29/10/2026
Andy Burnham said he wanted to “end 40 years of neoliberalism.” Did you believe him?
Let’s look at the first budget of his government. The most notable policy is £100 payment to council tax payers. But in Newcastle, a band D property has risen by £129 since last year. Councils are still cutting. The budget keeps income from working for a living taxed higher than passive income from owning things. What is “breathing space” if not a synonym for “inaction”?
Lord knows, we have problems. 140 applicants for every graduate job. Almost 1 million young people not in employment, education or training. 2.6 million food parcels given out by Trussell foodbanks last year. 1.3 million households on council house waiting lists and at current building rates it will take 119 years to clear the backlog. Rents up £2,600 a year in three years. Young people in Blyth are turning down jobs in Team Valley because our transport is inadequate. 1.5 million self-employed people living on a financial knife-edge. Healthy life expectancy down by 2 years.
Every one of these problems has a long-term cost. Every one of these problems also has a common root. It has a name everyone uses and almost nobody defines. According to Britannica, neoliberalism is “a political and economic ideology that favours free-market capitalism, minimal government intervention in the economy, and the transfer of economic control from the public to the private sector.”
But is that what neoliberalism does in practice?
It does its best to prevent free markets. Big tech and global investment firms dominate. Small local businesses pay full tax rates, global corporations offshore their liabilities. Utilities are run as monopolies. The state isn’t shrunk – it is colonised, and becomes a host to private profit. The £13 billion of PFI investment for NHS hospitals will cost £80 billion in payments to private capital.
If you don’t pay your mortgage, the bank takes your home. If the bank goes bust, taxpayers bail it out. It’s privatise the profits and nationalise the losses. There’s nothing free-market about that.
Neoliberalism doesn’t even allocate capital to where we need it. Money gets spent on share buybacks instead of building homes. Water companies have paid out £78 billion in dividends since privatisation. Not a single new reservoir completed. This summer farmers had to let crops die from a shortage of water.
Is there a solution? Yes. It’s all detailed in Hostage Nation, with endnotes, citations and calculations. And we could start it tomorrow.
Fund it off-market. Offer National Infrastructure ISAs for savers and National Development Stock for pensions. We can bypass the bond markets. Give tax relief only for money invested in Britain for the common good.
The Retrofit Blitz. Insulate every home, street by street. It creates local jobs and lowers bills. Every £1 spent returns up to £3.20 in economic activity, and even the OBR’s cautious estimate sees 40p come back in tax. It turns out the quickest way to decarbonise a country is also the cheapest way to heat a home.
Energy at cost. Build, own and operate generation with off-market finance. Half the cost of new renewables is in finance charges. By funding it ourselves we cut out the profit. And then we own the assets.
Build a hundred thousand council homes a year. The way Britain did for thirty-five years after the war. Rents that anchor the private market. Ending homelessness saves a fortune.
Public transport as one integrated system. One network, one fare, full coverage. Fast and reliable, so everyone has a real choice to use it.
A guaranteed pipeline of work. Twenty-year programmes fund the jobs to build them. Gig economy anxiety gets replaced by real jobs you can plan a life around. The welfare bill falls. Kids grow up in homes with decent wages coming in.
Who will this upset? Every serious plan to change wealth distribution upsets someone. Off-market finance upsets the traders who hold a veto over whether we build. Energy at cost upsets the people selling us electricity priced by gas. A hundred thousand council homes a year upsets the landlords whose rents they would anchor.
Ask that question of any budget. If the answer is “nobody”, nothing is changing.
