by fourteen years of Tory rule. Right now, however, it seems that there is not one critical thinker amongst the lot of them.…

The single transferable party describes the system of government that we now have in the UK, where whoever is in power, the policies appear to always be the same. When all that is on offer is austerity, and all that changes is who delivers it, do we really have a democracy any more, or is there just a single transferable party in power?…

All of life, including political life, depends on our ability to tell stories about who we are, what we are, what we think and what we hope for. In that case you would have thought Labour would have defined its story about what its latest iteration is by now, but it hasn’t. As far as I can see, it has no story to tell about what it is, what it beli…

As a matter of fact, the Bank of England can always create money out of thin air. But can commercial banks really do so? The answer is yes, subject to a massive caveat – which is that they can only do so under licence from the Bank of England, which means that the buck for all money creation ultimately stops with the government.…

Some people argue that modern monetary theory is irrelevant, or that it changes nothing. They’re wrong. MMT fundamentally reframes the power relationships within our economy, moving power away from banking and the City and towards democratic government control, whilst prioritising people and full employment instead. No wonder so many people don’t l…

The overwhelming impression Labour has given during its first few weeks in office is that it has no idea about why it wanted to be in government, or what it will do with power now that it has it. After fourteen years in opposition that appears quite extraordinary, except that it reinforces the idea that the whole Starmer project to date has simply …

Every time I post a video about money people appear claiming only gold is money and we must go back on the gold standard. Those saying so are economic dinosaurs who do not understand who the modern economy works and would rather we go back to the era that delivered the Great Depression, precisely because of the obsession with gold. They really do n…

QE was, and always will be a sham to disguise the fact that a central bank is lending money to the government that owns it. In this video I explain the ins and outs, and costs, of this ridiculous denial of the truth.Por Richard Murphy

Steve Baker – until recently a Tory MP – has claimed that in twenty years’ time – when we will be celebrating the centenary of the welfare state – we will no longer be able to afford it. Is he right, or talking a load of nonsense, as usual?Por Richard Murphy

When Tylor Swift endorsed Kamala Harris for US President everyone took note. But, do such endorsements matter and should more people put their heads above the parapet and declare what they think in public? My answer is a resounding ‘yes’.Por Richard Murphy

Instead of picking on children on poverty and pensioners needing support with fuel bills to pay the price for the Tory economic aftermath Labour should be picking on tax cheats to fill its coffers, as the National Audit Office agrees, and as I show in the Taxing Wealth Report 2024, would not be hard.…

Of all the groups in society anyone expected Labour to pick on when it came into office Labour were the least likely excepting, perhaps, children in poverty. Now it turns out they are the two groups Labour thinks should pay the price for the mess that Labour claims it has I inherited from the Tories. Political incompetence on this scale is hard to …

The Bank of England, and most especially its Monetary Policy Committee, have imposed misery on the UK over the past couple of years for absolutely no reason. If ever there was a reason for the Bank to be independent of the government, it has long gone. If the best interests of the people of the UK are to be served the Bank is long overdue for refor…