Cool.

Just do a quick sound check. One two. One two. One two.

That's good.

Whenever you’re ready.

We’re good, yeah?

Yeah, good.

Right.

All right.

We're going to do a video about the election.

To be honest,

I didn't really want to do a video about the election

because the election is very often so much bullsh*t.

We get everybody

very, very excited, and then,

nothing changes and people get quite depressed.

As you know, this channel is an economics channel,

and we have a very clear message

and a very clear idea on this channel, which is that

inequality, specifically

inequality of wealth is growing and growing,

that is causing falls

in living standards for ordinary families,

which you can see.

And it's going to get worse and worse.

And we need to change that.

people often ask me, why don't you get into politics?

And, when people say that to me,

I always say the same thing, which is I'm in politics.

I'm in politics.

I often ask them, you know, Rupert Murdoch,

you know, is he in politics?

So Rupert Murdoch, for people

who don't know

he owns, he's a very, very, very wealthy Australian

who owns a lot of newspapers,

a lot of TV channels

here in the UK, also in Australia,

I think in the US as well, all across the world.

And,

he basically tries to convince people

to hate foreigners and not tax rich people.

And it's something he's been very successful at.

And, he controls a lot of politicians and politicians

do what he says

because he controls

what people think and who people vote for.

So

the first thing to say is

we're going to get a new prime minister

early next month.

Rishi Sunak,

the current prime minister, has called an election.

He will lose that election.

And Keir Starmer,

the head of the Labour Party,

will become prime minister on July 4th.

A lot of people will be very excited about that.

That's understandable.

The Conservatives have been in power for 14 years now.

I was a very young man when they took power.

They've overseen, enormous increase in inequality.

They've overseen an enormous increase in poverty.

they've overseen an enormous fall in living standards.

In many cases, most of the senior

politicians, Conservative

politicians are very, very wealthy people from very,

very wealthy backgrounds.

In particular, Rishi Sunak

is an extremely wealthy man

from an extremely wealthy family.

I've been criticising him

ever since he became chancellor

because he has consistently brought in policies

which have enriched the richest,

that have increased inequality

and, in my opinion, have been the source

of falling living standards in this country.

So you might think

I would

be absolutely delighted

at the fact that

the Conservatives are going to be voted out.

there's a good chance they will not only be voted out,

but they will

lose very badly, that they will lose

a lot of seats, that a lot of famous

MPs will lose their seats.

And a lot of people

on the left are understandably very excited about that.

And, you know,

I would like to be excited about it as well.

Don't get me wrong,

I will probably enjoy

watching Rishi Sunak lose, and it would be nice

if some big Conservative MPs who have

consistently opposed tax on the rich lose their seats.

But it's very hard for me to be excited

because I don't think we will see

any improvements in living standards

and

I think that there's

a tendency,

an understandable tendency

to see politics as a bit like football.

You know, I support this political team.

You support that political team.

I want your political team to lose,

I want my political team to win.

But my background is not politics.

My background is economics,

and my background is a trader.

And what I am worried about

is the continual collapse in living standards.

I don't think we will change that

unless you do something about inequality.

we need to stop it from rising.

It is rising very quickly.

If we don't take action on that

living standards will continue to fall.

And my honest opinion,

unfortunately, is that the new government,

that the new Labour government

will not take action on that,

they will not stop inequality from rising.

They will not stop living standards from falling.

So it's really difficult for me to be excited,

about the election.

So the first message I want to put across is

don't get too excited.

There's going to be a lot...

I say that,

I think a lot of people won't be excited anyway,

because I think people won't have high expectations.

There'll be a lot of political coverage on the news.

the Conservatives will lose.

They'll probably lose by quite a lot.

We'll get a Labour government.

Don't raise your hopes too much,

because I worry when we see things like this,

everybody gets very excited.

Everybody hopes are more. Everybody expects change.

And then when change doesn't come, people

become disappointed, people become despondent,

people become depressed,

and people start to completely lose

faith in the status quo in what's happening.

This election, in my opinion, is not

the big fight.

So let’s talk about why.

But before I do that, I want to say as well,

please avoid the excessive

football-ification of politics.

I view politics through the lens of the economy.

My view on the economy at the moment is that

it is collapsing.

From the perspective of living

standards of ordinary people, that's not going to stop.

The only way to stop that, in

my opinion, is for ordinary people to unite and agree

that we need to take action, stopping

the increasing exploding wealth of the very rich

and the transfer of wealth

from ordinary people to the very rich.

When we divide

ordinary working people into red and blue and yellow,

it often makes it harder to achieve that unity.

So don't allow this election

to create more division between ordinary people.

That being said,

we need to do some analysis of the election itself.

So let's get started.

So the first thing is the calling

of the election itself. And this is

quite, quite funny in a way.

We put a video out a few weeks ago

predicting that inflation would fall in this country

for really obvious reasons.

You know, it's a good video.

Go back and watch it.

I think it's called

predicting inflation

or why inflation will fall this week.

We'll put a link in the description.

And in that video we said that

almost certainly the official inflation

statistic for the country

would fall significantly this month.

It was extremely predictable.

It was for historical reasons.

But we knew that the government

tried to take credit for it.

And, I honestly think that is the reason

they've called this election.

if you go back and look at that video,

we explain that inflation was bountiful this month.

It will probably fall again slightly next month,

and then it will start to rise after that.

So if we have an election on

July the 4th, which we will,

we will have just seen a couple

of inflation statistics prints which look really good

for the government.

And we won't yet

have had the inflation starting to rise again.

The Conservatives and Rishi

Sunak are currently very unpopular,

but here is this one statistic,

which they have tried to claim aggressive credit for.

Inflation is coming down.

It will probably come down again

in the print this month.

They want to claim credit for that.

And I think they've decided that

this is kind of the only good news story

that they've got.

So let's run with it.

Let's call it an election

while inflation is low and let’s hope people will

vote for us.

But not a lot of people are going to vote for them,

which is largely

because living standards

have really significantly collapsed

under their government.

So, you know, I follow the betting odds quite closely.

It's almost certain

the Conservatives will lose and Labour win,

Labour will win an overall majority.

it could be a pretty significant overall majority. And,

different people have different opinions

on why that is.

But I think that is almost exclusively

because living standards have fallen so much,

and it's been 14 years of Conservative government.

People can see that life is getting harder.

People want change.

I don't think there's a lot of particular enthusiasm

for the Labour Party.

But here in the United Kingdom,

we have a first past the post political system,

which I can discuss a little bit more,

perhaps in another video.

It basically means that similarly to the US,

we have a two party system

where it's almost impossible for any party

other than the two major parties to take power.

So if you don't like the Conservatives,

if you're not happy with the falling living standards,

you basically have no choice other than Labour.

The Conservatives and Rishi

Sunak are extremely unpopular,

so we're going to get a

probably a significantly large Labour majority

in this government.

What does that mean?

You know,

I've got here on my list

to go through the policies of the parties, but,

you know,

you're going to get the policies of the parties

and the manifestos of the parties

rammed down your neck on BBC news and Sky news

as if they're important, as if they matter.

To be honest, they don't really matter.

They're going to make a lot of promises.

They're going to promise to cut your taxes.

They're going to promise to do loads of amazing things,

which they basically can't pay for

because I don't think you can fund these things

if you're not willing to raise taxes on the rich.

So it's a lot of pie in the sky policy.

Really, you've got two

parties that are promising to continue

pretty much the economic status quo.

You probably get a little bit more austerity

under the Conservatives,

which would probably be worse,

but I think

Labour have not really offered us anything significant.

You know, behind the scenes,

I talk to Labour politicians

and I try to lobby Labour politicians

to do more on inequality,

but basically we have not done enough

and we're not going to get enough,

when I ask Labour politicians

why you're not taking action on inequality,

why are you not taxing very rich people?

Some of them say we would like to do it,

but we don't think it's a vote winner.

For me, that's quite depressing

because this is what I tried to do on this channel.

The whole point of this channel

is for me to convince you

that the only way to stop the fall in living

standards is to stop the increase in inequality.

The only way to stop the increasing

inequality is to significantly

increase taxes on the rich,

so that we can cut tax on ordinary people.

And unfortunately,

both the major political parties at this point in time

don't think that's a vote winner.

So that's a failure for me and that's a failure for us.

But the truth of the matter is,

I never thought that we would win

anything in this election.

I was expecting the election to be the end of the year.

October, November.

I've been trying to really aggressively

grow this channel,

but it was never really to target this year's election

because I never thought

we would get much from this year's election.

But there is

one small shrapnel of hope,

something that we can be proud of,

that I can be proud of, that you can be proud of,

which is that the Green Party has adopted our call.

The Green Party has adopted basically, exactly

what I've been campaigning for,

which is a 1% tax on wealth

and wealth of about £10 million.

That's something that I'm proud of.

It's something that you can be proud of.

Anyone who watches this channel,

he supports this channel who

helps to grow this channel.

It is, of course, not just because of me.

You know, there's a lot of groups that I work with

that have been campaigning for this as well.

There's the Patriotic Millionaires who have done

amazing work.

Rebecca Gowland who runs that organisation, has done

an amazing work, and all of the millionaires

who are part of that group have done

amazing work campaigning for it.

Tax Justice UK

have been campaigning for the same thing.

Economists like Arun Advani

at Warwick have been campaigning for the same thing.

And we've got it

into the Green manifesto, into the Green policy,

which is something we should be proud of.

And, you know, I'm really grateful

for everyone who's pushed for it,

and I'm grateful for the Greens

putting it in their manifesto.

The reality is the Greens are,

of course, not going to get into power

in this election.

The nature of our political system,

basically, it's a two party job.

And, it's very, very difficult to shift that.

But if the Greens do well,

if the Greens get more votes,

in the best case scenario,

they could win a couple more seats.

It is a message that people are willing

to accept these kinds of policies. So,

I'll be voting for the Greens, and,

I'm not going to tell you guys who to vote for, but,

these guys have adopted

what we've been campaigning for.

The reality is they're not going to win.

But if they get a big vote, if they get a big...

if they get a couple more seats,

which in the best case they could, it is a good sign.

It is a good sign. So that's who I'll be voting for.

So what could happen? You know, the truth is,

I don't think this is going to be...

even though we might see like

a big political landslide,

a big collapse in the Conservatives

and a massive majority for Labour,

I don't think it really changes our game much,

because Labour are not really going

to give us the policies that we want.

The truth is, we might get a few more opportunities.

I put a video out

when Rishi Sunak became Conservative leader.

It's easy to forget this now,

but when Rishi Sunak became Conservative leader,

he had a really good brand.

He was considered to be really smart, really competent,

really good with money,

and a lot of people were really happy to see him

be prime minister.

And, I put a video out saying

Rishi Sunak will be phenomenally unpopular

in a year's time,

just basically, specifically

for the exact same reasons that I'm telling you

now that Keir Starmer will be very unpopular

in a year, year

and a half time

because Rishi Sunak did not take action on inequality,

which meant living standards continue to fall.

Keir Starmer looks like he's

not going to take action on inequality,

which means living standards will continue to fall.

So,

Rishi Sunak's popularity collapsed,

but that really never gave us any opportunities

because I've never once been contacted

by a Conservative MP on the work that I do.

If a Labour win

a year, two years, three years

into a Labour government,

if living standards have not recovered,

which they won't,

Keir Starmer will be very unpopular.

There might be demand for change and for new policies.

If we can keep growing what we're doing,

we can try and get ourselves

to be the big voice in the room, when that happens.

There's a quote by the famous,

very right

wing American economist

Milton Friedman, which is, at times of crisis,

the new solution will be chosen

from the ideas lying around at the time.

Of what you can see

from the way the two main parties

have gone into this election is that we,

me, this idea that the problem is inequality

is not the loudest idea lying around at the time.

To be honest, if you look at the

the policies of the two main parties,

it seems like

there is no idea lying around because they don't

basically don't seem to be offering anything,

anything new on the economy.

The biggest new idea,

which is starting to get popular about the economy,

you can see the Conservatives edging that way.

You can see it becoming popular across Europe

and also in the US

is that the problem is immigrants,

is that the problem is foreigners.

You know, this is a really popular

economic idea, especially at times of crisis.

It was really popular in the early 20th century.

It was a big part of the reason of why

we ended up getting the Second World War.

Why we ended up getting the

Holocaust, things like this.

we need to make

our idea big enough

such that when the next election comes around,

the two main parties can't ignore it.

That's what I think, basically.

And I think this election

as much as it's fantastic

that the Greens have taken up our ideas.

The Greens are not going to get into power.

We need to win that argument for ideas.

We need to win the argument

for ideas for the next election.

I think that's all we can do.

That's all we can do.

I think,

I love football

and I love politics

for a similar reason that I love football

because I just...

I'm kind of a geeky guy

that likes these kinds of things. And,

a couple of years ago,

I had a two year plan for this channel,

which was to grow it massively.

And the book was part of that.

And,

it's been massively successful,

the growth of this channel has been enormous.

the growth of these ideas have been enormous.

The fact that we're getting these ideas

more understood,

more recognised by politicians,

by ordinary people, is partly

thanks to the work that I've done

and the work that you've done, sharing this.

I was kind of working towards

the end of the year as my time horizon,

and even though I knew we weren't

going to win anything from the election,

you're kind of thinking

maybe we can get ourselves a voice.

Maybe we can get ourselves a voice.

the election got called earlier,

and we're not in a position

to influence the main political parties.

And,

I think it's hard when you work so hard at something.

And you, you see how far you've come on it,

and you look up and you see how much further

you have to go on that thing.

So basically,

living standards are not going to rise

after this election.

We'll get a new government.

They're not going to do anything on inequality.

But, you know,

I never thought we would get anything

from the Conservatives,

and I never thought we would get anything from Labour.

And before I started this YouTube channel,

I existed in the world of, like, think tanks

and newspapers.

And I spoke to politicians,

and I spoke to people who speak to politicians,

and I still speak to people

who speak to politicians now.

And I made the intentional choice

to stop speaking to politicians

and start speaking to you

because I don't think that the politicians

are going to save us.

I think that we have to save us.

And, I think if enough of you realise that what we need

is action on inequality,

what we need is a fairer tax system

that taxes the rich more and taxes working people less.

I honestly believe

we can get ourselves into a situation

where when we go into an election,

the political parties have to do something.

And, you know, this might sound an absurd comparison,

but in a weird way,

I sometimes take hope from Brexit because in 2015,

none of the major political parties supported Brexit.

They were all quite passionately against it.

And

people consistently voted for parties

that were pro-Brexit to the point

where now the main political parties,

they don't want to support Brexit,

but they have to support Brexit

and you know,

I don't necessarily think Brexit is going to save us,

and I don't think Brexit necessarily

is going to get us out of this problem.

But what it shows is if enough ordinary people

demand something, we do still live in a democracy

and the politicians

will eventually have to give us that. But,

we're not loud enough.

My voice is not loud enough.

Your voice is not loud enough.

but it was always going to be a marathon, not a sprint.

I'll be voting for the one party

that has supported my ideas.

I think the first past the post

political system is stupid.

I'll be swapping my vote

if it helps on vote swapping websites.

Listen, there'll be people that will say

don't vote for the Greens because you need to vote for

whoever will get the Tories out.

And that's a legitimate opinion.

And if that's what you want to do, you can do that.

I will swap my vote so that I can try and do both.

I would encourage you to do what you think is best,

but also to realise,

don't get caught up in the hype of this election.

The real battle for living

standards is a battle for distribution.

It's a battle for inequality.

It's a battle which unfortunately, at the moment,

none of the politicians are fighting for us.

I'm going to keep fighting.

Well, I'm going to take a holiday, actually,

because I need one.

But, when I come back, I'll be fighting.

And, I hope you guys will fight with me.

So

don't worry too much about Rishi

Sunak and Keir Starmer.

It's a marathon, not a sprint.

I'll keep going and I hope you guys come with me.

So thanks for your support. And, we'll keep going.

Thank you.

Happy with that? Yeah, great man, it's great.

Emotional. Yeah.

It is frustrating, isn't it? You know, it just.

Yeah.

It's hard when you realise, like, f*****g

how much you have to work and how much harder,

how much more you have to come still, you know.

You know what I'll do.

And you know, you can stick this in on the end

if you want. Like I'm in a safe Labour seat.

I will try and swap a Green vote into a seat

that the Greens are challenging for.

probably they won't want to swap with me

because

people all over the country will be trying to swap into

about four Green seats, right.

So what I'll probably do is I'll vote Green here

and I'll swap a Labour vote into a marginal.

Or I might even swap Lib-Dem vote into a marginal

to try and like you know

I don't, I don't want to see listen

there's people that will say

how can you support the Greens?

You've got to fight the Tories and that's it.

I don't disrespect that view.

And there are people who say,

how can you support Labour when they do this?

They do that.

And obviously I haven't mentioned things

they do outside of economics.

But I think you can get the sense

I'm disappointed in Labour

and I appreciate that point of view as well.

But I'll swap so I can try and fight both fights.

And also like

I'm not going to insult people because,

you know, I think

both of those views are legitimate views.

I think if the Tories lose, which they do

and we get a big Labour majority,

we have a better chance than if the Tories don't lose.

You know,

I think if we get

a big Green vote

realistically,

that the press will ignore that big Green vote.

But if we get a big Green vote, it

at least is a signal,

you know, and one thing I will say.

I would encourage people to vote.

I would encourage people to vote.

And, if you can, you know, if it works for you, vote

because, you know,

a lot of poor people, a lot of young people don't vote.

And we get ignored.

And and I know a lot of people

are discouraged with Labour

and I'm discouraged with Labour.

But, you know,

and maybe some people

don't like the Greens for some reason.

I would encourage you to go and vote.

And, you know, if you

if that means voting for an independent,

if that means voting for Labour,

if that means voting for Greens,

if that means voting for the Lib Dems

or the SNP to get the Tories out of,

you'll see these are all legit views.

Like I don't want to see ordinary people

divided by like, oh,

my party is better than your party.

Like I just the situation is too serious for that,

the situation is too serious for that.

But more than anything.

This election is not the be all and end all, you know.

Go out, cast your vote, dust your hands off, move on.

Because we got a long, a lot of...

we have many years of fighting ahead of us,

and we can't afford to just, like,

exhaust ourselves all on this one thing. For sure.

Shall we just cut there?

Yeah, I think so, yes. Yeah.