Five simple policy ideas could generate billions for a Labour chancellor and end the threat of continued austerity
Richard Murphy is professor of accounting practice at Sheffield University Management School and director of Tax Research LLP
“How are you going to pay for it?” Over the past 14 years, it would seem that no other question has been so destructive for British society. That is because the vast majority of the country’s leading politicians still seem to believe that additional public spending or investment is impossible to finance. The result is a belief, explicitly stated or not, in the need for continued austerity, which is the policy that has seriously undermined UK economic performance since 2010.
It was when Labour’s shadow leader of the House of Commons, Lucy Powell MP, said that there was “no money left” in July 2023 – echoing Liam Byrne’s infamous note to Gordon Brown in 2010 – that I thought it was time to show she was wrong about this. The Taxing Wealth Report 2024 is the result.
