The Burnham Factor

[00:00:00] I have just come from Buckingham Palace, where I have accepted His Majesty the King's invitation to form a government. In doing so, I am acutely conscious that I am the sixth person in the last 10 years to walk up this street, the seventh Prime Minister since 2016.

[00:00:25] This is the Debunking Economics podcast with Steve Keen and Phil Dobbie. Yes, the UK really knows how to get through Prime Ministers, doesn't it? So, does Andy Burnham have staying power? Or is he constrained by the same problems that have challenged all of his predecessors? An economy that is going nowhere and a budget which is managed by bond markets. What makes us think that he is going to be any different? That's this week.

[00:00:59] So, depending when you're watching this, Andy Burnham is about to be or has just become the next British Prime Minister, given that he went unchallenged in his challenge against Keir Starmer. And Steve, I think the UK needs a change because obviously everyone's a little bit depressed. Well, I mean, they're depressed anyway because they're British, but they're particularly depressed because of the World Cup. And so they need something to distract them from all of that. So, on the World Cup…

[00:01:28] They're going to bomb Andy Burnham, are they? No, I don't think so. Andy Burnham is going to reignite the country. I'm going to bomb Argentina. Yeah, sorry, pardon me if I cut it wrong. Yeah, that was, I mean, that was, I was talking to somebody about that, about the fact that the Argentinian players had put that whole, you know, the, what do they call it for the Falkland Islands on the football pitch and… I didn't actually, so I know that they did do something about the Falkland Islands invasion. Yeah.

[00:01:53] Which is just a crazy thing. I mean, it was, but it was, if they'd done that before the match, then England would have won, of course, because everyone would have been so pissed off. So riled up, they would have actually played a better game. Yeah. Yeah, rather than just playing that whole pathetic defensive game that they played. But anyway, so Sean Locke is a British comedian. He's sadly no longer with us, but one of the previous World Cups, he was talking about how, you know, it's all controlled by FIFA and yet England invented the game and then they gave it away.

[00:02:20] You know, so FIFA is controlling. He said, we should be deciding where the World Cup is, not FIFA because it's our game. And he said, but, you know, we could get around that if we just invented a new game that's a bit like football, but is not exactly football. And his answer was, we'd call it footballs. Footballs? Yeah, you'd have two balls on the pitch at the same time, just for a bit more excitement. So it could be going in both directions. Is this the next British Prime Minister with your two soccer balls? No, no, no.

[00:02:49] He might be better looking than the last. Well, I think he probably, I think most women would say he is, but no, this isn't Andy Burnham policy. This is Sean Locke, a comedian's policy. And the other thing he said was one member of your team actually is playing for the other side and you've got to try and figure out who it is as well. I think that's a brilliant game, footballs with those two rules. But anyway.

[00:03:11] The ultimate soccer game was played between the Greek and the German team in Monty Python about 30 or 40 years ago, the soccer match. Have you seen that one? No, no. You're kidding. You tell me you have not seen the Monty Python soccer match. I've seen so much Monty Python, I haven't seen the soccer match one. You haven't seen that? No. God almighty, mate. I have to remember. Well, I know what you're doing after your dinner coming up. You're watching Monty Python's soccer match. I will be doing that.

[00:03:40] Now, so Andy Burnham, first of all, how did Keir Starmer voted with a landslide? How did he get it so wrong? What did he do wrong? Apart from obviously being a lousy communicator, but in a nutshell. What they're trying to do, I mean, rather than putting lipstick on a pig, they're trying to put a nice face on an ugly body. And the ugly body is neoliberalism.

[00:04:04] The policies which mainstream economics have been pushing for ever, which politicians have swallowed because the little children and they go off to university, the 18-year-old wet behind the ears. I'm speaking of experience here. And do a bit of economics and swallow first year and believe the shit that I realized halfway through first year was total nonsense.

[00:04:25] But that then leads them to thinking that it's a great idea for the government to run a balanced budget and that the government, sort of the private sector is better than the government sector. The private sector is better at everything. So we should privatize, you know, essential services like water and sewage, which will be far superior if the private sector takes over and does it and invests and make a profit out of it. Yeah. I mean, he didn't. That wasn't the Labour government, of course. That was previous Tory government. I mean, you're going to have to leave it up to you.

[00:04:54] You're going to have to do it for me, all right? But this is like our old mate, George Galloway, saying that two cheeks of the same bun. Two cheeks of the same buttock. Okay. Basically, you get two versions of neoliberalism. You get the one where they apologize for it, and that's the Labour Party, and the one who are proud about it, and that's the Tories. Well, they certainly had a chancellor who was very committed to that, didn't they? Oh, God almighty. She drove me barmy. Yeah, she drove the country barmy as well.

[00:05:18] Her own – I mean, in terms of personality as well, I mean, along with the prime minister, they weren't the most dynamic people, irrespective of what it was they were saying. I mean, to her credit, the only thing that she did differently was that she said, well, actually, if these are capital items which have got a longer payout, but they shouldn't be sitting on the main budget. They're trying to find some way to soften the blow of saying we've got to have a balanced budget. Yeah. And it's the mistake is believing it has to be a balanced budget.

[00:05:43] This is what irritates the hell out of anybody who knows their accounting, and that's myself and Richard Murphy, to see people saying the government has to borrow and order to spend. And it could easily – there's all this panic about government debt. The easy thing is, oh, let's sell the bonds to the central bank then, okay? Because when you look at the accounting, the only effect of the government spending more than it takes back in taxation is running up as over after the central bank.

[00:06:13] So if they sold bonds to the central bank at the same time, it would be balanced. That's only one element of it, but it's basically textbook economics. It's a system, isn't it? I mean, you can't – within the system of God, so with an independent central bank, the central bank can say, well, we're not going to buy them. We don't want to collude in that way. They're not independent. They're owned by the treasury, okay? And this is – I don't know what the British rule is, but the rule is usually that a central bank – when bonds are owned by a central bank, the treasury doesn't pay interest on them. Yeah.

[00:06:43] You know, and so if that rule is even feasible, it just shows that the treasury is in control of the central bank, not vice versa. But the central bank has the ability to – I mean, it doesn't have to buy those bonds. Well, it's not allowed to by laws. But if the laws were abolished, then it could buy those bonds. Yeah. And it's – So in the current – working within the current framework, I mean, because they were running – Yeah, working within the current framework, you're stuffed. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay.

[00:07:10] But the current framework is one law, change one law, and that framework changes. So what – because they live in the fear, of course, because they saw it with the previous very short-term prime minister that bond yields suddenly shoot up when the markets are concerned. What I'm saying is it's not what was different about Keir Starmer that led to his downfalls. What's the same about him? Yeah. They're all pushing policies you can take out of a first-year economics textbook.

[00:07:39] So what law should they have changed? What should they have changed? The very beginning. A whole bloody load, but certainly one of them, the law that says the Treasury can't sell bonds directly to the central bank. Get rid of that law. Okay. And then you want to get rid of government debt? Okay. We'll get the central bank to buy 100% of it. Right. And then, you know, it'd be the first people to complain? The banks. Okay. And the financial institutions who wouldn't have – Because they're not getting a cut anymore. Yeah, yeah. They're not getting a cut. They're not getting the interest on those bonds. But that's only one of many, many policies.

[00:08:09] I mean, the whole belief that the private sector does everything better than the public sector is something which is ignorant of issues of time. Because for a private sector entity to make a profit out of things like sewage and water, they have to – what they will end up doing is not doing the long-term maintenance because that's somebody else's problem.

[00:08:31] If you're going to end up doing the long-term infrastructure. The country needs. And therefore, the short-term infrastructure fails as well. Well, I think he has been trying to do that, of course. All within the context of government can't spend more than it takes back in taxation.

[00:08:58] But within that framework, though, he has cut National Health Service waiting lists. He's somehow found more money to put into the National Health Service. He's found more money to pay doctors and nurses. So resolving that young doctor's strike.

[00:09:13] And he has – and he's, you know, nationalized railways, which, you know, was something that was seen as sacrilege, you know, in the last Tory government when – what's-his-face was talking about it? Previous Labour contender. I've forgotten his name now. Former Lord Mayor of London. What's his name that I'm thinking of? No, no. Sadiq Hansen. Boris Osborne. Boris Johnson. No, no, no. The former Labour one.

[00:09:43] Anyway, don't worry. Ken Livingston. Ken Livingston. Yeah, yeah. Actually, I'm going to edit that because that was wrong. Who was it who said – I am going to edit this. Who was it who said – who was the previous Labour leader before Keir Starmer who lost in the – he lost the election? Corbyn? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's right. Jerry Corbyn. Yeah, yeah. You? Okay. Yeah. So, okay, so I'll edit it there. Yeah. So, he's privatised the roadways, which is something that Corbyn wanted to do, but, you

[00:10:11] know, everyone decried it as it was just going to cost too much. So, he's done that. So, he has done a few positive things. And on the water, I mean, they are just going to – they're going to collapse and get bought by the government anyway. So, Thames Water has got to – Well, that's the thing.

[00:10:37] That occurs, which – we should actually have him on the show one of these days. My colleague, Avner Offa, who wrote The Public-Private Divide. And the basic point is that if you have to be borrowing money or promising to pass profits on to shareholders to build something which takes 20 years or so to finish, then in that 20 years, you're not making any money and you're compounding the debt over that time and it becomes horrendously expensive and therefore, you don't do it.

[00:11:07] Whereas, if you're public, you're not trying to make a profit. So, you build it and it's the cost of building itself, not the cost of building compounded by the borrowing costs or the interest rate costs. So, what you've got is a philosophy. It's still the case that they're swallowing the first-year economics textbook. And I think I may have told you – we've mentioned this one for sure various times in the past. But Paul Samuelson once wrote – and this is actually – it's actually the theme for

[00:11:36] this discussion. He wrote, I don't care who writes a government's laws so long as I can write its economic textbooks. And the reason is they're so impressionable. There's 18 years. He literally says it. The first lick is a privileged one, impinging on the beginner's tabula rasa at their most impressionable state. Okay? That's literally what Samuelson said are pretty much exactly the words.

[00:12:02] So, what he's saying is if I've got their brains locked into my way of perceiving the planet, then it doesn't matter whether Tory or Labour is in charge. You're still going to get policies designed by my first-year economics textbook. And that's where we stand. Right. So, we need to rewrite that. You probably only need to write the first chapter because they probably never make it past that anyway. Just on water. Yeah. So, the great example of just how wrong it's all got is Thames water, which are $20 billion

[00:12:29] in debt, which is 13 times its EBITDA. The CEO has said they're going to run out of money by November. So, the government has to buy it. They've got no choice. And this is all foreign owners, which are obviously – who've just written it all off. Obviously. Give them a peppercorn. I mean, they've gone back. Well, that's what's going to happen. You don't bail them out. They take the loss. And you take over the assets of a peppercorn. Yeah.

[00:12:54] But the thing is, this is – the reason that Starmer failed and by the looks of it, unfortunately, the reason Burnham's going to fail as well is they're still giving you policies you can find in a first-year economics textbook. Now, that would basically – well, what's wrong with that? You know, we shouldn't be using first-year engineering and second-year and third-year and fourth-year to build bridges. And the answer is yes, you should because that's based on genuine science. The stuff in a textbook is a load of garbage, a load of well-dressed up, intellectually frayed

[00:13:23] nonsense, which the simple minds of 18-year-olds, if they don't get any experience or they don't get an alternative perspective put ahead of them, believe because they're good at fantasy at that age. And, you know, it's Dungeons and Dragons for accountants in that sense. Not accountants. They don't do the accounting properly. So, drums and dragons for marketing, marketing – hang on, I'm attacking professionals that actually do something worthwhile. But, yeah, they've got a fantasy view of the world.

[00:13:52] They believe it's the real world. And this is the reason that we have such travesties when it comes to attempting to manage our economies because you can't manage an economy like you used to be able to manage a car. Back in the days of, you know, pre-computerization, you could adjust the tap of the valves, you could change timing, et cetera, et cetera. And it was fiddling with a mechanical device you could actually see in front of you that

[00:14:22] if it didn't go out the garage, you know, you made a mistake. And that sort of thinking ends up being what economics teaches, a mechanical view of how the system functions. When you can't perceive – the economy is not a car in your garage, yeah? So, you've got to do it to the real world and you don't even know whether your policies work or not compared to what would have happened if you continued doing what was being done by the previous mob. Now, when I do that, the best comparison I can make – and it's got all sorts of problems,

[00:14:51] but it's still the only way to indicate it – what was the economy like before we got the textbook obsession with keeping the rate of inflation down? And that's the dominant thing coming out of textbooks. With the previous post-World War II and post-Depression emphasis on keeping the population employed, that's really the practical shift for people in policies. And it began in the mid-1970s. Now, the rate of economic growth, the recorded rate per capita economic growth in the UK

[00:15:20] before that change occurred, you've got data from 1956 to 1975. And the rate of economic growth per capita in that period was 0.8% per annum higher than it's been since 1975 up to pre-COVID. So, in terms of its – the one appeal that the textbook economics had is that because we know how the economy works, if you follow our advice, your economy will grow more rapidly, it's grown more slowly.

[00:15:48] But the thing is, people in the middle of doing all this stuff never look back and look at the record and say, well, what was the change? Did we actually do what Reagan and Thatcher promised to make the economy grow so much faster that our kids will thank us and that's all the thanks we'll ever need? Yeah. Our kids who won't have debt, you know, won't be kept passing to be riddled with our debt. High-paying jobs, you know, in a lively capitalist economy with low unemployment and low inflation. Well, I'm sorry, which planet are you on?

[00:16:18] And this is the trouble. So, all we've done with Burnham, I mean, particularly you see the selections he's making now for his cabinet. He's putting in the same sort of people with the same sort of first-year economics textbook background that Starmer had, just changing the faces. And that seems to be it rather than putting lipstick on a pig who changed the face on an ugly body. Yeah. Yeah. Well, talking about that borrowing and housing, so one of the things he said – so it's interesting

[00:16:48] because on the one side he's saying, I'm not going to put up taxes. You know, he specifically said, I don't want to divide the country by something as divisive as different tax policies like wealth tax and all that sort of stuff. He doesn't want to put up taxes. But he said he does want to introduce the biggest building of social housing since the Second World War. Yeah. So, coming out of the Second World War, Britain was building 200,000 homes a year.

[00:17:18] In the last five years, I think it's averaged about 10,000 a year. So, there's a bit of a difference there. So, if he's going to reach that sort of level, but he's not going to spend any more money because he's not going to raise any more taxes because he's – Or he's not going to spend – he's going to run a larger deficit, which is what he should do. Yeah. But he's – well, and maybe that's what he's thinking because he's saying – I mean, otherwise, how is he making it work for himself? Well, he can't. I mean, when your limitation says you've got to spend no more than you take back on taxation.

[00:17:47] So, why is he saying it if he's hamstrung by – It's textbook economics. It's just – it's what he learned – you know, wherever he learned it, I don't know whether it's education. But wherever he learned it is going to tell him that it's going to cost him more and he's not going to have that money coming in. Yeah. End of story. How is he going to fund it? So, he must have an idea. Otherwise, he's setting himself up for a fall. Oh, you mean like Starmer and Reeves? Oh, my God. Yes. I hadn't thought of that. Of course. It's a recipe for failure.

[00:18:16] If you've got an ugly face on a – a pretty face on an ugly body or a pretty face on a slow body, it's still going to lose the race. Okay? And this – every last one that's gone down, it's because they're putting limitations on themselves that are unnecessary, which also means they simply cannot finance the spending. They can't achieve the physical things they talk about because they're not allowing the monetary means to enable those to be created in the first instance.

[00:18:44] So, I just think it's looking like – the funny thing is you look at the Greens. So, they were originally worried that Burnham was turning up as the leader. And then within two – a couple of weeks of him arriving in Parliament, they're starting to say, oh, he's exactly the same as Starmer. So, you know, Zane Polanski's chances of becoming Prime Minister of Risen once more. But what would the Greens do differently, do you think? Well, hopefully. They'd spend – for a start, they'd spend more than they take back in taxation.

[00:19:13] They'd drop the fetish about a deficit. Okay? That's number one. Do you think they would, though? Is that part of their thinking? Are they acknowledging that? They are more aware of it. I don't – there are – I'm aware of some – certainly some of the things Zach says don't fit the neoliberal playbook. And that's the beginning point. Because if you're not sceptical about that when you start – and Reeves is an obvious example of somebody who is not sceptical. Now, the classic statement of hers, if we can't afford it, we can't do it.

[00:19:42] The opposite of Cain's, if we can do it, we can afford it. She says, if we can't afford it, we can't do it. That mindset was completely, you know, just locking them out of any chance of breaking out of the textbook way of thinking. It did seem very strange, didn't it? A Labour Party having a chancellor who used to work for the Bank of England. Yeah. This is – I mean, Maggie Thatcher, when she was asked at one stage what was the greatest invention, you know, very greatest achievement. And she said Tony Blair. Yeah, yeah. Because he was more like she was. Yeah. Exactly.

[00:20:11] Rather than a real Labour leader. Yeah. Okay. Not a George Galloway. Not a George. Definitely not a George. So, okay. Mind you, George would make some of the same mistakes in the accounting. I'm trying to get him to realize that. But it's getting past that, you know, expenditure equals income. The problem is trying to explain it in a soundbite that journalists are going to understand. So, point taken. So, when we come back after the break, let's assume he does do that.

[00:20:39] Let's assume he starts spending more money than he's bringing in in taxes. And let's look at some of his other policies as well and see whether they're good ideas or not. And, you know, what other things should he be thinking about? So, we'll do that when we come back on the Debunking Economics Podcast. This is the Debunking Economics Podcast with Steve Keen and Phil Dobby.

[00:21:04] So, one of the things Andy Burnham wants to do, Steve, is try and tackle that regional imbalance that happens in the UK. Because it is extraordinary in the UK compared to most other countries. The amount of money that's generated within London and the Southeast. The wealth that's generated in London and the Southeast. And yet, I've always found that quite curious because generally the education system in the UK is very good. And it's very good everywhere.

[00:21:30] So, all over the country, you've got educated people who would be willing to do just as good a job as someone in London or the Southeast. Actually do it possibly for less or they'd have a better standard of living if they're getting paid the same amount because their house would be cheaper. And yet, this concentration of wealth down in the Southeast. Andy Burnham wants to try and resolve that. He's moving number 10 to Manchester. He's going to, you know, most of the cabinet meetings are going to be happening in the north of England.

[00:21:59] He's not going to live at number 10 Downing Street. He is going to become a very northern MP. Is that going to be good for Britain, do you think? That is actually breaking out of the textbook. So, yes, I think that is good. I mean, it's going to be very difficult. When you attempt to improve the spread of economic activity across a highly concentrated landscape, it can be a hell of a challenge.

[00:22:24] And the thing is, the reason people, London, when everybody goes to London, all rail lines lead to London. Not that they move all that quickly, but it's easy to get to London. But there's actually a classic piece of economics called the hoteling model. And this has, hypothetical, you have a beach and customers are uniformly distributed along the beach. And you have your very first ice cream vendor.

[00:22:53] So, where does the ice cream vendor locate? Right in the middle of the beach. 50% of customers either side. Where's your second vendor going to locate? Okay. Well, if the second vendor locates, say, the 25%, one quarter of them are up the beach, then it's got one quarter fully to itself, but it's got to share the other quarter with the guys already got. So, it's got to be right next to the other one. Right next to the other one, yeah.

[00:23:20] So, they're both saying, oh, that's the case of London. But in terms of railways, there are a lot of cross-country lines as well. And if you want to take a packed lunch to travel 100 kilometers or you don't mind paying more than it costs you to fly to Berlin. That's the thing. It costs. Yeah, and that's the advantage of privatizing. Now, you can't afford it. Yeah. Whether you're going into London or you're going cross-country, it's astronomical. I mean, the investment.

[00:23:47] This is the other joke about saying privatization would give you a better result. The British train systems are a museum piece compared to – the only advanced trains have got are on the Elizabeth line. Which is funded by – out of the government, out of the public purse. Yeah.

[00:24:06] Well, again, because of the madness of believing the private sector would invest when the time horizon for getting a return is so long that they're better off to continue using that old rolling stock rather than writing it off. And so, you know, you hop in carriages in the UK and you wonder if you're in a museum in Europe. Well, they are. So, they are nationalized. Well, or they have. Or they're in the process of nationalizing. They won't fund them properly. Well, see, the problem is that they are going to keep on.

[00:24:35] All they're going to be is a single ticketing entity. So, the railway line was already owned by the government because they realized fairly quickly after Margaret Thatcher – I think it was Thatcher, wasn't it, who privatized them all. And it's included privatizing the provision of the railways. And there was a whole series of disasters, crashes, delays. And they thought, okay, we've got to pull out of this pretty quickly. So, they re-nationalized the rail infrastructure and they just kept the train operating companies.

[00:25:02] The train operating companies, because they are there as franchises, don't buy rolling stock because they never know how long they're going to be around for. So, they lease it from leasing companies. And what this whole new privatization role is going to do is they are going to continue leasing from those same leasing companies. Now, you would have thought the real advantage that comes from this is the government owning the railways and the infrastructure.

[00:25:30] I mean, anyone can do the timetabling and ticketing. Who cares about that? In fact, you know, that's an area that possibly could be done better by the private sector because there's apps that exist where you can – like Trainlight, for example, which does it all. But the real saving or the real investment has got to be in the infrastructure. So, why allow a company – which is one of the big operating costs. So, why allow a company to get the – Because their minds are – this is still stuck in that first Jury Comics textbook.

[00:26:00] And this is the issue. Until you get someone who comes in and says the textbook is poisonous, it's as if medicine was running by a textbook that still included leeches and those sorts of activities, leeches and exorcisms. And that's the quality we get of the economics.

[00:26:21] And this is why – you know, I think unless you get somebody who comes from the other side of politics in the sense that the Greens have done, and so this is just not working, we've got to change the whole agenda. Any pretty face is going to fall back into the same ugly body. Yeah. Well, you've got that thing about ugly bodies, haven't you? Have you been looking in the mirror, Steve? I have, unfortunately. I was pumped. So, and you're looking at me, hence the pretty face. Oh, that's true. I can understand the confusion. I'm sorry. Do you know what?

[00:26:51] Do you know what? I've been just on that. I've been losing weight. I've lost about eight or nine kilos. And so, this is a good sign. When I sign in on my computer, it doesn't recognize the face anymore. Oh, good luck with you. So, I've had to reshoot my shot so that it recognized either I have to reshoot or just, you know, puff up my weight again. So, I'm only one third of the way there. So, you can watch this in real time. Regulars of this video can just watch it over the next month or two, see how successful I'm being.

[00:27:18] Anyway, but just on this rebalancing of wealth across the country. So, in Germany, they've got a thing called, well, the basic law, which is called the Grundestats or Grundestats. Yeah. Or Grundesets, I think it is. It's a constitutional mandate that says that every region has to basically have equivalent living conditions by law.

[00:27:46] So, if you have a region which has fallen behind and a region which is well ahead, the region which is well ahead has got to put some money into the region that isn't doing so well. Or the government has to put more of the money into the region that they're doing badly. Or the government has to put some more federal money in. It becomes a combination of the two of those things. The moment you have that in the constitution that everybody should be, you know, the same living standard, then the government is forced to do something about it rather than just trying to, you know.

[00:28:14] Because you have those crazy things. I mean, of course, you know, Boris talked about leveling up. But people always talk about leveling up by saying, well, we're still going to have growth in the southeast. We're going to have faster growth in the north. So, it's going to level out because they're going to win the race. But the race, generally, everyone is moving forwards because we can't level up by disadvantaging the areas that are wealthy now. And so, that's the mindset that you've got to try and fight against.

[00:28:42] I mean, you know, of course the southeast has to lose out unless you're having massive growth if you want growth in the north. But that's fine. But it's also got to build the infrastructure to make it possible. This is partly it. I mean, the time it takes and the cost of getting from London to Manchester is greater than the cost and time involved in going from London to Amsterdam. Yeah.

[00:29:07] Imagine if you built a high-speed rail network where you could run trains every five or ten minutes so you'd have all that extra capacity. Everything completely stuffed up. You know, was it HS2? Yeah. Maybe you should be hosting HS1.5 because they're going backwards. Well, it's going to go from, yeah, London to Manchester and then extend further north into the northeast.

[00:29:30] Now it's going to go from just outside London to Birmingham, which only takes like a bit over an hour anyway. You know, but the whole idea was regularity of services, regular services and speed. But mainly it's the capacity that they were talking about. And so the hybrid solution is, well, we'll have the fast train to Birmingham and then the slow train from Birmingham to Manchester.

[00:29:59] Well, if you've got the slow trains, it slows down the speed and the frequency and you're going onto lines that are being used by other services. Yeah. It's incompetence. Yeah. So, yeah. Completely. Yeah. Because, again, because there wasn't the money there to do it. Yeah. Well, what you're basically pointing out here is Burnham has one advantage over Starmer and that's that he doesn't live in London. Yeah. Okay. And that he may therefore have a bias towards what happens in the northern region.

[00:30:24] So that's a bit like, you know, it's a personal version of the German law to try to push things in that direction. But I still expect he's going to end up failing because it's all of his, you've got to cut back on, you can't have national health. I mean, you know, old people need to get sicker. I mean, what has an old person ever done for me? That sort of attitude. You cut back on health, cut back on education, et cetera, et cetera, and wonder why the economy is not performing better.

[00:30:52] The obsession about the monetary system is ignoring the need to rebuild the production system. That's fundamentally what goes wrong with the way the politicians think. And so they undermine, they remove a potential source for financing the construction of infrastructure and essential services. And then they wonder why the economy performs badly and why people complain.

[00:31:18] So he's also, I mean, you're right about, I mean, whereas they are, you know, and it's not him, it's Keir Starmer who really pushed for the privatization of the railways. Sorry, nationalization of the railways, re-nationalization of the railways. Andy Burnham, you know, everyone points to how well the buses and trains work in Manchester. It's one of his crowning achievements. But he didn't actually bring them under government control.

[00:31:46] All he did was he changed the power. So in other words, private companies could pitch to run the buses. The government said, these are the bus routes. These are the fares you can charge. This is the frequency of services that we want. If you think you can adhere to that, then you get the gig. And that's sort of like a hybrid, you know, the government keeps control, but the government doesn't have any of the risk. And that is going back to that textbook thinking that you're talking about, isn't it?

[00:32:14] Well, the government couldn't possibly do that because it would cost money. They'd have to invest. But that private company obviously still reckons they can make a profit out of doing it. Otherwise, they wouldn't pitch for that business. Yeah. But again, I mean, this is partly what may be a problem with Burnham because he's learned his trade as a mayor. Again, I don't know his educational background. I'll need to take a bit of a look at that. Not a lawyer like, but anyway, it's still that same mindset. Yeah.

[00:32:42] Only more so, of course, because he can't create money as a mayor. He's got a fixed budget. Yeah, that's right. If you're a state or a municipal, you have got to get the revenue to do the expenditure you need. So that's the mindset that comes out of working in local government or state politics and going to the national scale. So we learn the wrong things. We're the right things for the right location and then move to the wrong location and still impose those same rules.

[00:33:05] So, yeah, I mean, I just expect him to – if he's going to continue the textbook approach, it'll continue failing as it has for the last half a century now. And he will be the final loser of the Tory versus Labour contest before we get Greens versus Count Finfess's party, obviously. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I'm loving that story about Count Finfess. Oh, I'm totally loving it. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:33:33] I mean, for those who aren't following, and you must have seen this, Nigel Farage, the Reform Party, faced this scandal about this five million pounds that was given to him, supposedly with no strings attached. Hey, Nigel, here's –

[00:33:59] But, yeah, well, just to show that the people still have their faith in me, I'm going to stand for an election. Again, he's going to re-elect in Clacton-on-Sea. And all the other parties said, well, this is a farce. We're not going to put a candidate up there. So the only other candidate is Count Binface, a man who's basically got a bucket on his head, who is neck and neck with Nigel now in the opinion polls. And he's been all over –

[00:34:24] I mean, one of the things I find amusing about seeing countries like the UK and America talk about bringing democracy to the rest of the world, between the two of them, they've got the worst bloody electoral systems on the planet. I understand Trump made claims like that in a recent speech. And he's correct. At least that's one thing Trump is right about. The electoral system in the States is third world caliber or lower. And the Bucco, the same story. But you know why he's saying that, though. He's gearing up for saying this. He's going to fix the next election. That's why he's doing it. He wants to make sure he doesn't lose.

[00:34:54] And I wonder whether actually even the midterms will even occur. You know, God knows what he's saying for by the time we get to November. But the fact that you've got the – you know, the fact that when you vote, you're not voting for the – first of all, you vote for your king. That's what the Americans do. That's the old system. Whereas the British vote for the parliament. So they haven't made it past the execution of Charles II in terms of the American constitution.

[00:35:20] Then, I mean, the British – so the American ones try to prevent anybody from – any less than a couple of million dollars getting involved in a campaign. And that's where you get the cardboard cutouts of Washington from. But the beauty for the British system is that anybody can send – you don't have to be in the electorate where the election is being held. As a party. And you don't have to be a member of a party. And all you've got is put your name on the ballot and there you are. And pay quite a bit of money. But, yeah. So, Bing – yeah.

[00:35:48] And so Bing Face could – the beauty of it is Farage, who's there to say, people support me, let me show you, gets beaten by a man with a bucket on his head. Yeah. Who then has to go and sit in parliament. I mean, that would just be hilarious. We better let it be known. We are recording this before we know whether Nigel is actually nominated because on the Friday, the 17th of July, is the last date that he can register. Oh, okay. Which is actually the day we're recording this. Yeah, yeah.

[00:36:17] So, we have to make that obvious this time. Yeah. Yeah. But the possibility is he might not run. And then you're going to get Count Bin Face versus Tarquin Fin Tin Lin Bin Ole Biscuit Barrel. Yeah, you see, I'm not happy about the Monster Rowing Loony Party because they're diluting the loony vote. That's – Well, this thing – have you – I've got to check your Mighty Python credentials now. I mean, you're pretty weak ground, my friend here. You do know the election night special version? Yes, of course. Yeah, yeah. Of course. Okay. Yeah, yeah. So, that –

[00:36:44] Vintin, Lin Bin, the Monster Rowing, yes, silly party. And Kevin Phillips bong. That's not Kevin Phillips bong. You've got zero votes. Yeah, that's right. I'm every mountain. Anyway, it is – One of their funniest sketches. The thing is, it's true. Yeah. When I – I spent a bit of time in the UK after – you know, I moved there in 2014 for a few years. And after a while, I started to realize Monty Python wasn't a comedy series. It was a documentary series. Yeah, yeah. Okay. And we're now getting the ultimate.

[00:37:13] Well, I think the Monster Rowing Loony Party came out of Monty Python. I don't think it was around before. But, I mean, it obviously gave people ideas. But I'm loving some of Cam Bin faces policies. So, first of all, he says he's going to – we need to build at least one affordable home. That's true. Because none of them are affordable. So, just one would be one more than we've got right now. Yeah. So, he wants to nationalize Adele. Yeah. And he wants – yeah, 99 flakes to cost 99p. There's some other classic ones as well. He's got it all.

[00:37:42] Well, he's actually now got ones which – as he said, he tailors his policies to the particular electorate he's standing in. At each time, he does what normally is a joke experience. Yeah. But this time, he said he's going to actually take clinics in the electorate, which Faraj hasn't done. Clacton, yeah. He's going to – every one day he spends overseas, he'll spend 10 days in Clapton. And he's going to – by a lottery ballot, he's going to help one family take their bins out each week. Right. Oh, he said that he's already –

[00:38:11] He's actually going to be in the – He's already done a U-turn because I heard him say that he's never – he was asked if he'd ever been to Clacton. And he said, no, and I'm going to stay away from the place because he thought that was what was required. Well, that's he sending up Faraj, of course. Yeah, because it's not Faraj's – It would be a bit more – there'd be a bit more of your American listeners that some irony is used in this show. Yes. And indeed, in Count Benfacer's campaigning. So, yes. So, just quickly, just on the final one that I wanted to cover off of Andy Burnham because we really are running out of time.

[00:38:39] But I think this is an important one. Other than the economic demise of the UK and the fact that growth is so slow now, part of the reason behind all of this, and he is on to this, and I'm not really seeing the government tackling this effectively, is 8% of the UK's working age population is economically inactive because of poor health or mental health. 8%. Which is 8%, which is way above any – well, apart from the United States.

[00:39:06] And the United States is pretty similar, but that's because they have no decent public health care service. So, if you're ill, you're ill. You're not going to get fixed up. But places like Germany, for example, and much of Europe, it's half that. And there's no comparable figures for places like Australia. But it really doesn't matter because the working age population that are economically inactive is less than that anyway, for whatever the reason. So, that's a real problem for Britain. There's a lot of sick people.

[00:39:37] And I don't know whether that's because the National Health Service has been underperforming, which is why you've got that same high percentage in the United States, or whether it's an attitude thing. And it comes a low for the working class people, and they buy junk food. Well, that's English food. It is junk food. But nonetheless, it's – you know, you have nutrition issues coming out of – not just out of – well, health issues coming out of the NHS being gutted, but also the low incomes, and therefore people can't afford to buy decent food.

[00:40:07] So, that's an area that he really could, you know, as a northern lad, try and sort out. He also wants to re-industrialise the UK. He said those words. Is it too late to do that? Which is vitally necessary. But with what? Well, this is where it comes down to government spending, okay? You're not going to get the private sector diving in to do it. And the thing is, in my perspective, given what I know about climate change, what I expect is going to start happening, probably even this year, then the most important thing for Britain is to have food self-sufficiency or work in that direction.

[00:40:36] There's no way they're going to compete with the Chinese on cars. Forget it. They're so far behind now. You'll never have a British car industry, given the advance that the Chinese already have, unless you whack up huge tariff walls and start building – but that's engineering miles in the future. What they could do is learn from the Dutch and learn how to have more food self-sufficiency. You know, the – because the crazy gap, you know, the Netherlands and the –

[00:41:04] the Netherlands are smaller than the UK and produces far more food and exports far more than any other country on the planet except America. It shows that you can get very – you know, it can be food self-sufficient with a good policy. That's a policy – that would remove 40% of Britain's imports of food. Or it would go from their importing 40% or more of their food to less.

[00:41:31] That is at least a way to get some manufacturing up and running. Yeah, and that creates jobs and reduces transport costs, and ultimately it's a win-win. That's the point I'd start from. And one of my favourite things as well, he wants to start – so there's discounts for large warehouses in the UK. Most of them sort of like out-of-town warehouses. Guess who's operating most of those out-of-town warehouses. They're getting a substantial discount on their rates. Amazon?

[00:42:00] Paying rates. Amazon, funnily enough, yes. So he wants to start charging them the fare rates. By the way, listeners, we did not pre-do that one. I made a good guess. Well, it's, you know, large warehouses. Large red sort of gives me an idea who's got to warehouses back in. Yeah. So he wants to do that. So it puts up the cost, obviously, of getting anything from Amazon. So, okay, people pay higher prices. But at the same time, he says he wants to increase the threshold at which local businesses would pay tax.

[00:42:27] So in city centres, you're going to have more stores not paying rates, and they would be competing against more expensive goods, which are now being sold online. So, you know, bringing people back into the high street, which sort of makes sense. The other thing he wants to do, get ready for this. The EU, he thinks, Britain, should we join it? But he says in his lifetime. In his lifetime. He's only 56.

[00:42:55] So if he meets the average age for someone from Manchester, that's 22 years or 25 years for the average age of someone living in the south. That's another thing. If he wants to live longer, he should move down south. Or he could try and equalise it so that people live the same length of time in the north of England and the south of England. That would be quite good as well. So he's got a lot to work on. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, the thing is, I think he's going to have –

[00:43:22] he might last – he's going to last more than a lettuce, okay, but less than a pumpkin. I think we should actually regard Keyes Starmer as a pumpkin now because he looks a bit like one. Back to the ugly face. Well, that's a good-looking face routine. But it's a pumpkin. He might last a pumpkin. He's certainly going to last more than a lettuce, but he might only last one and a half pumpkins. And then he's going to be – if he carries –

[00:43:49] if he continues following what Paul Samuelson tells him to do, he'll have the same fate that all the other politicians have followed Paul Samuelson's advice without knowing they're doing it. And that's going to lose it the next election to the other side. The other cheek will take over, and you'll go from the left to the right cheek of the same boom. Well, the right's gone apart from Farage. So, as you say, we have to see where he hits. Well, I think it's time for the raving learning party to take over. I mean, Britain's performance. We should give him a chance, couldn't we? Huh? We should give him a chance.

[00:44:19] Absolutely. Binfe seems to be the only one who's been talking sense lately, actually. I mean, I like his policies. I think they make more sense than all the others. Yeah, he's an intelligent man, and he might be stuck inside a garbage bin, but he's not stuck inside a neoclassical textbook. So, the garbage bin is a far healthier place for your brain to be than inside a neoclassical textbook. I don't know if you've seen him outside of his bin. It's quite surprising. He's younger. He's a good-looking bloke, actually. He's a comedy writer for the BBC, isn't he? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, there we are, you see. Zelensky.

[00:44:48] Zelensky was a comedian. You know, so there's hope. Maybe that should be the route to politics. What's his name? Jon Stewart. It's a possibility for the next American president. Yeah, that would be good. The world has been such a joke that it's better run it if the comedians take over than if we let the people think they're serious run it. At least it's honest, isn't it? All right. Very good. Completely out of time. We'll see you next time, Steve. Okay, Matt. See you then. Bye. The Debunking Economics Podcast.

[00:45:17] If you've enjoyed listening to Debunking Economics, even if you haven't, you might. Also, enjoy The Y Curve. Each week, Roger Hearing and I talk to a guest about a topic that is very much in the news that week. It's lively. It's fun. It's informative. What more could you want? So search The Y Curve in your favourite podcast app or go to ycurve.com to listen.