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We're currently closer to getting wealth taxes than at any point in the last 40 years. Here's how we get them across the line.
This is an AI-written (but human-edited) summary of Gary’s recent video: The UK is closer to wealth taxes than ever before
The UK is currently closer to introducing wealth taxes than at any point in the last 40 years.
In this episode Gary unpacks the current political situation in the UK, and a potential route to getting wealth taxes from it.
The Labour government in freefall. Keir Starmer, who won an electoral landslide just two years ago, is now among the most unpopular prime ministers in modern British history.
Labour were routed in local elections. Living standards have continued to fall. And the Iran war, whose full economic impact has yet to be felt in rising energy and food prices, is about to make things worse.
Two figures have moved to replace Starmer.
We can stop growing wealth inequality.
Wes Streeting resigned as Health Secretary and wrote a pointed letter. Andy Burnham, currently Mayor of Manchester, made his move — but he is not an MP, which means he first needs to win a by-election in Makerfield.
Betting markets give him roughly a 70% chance of winning it, and if he does, a 63% chance of becoming Prime Minister.
The most probable outcome, Gary concludes, is Andy Burnham as PM within months. If Burnham loses Makerfield, Starmer limps on — but Gary does not believe he survives until the next election regardless.
Any new prime minister is walking into an almost impossible job.
UK borrowing costs are high, which limits the capacity for quick spending. Living standards are about to fall further as the economic shock of the Iran war feeds through.
Coming in riding a wave of goodwill, as both Sunak and Starmer did before collapsing, will not be enough. The new prime minister will need an economic story — one that explains why people’s lives are getting harder and what will actually fix it.
Gary’s argument is that there is only one story available that is both true and politically viable: we can stop growing wealth inequality by taxing the super rich more.
Tony Blair published an article this week arguing that the only way to fix the economy was to embrace AI and deregulate everything.
Formerly a huge influence on centre and right of the party, Blair now appears to have very little current support in Labour.
Voices from across Labour almost unanimously challenged his intervention.
Wes Streeting wrote that inequality “is not incidental to the crises reshaping Western democracies” but “actually their cause,” and called for tipping taxation “away from work towards wealth.”
Andy Burnham asked why Blair had not mentioned inequality. Even Keir Starmer said the same.
In political messaging, when your opponents start using your language, you have won the argument. The framing that we, Tax Justice UK, Patriotic Millionaires and countless viewers have been pushing for years is now being used by politicians who were never ideologically aligned with it.
They are not saying it because they have been converted. They are saying it because the public has moved, and they can feel it.
We want to reach out directly to whoever is Prime Minister after the current leadership contest concludes. (And that includes Keir Starmer).
If you show us genuine seriousness on wealth taxes and tackling long-term inequality (not spin, not technocratic language, not short-term fixes), we will mobilise every political influencer we knows to back you. We will promote you on our channels. We have more viewers than Question Time.
The new prime minister cannot spin their way out of a structural economic crisis. A “Burnham bounce” followed by a snap election, without action on inequality, buys a few extra years before the same collapse eventually.
Labour’s choice is binary: give the public wealth taxes, or get destroyed at the next election.
Our campaign that was ignored for the better part of a decade has reached a point where even right-of-centre Labour politicians are echoing our core message in public.
We’ve built this influence together. You, our viewers, have shared videos, sent them to friends and family, called radio shows, emailed MPs, pushed the argument into everyday conversation.
Organised people, with a clear and simple message, can force change on issues where power and money are lined up against them.