New Economics Podcast

Breathing space for today, fresh hope for the future - that’s what chancellor John Healey’s first budget as chancellor promised to give us. But we’re about to be hit by a wave of price rises caused by the US and Israel’s strikes on Iran. And that’s on top of the last five years, where the cost of everything from groceries to energy bills to mortgages has shot upwards. So is it enough for the chanc...

Your water bill rises while private companies dump sewage in the rivers. Your mortgage jumps hundreds of pounds while banks make eye-watering profits. Your energy bill doubles in a few years and you don’t know whether you’ll be able to put the heating on this winter. Something has gone seriously wrong. Before he even had the keys to number ten, Andy Burnham said the last 40 years of economic polic...

A miniseries from the New Economics Podcast which asks how have energy crises shaped our economy and what do we need to do to shockproof our energy system in an increasingly volatile world? The Strait of Hormuz. Sitting between Iran, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, the Strait is one of the world’s busiest shipping channels. One fifth of all fossil fuels pass through the Strait, which means that...

A miniseries from the New Economics Podcast which asks how have energy crises shaped our economy and what do we need to do to shockproof our energy system in an increasingly volatile world? 2024 was the biggest election year in human history. Half of humanity had the opportunity to go to the polls in 72 different countries. What was striking about these elections was the number of countries which...

A miniseries from the New Economics Podcast which asks how have energy crises shaped our economy and what do we need to do to shockproof our energy system in an increasingly volatile world? Ask most people on the British left about the source of the country’s economic problems, and they are likely to point to one culprit: Margaret Thatcher. The prime minister who believed in the discipline and eff...

A miniseries from the New Economics Podcast which asks how have energy crises shaped our economy and what do we need to do to shockproof our energy system in an increasingly volatile world? The turbulent decade of the 1970s was marked by struggle: between workers and industries, newly independent countries and their former colonial masters, post-war social democracy and the fledgling economics of...

A miniseries from the New Economics Podcast which asks how have energy crises shaped our economy and what do we need to do to shockproof our energy system in an increasingly volatile world? It's 1956 and the UK and France have joined forces to attack Egypt. What became known as the Suez Crisis ended with a humiliating climbdown for the UK and France. “Suez” became a byword for the UK’s declining s...

A miniseries from the New Economics Podcast which asks how have energy crises shaped our economy and what do we need to do to shockproof our energy system in an increasingly volatile world? It's 1947. People in the UK were facing one of the most brutal winters on modern record. It was so cold that sheep and cows froze to death in their fields. There was so much snow that railways and roads were bl...

Two years’ ago, the UN human rights high commissioner issued the UK with a warning. He said that new restrictions being imposed on the right to protest were deeply troubling. Two years’ later, we have a new government in charge and now the police are due to get even more powers to restrict repeat protests, like the central London Palestine solidarity demos. That’s not all - this government also wa...

After months of rumours, speculation and gossip, today the chancellor finally delivered her autumn budget - but not before an accidental leak of the budget document rendered the whole speech somewhat pointless. Alongside billions of pounds of tax rises came the long-awaited end of the two-child benefit cap. But our public services have been decimated by years of austerity, and the cost of living c...

It’s a new technology that everyone’s desperate to get a piece of. CEOs say it’s going to change how we work, access information, and even relate to each other. Investors are showering companies with money - even when they aren’t turning a profit. You might think this is the story of artificial intelligence. But it’s actually what happened during the dotcom bubble, back in the late nineties. When...

Last week democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani won the New York City mayoral election. His election campaign was bolstered by a slick social media campaign, seen by millions in his city and beyond. Politicians in the UK have taken inspiration, with figures like Zarah Sultana and Zack Polanski raking in the views on TikTok. But these progressive voices are a drop in the ocean compared to the reach o...

We used to own things. The essential services we need to survive - things like water, trains and our energy system - used to be owned by us: the UK public. But over the last four decades, our public services have been sold off to private corporations over whom we have no control. The result? Soaring bills for us, but massive payouts to shareholders. Sewage in our waterways, but bailouts for water...

Israel’s attacks on Gaza have been described by ministers as “intolerable”, “appalling” and “cruel”. Last year this government suspended around a tenth of Israel’s arms export licences. Yet this summer the UK managed to sell record amounts of arms to Israel, including over one hundred thousand bullets in just one month. The UK exports billions of pounds worth of parts for fighter jets, bombs and o...

Is the party over before it has even begun? Tens of thousands of people signed up to be members of Your Party, the new political project founded by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana. But within hours, rumours of a rift within the party leadership exploded into warring public statements and threats of legal action. Meanwhile, Zack Polanski won eighty-five percent of the vote in the Green Party leader...

This government has taken a record-breaking plummet in popularity, our chancellor keeps telling us the Treasury has no spare cash for our crumbling schools and hospitals, and Reform have become the most popular party in the country. So, where did it all go wrong for Labour? Is it true that this government is hamstrung by the UK’s ailing economy? And why are so many people turning to Reform? For th...

During the presidential campaign, the Democratic Party warned that American democracy was under attack from Trump. Since the start of Trump two-point-0, his administration has deported pro-Palestine student protestors. He has barred Oval Office access to journalists who have used the phrase “Gulf of Mexico” rather than “Gulf of America”. And he has called for a judge blocking his orders to be impe...

We are living in a time of contradictions. For the last forty years, our politics and media have been dominated by neoliberal, right-wing voices - yet pundits insist that the UK is dominated by a woke, left-wing elite. Our politicians claim to champion the voices of the forgotten working class - yet working-class people are not seeing better wages, housing or healthcare. And the majority of people...

Half a year ago, the Labour Party swept into power with a huge parliamentary majority and Kier Starmer celebrated by saying that the country could “get its future back”.  Today, Labour are dogged by low approval ratings, having upset everyone from environmentalists to pensioners, farmers to small-business owners.  And just last week Reform overtook both the Conservatives and Labour in a poll of vo...

The price of your food shop rocketed because of inflation and now your mortgage is going up hundreds of pounds because the Bank of England decided to increase interest rates. You might be struggling to make ends meet and wondering why our central bank has made your life more difficult. Across the pond Donald Trump is putting pressure on the American central bank to lower its interest rates, saying...

Do you work from home? Then you’re probably not doing proper work, and you’re causing the UK’s economic decline! At least that’s what the former boss of Asda and M&S said last week. Meanwhile, gig economy Deliveroo riders have launched a new campaign for greater openness around the opaque algorithms that rule their working lives. It’s clear with new technology comes new battles for workers. So wh...

Last week hundreds of tractors drove through Parliament Square. It was the latest protest by UK farmers against changes to inheritance tax announced by the chancellor. From farmers’ protests to the poll-tax riots in the 90s, the amount of tax we pay to the government churns up intense emotions. We want to rescue our cash-strapped public services - but most of us are reluctant to pay more tax. Do L...

From housebuilding to sewage systems to the NHS, private companies are deeply intertwined with our essential public services. But is partnering with big corporations the only way of improving people’s lives? Is private investment a vital ingredient in economic renewal? Or will it just lead to price gouging for us and soaring profits for corporate execs? This week Ayeisha Thomas-Smith is joined by...

The International Energy Agency has said that the world cannot develop any new oil and gas fields if we are to stop climate breakdown. Keir Starmer has promised that the UK will slash its emissions faster than ever before and his government is banning new licences to drill for fossil fuels in the North Sea. Drilling in the wild waters of the North Sea has been a major Scottish industry for decades...

The Autumn Budget was the most significant since George Osborne implemented austerity in 2010. Rachel Reeves announced one hundred billion pounds for infrastructure, forty billion in tax rises and a whole host of policy changes, which she hopes will deliver Labour’s mission of national economic renewal. But what does an extra hundred billion pounds mean for the UK? Are we finally taxing the wealth...