“When the foundations are extractive, everything built on top is expensive.” Govt economic policy has to change and change rapidly. Any review on energy has to consider public ownership as an option. Here’s why: This isn’t just about a bad year or a temporary spike. It’s not something we fix with another sticking plaster or short term rebate. This is structural. For 40 yrs we’ve treated the basics of our economy as assets to sweat, not foundations to strengthen. Energy, water, transport, housing, even parts of our food system have been organised around extraction first, production second. When the foundations are extractive, everything built on top is expensive. High energy prices don’t just hit families trying to heat their homes. They hit factories, pubs, farms, small manufacturers. They feed straight into food prices, rents and transport costs. That’s why the cost of living crisis & the cost of doing business crisis are the same crisis. You can’t build a serious manufacturing base on top of an energy system designed to reward volatility. You can’t have food security when water companies are loaded with debt and paying out dividends. You can’t grow regional industry when transport is fragmented and overpriced. You can’t ask small firms to invest when commercial rents are inflated by land speculation. Tinkering won’t cut it. Price caps without structural reform just socialise the risk and privatise the reward. Short term subsidies ease the pain but leave the model untouched. Industrial strategy without control over energy costs is industrial strategy with one hand tied behind its back. If we’re serious about growth and renewal, we’ve got to talk about democratic control of the basics. Not control for its own sake. Control that lowers the cost of capital. Control that aligns investment with long term public need. Control that treats water, energy, transport, housing and food as the infrastructure of prosperity, not chips in a global casino. A Productive State doesn’t micromanage everything. It does something more important. It shapes the rules, owns or co-owns the natural monopolies, and makes sure essential services run at cost plus resilience, not cost plus maximum extraction. Right now we’ve got manufacturers paying some of the highest industrial energy prices in Europe. Households squeezed. Government spending billions managing the fallout instead of fixing the cause. Every time we patch instead of reform, we lock in higher structural costs. For families. For firms. For the state. The business groups are right to worry. But we won’t fix this by begging for another relief scheme. We fix it by rebuilding the foundations. Energy priced for production, not speculation. Water run for resilience and public good, not dividend flows. Transport integrated to support growth. Housing treated as infrastructure, not a tax shelter. Food supply anchored in security, not fragility. Until the basics are under far stronger democratic guidance, the cycle carries on. Higher bills. Higher business costs. Lower investment. Lower growth. That isn’t fate. It’s a policy choice. And we can choose differently.

Remarkable criticism of Treasury Sec Scott Bessent by his former boss, Stan Druckenmiller, esp this: "Once markets believe Treasury is defending a price, every rise in yields becomes a test of official resolve, and the operations must grow to survive the tests." wsj.com/opinion/let-the-bond…

The mid-2020s is beginning to look like the late 90s... US stock market annual returns +20% 3yr CAGR +12% 5yr CAGR (includes the 2022 bear market)

The U.S. (courtesy of Scott Bessent) is using the Japanese model to lower long term Treasury interest rates. The Bank of Japan owns slightly less than 50% of JGBs. Whether you think it will work or not (I don't) adding this wrinkle to our debt problem seems ludicrous.

Misconception 3 is that more UK oil/gas output would mean lower UK energy costs. While it might bring them down ever so slightly the difference would be so small most people would be unlikely to notice it. Unless, that is, there was some mammoth discovery...

The upshot is actually all else equal, less domestic gas production means HIGHER carbon emissions since LNG is MUCH more carbon intensive than domestic gas. So, in an odd way, more drilling actually means lower net emissions. Certainly for gas anyway...