Ben's blog and articles

Adair Turner is being provocative again. Almost a decade ago now he scandalised bankers and traders (although not the general public) when he declared the work of financiers to be“socially useless”. A few years ago he made himself almost equally unpopular in central banking circles by suggesting they should consider monetising debt to rebalance their economies. And now Baron Turner of Ecchinswell’s latest thesis is that politicians, everyone from the Chancellor Philip Hammond

Here’s a fun fact: the founder of neoliberalism was a Corbynista. Well, not exactly a Corbynista. The German sociologist Alexander Rüstow died in 1963, long before Jeremy Corbyn entered Parliament, let alone became Labour leader. But some of the economic policies Rüstow advocated bear a striking resemblance to those pushed by Corbyn today. Rüstow, according to the valuable research of Oliver Marc Hartwich, was in favour of the nationalisation of rail companies and utilities.

As I wearily forked out for my monthly rail travelcard this morning I felt the pain of hundreds of thousands of other commuters around the country over the latest round of price increases. Does it have to be this way? Labour has been touting its promise of train company nationalisations as the solution to this miserable January ritual. Alas, nationalisation would not, in itself, be a free lunch for passengers and commuters. The UK railway – its maintenance, refurbishment and

“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery.” General elections tends to turn journalists and broadcasters into Dickens’s Mr Micawber, albeit without the charm. Do the promises of the parties add up? Is there a gap? Is there to be happiness or misery? The questions ring in our ears. In many ways it’s a silly and unedifying specta

There are some rules of thumb in politics. If you want to keep something secret, say it on the floor of the House of Commons. If you want to publicise something, mark it “secret” and leave it lying around near a photocopier. And if you want people to be misled about what you are proposing, let the right-wing press explain it. The shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, first announced plans to spend an additional £250bn over a decade on state investment if Labour wins power in a s