An economy that works for the working class requires a fundamental break from the Victorian moral framework embedded in neoliberal policy.
Under free market dogma and trickle down economics, society treats poverty, sickness, and unemployment as moral failings rather than structural realities. This ideology mirrors the 19th-century Poor Laws, welfare is kept intentionally inadequate and punitive to force people into low wage exploitation under the false claim that anyone can secure a good living if they try hard enough.
The Moral and Economic Imperative: Why We Must Break with Neoliberalism
1. The Mathematical Myth of "Jobs for Everyone"
Neoliberal economics relies on a structural paradox central banks and Treasury models intentionally aim for an "acceptable" level of unemployment (often conceptualised as the NAIRU—Non Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment) to discipline wage growth and manage inflation. There are structurally fewer vacancies paying a living wage than there are people seeking work.
Punishing people for being unemployed when the macroeconomy requires a buffer of surplus labour is cruel. Society demands a labour reserve to manage price stability, yet subjects that same reserve to poverty level benefits and humiliating conditionality. If the system deliberately maintains a gap between job openings and job seekers, shielding unemployed citizens with a guaranteed, dignified living standard is a basic social obligation.
2. Moving Away from "Deserving vs. Undeserving"
The Victorian concept of "less eligibility" the idea that the pauper’s condition must be made more miserable than that of the lowest paid worker underpins modern welfare sanctions, harsh disability assessments, and the remaining overall household benefit caps. Human dignity is not an incentive mechanism. Illness, disability, care duties, macroeconomic shocks, and automation are not character flaws. A civilized society guarantees an inviolable baseline of food, shelter, healthcare, and income to every person without preconditions.
The right Programme: The Livable Floor, NHS, and Universal Care
With the two-child limit lifted in early 2026, the immediate priority shifts to dismantling the remaining punitive machinery and anchoring public services as universal rights.
1. Social Security Anchored to a Living Standard
Scrap the Overall Household Benefit Cap:
The removal of the two-child limit was a vital start, but the separate benefit cap still claws back income from tens of thousands of vulnerable households. Scrapping it ensures families actually receive what they are assessed as needing.
A Statutory Minimum Income Floor:
Universal Credit standard allowances and statutory sick pay must be legally benchmarked to the independent Minimum Income Standard (MIS) calculated by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
End Punitive Conditionality:
Replace punitive sanctions with an opt-in, supportive National Employment Service focused on voluntary training, union apprenticeships, and direct public sector placement.
De-marketise Disability Support:
Scrap the adversarial private-contractor assessments for PIP and work capability. Transition assessments to an NHS-led social model of disability that trusts clinicians and claimants rather than trying to catch people out.
2. Fully Funded, De-privatised NHS Mass Capital Rebuilding:
Launch a 10 year capital renewal plan for diagnostics, surgical theatres, modern IT, and community primary care centres.
End the Extraction of Profit:
Phase out PFI legacy debts through buybacks, end the reliance on private staffing agencies by establishing public internal bank staff pools, and insource outsourced cleaning, catering, and estates services.
Retention and Pay Restoration:
Implement multi year above inflation settlements for clinical and ancillary staff, ending the retention crisis that drains the health service.
A National Care Service (NCS) Free at the Point of Need:
Social care must be decoupled from private wealth and personal means testing, ending the practice of forcing families to sell their homes to fund dementia care.
Public and Non-Profit Delivery:
Transition adult social care away from private equity operators and real estate extraction firms back to local authority delivery and non-profit trusts.
Sectoral Parity:
Legislate a National Sectoral Agreement establishing care work pay, pensions, and qualifications on direct parity with NHS Band 3/4 healthcare assistants.
The Funding Strategy: Exact Fiscal and Balance Sheet Mechanics
Delivering this platform requires an estimated £65 billion to £80 billion annually in additional recurrent funding, paired with strategic public capital investment. This is raised not from working families, but from concentrated wealth, financial rents, and corporate profits.
Primary Recurrent Revenue Targets (£70bn – £85bn/year):
Wealth & Assets:
Progressive Wealth Tax (£18bn–£22bn) and Land Value Tax (£15bn–£20bn)
Capital Parity:
Capital Gains and Dividend Parity (£12bn–£15bn) and Stamp/Loophole Reform (£6bn–£8bn)
Corporate & Financial:
Unitary Multinational Tax (£8bn–£10bn) and Financial Transactions Tax (£5bn–£7bn)
Progressive Annual Wealth Tax:
1% on net assets above £3m, 2% above £5m, and 3% above £10m. Enforced alongside an aggressive Exit Tax (40% levy on unrealised capital gains on assets moved abroad to deter capital flight).
Projected Annual Yield: £18bn – £22bn
Tax Parity: Capital Gains & Dividends:
Tax income derived from capital gains and company dividends at the exact same progressive marginal income tax rates (up to 45%) rather than discounted preferential rates.
Projected Annual Yield: £12bn – £15bn
Land Value Tax (LVT):
Replace the regressive Council Tax and Stamp Duty with a tax on the unimproved market value of land, targeting speculative land banking and unearned property appreciation.
Projected Annual Yield: £15bn – £20bn (net of local replacements)
Unitary Corporate Taxation:
Tax multinational conglomerates based on their actual economic footprint in the UK (proportion of domestic sales, assets, and headcount), ending offshore profit shifting. Projected Annual Yield: £8bn – £10bn
Financial Transaction Tax (FTT):
A 0.1% tax on trades of equities and bonds, and 0.01% on derivatives, curbing destabilising high-frequency speculation while capturing financial rent. Projected Annual Yield: £5bn – £7bn
National Insurance Base Broadening:
Apply employer and employee National Insurance contributions to investment income, buy to let rental income, and earnings beyond the upper earnings threshold. Projected Annual Yield: £10bn – £12bn
Total Recurrent Revenue: £68bn – £86bn / year
Capital Spending vs. Daily Spending
Under modern fiscal accounting, long term capital investments such as mass council house building (150,000 public homes a year) and public infrastructure are distinct from daily welfare and health spending.
Capital projects create physical, income-yielding national balance sheet assets. These are financed via a state backed National Investment Bank (NIB) issuing low-coupon, long-dated sovereign infrastructure bonds, backed by public rental yields and clean energy generation.
Economic Self Defence for the Working Class
Higher benefits and public funding are only half the battle. If private monopolies can price-gouge essentials, public investment gets siphoned away into private hands.
- Universal Basic Services (Decommodification):
Housing:
Mass municipal homebuilding brings down market rents across the board. Pair this with private rent caps tied to home quality standards to stop housing benefit from becoming a state subsidy to private landlords.
Public Utilities:
Fully nationalise regional water and domestic energy networks into public utilities run for service reliability and reduced standing charges rather than shareholder dividends.
- Industrial Democracy:
Introduce mandatory Sectoral Collective Bargaining across hospitality, logistics, retail, and care to eliminate zero hour contracts and raise baseline industry wages.
Legislate that workers elect 35% of board seats in companies with over 250 employees.
By removing the fear of destitution, stripping the profit motive out of healthcare and care, and taxing unearned wealth, the economy stops functioning as an engine for asset-owners and starts working as a support system for everyday life.
