Cut and thrust (2026)

Book Review from the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Tory Cuts. By David Connolly. Self-published. 2026.

This has been advertised in the classified section of Private Eye and is clearly aimed at the sub-section of society that is actively critical about the way UK society and its economy operate. It is at times amusing and frustrating, the latter mainly because of the large number of editing errors and the rather scattergun approach to structure – there is an underpinning narrative thread, but it really does test the patience of the reader as it often meanders off on tangents. At root, it needed a much finer editorial hand.

The over-arching theme is that the approach to economic management favoured by the Conservative Party in recent decades (and to some extent Labour) is a form of neo-liberalism that has only served to damage the UK economy, engender class division and infect the UK public sphere. Connolly’s solution seems to be Social Democratic Party-style economic interventionism allied with aspects of social conservatism. In some ways it is a ‘back to the future’ scenario as all this has been tried before and the social democratic economies of Europe (Scandinavia in particular) that he lauds have now been beset by similar issues. Indeed, pretty much all of them have seen falls in their growth rates like the UK and their halcyon days seem well and truly over, with resulting social discontent which hasn’t been seen in decades and a concomitant rise of the populist right.

It should be added that there is some very selective use of statistics in this book and some of them could be questioned too (including the over-stated claim that workers in the UK are losing 10 percent of our wages for every 10 years of neo-liberalism). But it is entertaining in parts and brings out the class divide at the heart of society well enough.

The solution to the problems Connolly identifies lies not in a return to a mythical social democratic past though – a past, after all, that was perceived as being so glorious the working class elected Thatcher and her successors in gratitude. Furthermore, much of what Connolly blames on neo-liberalism and monetarist economics – such as the decline in UK manufacturing – is really much more a product of the shift in world capitalism away from many of the traditional metropolitan centres of capital in Western Europe to China, India and the Far East instead, where labour costs are lower. For instance, while it is true that the proportion of UK jobs in manufacturing fell from around 25 percent of the workforce in 1980 to about 8 percent now, in Germany it fell from around 40 percent to about 19 percent, France from 25 percent to under 12 percent and Spain from about 20 percent to 10 percent. There has been a big fall in the neo-liberal US economy too, of course, though actually less than any of these European countries, many of whom use the same type of broadly social democratic approach he favours.

Ultimately, the underlying cause of the issues Connolly is rightly concerned about is not the actions of Tory governments and those who wish to copy them like Blair and Starmer – it is the way society is organised. Class division, economic instability and an uneven, antagonistic system of income distribution are at the very heart of all market economies, irrespective of political colours. Top-down, class-divided, based on entitlement and exclusion, with untold riches for a tiny minority and salary slavery for everybody else – that’s the capitalist way and it will need a lot more than a modification of personnel at the top to make it history.

DAP

Cooking the Books: Money problems (2026)

The Cooking The Books column from the May 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Central banks and ordinary banks are both concerned about the spread of ‘private credit’, as reflected in two headlines last month in the Times: ‘Dimon alert on private credit loans’ (7 April) and ‘Bailey warns of private credit “lemons”’ (11 April). Dimon is the chief executive of JP Morgan and Bailey is the Governor of the Bank of England.

‘Private credit refers to loans that are provided by private equity firms, asset managers or hedge funds rather than banks. The sector has grown rapidly since the financial crisis [of 2008], as tighter restrictions on traditional banks pushed riskier forms of finance into unregulated markets. Dimon estimated that lending from private credit funds to heavily indebted companies was worth about $1.8 trillion.’

These financial institutions may not be banks from a regulatory point of view but, economically, they are as they borrow money from one source and lend it to another.  As the other article, on Bailey, put it, ‘private credit funds … take money from investors and lend it to other often privately-owned companies’.

Some of those engaging in this type of ‘shadow banking’ have got into difficulty or even gone bankrupt through making bad loans. Seeing this, some of those providing the funds have been asking for their money back or to be moved elsewhere. The concern is that, if the whole sector were to be affected, this could provoke a more general financial crisis just as another form of subprime lending did in 2008.

This brings out that governments can’t control lending in the way they — and the textbooks — claim. Where there is a demand for loans and money to be made from lending, then that demand will be met, one way or another.

It also brings out that the money that is loaned doesn’t come from nowhere. Not that anybody claims that it does; everybody can see that it comes from those who confide their money to the hedge funds, asset management companies and private equity firms concerned.

A question to ponder, then, for those who think that banks can create money to lend out of thin air: if private credit firms, which are performing the same economic function as banks, can’t, how come that ordinary banks can?

The other news about money is the Bank of England’s decision to replace pictures of famous people on bank notes with pictures of animals. This of course is a trivial matter but it led Private Eye (3 April) to ask why so many bank notes are needed in the first place. It quoted figures showing that the number of payments using cash ‘has fallen roughly 70 percent from around £17bn in 2015 to fewer than £5bn, or less than 10 percent of all transactions, last year’ but that, despite this, the total value of bank notes in circulation has continued to go up not down, even taking into account inflation.

The answer Private Eye came up with is that it is ‘very likely to be tax evasion and money laundering’. This seems a reasonable assumption as, normally, if cash transactions fall, the economy will need fewer notes for its economic transactions and, if the amount in circulation is not reduced, the result would be inflation in the sense of a rise in the general price level due to a depreciation of the currency. The fact that the non-reduction in notes issued has not resulted in such inflation suggests that there is a real demand in the economy for certain cash transactions, in the event tax evasion and money laundering. There is still a certain irony in the government making more cash available for this.

SPGB Snippets: Who do Samaritans call? (2026)

From the Socialist Party of Great Britain website

February 25, 2026

Driven to despair by capitalism? UK workers can always call the Samaritans, a help-line run by unpaid volunteers. Sadly, those volunteers also face capitalism’s cruelties, in the form of money-saving cut-backs, office closures and a requirement to work in isolation at home.

‘Having sacked volunteers who dared voice concerns about the proposed closure of half of its branches, the Samaritans’ HQ has slapped them with serious misconduct charges and imposed lifetime bans…’ Whistleblowers speak anonymously, fearing reprisals: ‘Leadership have used the concerns and complaints process like the thought police. They are on career paths, some of them very well paid… most of them will never have had to talk a caller down from suicide…’ (Private Eye, 5 February 2026).

TV Review: What’s in a Load of Rubbish? (2001)

Benjamin "the Binman" Pell

TV Review from the February 2001 issue of the Socialist Standard

What’s in a Load of Rubbish?

Last month Channel Four screened a documentary called Scandal in the Bins that was the remarkable story of a remarkable man—Benjamin Pell. Until recently very few people had heard of Pell and today, the majority still haven’t. But Pell has been popping up in the pages of Private Eye for quite some time and has recently had some exposure in the national press. Many who have heard of him know him by one of his other names—”Benji the Binman”.

“Benji the Binman” is what some might call “a great British eccentric”. Others might call him a simple thief. But essentially he is a collector. A collector of rubbish—indeed, a freelance collector of rubbish. For the last few years Pell has earned a living of sorts through scrabbling round amongst the refuse of the rich and famous, their agents and solicitors. A staunch Zionist, he began by raiding the bins of pro-Palestinian organisations in London and then moved on from there. The story which really made him—and which turned him into a household name among Fleet Street editors if nobody else—concerned Elton John’s financial difficulties and how they had been brought about through his mammoth and conspicuous consumption.

From that time on Benji has hardly looked back. He claimed in the programme that he is so obsessed with newspapers he used go down to Euston station every Sunday and collect them off the trains but in the last couple of years he has become a key contact for editors and newsroom managers and has had stories that he has ultimately been responsible for printed in almost every national newspaper in Britain. A man with an “anti-establishment” air about him, it is alleged that he has been heavily involved in everything from the Fayed/Hamilton case to the recent leaking of the Philip Gould memos about Blair.

Although his recent successes are reputed to have netted him £100,000 in the last year or so he lives a frugal life at his parents’ modest north London semi, spending a fair proportion of his time in the garden shed where he stores his dozens and dozens of bin bags. Frail and unkempt, his immediate ambition in life is to get a second shed.

Pell’s doctor describes him as an obsessive compulsive and this evidence was used in his favour during some of his many court appearances (whether as a witness, like in the Elton John case, or as a defendant). His interviews for this programme showed that he is certainly eccentric and probably what social workers, years ago, would have called “maladjusted” too. But what the programme also showed— and was at pains to point out—is that whatever he is, he is clearly not mad.

Aware of his eccentricity, Pell will accentuate his unusual behaviour even further to achieve a desired end (such as if and when he gets arrested). In the Elton John case he appeared in court dressed from head to toe in bizarre Elton John memorabilia and took little time convincing the court that he was a harmless nutter who was incapable of being part of any conspiracy of any description. On his late night scavenging forays he will make sure he smells as badly as possible lest he get arrested, as was demonstrated when one of the programme’s hidden cameras showed him being stopped by a police officer who, after a few seconds of questioning, started to search Pell and then hesitated, pulled a face, stopped and then left him to fester in peace.

Rat trap

Scandal in the Bins did a good job showing the human side of Pell—his eccentricity, his very real fear of going to prison and his sheer craftiness. Although Neil and Christine Hamilton were featured saying that Pell had been one of the people who had helped to ruin their lives (as if they hadn’t had a hand in it themselves) Pell showed himself to be at least as hostile to the press as they now find themselves to be. Rightly or wrongly, he sees himself as someone getting as much out of the press as he can by putting his compulsive disorder to use making a living. In the process he causes trouble to the powerful and—more often than not—as a lonely one-man band is the victim of the news corporations’ manipulations, not their primary cause.

Pell claimed that British newspapers are just as corrupt as the people they are allegedly exposing and, naturally enough, he has a ready audience for that view as few outside the British media would disagree with it. Scandal in the Bins had plenty of evidence for it as well. In the most revealing section of the programme two of the most powerful men in the British media—PR guru Max Clifford and Sun political editor Trevor Kavanagh were shown up, with help from Pell, for being the hypocrites they really are.

Clifford’s own PR façade slipped when he walked out of an interview with the programme’s makers shouting and screaming at the film crew for asking him questions about his business methods (even though he didn’t bat an eyelid at their seemingly irrefutable evidence that he had perjured himself in a court case) while Trevor Kavanagh was heard telling an interviewer that the Sun had never paid Pell for a story or for any of his illegal activities. As the tape played, the screen showed copies of News International’s invoices regarding payments to Pell for services rendered. Brilliant television, achieving what few—if any—have previously managed to do.

This is not to give the impression that Pell is an entirely blameless character either—he certainly isn’t. He has done his fair share to upset the lives of those he had otherwise no reason interfering with and has readily accepted payment for doing so. The point is that despite his own clear shortcomings his (partial) co-operation with this documentary did as much to expose the systematic hypocrisy and double-dealing of the British press as anything yet shown. If Channel Four repeat it soon (and no doubt they will) try and catch it if you didn’t see it first time around.

In the meantime, it is worth asking yourself when you next see an eye-catching article in the press—whether it be a “serious” investigation by Insight in the Sunday Times or an expose of some pop star’s business dealings in the tabloids—about where the information for the piece came from and of the unbridled skulduggery that took place to get it into print so more newspapers could be sold and more advertising attracted. And when you’re doing that remember to spare a small thought, at least, for a poor Jewish boy from north London with an obsessive compulsive disorder and a shed full of bin bags.

Dave Perrin

For the Record (2022)

From the October 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Here is what the new Prime Minister has promised her government will deliver:

‘I have a bold plan that will grow our economy and deliver higher wages, more security for families and world class public services’ (i paper, 3 September).

We record this so that it can be compared with what happens. Which, from past experience and a knowledge of how capitalism works, will be yet another failure to make capitalism work in the interest of the majority by delivering higher wages and world class public services. Wages and public services always take second place to profits as that’s the nature of the system. To those don’t believe us, we say wait and see.

Apparently, when she was younger she had other ideas. According to Private Eye (15 July):

‘Delegates who attended the 1993 Conference of the Liberal Democrat Youth & Students recall then-firebrand Truss arguing for, er, the abolition of money.’