UK Labour leader Keir Starmer has said if he wins the next general election, within 5 years he will have re-nationalised Britain’s railways. Phil asks Steve whether it naturally follows that this will lead to an improvement in services and lower fares? Steve reckons you any need to look at government run services elsewhere in Europe to answer that question – but Britain’s trains weren’t so great even in the days of British Rail, when they were in government hands. This time there’s a chance one of the key areas of investment will remain in private hands, negating the advantage of public ownership.
Railways are also an easy choice. Many franchise operators have fallen by the wayside, forcing the government to step in. Renationalisation was starting t happen by default. Ut what about water? Nd, more significantly, what about the power industry. How can an industry that relies on making more money from customers operate in an environment where climate change is demanding we use less?
Phil and Steve discuss how Labour’s plans only seem to scratch the surface. Th direction of travel is right, but they don’t seem to be heading very far down the line.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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[00:00:31] The plan will take time because the franchises come in over a period of time, but we can get going on this straight away.
[00:00:47] This is the Debunking Economics podcast with Steve Keen and Phil Dobbie
[00:00:53] So, Nationalised Railways in Britain is that a bold move? Kear Starmer there promising something that would bring the UK into line with Canada, France, Australia, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, just about everywhere else.
[00:01:08] And why stop there? Why not Nationalise Water, given the UK is the only place in the world where water and sewage are fully privatised and energy?
[00:01:17] You know, maybe Jeremy Corbyn's socialist plans weren't so extreme after all, so how far down the road do we go with nationalisation and with climate change?
[00:01:27] Have we actually got any choice? That's this week on the Debunking Economics podcast.
[00:01:31] So, Kear Starmer and Labour in the UK has announced that if they win the next election, which after the local elections recently sounds more likely, then they will nationalise the railways.
[00:01:49] But the question is why stop there? What about water and other public monopolies? What about energy?
[00:01:56] So Steve, nationalising the railways, I mean, we need obviously we need to move from the very complex arrangements that we have between the various carriers at the moment.
[00:02:05] All that intricate, you know, mechanics of dealing with trains passing from one area to another and the complex ticketing and payment and repayment between various providers, which is just a nonsense.
[00:02:17] And then the need for expensive regulation as well. But if we got rid of all of that and it was all came into public hands, doesn't necessarily guarantee better or cheaper services?
[00:02:30] The funniest thing, the reason you don't even need to do any logic about this is just change countries and you hop up virtually any country in Europe and then even the overall international system within...
[00:02:43] And it's better.
[00:02:44] It's better.
[00:02:45] But that's always been the case even when we had a nationalised British rail, it was better.
[00:02:52] And I don't know whether that's the...
[00:02:55] But it's part of it legacy because we built the railways so much sooner in the UK.
[00:03:01] That's the last part of it.
[00:03:02] Because we look at the original construction of railways, most of them are private ventures. Railways were the electric vehicles of the 19th century.
[00:03:11] They were the automobile of the 19th century.
[00:03:14] And everybody was trying to get in on the act and make money out of it.
[00:03:17] What you had was a whole sum of railways, berms and busts.
[00:03:21] I don't know whether they were competing, systems are putting out two railways between the same two towns.
[00:03:27] Yeah, they were. Absolutely they were.
[00:03:29] Slightly different routes.
[00:03:30] And then to try and... I mean it really was.
[00:03:33] It was how quickly can we build and then also let's build to this town but where will people stay when they get to this town?
[00:03:40] Oh, we better build some hotels as well.
[00:03:42] So we'll diversify into hotel building.
[00:03:45] I mean it really was the birth of domestic tourism in the UK that these companies were overseeing.
[00:03:51] Yeah, and it said berms and busts come out of that.
[00:03:53] So what you had was rather than a well planned way of linking major cities together,
[00:04:02] not just a spider web but multiple spider webs thrown across the tapestry of the UK.
[00:04:09] And then that was then privatized, although sorry nationalized at the end of all that,
[00:04:16] which gave us a system that could be again before privatization.
[00:04:21] So it's been... if we actually have nationalization taking on an hour,
[00:04:25] you'll have privatized system, nationalized, privatized, nationalized.
[00:04:29] That will be four times through the ringer on this.
[00:04:32] Yeah, but the reason it was nationalized the first time around was though
[00:04:35] because we were starting to see demand falling away
[00:04:38] and there were so many of those duplicate lines
[00:04:40] and I had the whole beaching report which sort of regressionized all of those lines at the same time.
[00:04:46] I mean we don't want to do that now because there's no connection.
[00:04:48] There'll be no lines left. So that was part of the reason behind it.
[00:04:52] Now it's sort of like saying, well okay we think we can do it better.
[00:04:56] And my question mark is, well other than all that complex ticketing etc.,
[00:05:01] will we do it any better in private hands?
[00:05:03] What makes us think that a group of civil servants...
[00:05:06] In public hands.
[00:05:07] In public hands, sorry.
[00:05:09] What makes us think that a group of civil servants are going to do a better job
[00:05:12] than the Kamash-Tuk-Un organization?
[00:05:14] This is one of the sort of...
[00:05:16] What's the function of railways in the modern generation?
[00:05:19] We go back to the 19th century.
[00:05:21] It was a sort of thing which could have been government funded
[00:05:24] in the same way that the original attempts to get into space were government funded.
[00:05:28] But it wasn't.
[00:05:29] It was done by private groups competing with each other
[00:05:31] and then you got this huge...
[00:05:33] It had the booms and busts that railways caused in the 19th century
[00:05:36] and then this confused mess of different railway lines.
[00:05:40] Then what ultimately happens,
[00:05:42] is there's no longer leading edges of innovation.
[00:05:45] That's the actual thing that you're having.
[00:05:48] Devices that run on metal rails.
[00:05:51] Let's get a very basic definition of what a railway means in this instance.
[00:05:55] And that's no longer cutting-edge technology.
[00:05:57] We've got high-speed rail and things like that aren't being done.
[00:06:00] But you well pass the point where that's the centre of innovation.
[00:06:03] And then that sort of area is one where you can say,
[00:06:08] well it's a public service.
[00:06:10] We want people to get from one point to another.
[00:06:12] We want those costs to be as low as possible.
[00:06:15] We don't want it to be something where you impose a profit centre requirement
[00:06:18] on people to go from one town to another
[00:06:20] or to move within their own town like moving around London.
[00:06:23] And what you have if you try to make everything a privately profit based
[00:06:27] when you're really talking mass transit for people who are generally speaking
[00:06:31] it's the poorer end of the society, not the rich end.
[00:06:33] You're simply bumping up the cost of living for them
[00:06:36] which is going to reduce their capacity to work
[00:06:38] in those private institutions that they're going from home
[00:06:41] to the factory to work in in the first place.
[00:06:44] So that's the sort of...
[00:06:46] Okay, so a couple of things there.
[00:06:48] One is you're saying well there's no innovation.
[00:06:50] So we're just saying this is almost like the end of the line for railways.
[00:06:53] Haha.
[00:06:55] We're just going to carry on doing what they're doing now
[00:06:58] for those people who can't afford to travel by any other means.
[00:07:01] Or is that...
[00:07:03] Well it comes down to what's the investment horizon.
[00:07:06] I saw particularly being somebody who's lived both in the European mainland
[00:07:10] and the UK.
[00:07:12] And I think this is where a subscriber of ours and a good friend,
[00:07:16] Avna Offa has done a very nice little book which we better mention
[00:07:20] in the summary where he tries to make the public private divide
[00:07:23] and say what should be the dividing line between something being publicly funded
[00:07:26] and privately funded.
[00:07:28] And it comes down to the length of time
[00:07:31] you're going to get a full return on your investment.
[00:07:34] And if you have things which like sewerage
[00:07:37] which I think is the obvious example to use for other areas
[00:07:40] to bring back into public ownership,
[00:07:43] health.
[00:07:45] Well everything which has a...
[00:07:47] Which where the return is so long that your short-term oriented private sector manager,
[00:07:52] capitalist, is going to not bother doing that
[00:07:55] because by the time that particular investment makes a return
[00:08:00] he or she has moved on and somebody else has taken over the management role.
[00:08:03] And therefore you get a lack of investment in the long-term stuff
[00:08:07] which is the thing you want the state to be providing.
[00:08:10] It's not possible to make a return on that stuff anyway
[00:08:14] from the private sector, therefore you don't do the investment
[00:08:17] and the thing degrades over time.
[00:08:19] Well here's the crazy...
[00:08:20] Yeah it makes perfect sense but here's the crazy thing on that
[00:08:23] in that if you're running a train company
[00:08:25] you have the license currently for a certain number of years
[00:08:28] I don't know what it is but it's not a very long time
[00:08:30] so you've got to make short-term gain out of it
[00:08:33] just in case you lose the franchise.
[00:08:36] And so they don't invest in the trains, the rolling stock themselves
[00:08:40] they go to what are called Roscos which are a rolling stock company
[00:08:45] so companies like Everscholten, Porta Brook and Angel Trains
[00:08:49] and they lease the trains from them
[00:08:52] and looking at some figures from the FT
[00:08:54] they spend 3.1 billion in the year up to March 2023
[00:08:59] that's 26% of their overall expenditure leasing these trains
[00:09:03] and these are owned by overseas investors like Allianz
[00:09:08] Canada's Public Sector Pension Board, CK Hutchinson in Hong Kong
[00:09:13] so private companies are operating clipping the ticket
[00:09:18] literally making money and their investment is not huge
[00:09:23] because they are just leasing the rolling stock
[00:09:25] the railways are currently owned
[00:09:28] the actual infrastructure itself is currently owned by the government
[00:09:31] it was privatised and then they had a few accidents
[00:09:33] so they thought we better bring that back into public hands
[00:09:36] so these companies are not doing a great deal
[00:09:39] and when they nationalise them
[00:09:42] they're not going to nationalise them
[00:09:45] these rolling stock companies will still exist
[00:09:48] I bet you the government continues to lease from the rolling stock companies
[00:09:52] that's the crazy bit
[00:09:55] I mean again the contrast in the quality of the rolling stock
[00:09:58] between Europe and the UK is so extreme
[00:10:01] it's virtually laughable
[00:10:03] a large number of railways carriages in Europe
[00:10:08] will have built-in Wi-Fi
[00:10:10] they see it's some Wi-Fi
[00:10:12] that's a fairly trivial example
[00:10:13] but I mean the UK just doesn't work
[00:10:15] that's all
[00:10:16] yeah, it works at the railway station
[00:10:19] not when you move to 50 metres
[00:10:21] it's very reflection of the cellular network
[00:10:24] rather than the railways
[00:10:25] that's another thing to knock about the UK
[00:10:27] but yeah, my favourite experience
[00:10:29] that was I was told when I first arrived
[00:10:31] there was some UK line
[00:10:33] where the carriages had the handle
[00:10:35] on the outside of the carriage
[00:10:37] and you had to open the window
[00:10:39] and put your hands through the reach
[00:10:41] that's where it always used to be
[00:10:42] and I couldn't believe it
[00:10:43] that's still running
[00:10:44] no, it isn't still running
[00:10:46] in fact, in fact
[00:10:47] they must shut it down the last few years
[00:10:49] because I thought it
[00:10:50] there was a case in Scotland
[00:10:52] where there's an old railway line
[00:10:54] that is an old steam line
[00:10:56] that's running trains where the
[00:10:58] and I think it's a not-for-profit
[00:11:00] and they're having to close it down
[00:11:02] or it's a very small private company
[00:11:04] but having to close it down
[00:11:06] and there's a campaign
[00:11:07] and the reason is because they've been told
[00:11:09] they've got to have automatic locking doors
[00:11:11] and they're saying we just can't afford to do that
[00:11:13] so it's, you know
[00:11:15] so there's a case in point where
[00:11:17] actually for a lot of people that go out and see
[00:11:19] you know, for the charm of going on this old train
[00:11:21] through the hills of Scotland
[00:11:23] for it to be modernised by regulation
[00:11:25] so you can argue both ways
[00:11:27] but always used to be the way you had to roll down the windows
[00:11:29] to get your hand outside the train
[00:11:31] and open the other and wield the doors
[00:11:33] this is another one actually
[00:11:34] I wasn't in Scotland when I caught this train
[00:11:36] it was somewhere in the UK as well
[00:11:38] England as well
[00:11:39] so it's, but the lack of investment
[00:11:41] in the rolling stock
[00:11:43] is quite a joke in the UK
[00:11:45] the calibre of rolling stock in Europe is far, far higher
[00:11:48] and one of my little fantasies has often been
[00:11:50] to bring back Maggie Thatcher
[00:11:52] and Ronald Reagan
[00:11:54] and Pophamon Trains in Europe
[00:11:56] and the UK
[00:11:58] and then have them
[00:12:00] to have to tick a box
[00:12:02] where do you think you are
[00:12:04] and I think if they were in the rolling stock
[00:12:06] in the UK they'd say
[00:12:08] we're in Europe
[00:12:09] this is obviously Old Thashten and Soviet stuff
[00:12:11] and if they were on the UK
[00:12:13] this must be the modernized stuff brought in
[00:12:15] by our privatization revolutions
[00:12:17] it's the other way around
[00:12:19] there's a way Avner's work
[00:12:21] is such a useful contribution
[00:12:23] the horizon over which you get returns
[00:12:27] to actually invest in that stuff
[00:12:29] is so low, it's so long
[00:12:31] that you don't bother doing the investment
[00:12:33] of course it's made even worse
[00:12:35] because as you say they privatize
[00:12:37] the management of the rolling stock
[00:12:39] as well as privatizing the delivery of tickets
[00:12:41] so you've got a double whammy there
[00:12:43] and nobody bothers doing any investment
[00:12:45] and you've got rather than the privatizing
[00:12:47] leading to a revolution in quality
[00:12:50] which is the Maggie Thatcher
[00:12:52] Ronald Reagan belief
[00:12:54] it's led to stagnation
[00:12:56] so can you
[00:12:58] and then water is the obvious other example
[00:13:00] I mean besides Britain
[00:13:02] how many other countries have fully
[00:13:04] privatized their water and sewage system
[00:13:07] it's very round number this one
[00:13:09] zero
[00:13:11] with only country in the world that has done it fully
[00:13:13] so there's public-private partnerships
[00:13:15] in various degrees in various parts of the world
[00:13:17] but to hold us bolus the whole system
[00:13:19] being sold off
[00:13:21] 70% of that ownership is owned by foreign investors
[00:13:25] and it's a nonsense
[00:13:27] because you can clearly evidently see
[00:13:30] the consequences of that
[00:13:32] and again that gets down to the long term investment doesn't it
[00:13:34] but the issue is if you were to
[00:13:36] so if Labus as well as nationalizing their airways
[00:13:39] we're also going to nationalize water
[00:13:41] re-nationalize water
[00:13:43] the issue they face obviously
[00:13:46] is that the amount of investment
[00:13:48] that is needed to get back to a level
[00:13:50] that is a suitable standard
[00:13:52] is huge isn't it
[00:13:54] and possibly politically unpalatable
[00:13:57] I mean we're you know billions or
[00:13:59] hundreds of billions
[00:14:01] this again comes down to how it does the state bar
[00:14:03] just to do investment all then that's where the
[00:14:05] you know the accounting aspect of modern monetary theory
[00:14:08] that says that the government creates money when it spends
[00:14:11] it doesn't need to borrow
[00:14:13] that's the way you should look at it and say
[00:14:15] is there a justified need
[00:14:17] to expand government money creation
[00:14:20] for the area of transport and water
[00:14:23] and when you've got the situation
[00:14:25] of the privatized water systems in the UK right now
[00:14:28] where one of the most dangerous things you can do
[00:14:31] in the UK is go for a swim in a river or on a beach
[00:14:34] you know that is appalling
[00:14:36] so it's a classic
[00:14:38] that would be seen as a failure of public
[00:14:40] investment infrastructure
[00:14:42] were done by the public sector
[00:14:44] but it's actually by the privates failing to do it
[00:14:46] for the same reason that Avner's book outlines
[00:14:48] that the
[00:14:50] the horizon on returns
[00:14:52] of the necessary investments to avoid
[00:14:54] having sewerage in your rivers
[00:14:57] is beyond that as most private sector
[00:15:00] managers so they don't do the investment in the system
[00:15:03] breaks down and you left it with a catastrophic failure
[00:15:06] that in that case yes definitely
[00:15:08] you have to it's worthwhile getting back to the stage
[00:15:11] where you can manage to swim
[00:15:13] in British rivers or drink the water out of them
[00:15:16] or use them for other purposes
[00:15:18] apart from sewerage lines
[00:15:20] it's worth that investment
[00:15:22] so we could get back to the good old days when people died from hypothermia rather than
[00:15:25] you know poisoning
[00:15:28] from swimming in the water imprint
[00:15:30] so that's right yeah but the investment
[00:15:32] so you're saying well okay
[00:15:34] follow the modern monetary theory road
[00:15:36] and it's all public investment
[00:15:38] the issue becomes resources doesn't know
[00:15:40] the resources in this case would be people
[00:15:42] you know the amount of work that we were needing to be done
[00:15:44] for all of these industries
[00:15:46] would be fairly people intensive
[00:15:48] and you know we got close to full employment
[00:15:50] and have an issue trying to fill all those jobs
[00:15:52] well that's one of the bottom like some of the other ones
[00:15:54] if you're going to go to the stage where you have decent infrastructure
[00:15:58] then that's a fair amount of capital investment as well
[00:16:01] and the thing which the UK has
[00:16:04] it's just degraded
[00:16:06] it's the calibre of its physical infrastructure
[00:16:08] for supporting industry
[00:16:10] dramatically over the last 40 years
[00:16:12] with the belief that there was the growth was going to be in services
[00:16:14] rather than manufacturing
[00:16:16] so you've lost the skill base
[00:16:18] and America to some degree has done the same thing
[00:16:20] you don't have the trained workforce
[00:16:22] you don't have the machines that make the machines
[00:16:24] that we would have if you were still
[00:16:26] following what was supposed to be old fashioned
[00:16:28] canes and ideas back in the 50s and 60s
[00:16:30] you would have the machinery
[00:16:32] you'd have the capacity to do the industrial
[00:16:34] development you need to do
[00:16:36] what should have been done by the private companies
[00:16:38] with proper sewage treatments and so on
[00:16:40] so it really is a case
[00:16:42] if you try to save money
[00:16:44] you end up destroying resources
[00:16:46] not just the physical stuff
[00:16:48] but the capacity to recreate that machinery
[00:16:50] as well as the capacity to create
[00:16:52] the machine that you're going to have
[00:16:54] to make that machinery
[00:16:56] is gone
[00:16:58] so you can't really catch up on the 30 years you've lost
[00:17:00] Will you just be to buy the machine making machine
[00:17:02] well you buy the machine making machines
[00:17:04] so that you can make the machines
[00:17:06] things are reversible aren't they
[00:17:08] these engineering talent and talent
[00:17:10] they'll want us to do that
[00:17:12] and if we don't have the knowledge base
[00:17:14] I mean that's another classic instance
[00:17:16] where if you go like Australia's another example there
[00:17:18] with the ferries in Sydney
[00:17:20] where the decision was made
[00:17:22] it was just for the river and
[00:17:24] harbour transport in Sydney
[00:17:26] but to outsource them I think to an Indonesian company
[00:17:28] and that resulted in
[00:17:30] therefore we didn't have the local
[00:17:32] ferry building, ship building
[00:17:34] capabilities in
[00:17:36] Australia they basically were led to Kay
[00:17:38] handed over to an Indonesian company
[00:17:40] and what comes back a cannery around
[00:17:42] that's too high for the bridges
[00:17:44] on the river it's supposed to
[00:17:46] traverse so people
[00:17:48] you've got a top deck where people are advised
[00:17:50] not to go up there because you'll be decapitated
[00:17:52] by the bridge we're going about to go under
[00:17:54] so it is
[00:17:56] a classic short-sightedness
[00:17:58] to believe everything is better done by the private sector
[00:18:00] well I mean there were two towns
[00:18:02] in the UK like Kru and Darby
[00:18:04] which were big towns
[00:18:06] that basically built from building trains
[00:18:08] and they didn't do any of that
[00:18:10] anymore now but
[00:18:12] if you look at the
[00:18:14] the new Elizabeth line
[00:18:16] in London, central London
[00:18:18] I mean some amazing engineering
[00:18:20] feet as well and it's
[00:18:22] been weaving its way in amongst
[00:18:24] already complex web of tunnels
[00:18:26] not just the underground but sewage tunnels
[00:18:28] and all sorts of other tunnels that exist in London
[00:18:30] plus Roman remains and goodness
[00:18:32] knows what else that you're not allowed to touch
[00:18:34] and then
[00:18:36] also building these
[00:18:38] massive stations in amongst
[00:18:40] existing buildings in Oxford Street and Bond Street
[00:18:42] and the like I mean that was a huge
[00:18:44] engineering feet I mean massively over budget
[00:18:46] and you know a year or two late but
[00:18:48] I mean it shows that
[00:18:50] Britain can pull its finger out and deliver
[00:18:52] quite a big engineering
[00:18:54] achievement
[00:18:56] just takes time and a lot of money to do it
[00:18:58] yeah time and money which can be created
[00:19:00] by the government and time which
[00:19:02] the government has and those are
[00:19:04] the factors that we're completely missed
[00:19:06] in thinking about the shift
[00:19:08] of privatising in the first instance
[00:19:10] I'm actually very as well being a great way
[00:19:12] to travel it's a great way for people
[00:19:14] who don't live in the country or that often to see
[00:19:16] what has happened to courtesy
[00:19:18] of the last 40 years
[00:19:20] of privatising everything
[00:19:22] and it makes the HS2
[00:19:24] even more sad in a way doesn't it
[00:19:26] because and here you've got a situation
[00:19:28] where you know major investment in a major
[00:19:30] infrastructure project
[00:19:32] I guess
[00:19:34] that you know it's easy to pull the plug
[00:19:36] on something like because you say oh it's getting
[00:19:38] very expensive
[00:19:40] and I need that to fill in potholes
[00:19:42] which is basically Rishi Sunak's short
[00:19:44] term outlook
[00:19:46] because he can't see very far well you know
[00:19:48] if you stood on a box
[00:19:50] maybe Tibia further
[00:19:52] but I mean the
[00:19:54] the problem is when you're
[00:19:56] looking at doing cost benefit analysis
[00:19:58] of stuff like that
[00:20:00] you don't look at the longer term in direct benefits do you
[00:20:02] so we've talked about the need for
[00:20:04] you know growing the
[00:20:06] economic complexity of a country
[00:20:08] and to do that you need to be able to
[00:20:10] move around the country nimbly
[00:20:12] and HS2 would have been a great opportunity
[00:20:14] to do that if it had been done in the right way
[00:20:16] so that people in the north could easily
[00:20:18] deal with people in the south and they could
[00:20:20] you know in a couple of hours
[00:20:22] they could be in London
[00:20:24] talking to somebody and somebody in London
[00:20:26] could be up in Leeds talking to somebody
[00:20:28] and if you got the capacity
[00:20:30] up because these trains are travelling regularly
[00:20:32] at a high speed
[00:20:34] then you can't really see
[00:20:36] the difference between the two
[00:20:38] so if you're travelling regularly
[00:20:40] at a high speed without any slow trains
[00:20:42] to stop that happening
[00:20:44] then you can get the capacity up and get the prices down
[00:20:46] but all of that just thrown away
[00:20:48] I mean it's like a massive opportunity
[00:20:50] for the UK just ditched because
[00:20:52] of because the numbers didn't stack
[00:20:54] up supposedly
[00:20:56] and that's because of the short
[00:20:58] term cost benefit of focus rather than
[00:21:00] looking at you know
[00:21:02] your whole idea about systems thinking
[00:21:04] isn't it, everything is connected
[00:21:06] don't look at the time
[00:21:08] horizons involved in different systems
[00:21:10] you see everything with the private sector
[00:21:12] then those elements of the
[00:21:14] take a long time horizon
[00:21:16] don't get built and then suddenly
[00:21:18] in this case certainly with the
[00:21:20] sewerage situation in the UK
[00:21:22] then all the other stuff
[00:21:24] which depends upon those
[00:21:26] elements
[00:21:28] interlink system
[00:21:30] breaking, the whole thing falls apart
[00:21:32] so you end up drastically undermining
[00:21:34] the long term future
[00:21:36] by thinking the private sector is better at everything
[00:21:38] and yeah, some people would say
[00:21:40] well
[00:21:42] you can commercially run monopolies
[00:21:44] if you insist on minimum requirements
[00:21:46] and those requirements are for social purposes
[00:21:48] so for example
[00:21:50] regulation that'll work
[00:21:52] sometimes it does doesn't it
[00:21:54] so for phone companies
[00:21:56] I'm a bit of a mixed attitude on phone companies
[00:21:58] so long as you say well okay
[00:22:00] you've got to provide a low cost line rental
[00:22:02] for people who can't afford mobile phones
[00:22:04] even that's old fashioned thinking
[00:22:06] so you need a low cost mobile plan
[00:22:08] for people who can't afford
[00:22:10] because everyone should have the right to be connected
[00:22:12] rail companies perhaps you could say
[00:22:14] well you've got to offer cheap fares
[00:22:16] a certain time of the day
[00:22:18] there's got to be a minimum of fare
[00:22:20] if you feel like you can make money out of
[00:22:22] business travelers at peak time
[00:22:24] then go for it but for the social good
[00:22:26] certain times of the day
[00:22:28] you've got to offer a much cheaper
[00:22:30] for the mobile companies which obviously
[00:22:32] have responded to the fact that
[00:22:34] people are getting a subsidy based on
[00:22:36] usage of just jacked up
[00:22:38] the fixed charge
[00:22:40] the fixed daily charge
[00:22:42] because they can so actually saying
[00:22:44] well actually you've got to come up with a system
[00:22:46] where prices
[00:22:48] where you don't penalize low users
[00:22:50] with a high fixed charge
[00:22:52] in fact let's get rid of the fixed charge
[00:22:54] let's just have usage charges
[00:22:56] and you have to make those usage charges
[00:22:58] progressively more expensive the more you use
[00:23:00] to try and dis-incentivize
[00:23:02] heavy users
[00:23:04] so you sort of like saying well okay
[00:23:06] you can run as a private concern but you've got to follow
[00:23:08] public policy on this
[00:23:10] and the public policy is that you should
[00:23:12] be encouraging people to use less
[00:23:14] yeah I mean it's often what you get out
[00:23:16] of a lot of this stuff is just
[00:23:18] supposedly the argument that private sector will do things better
[00:23:20] that's the bottle line assumption
[00:23:22] which itself can be false
[00:23:24] when you're investment horizon
[00:23:26] time-link is a
[00:23:28] significant issue but the other thing
[00:23:30] is it assumes that the private sector is lean and mean
[00:23:32] well it's normally lean and mean to its
[00:23:34] actual core workers
[00:23:36] not lean and mean to its actual management on top
[00:23:38] and you what do you then get
[00:23:40] marketing expenses one group
[00:23:42] when you have the capacity to compete over
[00:23:44] the same potential pool of customers
[00:23:46] and this is clearly the case
[00:23:48] with the university sector for example
[00:23:50] you get a proliferation of marketing
[00:23:52] costs
[00:23:54] and management costs coming out of that
[00:23:56] which actually can be more expensive than
[00:23:58] if there was a single public
[00:24:00] entity involved certainly that's a case for health insurance
[00:24:02] so there's
[00:24:04] so many areas where this rather
[00:24:06] than being more efficient you get more waste out
[00:24:08] of the private sector because it's focusing
[00:24:10] upon demand
[00:24:12] trying to grab that demand
[00:24:14] and the costs of getting the
[00:24:16] demand rather than
[00:24:18] having just providing a basic level of service
[00:24:20] which is what the state tends to do
[00:24:22] the cost of that become overwhelming
[00:24:24] and that's
[00:24:26] yeah you're at a marketing point
[00:24:28] on marketing budget so if you only had the government
[00:24:30] supplying a service we wouldn't be saying hey
[00:24:32] use more electricity but if you've got
[00:24:34] several electricity companies they're all
[00:24:36] going to be competing. Exactly. When we come back
[00:24:38] energy is an interesting one I feel like there's
[00:24:40] no choice if we're going to reach net zero
[00:24:42] you can't do that with energy and private
[00:24:44] hands and I've got a very simple argument about why that
[00:24:46] might be which came out of a coffee conversation
[00:24:48] with a mate of mine this week
[00:24:50] so
[00:24:52] back in a second to talk about that this is the Deep Banking Economics
[00:24:54] Podcast
[00:25:22] this is the Deep Banking Economics Podcast
[00:25:24] with Steve Keen and Phil Dobby
[00:25:26] so we are looking this week as to
[00:25:28] whether you should nationalize
[00:25:30] the
[00:25:42] companies obviously the labor in the UK has said
[00:25:46] they want to nationalize the
[00:25:48] which would be nice I wonder whether
[00:25:50] actually they've picked the wrong target because
[00:26:04] there's obviously everyone who's going well what about
[00:26:06] water companies given that they are paying
[00:26:08] themselves huge salaries and they're polluting
[00:26:10] our water but also energy
[00:26:12] is the obvious one as well
[00:26:14] because if you're
[00:26:16] paying for a lot of money
[00:26:18] you can't do that with energy
[00:26:20] because you're going to be a big
[00:26:22] big big big big big big big big big big
[00:26:24] big big big big big big big
[00:26:26] because if you nationalize energy
[00:26:28] I mean
[00:26:30] the focus from the government has been
[00:26:32] trying to fix the short
[00:26:34] time problem of rising prices and that has
[00:26:36] been because we've had
[00:26:38] rising demand for energy
[00:26:40] we've had falling supplies on a global
[00:26:42] price basis so prices have gone up
[00:26:44] the government then introduced price caps
[00:26:46] and this has happened around the world they've offered subsidies as
[00:26:48] well I mean
[00:26:50] that wouldn't actually be any
[00:26:52] different, that situation if the government owned the energy company. We'd still have
[00:26:57] that supply demand imbalance which would be pushing prices up. That wouldn't fix that
[00:27:02] particular issue.
[00:27:03] No, but one thing you mentioned earlier would fix and that's the energy companies are trying
[00:27:08] to get us to use more energy. And in a private sector environment, that is what's
[00:27:16] going to happen and not necessarily something you want to reject. But when it comes to
[00:27:21] energy now, we know, well we should know, they've got to drastically reduce our energy
[00:27:26] consumption. We need less far less consumption of energy to reduce the damage we're doing
[00:27:32] to the biosphere. And that is very hard for the that just goes entirely against the
[00:27:36] grain of a private sector enterprise. We're saying please consume less of what we sell.
[00:27:41] So you do need the nationalization of the energy grid and the nationalization
[00:27:47] of anything where people are going to end up encouraging us to use fossil fuels, which
[00:27:53] is the bottom line here with what's actually happened. Instead of course, there's the
[00:27:56] reverse the private or the state, the national governments, which are themselves oil promoters,
[00:28:02] societies and co. And then the remaining private oil companies have taken over the
[00:28:07] United Nations process as we saw at COP28. So you know, the private interest is
[00:28:13] in the case of energy is what's got us into this dilemma in the first place in many ways.
[00:28:19] And reverse it, you've got to say that's got to be state owned and we want to reduce the
[00:28:24] usage of oil.
[00:28:25] Well, the energy companies would say, well, you know what? We are increasingly using
[00:28:28] renewable energy.
[00:28:29] Well, they'd say that. They would say that.
[00:28:32] They would. But I mean, at the end of the day, they still want to sell energy,
[00:28:36] even if everything they sold was a renewable energy. They still want to pipe it
[00:28:41] across the country and make money off you for it.
[00:28:44] So my next door neighbor has got solar cells on his roof, and he's got a Tesla
[00:28:51] battery or two fixed to his wall as well. And he's got one of these apps like I have
[00:28:56] for my electric car where you can see what's going into the house. He can see what's
[00:29:01] going from his solar cell, what's going into his battery and what's being used
[00:29:06] in the house at that time coming from the grid and what's coming from his
[00:29:09] battery and how much is being added and all that sort of stuff.
[00:29:12] And lots of graphs. I mean, he loves it because he's a numbers guy.
[00:29:14] So he loves trying to get the number down to zero or even negative.
[00:29:19] And he says, you know, the investment is worth it, apart from the fact,
[00:29:23] you know, he loves gadgets. So even if he wasn't making any money,
[00:29:25] I think he'd still do it. But, you know, it's worth it because even
[00:29:29] though the payback is quite slow, you know, it does pay for itself in
[00:29:33] the end. And he's saying to me, because I get a much cheaper rate for using
[00:29:39] energy to charge up my car at night like seven pence per kilowatt hour rather
[00:29:43] than 30 pence per kilowatt hour, which is what I get charged during the day.
[00:29:49] And I could do the same if I got a battery even without solar cells
[00:29:53] because not a lot of room on our roof, but if I got a battery, I could
[00:29:56] do the same thing. I could charge up the battery overnight at seven
[00:29:59] pence per kilowatt hour. But the issue is, if everybody did that,
[00:30:06] the energy company would not be charging seven pence per kilowatt hour,
[00:30:09] would they? Because they'd be losing a lot of money.
[00:30:13] They would jack that up. So you know that it's one of those things that
[00:30:17] so it's OK now. But the risk of making that investment personally
[00:30:22] is that you are reliant on a private company saying, trust us,
[00:30:27] you know, we're not going to charge you much. And then when everybody does it,
[00:30:30] they're going to have to jack the prices up for them to make a profit.
[00:30:32] So you are not ahead in any way by that very simple argument.
[00:30:38] You've got to put it in public hands so the government can say, yeah, sure.
[00:30:42] I mean, we'll make less money because you're using less energy.
[00:30:45] Brilliant, because that's what we're here for.
[00:30:47] Yeah, you're trying to reduce the energy consumption.
[00:30:49] So this is we don't realize we're in this world yet where we are
[00:30:53] certainly are where energy shortages are going to be ruling
[00:30:57] the the roost of the entire behavior of our society.
[00:31:00] And in that situation, you don't want it to be managed by people who are saying,
[00:31:04] we want to use more energy, which is the case when you've got private ownership
[00:31:07] of the energy distribution system and the energy generation system.
[00:31:12] The big issue I've got with that as well, which my engineer friends will
[00:31:15] tell me, I'm sure in comments later, is the grid itself and the grid's not
[00:31:19] built for feed in production of energy.
[00:31:23] So we have and then that again is an area where if you're going to address that,
[00:31:27] then you would want the public institutions doing it rather than private
[00:31:30] because you want them to achieve that for social reasons, not for profitability ones.
[00:31:34] And the issue again is, isn't it?
[00:31:35] It's not joined up thinking.
[00:31:37] So, you know, our whole approach to energy.
[00:31:39] So we do bits and pieces.
[00:31:41] So, you know, we give incentives to consumers to do stuff like
[00:31:47] getting solar cells put on the roof or getting heat pumps or buying electric
[00:31:51] cars, we close down coal fired power stations.
[00:31:55] All of that is good.
[00:31:56] But is it actually joined up thinking?
[00:32:00] You know, it's all been coming from the Department of Energy and Climate Change,
[00:32:03] a couple of hundred civil servants.
[00:32:06] And their focus lately has been on trying to make energy more affordable
[00:32:10] because of the rising prices.
[00:32:12] You know, end of story, all their focus has been on that.
[00:32:16] It's not again, it's not systematic thinking that's going on here.
[00:32:18] Is it towards achieving net zero?
[00:32:20] It's sort of it's a bit haphazard.
[00:32:23] So again, I'm wondering whether it's sort of like it can't be done by private
[00:32:27] companies, but is the government best place to do this as well?
[00:32:30] Or is it something where we say it's awful word, but you know, we used to have
[00:32:33] crangos, we still do.
[00:32:34] But you know, quasi government organizations where you have experts
[00:32:38] who look after this sort of thing and they come out with a strategy
[00:32:42] and they're responsible for, you know, implementing it.
[00:32:46] Yeah, I mean, you're inheriting a complete miss.
[00:32:48] And that's partly the problem because again, the the ideology of privatization,
[00:32:54] which Maggie Thatcher and Ronald Reagan deservedly most associated with basically says
[00:32:59] there won't be any problems in the future.
[00:33:00] The private sector will solve all of them.
[00:33:02] You won't need welfare because everybody's going to have a high paid job.
[00:33:06] You won't you won't need social security.
[00:33:08] You won't need health precision because we'll all be having much,
[00:33:12] much cheaper medicine anyway in the future.
[00:33:13] You are the other you get to the future and you were sold a total pop.
[00:33:18] What do you do? You've then got the you can't get out of this
[00:33:22] without enormous cost of reversing a mistake.
[00:33:25] And and that's the trouble that you said the last lack of systemic thinking
[00:33:29] the real driver behind all this was the marshals into ply into locking supply
[00:33:33] and demand curves, which even on its own grounds has been shown to be
[00:33:36] intellectually barren but still believed by the economic priesthood.
[00:33:40] So we went down this route being promised to Nirvana.
[00:33:44] We've ended up in the form of purgatory and getting out of purgatory
[00:33:48] and shape.
[00:33:49] Well, I mean, it's it's it's an argument you could make if there was
[00:33:53] only one product in the world and no interdependencies.
[00:33:58] If we all just bought one thing and the supply and demand might work on that
[00:34:01] on that basis.
[00:34:02] But the the joined up plan though, so Labour has got a plan for
[00:34:08] Great British Energy, which is going to be a new publicly owned
[00:34:11] clean energy company.
[00:34:13] So they say, first of all, we're going to have a proper
[00:34:15] windfall tax on oil and gas companies.
[00:34:17] Then we're going to establish Great British Energy, which is going
[00:34:19] to give us in their words real energy independence from foreign
[00:34:24] dictators.
[00:34:25] It's going to be owned by British people, built by British people
[00:34:27] to benefit the British people.
[00:34:29] I hope you're standing up while I'm reading this as well.
[00:34:31] Seeing God Save the King.
[00:34:33] You're reading that.
[00:34:34] That's that's what they say.
[00:34:36] Oh my god.
[00:34:37] Well, it's well, it's the Labour Party document.
[00:34:39] It's going to invest in it's going to invest in clean energy
[00:34:41] across our country.
[00:34:42] For example, by making the UK a world leader in floating offshore
[00:34:46] wind.
[00:34:47] And that's something we know that all sounds great.
[00:34:49] But I wonder whether actually it's just a bit of a half
[00:34:52] arsed approach because actually what we need is to take that to
[00:34:57] the next step surely, which is where the government is
[00:35:00] responsible for the buying in of all energy supplies for the
[00:35:05] UK.
[00:35:05] So imagine if Great British Energy was saying yes, we'll
[00:35:08] you know, we'll tax heavily companies that are creating dirty
[00:35:11] fuel.
[00:35:12] But also we will invest or provide grants or some sort of
[00:35:16] system to help other kind of companies to a subject.
[00:35:19] It's got to be a bit of private investment here, but other
[00:35:22] companies to invest in in green power generation.
[00:35:26] And we will choose who we buy from trying to solve this,
[00:35:31] you know, shortest possible cost.
[00:35:34] And but you know, obviously we're going to invest in
[00:35:37] renewables.
[00:35:37] So we're going to drive all of this towards renewable energy
[00:35:39] and the fact that we are buying it as a whole block
[00:35:42] for all of the UK means that, you know, we can go to, you
[00:35:47] know, we can we can go to OPEC and say we're looking at you
[00:35:50] can try and push all our prices up.
[00:35:52] You know, if you push the price of oil up, all we're going
[00:35:54] to do is invest in more green energy for the UK.
[00:35:57] And then imagine if you took that one stage further and
[00:35:59] all of Europe behave like that.
[00:36:01] So you started to have a powerful force where actually
[00:36:03] you are taking on as they say, the dictators who are
[00:36:07] creating a lot of this dirty energy.
[00:36:09] It's the buying power, the government buying power, which
[00:36:12] we haven't quite got the hang of.
[00:36:13] And yet that's something you would have thought would be
[00:36:15] fairly easy to implement, which would result in cheaper
[00:36:17] energy and could drive investment in alternatives
[00:36:20] to fossil fuels.
[00:36:21] Yeah, I mean, I'm beginning to regret my age, not
[00:36:24] because it allows me to be over 70, but it's
[00:36:27] allowed to have historical memory going back 60 years
[00:36:30] of all these various promises of what was going to happen
[00:36:33] out of privatisation and the actual outcome.
[00:36:35] And then right back to the days when lousy prices being paid
[00:36:39] by the they used to call them the four sisters, the big four
[00:36:42] privately owned oil companies led to the formation of OPEC.
[00:36:46] And and now what happened as a result of that was that oil
[00:36:50] price, I think the oil price was kept to $2.50 a barrel
[00:36:54] for the whole period, pretty much from 1945 to 1973,
[00:36:59] which was progressively less and less money going to the oil
[00:37:02] producing nations who felt rightly exploited by the whole thing.
[00:37:06] And then that's when the Omkippur War occurred,
[00:37:09] anybody who had backed Israel in that war was given limited
[00:37:12] access to oil from the from the countries who nationalised
[00:37:16] the oil, the oil companies that were mining their
[00:37:21] private publicly owned resource of fossil fuel.
[00:37:26] And fast forward now and we've now got OPEC as the
[00:37:28] dominant power player on the on the planet.
[00:37:32] In terms of the cost of energy and still trying to promote
[00:37:35] using fossil fuels and we're trying to get away from the damn things.
[00:37:38] So again, that lack of systemic thinking has caught us in a systemic dilemma.
[00:37:42] But if we had we started to have buying groups, which were as powerful
[00:37:45] as OPEC, then we play them in their own game.
[00:37:48] And you know, when they say, well, we're going to push our prices up.
[00:37:51] We're in a position to be able to say, well, you can, but we're not going to buy it.
[00:37:54] Yeah, but if you do, if you keep on doing that,
[00:37:56] we are just going to invest faster in alternative.
[00:38:00] So you'll you'll hasten your own demands.
[00:38:02] I mean, again, we're not having a thinking systemic with this.
[00:38:04] We've obviously never to be straight into the issue of climate change here
[00:38:09] and what's driving it, which is energy consumption and getting
[00:38:12] the vast majority of energy from fossil fuels.
[00:38:14] And again, my dear friend economists have been the main reason
[00:38:18] why we haven't paid attention to trying to get rid of the fossil fuels
[00:38:23] and move to other forms of energy which don't burn fossil fuels
[00:38:26] and don't put carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
[00:38:29] So we are in a predicament.
[00:38:31] We're trying to discuss here is how do you get out of predicament?
[00:38:35] Not how do you solve a problem?
[00:38:36] And, you know, certainly I think where we're going,
[00:38:41] where we're going in the future is you do not want to have something
[00:38:45] is something's going to happen with the climate.
[00:38:47] God knows what it will be.
[00:38:48] I've got about five different gambling points
[00:38:53] that people working in climate change now talking about
[00:38:55] is what's going to get people to wake the wake the air up.
[00:38:59] And when that happens, we've got to drastically, rapidly get back
[00:39:03] to what we should have been doing for the last 50 years,
[00:39:05] which is moving in the direction of less dependence upon fossil fuels.
[00:39:09] So if you've gone and drive for change,
[00:39:11] then my point is if Labus says, well, we're going to set up a whole new body
[00:39:16] and it's only going to go part of the way to the solution.
[00:39:18] Shouldn't we shouldn't we be pushing to them to say,
[00:39:21] no, think about this more because all you're talking about
[00:39:24] is just an investment company that's going to drive more renewables?
[00:39:28] That's fine.
[00:39:30] But actually, you need to monopolize the buying power
[00:39:33] so that you've got control over all the energy that has been consumed in the UK.
[00:39:38] And then you will need to set up partnerships
[00:39:41] with other European countries who face this problem as well.
[00:39:44] On the basis that, first of all, it will reduce prices.
[00:39:46] And secondly, it will reduce dependence on fossil fuels
[00:39:49] without having to wait for that catastrophe.
[00:39:51] It's just like taking, well, if we if you accept the change,
[00:39:55] that's why you're sitting at this new agency for God's sake, do it properly.
[00:39:59] Just don't don't, you know, don't go for an interim half ass solution.
[00:40:03] Go the whole hog.
[00:40:04] You know, well, I mean, half ass has been the name of the last 50 years
[00:40:07] and this comes down to believing leave it all to the market.
[00:40:10] The idea is that, you know, the government can't do long term planning,
[00:40:14] shouldn't do long term planning.
[00:40:15] The market, which is a diversified system will do it better via the price system.
[00:40:19] That was the ideology.
[00:40:21] We're now in a mess compared to the the situations
[00:40:25] that we mentioned rail and sewage and so on,
[00:40:27] that the privatisation of our has not arrived when a private perforary instead.
[00:40:32] So how do you get out of that?
[00:40:34] Well, in the case of the energy issue, you want to drastically
[00:40:37] begin to have energy rationing at some point.
[00:40:40] That is not the sort of thing a private sector does.
[00:40:42] So you are brought up on the point where you're going to be forced
[00:40:45] to put everything in public ownership.
[00:40:47] And then the question is, do you have the skills to do it properly?
[00:40:50] And those skills, again, have been lost over the last 50 years.
[00:40:53] Yeah, which again, you know, if you set up an agency,
[00:40:55] maybe the first thing they do is try and build up that skill set.
[00:40:59] But it's hard to argue that free market argument in the energy markets,
[00:41:04] isn't it, given it's supplied by an oligopoly?
[00:41:06] Yeah, I mean, it's not anything but free market.
[00:41:08] Yeah, well, again, with the division of the market itself as a myth,
[00:41:12] you know, perfect competition and all sorts like that.
[00:41:15] Numerous, numerous suppliers, all of a small scale,
[00:41:18] all these scale issues that this completely ignores,
[00:41:21] the interlocking relationships in a private sector system.
[00:41:25] They're all the extent to which a whiteboard drawing
[00:41:29] of a couple of intersecting lines have dominated
[00:41:32] how we think about engineering is just quite tragic from my perspective.
[00:41:36] So this is a point just to finish on and maybe we don't answer it.
[00:41:40] Maybe it's a podcast for another day.
[00:41:41] But just as we try and figure out how we deal with it in places like the UK
[00:41:45] and, you know, obviously similar in all other developed nations.
[00:41:49] What about clean energy to developing nations?
[00:41:52] So the International Energy Authority or agency, the IEA,
[00:41:55] reckons that to meet rising energy demands
[00:41:57] in ways that align with the Paris Agreement
[00:42:01] in developing nations, annual investment,
[00:42:03] whether it's public or private and clean energy
[00:42:05] in these developing nations will need to go from
[00:42:08] about 770 billion per year, which is what they reckon
[00:42:11] is spent in 2022 to 2.8 trillion per year by the early 2030s.
[00:42:19] Now, who's so, you know, a side, you know, many, many, many fold increase.
[00:42:25] Who's going to fund investment in renewable or clean energy
[00:42:29] in developing nations when, you know,
[00:42:31] our investment in developing nations in the past
[00:42:33] has been largely investing in getting resources
[00:42:36] that we can suck out from underneath them.
[00:42:38] You know, where's the return for private investment
[00:42:42] in making the third world or developing nations greener?
[00:42:46] And, you know, how do we and that is, you know, a big chunk of the world as well.
[00:42:51] Yeah. And this is again why I've sorry.
[00:42:53] I've forgotten who I saw made the made this observation,
[00:42:55] but they said we're no longer trying to solve problems.
[00:42:58] We're trying to escape predicaments.
[00:42:59] And there is no easy answer to any of this.
[00:43:04] So like you might say, well, the third world should be
[00:43:07] investing in its own infrastructure,
[00:43:09] but you need the skill base to be able to do that.
[00:43:11] And as you say, we've been taking the minerals out of them at cheap prices.
[00:43:14] The cobalt mining issue is probably the most egregious example
[00:43:19] of that slave, the facility slave and child labor
[00:43:21] to get an essential component for our smartphones
[00:43:23] out of developing nations and with very little revenue
[00:43:26] going back to the nation itself.
[00:43:27] So it doesn't have the skill base.
[00:43:29] And so it's a whole series of predicaments,
[00:43:32] not not problems which have easy solutions.
[00:43:35] And in that particular case, the only way you can think about it
[00:43:38] is being feasible as to enable like localized energy production
[00:43:43] for localized energy consumption.
[00:43:45] And I know a few small level groups which are working on things
[00:43:49] like cheap solar, cheap for heat production for the sort of heat
[00:43:54] you need for industrialized industrialized activities.
[00:43:58] That that sort of thing, it'll help, but with still a predicament.
[00:44:03] We have disabled our capacity to handle the major issues we now face.
[00:44:08] And there we can't go back in time and reverse that mistake.
[00:44:11] That's largely what we need to do to make this a problem
[00:44:14] rather than a predicament.
[00:44:15] Well, look, I guess the progress is,
[00:44:17] and let's hope he doesn't stuff it up,
[00:44:20] that Kier Stammer is at long last talking about privatizing utilities.
[00:44:25] He's starting with railways.
[00:44:26] But I you you you.
[00:44:27] Nationalizing.
[00:44:29] That's how I grew up during the fetch of years.
[00:44:32] Nationalizing.
[00:44:33] It is.
[00:44:34] That's right.
[00:44:35] So he used to have the idea.
[00:44:36] It's been implanted in my brain from almost from birth.
[00:44:39] Yes.
[00:44:39] So the idea of nationalizing utilities, at least now,
[00:44:43] he's talking about that.
[00:44:44] Jeremy Corbyn talked about it and he got hammered, didn't he?
[00:44:49] And now there's no problem at all.
[00:44:51] It's almost everyone is going, yes, please, when, how quickly?
[00:44:54] The issue is, how can you do it in a way
[00:44:57] that isn't going to stuff it up
[00:44:58] and actually creates no benefit whatsoever
[00:45:00] and in fact, possibly even makes things worse.
[00:45:02] And for that, he's got to tread fairly carefully, I think.
[00:45:05] That's his own issue of another podcast.
[00:45:07] How do you do it?
[00:45:08] Yeah. All right, very good.
[00:45:09] We'll leave it there for now.
[00:45:10] Good talk, Steve.
[00:45:11] OK, bye.
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