B IS FOR BURNHAM

It has been remiss of me not to have recognised the incoming of a new Prime Minister – with this article covering Andy Burnham’s first week 

Because Starmer had nothing to say, he had no voice to say it in. We should have 
known. In 2021 he wrote a 12,000-word essay to define himself and his politics. 
It was remarkable for its emptiness. Opportunities would be seized, potential fulfilled, 
power harnessed and productivity unlocked. Sentences had verbs, but it wasn’t 
always clear what those verbs related to — under a Labour government, “community, 
wellbeing, security and opportunity” were to be “fleshed out”, which is nice, but it 
didn’t mean anything in opposition and was no guide to government. 
A Judgement on Keir Starmer by Will Davies
Many of the things that now seem exciting and impressive about Burnham as 
an individual leader are things that were taken for granted about Tony Blair and 
even David Cameron: having a plan that a leader appears to believe in, is willing to 
argue for, will take flack for (Burnham is still something of an unknown quantity here), 
and which others can then position themselves in relation to, either as opponents or 
supporters. Quite how radical Burnham will end up being remains to be seen, but 
some of the appearance of political radicalism is merely the shock of politics being 
done purposefully and enthusiastically, signalling how dysfunctional British politics 
had become in the decade following the Brexit referendum. 

Starmer’s absence could be felt and witnessed across three different aspects of 
political leadership: appetite, destination, ideology. It wasn’t clear why he wanted 
to be Prime Minister (appetite), it wasn’t clear what he wanted to do with power 
(destination) and it wasn’t clear why or with what justification he wanted to get there 
(ideology). It was this triple vacuum that made him such a bewildering figure, 
psychologically as much as politically. There weren’t even any significant stories of 
psychological frailty, sensitivity, rage or rupture, that usually leak out from centres 
of political power, simply because politicians are such unusual psychological 
specimens. It felt like there was no there there.
Burnham’s first 100 days 

Today – the ‘first 100 days’ is acknowledgement that first impressions count. In the case of Andy Burnham – seventh prime minister in 10 years and the Labour Party deeply unpopular – this is the chance, maybe the last chance, to turn around the government’s fortunes. There is, of course, no magic to 100 days as opposed to 90 or 110, but seeing each term (to use the unit of time I’m familiar with as a former teacher) as a key strategic period is a useful way to govern. Thinking in 100 day or three-month chunks forces the government to think beyond getting through the week.

Of course, all of these three-month periods should be part of an overarching strategy that Burnham puts together with a 2/3 year horizon, working back from where he wants to be at the next election. This in turn will need to fit into the 10-year plan that he has promised. I used to write these strategies in Number 10. They require pulling together several inputs from different parts of the building: the policy announcements, the big events, a speech programme – all in pursuit of the key strategic objectives for the period. Done well, the plan gives purpose and direction to Number 10 and the government. Rather than the prime minister’s diary being filled with activities from those who shout the loudest, this is a strategic way of ensuring he spends his time (his most precious commodity) in the most effective way possible. What follows is what a three-month plan could look like; a template for the kind of short document that ultimately needs to be interrogated and then signed off by the prime minister.

How to compile a 100 day/three-month strategic plan

Objectives

This is the key starting point. What does the prime minister want to have achieved in the first 100 days and how will he measure success? I have given some examples below of what the objectives might look like (ideally there would be 3 to 5 - I’ve done a menu of 6) and the kinds of steps that might exemplify them.

(i)To establish that Burnham is an insurgent and his government represents a ‘circuit breaker’ e.g
a. Appoint a Cabinet with the biggest reformers in the key positions and an instruction to work at pace.
b. Structural changes – reforming the centre of government plus creating task forces/mission teams to deliver the key priorities. (Instead of assuming that new Ministers and one more heave from departments will get there)
c. Make No10 North work as a new centre of power outside of Westminster
d. Signal new policy directions e.g on education

(ii)To bring to life his big idea about devolution and ‘rewiring the state’
Burnham’s big idea is to hand power back to the people and tackle an overly-centralised state. This needs to be worked into a narrative that lands with the public, accompanied by a set of speeches, activities and policies that bring it alive e.g.
a. A new devolution settlement with new powers and resources to communities
b. A massive reduction in Whitehall numbers and functions.
c. No 10 North opened and staffed and Burnham working there each week

(iii)To demonstrate a willingness to take tough decisions
If the perceived weakness is that Burnham is not willing to take tough decisions, he can establish the reverse in the first few months. And there will be many opportunities to do so e.g.
a. The zeal with which he gets stuck into public service and welfare reform
b. The tough choices in the first budget
c. the message of trade-offs to the faithful at party conference

(iv)To connect with the electorate and get them to take a second look at Labour e.g.
a. Design a new communications strategy
b. Use Labour Party conference for a reset with the public
c. Use No10 North as a platform for keeping in constant touch with the public.

(v) To show economic credibility and a plan for a new economy
e.g.
a. Deliver a successful first Budget giving confidence there is a credible economic
plan for stability and growth in every postcode
b. Unleash the power of business – particularly small and medium sized businesses - to create wealth
c. Take the first steps to making the tax system fairer
d. Take tough decisions on spending eg welfare spending

(vi) To show he is sure-footed on the international stage e.g.
a. First meeting with Trump
b. First meeting with European leaders
c. First visit to Ukraine
d. First armed forces visit

Narrative

The narrative – or washing line – is what all (or most) announcements should hang off. The narrative has to be big and go way beyond – ‘this is a cost of living government’. It needs to capture three things:
1. The big argument about an overly-centralised state and an unequal society requiring a new politics and a new economy - connected to the future and personal aspiration
2. A story about Britain’s place in the world – how it gets its reputation back - after the last 10 years of instability
3. A personal story about Burnham and his values and purpose
The narrative should be turned into a message note that gives Cabinet Ministers the context for all their communications and shows everyone pulling in the same direction.

Speech programme

Speeches still matter. They are where arguments are honed and stakeholders and the public get a sense of clarity and direction. Continuous explanation (long form and short form) is essential for a government to be effective in the attention economy. For a new prime minister this is particularly important. e.g. He should make a series of big reforming speeches in the first few months that might include:
a. How I will rewire the state
b. Why we need to rethink education providing parity of esteem between academic and vocational.
c. How I will give young people their future back – building on Neet review etc
d. Why we need to change our economic model to ensure living standards rise
e. The part you can play in renewing Britain
f. My vision of Britain in the world

Big moments

There will be key moments during the first 100 days that need to be planned for. Some are already fixed: the leaders’ speech at Labour Party Conference, the first PMQs. Others are still to be scheduled (I have guessed when they might be in the table below). Some, not yet scheduled, are likely to happen in the next few months – for example, the first meeting with Trump, and the first major engagement with EU leaders.

The key is to build a strategy around them.

Building Burnham’s profile

Burnham needs to define himself as prime minister before opponents do it for him. The public do not know Burnham well. While he is loved in Manchester, the rest of the country needs to get to know him. Some of this will come in his good use of social media and his successful narration of his premiership. But there needs to be a strategic view too of how he is seen to be making the shift from Mayor to Prime Minister. The sort of questions that need answering are:
a. How does he want to tell his own personal story - his family, his political journey, his hopes and fears, his interests and passions?
b. What media vehicles best suit his new style of politics?
c. How does he best engage with opponents? How does he demonstrate his aim of greater cross-party working? How should he handle PMQs?
d. How does he remain an insurgent and not become just another incumbent? Should he have weekly/fortnightly town hall meetings? How should he use No 10 North as an antidote to Westminster business as usual? One sign of success would be that the political lobby has to create its own ‘Lobby North’ to reflect the amount of activity going on outside of London.

Designing a ‘playlist’ of big issues and arguments that need to be fought for each day.

What are the four or five big things that the government is fighting for on a daily/weekly basis? This is where the idea of a story factory comes in. Each of these needs a constant stream of media stories to win the argument and show progress. How does the prime minister’s diary reflect these priorities? E.g.
a. Building more social housing
b. Growth in every postcode
c. Fairer utility bills
d. Parity of esteem in education between academic and technical
e. Reform of social care

One of the many reasons why the British government has been so unstable in recent years has been the lack of strategy and strategic capacity in Number 10. Short-term tactics have dominated over long-term strategy. Now is the time to reassert the importance of having clear objectives for each three-month period and relentlessly pursuing them. That is a good way of showing ‘grip’ and providing the clarity and purpose Britain so desperately needs.

Head North Any Burnham and Steve Rotherham (2024)

Bella Caledonia is an important Scottish site and this is what one of its editors, Mike Small, had to say about Burnham
 
Burnham’s first task to establish that he is not simply a replacement for Starmer, is to set out his plan for Britain, and much of his thinking stems from Head North. Some of the key ideas are:

1. A Written Constitution

2. A Basic Law

3. Reform of the Voting System

4. Removal of the Whip

5. A Senate of the Nations and Regions

6. Full Devolution

7. Two Equal Paths in Education

8. A Grenfell Law

9. A Hillsborough Law

10. Net Zero to Reindustrialise the North

The platform emerges from the network called Mainstream, the Compass-founded 
campaign group that provided policy work for Burnham to start to build a leadership 
campaign. The Burnham movement sees itself as centre-left, and is motivated by a drive for progressive social policy, democratic reform and the need to provide a credible response to the rise of the far-right. The group were appalled by the regressive social policy of the Starmer government, the internal chaos and factionalism and the astonishing mismanagement of the Peter Mandelson appointment. They aim to overcome both the sense of internal chaos within Labour and the general feeling of Britain being moribund and in perpetual decline.
It remains to be seen if Burnham will implement any or all of his ideas, or be thwarted 
by the powers that be. But even as a nascent project it represents a political threat to 
the SNP as it aims to reform the UK both constitutionally and economically. 
Let’s try and unpack some of their ideas.
At the centre of Burnham’s political project is a form of constitutional reform including 
creating a written constitution, reform of the voting system, creating a Senate of the 
Nations and Regions, and something called ‘Full Devolution’. These proposals could 
be transformative, but they do land in an uncomfortable way. What is the democratic 
forum in which these ideas have been developed? It feels like, and this is true of the 
Burham project as a whole, as ‘democracy from above’. And the whole constitutional 
reform project also sits uncomfortably with the deeper constitutional crisis that still 
haunts Britain.
Dr Ryan Swift, writing for the IPPR has noted (On Home Ground) : “Devolution must 
become the organising principle of a rewired, forward-looking UK – one that drives 
economic growth and reduces regional inequalities, renews democracy and rebuilds 
political trust from the bottom up, and becomes firmly established within the governance 
of the country.” But while this feels radical it doesn’t really get to grips with the deeper 
national questions at play here. Instead, it tries to just bypass them.
Swift again: “The conversation on regional devolution shouldn’t stop at England’s 
borders. Greater regional devolution within Scotland and Wales for cities like Glasgow, 
Edinburgh and Cardiff could complement national devolution by strengthening cities 
and local economies while reducing the concentration of power within the devolved 
governments themselves. A genuinely multi-level UK should recognise that 
decentralisation is valuable at every level of government.”

The F Bomb, again
It feels like an agenda for breathing some democracy into English local government. 
But that’s not really the same as genuine constitutional reform. It’s noted, too, that the 
language has shifted from ‘abolish the House of Lords’ to ‘reform the upper chamber’. 
Burnham’s revelation that Britain has power and wealth concentrated in London may 
be amazeballs to the political class but it’s not exactly news to Scots. 
Essentially, this is bits of Gordon Brown’s blueprint document. That’s certainly true of 
the Council of Nations and Regions shtick.

As John Denham wrote in 2024: “Today Keir Starmer will chair the first meeting of the
Council of Nations and Regions (CNR). It’s an innovation 
with an important message about Labour working to 
deliver across the UK.  But how much difference will it 
make to the way the United Kingdom and its nations are run? The Council has its origins in Gordon Brown’s report on the future of the UK which  recommended ‘a new and powerful institution to drive co-operation between all its governments – a Council of the Nations and Regions.’ I was critical of Brown for not being radical enough but I also warned that  ‘Labour in government is usually less radical than in opposition’. That’s certainly the case with the new Council.” He goes on: “Brown wanted the Council of Nations and Regions based in statute, with an independent secretariat. It was to be part of a series of constitutional changes, including stronger legal protection for the devolved parliaments, the replacement of the Lords with a union-wide second chamber, a new Council of England to represent English mayors and local government, and a new body to bring together the First Ministers with the UK Prime Minister.”
“Today’s Council was reportedly set up without even informing the Scottish government and will, it seems, be run out of Whitehall’s Cabinet Office by the recently demoted Sue Gray.  While Brown’s Lords reform did raise some serious difficulties, the King’s Speech contained no proposals to give the CNR legal status and the rest of Brown’s proposals have, for now at least, disappeared.”
I didn’t quite know what was meant by ‘Removal of the whip’. The Guardian journalist 
Andrew Sparrow explained: “In the book they suggest getting rid of the whipping system 
altogether. But now Burnham is proposing whipping-lite – in particular, not suspending 
people who vote against govt whip.”
There’s a strong element of the zeitgeisty ‘consensus’ speak that is all the rage among 
wonks and the chattering class.
In 2024 Burnham made a speech advocating that a Grenfell Law should be introduced to 
enshrine the right for decent housing for every citizen in Britain. He said: “We need a new 
housing-first strategy, because you can’t have anything without a good home. It should 
be a human right for everyone to have a decent, secure home and that’s what we should 
be working towards.” 
 real threat to the arguments for Scottish independence because it posits the idea, again, that Britain is reformable. But the constitutional reforms are so wracked with inconsistencies and contradictions

Ask Andy Anything
Burnham has made great play of Mamdani-like sessions in which you could Ask Andy 
Anything. He did this in Cardiff city-centre the other day. It’s a good look.  One question 
would be: “If this is a voluntary Union, what is the democratic way to leave it?” But, if the 
answer is there isn’t one (dear readers – that is the answer)  then all of the policy 
proposals about Mayors and constitutions seem an odd distraction.
But my notes on the inadequacy of Burnham’s constitutional programme are complemented 
by other observations about the absence of power analysis in Labour’s outlook. European 
Powell points out that: “Andy Burnham is days away from becoming Prime Minister. 
His incoming chief of staff is James Purnell, CEO of Flint Global, a corporate lobbying firm 
whose clients include Amazon, Uber, BP, Airbnb, Apple and Thames Water, the utility 
Burnham says should be nationalised. In December 2025, Flint was acquired by private 
equity firm Cinven for £190 million. The firm at the centre of a Burnham government is not 
merely connected to corporate capital. It is owned by it.” “While at Flint, Purnell told 
corporate clients to expect deregulation, no tax rises, and spending cuts. That is the stated 
position of the man who will occupy the most powerful unelected role in the British government
.” This political/apolitical trope is played out in an interview Andy Burnham has with Gary 
Lineker in which he said he didn’t want to “create new divisions” when asked if he would 
set up a wealth tax: 

Burnham does not have Starmer’s fatal flaw, of an almost complete lack of any policy ambition whatsoever. However he is divorced from any political base and guilty, like his predecessor, of constant flip-flops.
As Grace Blakeley points out (The Labour Machine always wins):
“Burnham has managed to ingratiate himself with what remains of the Labour left over the last
 few years, thanks in part to some genuinely impressive achievements as Mayor of Greater 
Manchester. But a cursory look at Burnham’s public statements during his recent campaign 
reveals a politician just as slippery and opportunistic as Starmer.”
“As Harriet Williamson shows in this excellent video for Novara media, Burnham has made 
multiple, contradictory promises to different factions within the Labour Party. He says he’s 
going to invest in public services, while also sticking to Rachel Reeves’ nonsensical fiscal 
rules. He has previously articulated liberal attitudes towards migration, but recently 
supported Shabana Mahmood’s draconian immigration reforms. He’s criticised the Israeli 
government, but refused to call out Israel’s genocide.” “This opportunism is, of course, what 
makes Burnham palatable to the Labour machine. To be sure, he is not their preferred 
candidate. They would prefer someone like Wes Streeting, who has clearly demonstrated his 
obedience by taking vast donations from private healthcare lobbyists only to advocate 
ceaselessly for greater private involvement in the NHS. Burnham hasn’t been quite so 
grasping. But he has flip-flopped enough times for the Labour machine’s apparatchiks to 
accept he is no threat to their project.” Burnham’s project is over-sold because the British 
political class thinks it’s radical to point out that Britain has a concentration of wealth and 
power in London. Manchesterism is good but limited as explored by Mike Danson here 
On No 10 North and the Limits of Manchesterism – Bella Caledonia and by Laurie 
MacFarlane here: Scotland has already tried ‘Manchesterism’. It won’t solve Britain’s 
economic crisis alone,
The post-Starmer era is upon us, but Burnham is still wedded to centrist ideas of 
ameliorative change that remain within the range of acceptable political discourse but are 
woefully inadequate for the state we’re in

X

ThisThis podcast covers the main points

And some other ideas from Will Davies in A Legitimacy Trap   

When people do not see the state solving problems, faith that politics can improve their lives fades. This erosion is experienced first at the level of everyday life: in those potholes, waiting lists, and polluted rivers. Small-scale local problems can accumulate into national discontent. The damage is compounded when there appear to be no actors with the authority or ability to fix them. Market-conforming, low-visibility interventions – from planning reform to “nudge” policies – have been both too modest for the scale of the problems, and they have failed to produce a clear demonstration of state effectiveness. Furthermore, serious high-profile failures – such as the infected blood scandal – do not seem to result in adequate learning on the part of system designers. Without visible improvements in public services, the state will struggle to rebuild trust; yet repeated failures to improve them have simultaneously eroded support for the very measures (most notably higher taxation) required to do so. 

Human Landscapes of my country Nazim Hismet (2001) 

The Productive State – a framework for Manchesterism Mark Williams (2026)

EIGHT MORE

Only 38,000 clicks so far this month – compared with some 450.000 last month. That’s less than one tenth of last months’. So far, so bad! Hopefully I’ll be able to reach 45,000 by the end of the month?

An Honest Day Mark McVitie (2026) An unusual pamphlet (with 100 odd pages) 
which argues that

Britain has built an economy where holding position or owning things pays better than putting in an honest day’s work. Holding scarce assets, occupying protected market positions, navigating process, gaming broken systems and capturing profit from state‐created scarcity have become safer routes to reward than working, building, investing, teaching, caring, manufacturing or taking productive risk.

Conclusion

Britain does not lack people willing to work, build, care, teach, invent, manufacture, serve, take risks or do the right thing. It lacks a settlement that rewards them.

For too long, the country has asked people to keep their side of the bargain while quietly withdrawing the rest. Work no longer reliably buys a good life; the state taxes heavily but cannot deliver visibly; markets in essentials reward scarcity; and the institutions of common life have thinned. The public knows the rules are rigged, and mainstream politics has too often offered either denial, compensation or management.

Nostalgia will not do. The post‐war settlement cannot be restore. The Thatcher settlement cannot be unleashed again. The New Labour settlement cannot be revived by wishing the world of the 2000s back into existence.

Austerity has left no hidden reserve of state capacity to draw on. The country needs a new and actively forged settlement. This begins by naming the moral line: work and initiative against extraction. It then names the institutional truth: extraction persists because the state has lost capability. The governing task then being to rebuild a democratic state able to choose, build, enforce and be held accountable, so that the conditions of productive life in Great Britain are restored.

This is a pro‐market argument: competition where competition is possible, hard obligations where competition is not, and public authority willing to confront rent‐seeking, capture and monopoly position. It is also a pro‐state argument, but for a state that does fewer things than the current state pretends to do and does the things only it can do seriously.

It is a demand for multiple economic engines, not an attack on London; and it is a demand that success follow from action, contribution and risk rather than position, scarcity and gaming. The fight will be hard because the winners from the present settlement are organised. Landholders, incumbents, process industries, extractive owners, regulatory moats, consultancy dependency, parts of the political‐ administrative class and the populists who thrive on decline will resist. That resistance is not a reason to retreat. It is proof that the line has been drawn in the right place.

The people who sustain Britain have waited too long for politics to take their side in more than language. They do not need another account of how difficult everything is. They need a government willing to say who the country is for, what must be confronted, and what must be built.

An honest day's work should once again lead to security, agency and dignity. That is the promise. The machinery of the old settlement will not deliver it. This one, if we have the courage to deliver it and the will to believe in it, will.

Europe 2031 (2026) a short, interesting pamphlet (only 68 pages) which argues 
that we in Europe are indeed facing revolutionary change with Artificial Intelligence 
but does so using a highly personalised approach. Ideal for the cynical me!

America’s AI Action Plan (2025) an even shorter (just 28 pages) document

Invitation to a Banquet – the story of Chinese Food Fuschia Dunlop (2020)

Shaped by the State – toward a new poitical history of the 20th century 
ed B Cebul et al (2019) 

The chapters in part 1, “Building Leviathan,” point to the emergence of the New Deal state and its discontents as they were constructed and reconstructed through the crises of depression and war. The essays suggest that as state builders confronted structural realities and limitations inherited from earlier eras as well as broader contemporary social and structural realities, the state they built entrenched and developed certain governing logics—accommodation with Jim Crow, techniques of surveillance, public-private partnerships, cultivation of highly contingent labor markets, and profound but obscure interventions on behalf of maintaining the fiction of free markets. These chapters emphasize not only the expansive and pervasive dimensions of the New Deal state but also the ways in which Americans understood and grappled with the reality of this powerful and diffuse, yet increasingly distant national government. They beyond red and blue also emphasize the overlapping and often constitutive relationships between modern liberalism, modern conservatism, and phenomena associated with neoliberalism.

Connolly offers important insight into the troubling history of African Americans’ relationship to midcentury liberalism. In Connolly’s telling, liberalism often cultivated African American partners in its recourse to markets, its endorsement of state violence, its pragmatic embrace of paternalistic alliances, and its reliance on brokered rather than direct democracy. The result was the maintenance of white supremacy that transcended the ostensible high-water marks of the civil rights era. In his exploration of these dynamics, Connolly locates striking lines of continuity between the seemingly distinct political crises of black disfranchisement and modern neoliberalism, which is too often defined as a crisis of the white working class.

In their chapter on the complex legacies of New Deal federalism, Brent Cebul and Mason Williams argue that red-blue binaries, which often took on regional dimensions (e.g., the “conservative” South and the “liberal” North), have led scholars to miss the centrality of the New Deal in creating not only urban liberalism but also Sunbelt conservatism. By mapping the New Deal’s reliance on loosely regulated fiscal relationships between national and local governments and public and private actors, Cebul and Williams excavate the importance of local politics in shaping the day-to-day realities of the New Deal and postwar state. In their recounting of New Deal federalism, the legacies of Progressive Era reform, the contingent brent cebul, lily geismer, and mason b. williams development of mass democratic publics, Jim Crow, the subtleties of fiscal federalism, the long history of public-private partnerships, and the fierce competition between local elites over the spoils of federal spending emerge as significant factors shaping not only what the New Deal accomplished but also how local actors—urban progressives and Sunbelt boosters alike—remembered and misremembered the importance of the New Deal as they constructed and reconstructed their political ideologies.

Far from snuffing out the centrality of the market and market actors in Americans’ political and cultural imagination, the development of the leviathan state proceeded through market forces and ironically redoubled Americans’ recourse to markets as alternatives to increasingly unwieldy or undemocratic governing institutions. As David M. P. Freund argues in his study of New Deal era financial policy, a new economic orthodoxy emerged around public debt and the money supply that justified unprecedented state interventions between 1932, when Herbert Hoover signed the first Glass-Steagall Act, and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s passage of the Banking Act of 1935. Yet as Freund reveals, politicians and economists from across the political spectrum masked the implications of the government’s new stake in finance, arguing that it mattered not whether public or private assets “stood behind” the currency’s value. Instead, Freund argues that the “U.S. state fundamentally remade the financial landscape in the twentieth century by collateralizing it with public resources,” and that the state’s new powers would be essential to financing unprecedented postwar growth. Freund ultimately contends that policy makers and economists, liberals and conservatives, have been complicit in obscuring this transformation by portraying the value of modern money as purely market driven, further submerging the role of the state and helping maintain fictions of free markets and limited government.

In part 2, “Crisis and Continuity,” the chapters explore the ways in which earlier techniques of governance and experiences of citizenship became renegotiated and amplified through a subsequent period of crisis, the 1970s. The essays identify not only deep continuities between historical techniques of what we might call neoliberal governance but also continuities and convergences between the experiences of contingent forms of citizenship and citizens’ perspectives on the state itself. To be sure, changes in the global political economy and the rights revolutions of the 1960s refashioned the relationships between state and society, state and market, and the lived experience of the leviathan state. But they did not rewrite these relationships on a clean slate. Rather, through a particular emphasis on the 1970s, the chapters suggest ways in which these relationships became recast in the context of earlier state developments and dependencies.

Expanding on themes introduced by Connolly, Andrew Kahrl reveals that racial and ethnic depredations of the U.S. political economy extended and intensified after the Great Society. By focusing on state and local tax-policy administration, Kahrl uncovers a variety of bureaucratic and administrative practices used to punish and exploit the poor and politically disfranchised. Providing a new way to think about the tax politics of the 1970s, Kahrl maps unseen sites of discrimination and chronicles the double injury that myths about black tax delinquency and the undemocratic state have perpetuated: abetting a misguided radical anti-tax, promarket, and antigovernment mood that infects both parties and which simultaneously enforces a locally based, regressively redistributionary tax regime. In his chapter, Suleiman Osman reveals that the “politics of scale” that emerged in the 1970s cut across the ideological and partisan divides and reflected a yearning for both a return to the local and a quest to harness new globalizing capacities. Osman points out the existing limitations in many of the historiographical understandings of that “pivotal decade” and instead calls for an approach that attends to the codevelopment of global and local political outlooks. Through close attention to varieties of political expression and experience on the ground, Osman roots the emergence of neoliberal policy prescriptions not only in the crisis of the national state but also in a multivalent quest to cultivate governing local and global capacities capable of maintaining continuities of rights and opportunity. 

Stuart Schrader suggests that looking beyond national boundaries can provide new ways of understanding how the New Deal state evolved over time and ultimately generated what is perhaps the fundamental social and political crisis of our time: the crisis of black, male incarceration. Like Freund, he explores the way political narratives can obscure forms of state power, and, like Igo, he uncovers roots of the neoliberal surveillance state in New Deal and postwar state-building projects—in his case, abroad. Schrader examines the literature surrounding the “carceral state” and spotlights how the turn toward transnationalism or “the U.S. in the world” has been notably absent. By tracking institutions both inside and outside the state, including law-enforcement agencies and professional organizations, Schrader demonstrates the need beyond red and blue for close empirical attention to the transnational dimensions of the carceral state, suggesting that key aspects of the construction of a postwar U.S. empire have come home to roost. The final essay in the volume, by Rachel Moran, also challenges prevailing ideas of culture wars politics of the last decades of the twentieth century. Moran demonstrates shifting cultural perceptions of the state, following as liberals moved from subsidizing a mass consumer economy in the postwar years to regulatory policing of the family-consumer economy in the 1970s. While scholars have illuminated the gender dynamics of specific policy regimes, Moran reveals how gendered metaphors for specific policies, in this case the Federal Trade Commission’s efforts to regulate commercials targeting children, shaped the language Americans used to describe the state itself. While these terms have surely taken on partisan valences, Moran reveals how such gendered metaphors were animated by anxieties about big government that also emerged across the Atlantic in other Western democracies in crisis, and in the process reshaped the very meanings of liberalism and conservatism at home.

The volume ends with two synthetic conclusions. In the first, Kim Phillips-Fein offers a more sharply delineated appraisal of the promise and perils of the emerging neoliberalism paradigm, suggesting as well auspicious new sites of historical study and analysis. In the second, Matthew Lassiter explores how the kind of political history suggested by this volume (and the works that inspired it) will provide ways to move beyond the emphasis on critical elections, partisan realignment, polarization, and totalizing narratives of neoliberalism. Lassiter’s is also an implicit call to unify the flourishing if fragmented fields of inquiry concerned with the relationship between state power, capitalism, and the experiences of citizenship—of uniting disciplines attuned to both crisis and continuity in political history.

Country ot Lords Kim Phillips-Fein (2026) an interesting critique of the

techno-lords reviewed here

The historian Kim Phillips-Fein’s new book is published amid celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the declaration of independence and its truth “self-evident, that all men are created equal”. Country of Lords, however, is a history of Neo-Aristocrats, Social Darwinists, Tech Utopians, and the Long Fight Against Equality in America.

Concise and hard-hitting, the book arrives at a time of glaring social and 
economic inequality, Phillips-Fein seeing Elon Musk “emerging as a trillionaire 
very much on people’s minds, with a deep level of discomfort, both fear and anger 
 about what this portends”.

“It’s always hard to know what’s going to be happening when you have written a 
book,” she said. “But I think those questions about economic equality and the 
impact of extreme levels of economic hierarchy and concentration, and the 
questions, ‘Can you still have a democracy any longer? What are the ways that 
you can counter that? What alternate visions are there if you want to live in a 
world that’s not characterized that way?’, are present.”

Phillips-Fein studies conservatism and “questions about capitalism and democracy”. 
Her first book, Invisible Hands, was a study of businessmen who fought the New Deal 
of the 1930s. Her second, Fear City, about the New York economic crisis of the 1970s,
 was a finalist for the Pulitzer prize. Hers is a major voice. It’s also unique. 
Not many books start with founder John Adams and end with Peter Thiel of Palantir, 
Musk’s fellow techno-fascist. Might such company seem unfair on Adams, the Boston 
lawyer who was part of a great revolution but feared what was unleashed?

“I hope this comes through,” Phillips-Fein said. “Adams is very different from 
[steel magnate] Andrew Carnegie and [Yale professor] William Graham 
Sumner and the late 

19th-century social Darwinists, and the pro-slavery advocates. He’s also definitely 
very different from people who are saying extreme levels of economic inequality 
are good.” Adams, however, was “very ambivalent and skeptical of egalitarian claims
 … during and after the French Revolution: a deep sense of you can have too much 
egalitarianism.
“In his writing, he does also give a strong kind of conservative temperament and foundational sense of the problems of arguing for greater equality and a deep wariness and sense of pessimism about a politics that claims to do that.”

And so Adams takes his place in Country of Lords. Other subjects include 
preachers of race-based inequality from George Fitzhugh, a Confederate 
theorist of slavery as natural good, to Theodore Lothrop Stoddard, a hack 
journalist who had a huge bestseller in 1920 with The Rising Tide of Color 
Against White World-Supremacy, “part of a larger intellectual subculture of 
‘scientific’ racism … in the aftermath of world war one”. There is also 
Carnegie, the Scottish-born tycoon who flourished in the Gilded Age of the 
late 19th century.

“What makes Carnegie so interesting is that he at least allows himself to 
have some sense of ambivalence,” Phillips-Fein said. “He says that while 
the concentration of wealth is absolutely necessary and inevitable, and 
the people at the top … should have the ultimate say over resources, he is 
deeply aware that this is politically dangerous, that … it creates an unstable 
society in which the poor and the working class might actually hate the 
wealthy, and that’s not in the interest of the wealthy in the long run. Also, 
he has a sense that human brotherhood is lost, or some kind of community 
that had existed.”

Carnegie’s father was a Chartist, seeking working-class rights. Carnegie’s 
major outlet for doubts about his wealth came through philanthropy, 
prominently the construction of libraries for working people.
“He had a very deep sense of paternalism,” Phillips-Fein said. “He was 
very invested in the idea of business as a romance and kind of a space of 
adventure and conquest and feudal benevolence. I think Carnegie’s answer 
was ultimately that the wealthy should have their money but they shouldn’t 
bequeath much to their descendants, they should invest it in massive 
philanthropic projects, and this was better than raising wages or other things 
like that … It is his level of guilt and ambivalence that I think does make him 
appealing, if also troubling. I think it raises a set of questions that he certainly 
was never really able to resolve.” The 1892 Carnegie Steel strike and its 
violent suppression devastated Homestead, Pennsylvania, and left 
Carnegie disillusioned. Country of Lords is also a primer on modern 
inequality.

Invisible Hands – the business men’s crusade against the New Deal Kim 
Phillips-Fein (2016)

These Wild English – a family, a class, a country on fire Nicola Wilding (2026)

An amazing and powerful memoir written by someone who is a documentarist 
by trade and which focuses largely on her mother’s membership of the English 
League and her participation in its protests.

FIVE MORE BOOKS

I haven’t written on ecological matters for some time – so let me make amends with Roger Hallam’s recent, rather harrowing Suicide – the political and legal implications of creating endless mass death (2025) with an interview by Chris Hedges with Roger Hallam and a transcript here.

Then the 2nd World War with The Second World War – a Marxist history Chris 
Bambery (2014)

This book offers a Marxist explanation of why the Second World War happened, how it was fought, and what its outcome was. It starts by explaining why I believe it was a war fought primarily for global hegemony, but also why it differed from its 1914–18 predecessor, because popular opposition to fascism drove ordinary people to fight, and later to resist. It then examines each of the powers involved, starting with the Allied camp. In particular, it argues the Allies were a band of warring brothers.

This then allows us to examine the countdown to war and how dominant the

policy of appeasing Hitler was within Western ruling circles.

From the moment the Third Reich was at war it was moving towards genocide, the beginnings of which were apparent in 1939 with the conquest of Poland. In looking at the early war we also see why class division undermined France’s ability to fight Hitler, and how Britain survived the collapse of its ally but was in no position to defeat Germany alone. Hitler’s decision to invade Russia seemed to have secured the key victory he desired in late 1941, but Stalin’s regime survived and in 1942–43 the Russians would decisively turn the tables on the Third Reich. The war in Russia would be key to the defeat of Hitler. The events contributing to that defeat are charted in the next chapter, which also examines the return of British forces to Europe alongside the Americans. This was an alliance in which American power and wealth would see it establish a clear dominance. Meanwhile, as Germany faced defeat, the Nazis carried out the greatest crime in human history, the Holocaust.

The German occupation of much of Europe bred a resistance that, I will argue, had a revolutionary dynamic, but one which was deflected because the left, and in the main the Communist Parties, helped contain it. We then turn to the spread of the war into the Pacific and the failure of Japan to capitalise on its initial successes, while the Americans were able to fight a war on two fronts, and eventually secure victory in the Pacific. Less well known is the popular resistance which developed to Japanese imperialism and to the possibility of a return to colonial rule. It was during the war that the Communists would begin their march to power in China. Despite Churchill’s determination to protect and maintain the British Empire, it was a task beyond him. As the book moves towards a conclusion we look at the reasons for the passing of Empire. Finally, we consider how the war shaped today’s world, and how peace did not, tragically, bring an end to war and occupation.

Then a country which has long fascinated me – Turkey with two of 
Ece Temelkuran’s writings

• Turkey – the insane and the melancholy (2015) interviewed by Chris Hedges here and 

• Together – a manifesto against the heartless world Ece Temelkuran (2021)

And, finally, a great collection of essays

• To Show and To Tell – the craft of literary non-fiction Phillip Lopate (2011)

A USEFUL - IF RATHER OLD - BOOK

Reclaiming Development – an alternative development policy manual Ha-Joon Chang and Ilene Grabel (2004)

In the wake of the Great Western Crash of 2008, following on a long series of financial crashes since the 1980s, it should be clear that the neoclassical conceptual framework harbours systematic fallacies about how capitalist economies work. That framework generated theories which justified and celebrated the structure of Western economies – a structure which generated rising levels of financial fragility; and it occluded the impending collapse from the sight of almost all professional economists. As the self-styled queen of the social sciences, the discipline has betrayed the trust of society in its expertise and professional ethics.

What follows is a discussion of how the current mainstream builds in fallacies about how capitalist economies work and marginalizes other frameworks; which leads directly to the value of Reclaiming Development. We begin the book in Part I by presenting and rejecting the six major ‘Development Myths’ that are used to justify the neoliberal policies that have been pursued with such disastrous results in the developing world during the last quarter of a century (Chapters 1–6). Part II is the heart of the book. Here we provide activists, policymakers and students of development policy with an array of concrete policy options that are superior to their neoliberal counterparts. In these chapters we look specifically at policies towards trade and industry (Chapter 7), privatization and intellectual property rights (Chapter 8), foreign bank borrowing and portfolio and foreign direct investment (Chapter 9), domestic financial regulation (Chapter 10), and exchange rates and currencies, central banking and monetary policy, and government revenue and expenditure (Chapter 11). In each case, we explain why the neoliberal policy recommendations in these domains have failed, often with disastrous consequences for developing countries. We then counterpose an array of alternative policies that can promote faster economic development than can neoliberalism, while ensuring that it is equitable and sustainable.

We must emphasize at the outset that we present this range of proposals in the spirit of pluralism and humility. We do not share the hubris of neoliberals, and therefore do not argue that there is an ideal, single approach to ‘good’ policy. We hope that this work will contribute to the promising new search within developing countries, multilateral agencies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and activist communities for alternatives to neoliberal policy regimes.

We hope that this book is an antidote to the defeatism found among many opponents of neoliberalism who do not challenge these policies, believing that there are no credible alternatives. We also hope that our book empowers those who seek concrete alternatives to neoliberal policy. Towards these ends, we present our ideas in a clear and accessible manner so that both busy policymakers and those with little formal training in economics can make use of this book. However, the book is not simply a ‘beginners’ guide’ to development policy. Professional economists will also find that our arguments are firmly grounded – even if plainly argued – in frontier research in development economics. Our greatest hope for this book is that it is useful, empowering and accessible. We hope that it stimulates discussion of the ways that development policies can be reclaimed by those seeking to promote rapid economic development around the world that is equitable, stable and sustainable.

Economics Without Illusions – debunking the myths of modern capitalism Joseph
 Heath (2009)
A book very much in the American style which fails to get to the root of 
the matter.Cooperation and Social Justice Joseph Heath (2022)
A rather philosophical discourse – consisting of separate essays without 
any attempt at a conclusion