Author: Mark E Thomas

May 1 elections brought bad news for Britain’s main political parties but good news for the far-right. As the Financial Times reported, “Reform UK leader Nigel Farage on Friday claimed he now leads Britain’s main opposition to Sir Keir Starmer’s government after his party won the Runcorn & Helsby by-election, ousting Labour by just six votes.” Of […]

Our government faces stiff challenges and if it is to meet them and deliver the promised national renewal, it will need a rapid and significant shift in mindset. Before the 2024 General Election, Sir Keir Starmer explained that the UK needed a decade of national renewal. He was undoubtedly correct. The Chancellor recently commented that:  “The world […]

This is a special request to all members of the 99% Organisation and readers. It should only take five minutes of your time, but it is important. Please write to your MP today about a meeting in the Houses of Parliament on Tuesday 4 March. 99% will launch our new report The Rational policy-maker’s Guide to Rebuilding the NHS at a meeting […]

The UK faces serious challenges: the cost-of-living crisis, which has been with us since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) is showing no signs of abating; poverty is on the rise; the NHS and other key public services are struggling to provide the services we need; our economy is stagnant; our infrastructure is crumbling; and our […]

The Budget is critically important. If it is well-formulated, it gives ministers the space to address the issues facing the country; if it is not, then whatever promises they may make, they will not be able to keep. Frequently, Budget analysis in the media does not look at it this way and instead focuses on […]

While in opposition, Rachel Reeves and Sir Keir Starmer spoke of the need for a decade of national renewal; and since they have taken office, the evidence of the need for that renewal has grown even stronger. They have also spoken about a “financial black hole, the £22bn of unfunded spending commitments, concealed from our country by the […]

There is a rather wonderful story about billionaires. According to this story, a small number of exceptionally gifted and hard-working people, through their own talent and dedication, create and build businesses which both enrich themselves and hugely benefit the rest of the world: their customers, their employees, their suppliers and the rest of society (via […]

“Big Bill” Tilden – the 1920s equivalent of Roger Federer – said, “Never change a winning game; always change a losing one.” Almost always, that is sound advice – but not right now, not for Labour. Labour won the general election, in no small measure due to their ‘small target’ strategy. But sticking to it […]

How the far-right may lose the battle, but still hope to win the war As many centre-right politicians and commentators have warned us, what used to be the Conservative Party has become a vehicle for the far-right. Philip Hammond wrote:  “the Conservative party has been taken over by unelected advisers, entryists and usurpers who are trying to turn […]

On May 22, 2024, Sunak finally announced the date of the next General Election: July 4. As the polls show, he has quite a challenge to win – or even to prevent Labour from securing an outright majority. But the Conservative Party is traditionally one of the world’s most effective election-winning machines, and it would be complacent not to assume […]

There are many arguments for taxing the extremely wealthy more. Perhaps the simplest is that while most normal people pay tax of up to 40 per cent on their income (or more), the very wealthy can easily pay less than one per cent on their true economic income. To most people that seems very unfair. But […]

When it was clear Johnson was on the way out, his allies launched Operation Save Big Dog. This article explores what we might call Operation Save Little Dog – the equivalent for Sunak, in the wake of the worse-than-expected results in the Council elections. The factions on the right are now quite complex: there are the extreme-right backers of the […]

The wealthy market fundamentalists who fund the right-wing think tanks have different objectives from the UK population as a whole. These think tanks propose such policies as abolishing the NHS, allowing slums with substandard housing to ‘solve’ the housing crisis, slashing benefits to pensioners in order to reduce taxes and letting the climate crisis go unchecked. The UK population as […]

Getting the Budget right is a critically important part of governing well. If the Budget is well-formulated, it gives space to address the real issues; if it is not, then whatever promises politicians make, they will not be able to keep. Frequently, Budget analysis in the media does not look at it this way and […]

In many elections, the key issues are living standards and the state of the economy. In the UK today,  voters are (rightly) concerned that their living standards are lower today than they were in 2010 and that public services (especially the NHS) are in crisis. These valid concerns can however obscure an even more fundamental […]

All Budgets are important, but this one is especially critical: 13 years of market fundamentalist policy choices have left the UK in a state of decay, with a weak economy, falling real wages, a cost-of-living crisis and growing poverty. Our public services are on their knees: our schools are crumbling and even our cherished NHS is struggling […]

The Chancellor is due to announce his Autumn Statement on November 22. Truss will apparently also announce her own so-called ‘Budget for Growth’. This is an open letter to the Economics Editors of our major newspapers and broadcast media setting out a few suggestions for how to analyse the Budget(s) in a way which accurately […]

We all have at least one neighbour who has become despairing about the state and trajectory of the UK. And despair is not a basis for change. This article suggests three simple and powerful messages that you can share with anyone open-minded enough to listen and which, once they are aware, might give them cause […]

Even on the 75th anniversary of its foundation, the NHS came under assault from the far-right. This article tackles the claims of its detractors and shows how a team of volunteers has taken the argument to Parliament to defend the NHS – and the UK economy. The assault on the NHS When the NHS was […]

Sometimes the challenges facing those of us who would like the UK to remain a civilised country with a functioning democracy and a strong social contract seem daunting. This article suggests that we may be able to learn a lot from Greek mythology. The way Hercules killed the Hydra – a 10-headed venomous serpent – […]

Churchill commented, “It is a joke in Britain to say that the War Office is always preparing for the last war. But this is probably true of other departments and of other countries, and it was certainly true of the French Army.” It is certainly true of the Treasury and the Bank of England in their […]

In late 2015, I began work on the book which was finally published in 2019 as 99%: Mass Impoverishment and How We Can End It. The book’s original working title – which was deemed too cheesy for publication – was The Frog, the Elephant and the Jellyfish. Recent events in the UK have made me reflect on […]

This article looks at how far and how fast the Conservative Party has shifted to the extreme right, and what we can do about it: Leading Conservative Party members have been warning us for a long time about the extremist trends in their party; It is not just economic policies that have become extreme: they […]

The results of the Council Elections are now in, and it is a good time to ask: what have we learned? Our take is that: The results were worrying for the Conservatives; but They were deeply worrying for democracy; so We can be confident about the next election but not complacent. The results were worrying for the Conservatives […]

After 13 years in power, the Conservatives want us to believe that the UK is safe in their hands. This article explains how, given a just a few more years, they can complete their transformation of the UK into a playground for their donors – at our expense: There has been a successful, but gradual, unwinding of […]

In 2002, Theresa May famously said to the party faithful, “Yes, we’ve made progress, but let’s not kid ourselves. There’s a way to go before we can return to government. … You know what some people call us: the nasty party.“ Since regaining power, however, it does not seem as though the Conservative Party has been […]

Hunt’s latest Budget shows the UK heading for a dismal future. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, the UK is now facing two years with the sharpest fall in living standards since records began. The economy will contract again this year. The level of taxation is at the highest for many decades. Our growth […]

Many senior former Conservatives have warned us about the current state of their party. Philip Hammond wrote:  “the Conservative party has been taken over by unelected advisers, entryists and usurpers who are trying to turn it from a broad church into an extreme right-wing faction. Sadly, it is not the party I joined.”  Anna Soubry said  […]

This is a long post from Oct 2019, and some of what it says would have seemed seem hard to believe back then. But now? Now when we see cuts to public services, the increasing wealth gap, steady defunding of council services, the running down of the NHS and talk of the use of artificial […]

For many years, in the UK as well as other countries, progress across a wide range of issues seemed to be the natural order of things. Almost every year, the economy would grow a little and people’s real (inflation-adjusted) wages would grow with them. Almost every year, in other words, most people would become just […]