Is the Labour government over?
Okay.
Welcome back to Garys Economics.
Today, we are going to ask the
question, can Labour be saved?
Okay, so this is the first ever part
two of a two-part video this week.
So last week, we discussed the question of
whether Labour have been unlucky and whether
global center-left political parties have been
unlucky, and that is why they were very unpopular.
And the conclusion that I came to is they're not
unlucky in the way that they like to say they are.
They like to say they have inherited bad
economies from the right, from the center-right,
and that's nothing to do with them.
In reality, the weakening economies were
predictable long before Labour came into power.
I've been predicting them for five years.
I tried my best to let Labour know before they
came into power that there was going to be big problems
of government spending, government funding, big
problems with inequality, and they ignored it.
So they are not unlucky in the sense that
the economic problems were unpredictable.
But where they are unlucky is that the economic
problems that Labour are facing and the
UK economy is facing is not at all unique.
This problem of weakening economy, falling
living standards, has basically been experienced by
every government in the UK for the last 15 years.
It brought down Rishi Sunak for the same reason
that it would... that it's bringing down Keir Starmer.
It will bring down Nigel Farage
if and when he comes into power.
The same thing is happening to Donald Trump in America.
The same thing is happening to the German
government, the French government, the Spanish
government, the Italian government, even the
Japanese government, the Australian Government.
This is happening to governments all over the world.
It's not a Labour-specific problem.
And what this is, really, is more of a broad
intellectual failing where our economists
and our politicians are simply unable to
recognise that we have a structural growing
problem of growing wealth inequality, and
that is the cause of the economic crisis.
Okay, so once we accept that, that what we
have is a broad intellectual failing,
that raises the question of, what do we do?
We're in a situation here where
inequality continues to rise.
That means that living standards will continue to fall.
It's important that we recognise that
that is like, really, really serious.
That means people not being able to heat
their homes, feed their kids, buy houses,
have families, have financial security.
It's going to be really, really serious
here and across the world.
So we need to ask ourselves, what can we do?
How can we get governments to change
policy to stop inequality from rising?
Which basically means policy on taxation, wealth taxes.
And here in this country, and I think in most countries,
you basically have two choices, assuming you don't
get anything on inequality and taxation from the right
and the center-right, which I think is probably true.
You have to either build a new political party
or try and influence your centre-left parties.
Here in this country, under our first-past-the-post
political system, which I think is a
bit of a stupid system, it is very, very
difficult to displace political parties.
So we need to figure out, can we save Labour?
So that raises the big two questions of this video.
Why have Labour failed to recognise inequality as
the core central message, and can they be saved?
Okay, so, you know, I speak
about why they've failed a lot.
I spoke about it a lot in last week's video.
This is a misdiagnosis of an economic problem.
Economists don't look at inequality a lot.
We have a crisis of falling living standards
being caused by growing inequality, and
economists are missing it, and that's causing
political parties, including Labour, to miss it.
Why that is happening, I think...
To be honest, I'm not 100% sure.
I've got a lot of theories.
And We're going to run through them.
It's important that we understand why
these guys are missing it if we want
to move into a more sensible position.
A big part of this, in my opinion, is coming from
problems in the academic discipline of economics.
So economics in the way that it is
understood and taught at universities.
I've spoken about this in some past videos.
Maybe we'll flash a link up to 'Why economists are
always wrong' which is a cool video of me walking around
Oxford years ago when we used to do things like that.
When you study economics at university
nowadays, it is a very complicated and
difficult and extremely mathematical subject.
You spend an enormous amount of time doing
complicated algebra, complicated calculus.
If you take it to post-grad or PhD or post-doc level,
you are going to spend 10 years doing complicated calculus
and algebra on very, very mathematically complicated
models, almost all of which contain no inequality.
This is a very, very effective way
of training economists not to think
about the economy in terms of inequality.
If you have spent 10 years locked in stuffy,
windowless university library rooms doing simultaneous
equations and complicated algebra and calculus, when
you see a real-world economic problem, you are going to
have a very strong temptation to try to apply the
things you learnt and things you studied at university.
If you spent 10 years studying very, very complicated
mathematical models that include no inequality,
you are very, very unlikely to look at an economic
problem and think, "Maybe this is being caused by
inequality." I think there's also a kind of
hothouse, very competitive culture within economics
specifically, although I do think it's happening in
lot of academic disciplines, which really, really
aggressively rewards students for studying and
writing papers on kind of fashionable ideas and not
really stepping outside the box and writing about
things which are unfashionable, like inequality.
You know, a good example of this is Ha-Joon Chang,
who is a Korean economics professor who I
think is really smart guy, really thoughtful.
I've got a lot of time for him.
We had him on the channel earlier this year.
He writes a lot of great books about things like
how Korea went from being poor to being rich.
He has a lot of things to say about how
countries can improve living standards.
And yet, because he does not talk and write
in the way which is approved within economics,
despite the fact that he is the best-selling
economics author in the entire country, he is
largely shunned and ignored within economics.
Another great example is Thomas Piketty. French
economist who had a very prestigious, illustrious,
successful economics career, who decided in 2011, "I'm
going to start talking about inequality." Probably because
he was smart enough to recognise what a big deal it was.
And since then has been kind of criticised,
attacked, shunned, and sidelined a
lot within the economics community.
So, within economics as a whole, you have a
discipline which is not able really to look or
think in terms of inequality, and tends to
punish people who think outside the box, who
are willing to think in different terms.
I think COVID is a great example of this.
We had the crisis, which from the very
beginning it should have been obvious was going
to cause a massive increase in inequality.
And yet basically nobody in academia, in the think
thanks, the central banks, which are kind of extensions
of academia, was ever able or willing to think about it
in terms of inequality, in terms of distribution.
You then have the additional factor that
specifically within economics you have this other
optional career path, which aggressively
rewards people who think outside the box and
challenge conventional wisdom, which is trading.
So, I have studied at the London
School of Economics and at Oxford.
I can tell you with a very high level of
confidence the vast majority of economics undergrads
really, really want to work in finance jobs like trading
or perhaps other jobs nowadays, like tech or AI.
They're not trying to get into government.
But they know that in trading, trading is quite
interesting in that it really, really heavily rewards
people who turn around and say, "Everyone around me
is wrong" as long as you get proved to be right.
When I was a trader, I was a very heavily
counter-trend trader, so I liked to really bet
aggressively on things that everybody thought was wrong.
And if you do that, you get paid a lot of money.
So, you have one side of economics, which is the kind
of public-facing side, which is the universities, the
governments, the think tanks, which really, really
punishes people for stepping outside the sort of
acceptable box and saying, "I think everybody is wrong.
I think something different." And then you have
another much better-paid side of economics, which
really, really aggressively rewards people who do that.
So obviously, if you are the kind of person who
wants to challenge conventional wisdom in economics,
there are very, very strong reasons why you might try
and go into finance and trading rather than economics.
But even if we accept this that economics as a
discipline kind of slightly brainwashes its students
into not really breaking the rules and then really
pushes the students who are a little bit more inventive
in their thinking out of academia and into trading,
we're now in a situation where in the last 17 years,
living standards have been falling quite consistently.
Existing political parties have
been losing again and again.
They've been consistently failing on the economy.
The far-right is growing all across the world.
There's this outrage against popular economists,
popular politicians, against the status quo.
It's like really obvious that
the status quo is failing.
We have in the Labour Party a government
that is phenomenally unpopular, looks
very likely to lose the next election, is
desperately in need of money and new ideas.
And yet despite this, like, very long-term track record
of quite consistent failure, this really powerful
demand for new ideas from the public, economists and
politicians have still been really, really stubbornly
ignoring and, and unwilling to talk to people like me.
And it's not just me.
We have other people like Thomas Piketty...
Gabriel Zucman in France saying similar
things and meeting really strong pushback, even
from politicians who are supposed to be on the
left, who you might imagine would be more open to ideas
like taxing very rich people, reducing inequality.
So, why is it that economists and politicians have
been so stubborn in ignoring these ideas about
inequality in spite of the massive popular demand?
Now this, to be honest, is something which
I'm not 100% certain on, and it's something,
which I think about a lot, because obviously
we're at a point now on this channel where
we've had a huge amount of cut through with the public.
And what we are kind of coming up against is
we're hitting this wall of politicians
and academics and kind of this intellectual
middle class who are refusing to accept it.
And if we want to actually get this into power, we
do need to try to understand why these guys are so
unwilling to listen to us, so unwilling to work with us.
So, I've been thinking about this a lot,
speaking to a few different people and
we're trying to understand what it is.
And I've got a list of ideas here, which might
be what is stopping them from listening to us.
I'm going to go through them and you can
let me know if you think any of these are
right, if you think any of these are wrong.
If you think there's anything
I'm missing, put it in the comments.
But I'll go through the list of ideas I've got here.
So, number one is, I've
got here the far-left theory.
And this is that me and my ideas have kind of
been branded in the eyes of the political class,
the politicians, maybe the media as far left.
And a lot of politicians don't like the
far left, and they are unwilling to
countenance anything that is branded as far left.
This is very frustrating for me because
I don't come from a political background.
I don't come from the far left.
My background is I studied economics at LSE.
I was very successful.
I got very good grades.
I went on to become a trader.
I was very successful and made
a lot of very good predictions.
I went to Oxford to do a two-year master's.
Again, I did very well.
Classic, classically trained economist.
And then I've been out here speaking publicly,
making very good predictions as well.
Like for me, I have never tried to be far left.
I don't come from a political background.
I have a very, very good track
record of being right.
And this is the kind of thing which
gets you a long way in the financial world.
People will look a lot at what your
track record of predictions are like.
If you don't believe my track record of
predictions, go and watch the video from...
first ever video from this channel in June 2020.
You'll see how good the predictions
were just at the beginning.
But it does seem like this might be one of
the reasons why Labour are not listening
to us, that they think we're far left.
We need to think about how can we
try to rid ourselves of that brand.
Honestly, you know, I
don't... I'm an economist.
I don't think of economics
as left or right, you know.
When I look at the economy... When I first
started making these bets in 2011 as a trader,
because I was heavily financially incentivised to
bet on what's right. I've been betting
on these things since the beginning of COVID.
I've made a huge amount of money.
I don't say these things because
I have some political motive.
I say these things because I have a very
good track record of accurate predictions.
My current forecasts are for
a collapse in living standards.
I don't want living standards to collapse even further.
But unfortunately, this, this branding as far-left is
perhaps one of the things which is about stopping us.
I've got here the Zach Polanski theory.
I went on a podcast with Zach Polanski,
the new leader of the Greens.
I asked him, why is there so much resistance?
And he just basically said, like, they're all bought.
He goes, "This is it. Like, they're all
bought, they're paid for by the rich.
Their donors are very, very rich.
They go and work for rich people."
Which some people might say is quite conspiratorial
and quite negative but I think there
might be some element of this involved.
You know, when we were looking at the Conservative
Party, we had Rishi Sunak, who was phenomenally wealthy.
We had David Cameron, who went on to make a
huge amount of money after leaving office.
Before that, Tony Blair made a huge
amount of money after leaving office.
I don't know what Keir Starmer's plans are, but it
does seem that part of the problem may simply be
the political class, especially at the top level, is
people who are very rich or are about to become
very rich and are often funded by the very rich.
That could be an element.
That could be an element to it.
If that happens, that will be tricky.
We have to think about how we can work around it.
Okay, I've got here the class theory.
This is the theory that basically the kind
of intellectual class... I wanted to...
Thomas Piketty, the French inequality
economist, calls them the Brahmin class.
So he uses the term the Brahmin class, which refers
to... The Brahmins were the top caste in the Indian
caste system, and they're basically priests, and
uses this term to talk about this kind of, this
kind of group of intellectuals who... High-level
economists, high-level academics, high-level
journalists, high-level politics, media, high-level
perhaps business, who sort of determine what
the public think and control a lot of the media.
I've had this theory for a while.
And when I first started this channel, it was... I
didn't know at the time it would become as big as it
has done, but a big part of it was I felt that there
wasn't really any sort of economic news source that felt
just accessible or understandable to ordinary people.
And I was writing for the Guardian at the time
and I really thought because I come from a working-class
background, and I look and I sound working class,
I thought ordinary people would appreciate having
somebody from an ordinary background talking to them
about economics in a way that they could understand.
And that was a big part of the idea of this channel.
And that means that really ever since the beginning,
I've always been trying to talk to the public
rather than trying to talk to the politicians.
And I'm obviously English and this is a country which
has had a long history of a class system, and
I do think there is a problem that when especially
more middle-class people see or hear somebody from a
working-class background, they perhaps make assumptions
that this guy is maybe not smart or maybe not honest.
And I do think that sometimes is
one of the reasons why I'm not taken that
seriously by these senior Labour politicians.
Again, it's very, very frustrating because, you
know, I was a very successful, very well-paid
trader and I was taken very seriously in that space.
And it's very frustrating to not be taken
seriously by people who would very, probably
very happily give me their money to manage.
I think a great example of this is when
I went on The Rest Is Politics, which is,
for those who are not in the UK, the most
popular politics podcast here in the UK.
It has a couple of presenters, one of whom is from a,
a very posh, you might even say aristocratic background.
And I made this case to him
that I felt like one of the reasons why
I'm not taken seriously by politicians is because
I'm from a working-class background and because
of how I talk and because of how I sound.
And he replied, "You know, I don't think that's right.
You shouldn't patronise politicians.
I think it's because of your class anger."
Which is, Well, it's a wonderful thing
to say really, because it's... What he's saying is
it's because of my class and the way that I speak,
which is, which is exactly what I what I said,
in a way, so... I put the case to him that posh
people don't take me seriously because of my class
and how I speak, and he said, "No, it's not that.
It's because of your class and how
you speak." I do think it's a problem.
I think the way that we get around this is really
I need yourselves and people like you to try as
much as you can to infiltrate those elite spaces.
So, get yourselves and your kids into fancy
universities, fancy jobs, media, politics, academia,
banks, finance, civil service, central banking,
and get those ideas that way.
I would never tell anyone to change the way you
speak but we do need posh people with posh
voices, I think, to be taken seriously.
The next one I've got here is the Gary is a dick theory.
And this is basically the fact that, like, from the
beginning... So, I've made all my money basically
by betting on the fact that economists are wrong.
And my whole career history
since 2011 is aggressively betting on
the fact that economists are wrong.
And I do believe, I say it all the time,
that I think we have a problem in economics where
economists are just failing to recognise this very,
very serious problem of growing wealth inequality.
And because of this, you know, sometimes
I... The way I speak about economists or
politicians or economists in
politics is perhaps a bit disrespectful.
Last week's video on, on whether Labour
are unlucky or not was actually originally
scheduled to be called Why Are Labour So ****?
And and this, I think kind of typifies, I think
a problem that I have, which is I'm very, very
frustrated with this political and economic class.
And I spoke with Oscar, who's the manager of
this channel and he sort of talked me off the
cliff edge and said, "Listen, if you want Labour and
Labour politicians to listen to you, you can't be
saying Labour are ****." And the truth is, the
history of this channel has been quite a lot of me
sometimes in somewhat flamboyant ways saying that
I think economists and politicians are a bit dumb.
And that perhaps worked very well in making this
channel very popular, but it's maybe not the
best way to get Labour to listen to you.
And I've got here attached to this is that
Gary is a classist, which relates to the previous
issue that people don't like that the middle class,
the sort of intellectual class don't listen to
me because I'm a working-class background.
I think I do have accept that to a degree I am
frustrated and a little bit angry with this sort
of upper middle class, intellectual class that
are allowing the economy to fall off a cliff
while in many cases, they themselves get richer.
This is probably best typified by a video
I did really, really early on called Elite Idiots,
saying the economy is being ruined by rich idiots.
The fact is, the way that I communicate,
the way that I talk about economists and the
way that I talk about politicians is perhaps
a bit rude, and that has probably p***ed them off.
And we need to think about that because yeah,
we do need to figure out ways to speak to these guys.
The last one I've got, which is about me personally,
is the Gary style of approach theory, which is that
basically they don't respect me because I'm coming
up through YouTube, and they need you to be coming
up, you know, the sort of acceptable way you go
and you get your PhD and you work your way through.
Just to be clear, I did go and do a
two-year master at Oxford before I started
doing this, and it was just so bad.
The quality of education was just unbelievably bad.
I felt guilty for having paid for such a poor education.
And I could also see, you know, the economy
was going to get worse quickly, and I didn't
think I wanted to do another six, seven years
wasting my time getting locked in libraries.
But this is the truth, right?
You know, I think the way that I've come through,
through YouTube, through trading
being a bit rude about posh people was
never going to endear me to posh people.
So we do need other people to go in,
push these theories, push this understanding,
not using my face, not using my name.
It helps if you got a posh voice.
Just don't talk about me.
Take the ideas, take the ideas and run with them.
But, you know, criticisms of these last
ones, all of these ideas are sort of based
on Gary specifically is doing it wrong.
The thing is, we've got another guy.
There's a guy called Gabriel Zucman, French economist,
who is doing great work pushing for wealth taxes in
France, and he's come at it a very different way,
very academic, got his PhD, very prestigious academic.
You know, didn't go through trading, didn't go
through YouTube, went direct to the politicians
and he's doing a really, really good job and we
hope he gets it, but he is also getting pushback.
And if the problem was just specifically me,
then you would imagine that other people in other
countries would be doing a better job of wealth taxes.
So I'm not really sure whether these
ideas that focus very much on me are the real answer.
I've got a couple more ideas here.
One is the small C conservatism theory,
which is basically just that because this
Brahmin class, this intellectual class is largely
richer people from richer backgrounds getting paid
quite well, they are just very comfortable with the
status quo and they don't want things to change.
They don't like ideas about taxation
because they see themselves as rich.
They don't want to pay higher taxes.
Next is the big picture thinkers
are all in different jobs theory, which is basically
what I said before, which is, if you are the kind
of person that wants to challenge the status quo,
think strategically, you are going to get rewarded much
better generally in business or in finance or in
trading than you will do in places like politics.
You do see a few... Well, the most obvious
counter-example to that is Dominic Cummings, who was
a kind of very radical guy, who became very senior in
government here before being publicly defenestrated,
Which means thrown out of a window.
Not literally.
And the last one here is the social mobility theory,
which is basically that, you know, I think back
in the day, this country, with young kids like
me, it would often, like very smart young kids
from poor backgrounds, would send them to grammar
school and they would bring them into places
like the civil service or like in government.
And you did have a situation where a lot
of the smartest young kids ended up in
some sense or another running the country.
Great example of this is John Major, who
was the prime minister in the early '90s, who I
believe came from a very working-class family.
I think his dad was a clown or something, wasn't it?
Something like that.
Worked in the circus, I think.
But went to a grammar school
and ended up running the country.
And I think if you look at countries like China
or like Singapore, they do still make sure that
a lot of the smartest kids in their country or,
you know, the kids that do best in exams, end up
working in government, end up running the country.
So what you see is, in the UK in the past
and in countries like China and Singapore
now, they make sure that the best people, or
at least some of them, end up in government.
Whereas now having been to sort of some
of the best universities in the country, I can
tell you the truth is not many of the smartest
kids aspire, especially from poorer backgrounds,
aspire to work in government.
Just simply because it is really, really
not a financially competitive job with
things like finance, with things like tech.
And what that has led to, I think, is really
just basically not a lot of great people in
government really, and which I think is,
is connected to the collapse of the country.
But of course, I have to be careful about saying
things like that because as we've established, me
loudly saying that I think politicians are not very
competent is probably not the best way to win them over.
So maybe forget that one.
So I'm fascinated to understand why it is.
I'm going to go on a bit of a break soon
and I'm going to really try to think about why.
If you have ideas, let me know.
But I think the theory which I think, I
think is most likely to be true, in my opinion, is
this last one, which is called the bubble theory.
And this is just that basically as the economy has
become more divided, we have really divided the
lives of richer people, you know, the sort of
middle class, upper middle class, from the poor.
And now we have this situation where
most elite jobs, including politics, have a
very high over-representation of people from
richer families, from private schools, from
this kind of elite, upper middle class space.
There are still some working class people in
politics, but they're less likely to be at the
top and they are a minority in that group, which
means the overall culture of the space, elite
level, politics, media, banking, academia, all
of these spaces are very, very middle class.
And what it means is you end up in a bit of a
bubble where most of the people in this space
went to elite schools, come from wealthy families,
went to elite universities, end up in elite well-paid
jobs, and simply do not have a good understanding
of or connection to life for ordinary people.
And I see this so often when I interact with people
from richer backgrounds and try to tell them what's
happening, this real unwillingness to even accept
that life is getting worse for ordinary people.
You see this all over the media.
When I went on Rest is Politics, you had...
you had Rory Stewart saying, "I think,
life is getting better in America." And then when
I went on LBC the other week, you had Tom Swarbrick
saying, "Oh, but things are okay in Australia."
Or we saw so much in the US press the last few years,
this idea that the vibes are off, which is actually
life is getting better and it's the working
class just don't understand their own situation.
Or there was the... the fantastic
piece by, was it John Burn-Murdoch?
Is that his name?
John Burn-Murdoch, the Financial Times journalist
saying, "Life is unambiguously getting better for
the poor." I think we have this problem now as
inequality is increasing and as social mobility is
decreasing, that when you go into elite spaces like
politics, they are really just full of wealthy people
who, because we exist in a crisis of inequality
where life is actually getting better for richer
people, they simply cannot see or understand
that life is getting worse for ordinary people.
And I think probably this is the biggest problem
we have, the bubble theory, that the people who
are in charge of power are stuck in this bubble.
Okay, so what do we do?
How do we win them over even though
they're stuck in this bubble?
Well, actually, in a bizarre way, we have a great
opportunity here because these guys that have been
stuck in this bubble have been willing and able to
ignore us for a long time, but the reckoning is kind
of coming for them because unless they start taking
these ideas seriously, they will continue to fail
on the economy and they will lose to the far right.
And I think a lot of these people, this intellectual
class, really do not want the far right to win.
So we do have a really good opportunity here to
really keep banging the drum, really make sure these
people know if you don't move seriously on inequality
and the economy, you will lose to the far right.
I think that that is a really good message to
have because that intellectual class specifically,
that Brahmin class, I think a lot of them don't like
the far right, so we have a good opportunity here.
But I have to be honest, I'm going to do
everything I can to win the next Labour leader.
I think we will get a new Labour leader next year.
I think probably we won't win them.
If we don't, then that leader will fail on the economy
and Reform and Farage will win the next election.
And they will fail on the economy
for the exact same reason.
So, you know, I know this is not the best case scenario
because that would then mean nine years of no wealth
taxes, because I don't think we'll get anything
from Reform, but it will only strengthen our case.
Yes, that might be a bit depressing, the idea that
if we don't get the next leader, we can't stop Reform
from winning and then it's nine years of no wealth tax.
But don't lose hope entirely.
I think there's a good chance that if Reform win
in four years, it could be a very small majority.
It could be even a hung parliament, so a minority
government, that I think they would also become
very unpopular very quickly because it will be seen
that they're going to fail on the economy and there is
a good chance that that government will fall quickly.
And it will strengthen our case even further.
One thing I can tell you with absolute certainty
is every single government you see in this
country or wherever you are for the next
20 years will do either one of two things.
Either they will give us something serious
on inequality and taxation or they will
fail on the economy and living standards.
So basically, we can only get stronger until we win.
So that's it, basically.
We need to keep banging the drum again and again.
We need to do everything we can do to de-radicalise
this brand, to de-leftise this brand, make it
clear that this is not about left or right; this
is about do you want the economy to fail or not?
As much as we can, we need to separate the
brand from me as a person, which means I need
you guys to run with these ideas yourselves.
I need you guys to use these ideas in your everyday
lives, with your communities, in your job if you can.
But look, I know the situation looks bad,
but we are actually in a very strong position
because whoever wins, either they give us
what we want or they fail on the economy.
And every time another idea fails, we will move closer
and closer to being the idea that takes power next.
And even if Reform do win here and
it's nine years with no wealth taxes
we're not the only country in the world.
This same thing is happening everywhere.
You know, I got ChlΓΆe Swarbrick on from New Zealand
really largely because I wanted to show you, especially
to our British viewers, this is happening everywhere.
I think a lot of people think, oh things
are fine in Australia or in Sweden.
I was in Sweden earlier this year.
Same thing's happening there.
Same thing's happening across Europe.
Same thing's happening in Japan,
which is a country know very well.
This movement... one of the reasons why I've
been traveling around the world is I'm trying to
plant this seed everywhere because if it doesn't work
here, you know, it could work in another country.
There's great work being done
by Gabriel Zucman in France.
We just need one country to manage it, get a
wealth tax seriously, and show it can increase
living standards, and then we have a much better
chance of getting it here or wherever you are.
Okay, so I'll keep doing it.
You keep doing it.
I want to answer the opening question of
this video, which is, is Labour saveable?
And the honest answer is I don't know.
I don't know.
I hope that it is.
If we don't win Labour over, if we don't get the
next leader, then Labour will lose the election
and Farage and Reform will win the election, living
standards will fall, and we probably won't get
anything for nine years on wealth taxes here.
That would be serious.
Poverty will get worse and politics can get worse.
But look, things will change.
I think Labour will get a new leader next year.
I know we haven't heard much from Labour
in the last few months, and it's disappointed
me as much as it's disappointed you trust me.
But you know, Labour have a lot of very
new MPs that have only been there one year.
They're not very powerful.
They're finding their feet.
I think next year there will... there'll
probably be a push to push out Starmer
and a new man or woman will come in.
And I think a lot of these new MPs
will start trying to find their feet
and establish themselves more seriously.
You know, we did a call-out to Labour MPs
a few months ago and we did get a lot back.
We got, you know, we got I think more than 10 MPs
have asked for meetings or have given them meetings.
And we're trying to meet with all of them,
as well as some Liberal Democrat MPs.
Look, there are people in there and we're
going to try the best we can to work with them.
They're not all d**kheads.
They're not all idiots.
I've had some good meetings with some good
people and I'm going to try my best to build on it.
And I know there'll be people out there
saying, you know, "Forget Labour, they're rubbish.
Work with Zach Polansky, work with the Greens."
I'm talking to Zach, I'm talking to the Greens.
We're not ruling anybody out.
This is not football.
This is serious.
Things will get really bad if we don't do it so
I'm going to try my best to build something with Labour.
And I want to do a message to Labour MPs
because I know I've spoken in ways that are
perhaps a little bit disrespectful sometimes,
and I'm sorry if I've done that.
I'm frustrated, you know.
I see living standards falling
in this country, in my country.
I come from a poor background.
I know what it's like growing up poor,
and I don't want that to grow.
I don't want that to grow.
And I've been betting on these things for 14 years.
I've been making a lot of money on them.
I don't want them to get worse
and I'm frustrated at the lack of
support I've been getting from Labour.
But I keep turning up, I keep doing these
videos because I want to make things better.
And you guys, you're in there, you're
in the seat of power, your job is supposed
to be to protect the British people.
You're unpopular, you need money, I'm here to help.
I'm here to help.
And I don't, I don't mean
to say that in a disrespectful way.
We will always be open to speaking to Labour MPs as
long as the situation is as it is, which is we need
you to help us stop this country from collapsing.
I don't want the country to collapse,
you don't want the country to collapse.
Let's try and fix this together.
But you need to be open-minded about the economy.
You need to be open-minded about the idea that there
might be big economic problems that need fixing.
You need to be open-minded about the idea
that it might not be just about looking at
next year's budget and next year's budget.
You need to be willing to consider the idea that there
might be a big problem of large-scale wealth inequality.
You need to be able to consider that distribution
might matter, that wealth inequality might matter,
that government wealth-holding might matter.
And I know if you're an economist that these
ideas might be like outside of what
you were taught and outside of what you
studied and that might be, like, scary.
But look at what's happening. I know if
you're from a rich background you might not see
it, but I encourage you to go and speak to
people, and get into people's lives, and look
at what is happening to poverty, and look at how
much harder it's becoming for people to buy a home.
You know, I know big new ideas are scary,
especially if you've got like a background in economics.
And I know you might think that I'm just some working
class chancer or some kind of idiot, but look,
I've got the qualifications, I've been to LSE, I've
been to Oxford, I did very well, I've got a very,
very good track record of predicting as a trader.
In The Public you can look at my predictions from 2020.
They were very, very good.
Work with me here.
Work with me.
We need to do something.
If we don't take action on growing
inequality, I absolutely guarantee you that
living standards and poverty will get worse,
and worse, and worse, and worse in this country.
And I don't say that lightly, I don't take that lightly.
And I'm not just saying it, I'm betting on it,
I've been betting on it for a long, long time.
I've made a lot of money betting on it,
but I'm trying to stop it.
If you do not do anything about growing inequality,
poverty in this country will get worse, and
worse, and worse, and it will be your fault.
Okay, so that's it, right?
I'm here, I want to work with Labour.
I'm sorry if I've been
disrespectful in the past, you know.
I speak with my heart sometimes.
I'm worried about the future of this country.
I know I need the political parties to help me.
I will be here to speak to you
when you guys want to work with us.
People out there who say I should forget Labour and I
should work with the Greens, I'll be here, you know.
I'll be speaking to the Greens, I am speaking
to the Greens, I am speaking to Zach Polansky.
I don't rule anybody out, you know.
Politics is not football.
This is serious.
This is your life, this is your kids, your grandkids.
Can they buy a house?
Can they afford a family?
This is too serious to say, "I only like this
guy, I only like that guy." I will work with
whoever I need to work with to make this happen.
But look, if we don't win Labour and Reform come in,
we keep fighting, we don't give up.
It's a marathon, not a sprint.
And I want to finish this on a quote which
I've used before on this channel, but since it is a
quote from a somewhat legendary Labour MP, I thought
I would use it again as an olive branch to the Labour
Party, who I've said a million times I'm willing
to work with to make this country better, which is
a Tony Benn's quote that, "There is no final victory
and no final defeat, only the same battle to be
fought again and again and again. So toughen up,
bloody toughen up."
I think that's how it goes
Look, thank very much, for all your support.
I know it's a tough time but we keep fighting.
I'll keep fighting if you do.
Good luck.
Tax wealth not work.
Thank you.