FIX THE ECONOMY

“I remember the first round of tariffs in 2019. I had a conversation, we were doing a farm visit and a guy I had asked the question I said, well, you know, what's the impact of tariffs here? And he said, if you're asking me if these tariffs are gonna be the death knell for rural America, the answer is yes.”

“He says, I'm in favour of Europe in principle, but not in practice. So basically... He says, Ted Heath has got us in on very bad terms. So when I come back as Prime Minister, I will renegotiate the terms and then I'll hold a referendum so that the people can decide.”

“They have a war chest of one and a half million pounds, which is the biggest war chest that any side had ever had in a British electoral campaign. And it's 10 times as much as the No campaign had. So, I mean, they're able to absolutely obliterate the Leave campaign.”

“I don't trust that we're gonna have those standards set by the federal government, not with this EPA. So as a state, we need to set a set of rules governed by the DNR. And the fact is well, I should say I say that it should be a statewide set because local governments, like, if they go and try to appeal and are turned down, they shouldn't just be able to go to another community.”

“The hardest part is that people often blame themselves. They think they are becoming boring. They think they are getting worse at coping. But what they are feeling is not personal failure. It is the consequence of living where too many ordinary things come with a heavy financial cost. The wealthiest 1% of households held 10% of all household wealth. The same share as the least wealthy 50% combined. That feeling is not coming from nowhere. One person experiences rising costs as an inconvenience while another experiences them as a daily narrowing of life.”

“People are living in conditions where the cost of being an ordinary person feels structurally heavy. You are not failing at adulthood. If everyone feels privately ashamed, nobody sees the pattern clearly. If everyone feels like the problem, nobody questions the conditions. The deeper answer cannot just be private coping. It has to include a clearer instinct to stand with each other, to recognize each other more accurately. The people doing ordinary necessary work who keep society functioning are the story.”

“I think that the dinner itself has had an identity crisis for the last ten years. Fifty? I'm sorry. Yeah. Go on. Some well, I'm being extremely generous about this. Right. And in the era of Trump, he doesn't ever go. He hates it. He shits on it.”

“That is one of the biggest misunderstandings in this whole conversation. When people hear inflation is coming down, many assume that means prices are coming down too. But that is not usually what it means. It usually means prices are still rising, just less quickly than before. And that difference matters. People do not live inside the rate. They live inside the result. They live inside the total at the till. They live inside the rent payment. They live inside the monthly direct debits.”

“And the paradox of this, and I think this is the really interesting thing. The paradox of this is that all the evidence shows that the British people in the 70s were pretty Euro-skeptic. So remember that before we entered, the polls and surveys showed that people were generally against it or indifferent. And after the referendum, polls showed the same thing.”

“Providers aren't getting the money to be able to pay the teachers what they deserve. Parents are often cash wrapped and aren't able to pay, especially if they have to jack up prices to be able to pay teachers. And the state has to step in at some point because this is a workforce issue.”

“He's fervently anti-European. He sees Europe as a capitalist cartel, and it will make it impossible to build socialism in one country. And the funny thing about writing about Tony Benn, I love writing about him and written about him a lot in my books, is the paradox that his colleagues universally said, he's an extremely nice man.”

“That's part of what should scare people about the economy right now, but it ain't the only part. We got a lot we got a lot of stuff going wrong. I mean, the last twenty four hours, there have been stories about, record farm bankruptcies. Right. Not great. Nobody should be happy about that. You never wanna break records with bankruptcies.”

“The state senate will be a little, you you know, that path is a little more clear than the state assembly. But given everything that has been going on, across the country, people's very real frustration with Republicans in the way that Donald Trump has left folks behind, there is a possibility that we will have a trifecta, and that's what I am working towards.”

“I saw a Republican friend of mine this weekend up in DC who said to me, oh, yeah. The senate's gone. Oh, it's done. I'm like, really? He's like, everything's collapsing. If he would just shut the fuck up, we might be able to pull out the senate.”

“Rising corporate profits accounted for almost half the inflation increase as companies increased prices more than imported energy costs alone would explain. Part of the story was about power. Who gets to protect themselves first? Who gets to pass costs on? Who gives told to absorb reality and cope better? Hardship feels different when it looks shared. What people struggle to accept is hardship that feels selective. Hardship that seems to flow downward.”

“And it's about the first Brexit referendum in June 1975 when Britain took the fateful decision not to leave what became the EU. And it's about Basil's betnoir, bloody Wilson, and how Harold Wilson struggled to stop Britain plunging into hyperinflation and complete economic meltdown in the course of 1975”

“Maybe we would not have this this economic calamity staring us in the ass of the straits, but we do. That's part of what should scare people about the economy right now, but it ain't the only part. We got a lot we got a lot of stuff going wrong.”

“Because thanks to Ted Heath having inflated the economy and then the 1973 oil shock, inflation has gone through the roof. It is now hurtling towards 25%. And on top of that, public borrowing is totally and utterly out of control.”

“This is precisely the point when inflation is ripping through the British economy, you know, wages are rising at 30% a year. There are all these apocalyptic predictions we're heading into, you know, we're turning into Weimar Germany, we're heading for dictatorship. And most people think, well, against this backdrop, getting out of you. I mean, I don't think they'd have got in in 1975 I think they'd have been more hesitant, they'd have stuck to the status quo.”

“Then this is no longer just about expensive groceries or bills. It becomes a story about imbalance, about who absorbs the shock. Ordinary people are very good at absorbing pressure quietly. People cut back. They recalculate. They stretch things. They lower expectations. They delay plans. They stop buying little things that make life feel lighter. They work more. They worry more. They become efficient versions of themselves. And because they keep functioning, society starts treating the strain is normal. It starts acting like this is just what adulthood is now supposed to feel like.”