Economist explains how Big Banks are CHEATING Britain | James Meadway interview

Added: 2026-05-13

[00:00:00]JP Morgan obviously seeing Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Excheer and the Treasury coming like a mile away have gone, you're kind of desperate for big investment announcements. Do you know what? We don't want to pay business rates uh for this headquarter. We want 100% off our business rates. They made a record-breaking 43 billion in profit last year. But because they're so big and because they're so powerful, they can go to the government and say, "Hey, we don't want to pay our local taxes."

[00:00:27]If you run a pub in Tower Hlet or a shop or a restaurant, you have to pay business rates. If you're JP Morgan, the Treasury is saying that's okay. We'll sort that out. The age of the Social Democratic parties like Labor is kind of coming to an end.

[00:00:41]>> James Bway, welcome to the Politics Show podcast.

[00:00:43]>> Thank you for having me.

[00:00:44]>> No, thank you. Uh, so it's day before polling day.

[00:00:47]>> You're standing in Tower Hamlets for the Green Party.

[00:00:50]>> That's right.

[00:00:50]>> What made you want to stand in Tower Hamlets this time around? Well, I mean, look, I I live there and and I like living there and I feel like it's um somewhere where you could there's a huge amount of potential and you could do better. And what's exciting at the minute, particularly about what we've seen happening with the Greens over the last 6 to 8 months, I mean, how long is Zach Palansky being leader is there's a sudden sense of possibility that's opened up after a number of years of possibility being closed down. And that's a possibility that for sure at some point we'll have a general election. and there's a national government that can get elected, but it's a possibility that can start to happen on the local level. And that's what is particularly appealing about the Greens, I think, because it's a party that's always sort of talked about what you can do locally and how you can uh act locally, think globally, and act locally to drag up the old, you know, anti- capitalist slogan from the early 2000s that this is something you can do in Tower Hamlet. So, we put together what I think is a brilliant manifesto uh for what Tower Hamlets could look like once you have agreed administration in place there. And that's exciting and it's smaller scale. It's not the big national thing. You're not going to be stopping wars or whatever directly because you're running Tower Hamlet's council. You're going to be sourcing out the bin collections. But you take that responsibility on you make a difference and you deliver the stuff on the doorstep. You see with Zor Mandani, he calls it suicism in New York, right?

[00:02:05]It's like what can you do on a day-to-day basis? If someone opens their front door, they can go outside and things look better and different than it did uh the day before. What can you do to make that happen? That's quite an exciting prospect.

[00:02:16]>> Yeah. I mean we saw that with Zoran Madani. The big one for me was when he got rid of all the snow in like the central blocks of New York and you was like how has that happened almost overnight? Um so obviously in town hamlets it's the Aspire party that run it. The ward you're running in has two sitting as Aspire counselors at the moment.

[00:02:32]>> There's a split but we can we can maybe talk you're getting into the into the the intricacies of Tower Hamlet's politics. So so Aspire is actually split. There's a a split from them called Tower Hamlet's Independence. So there's candidates from each of these different organizations standing.

[00:02:46]>> Obviously you got somewhat notorious famous look for Ramen the mayor of Tower Hamlets. Um Jeremy Corbyn former leader of the Labour party now independent MP and your party leader has endorsed Luter.

[00:02:59]>> How do you feel that dynamic's gone down on the left? Because obviously you know in the Green Party I would say Jeremy Corbyn certainly an inspiration to quite a few members and the direction the party's going under Zap Palansky that kind of leadership of the Labor Party.

[00:03:10]How do you feel that's gone down sort of with the Green Party membership base on the doors kind of in tower hamlets?

[00:03:16]>> There's there's two different views of this, right? And I'm always careful and I think you should actually well we were just talking now and if you don't mind me saying that you lived in tow h yourself for for a while. Look, I think it's genuinely think it's a great place.

[00:03:28]I think there's all sorts of things that are happening there that make it exciting that making it a good place to live. You can see what could be better, right? And I always feel like when you get this particular online a sort of chatter about, you know, it's always picked out as the place in London. It's the worst bit. It's absolute nonsense.

[00:03:43]Racism really, that's what's going on there. So I'm always careful to say Tahits has got a huge amount of potential. what's happened locally I think with Aspire and we'd look for is that there's a a recognition of how people are treating our hamlets how people talk about it and then there's also a recognition of what his administration's actually delivered and he can point to some achievements it's true and as Greens locally we supported things like reintroducing the education maintenance allowance for 16 year olds and 17 year olds going to college reintroducing free free school meals we support all of that we'll keep it if we end up running the council um but there's big stuff that he's not delivering on around housing in particular promises and council housing not met council house waiting list actually increasing over time it looks to me frankly I think aspire far too close to developers locally when you see a policy that council land council owned land is not going to be used for council housing that half of it can be given over to private developers and you can see these developers developments popping up uh around the burough it's not doing much for the people who live there so there's a real set of big picture problems that are coming through there. That's part of the I think the issues that people face with the spire that outside you might have a story that oh it's all super duper leftwing and whatever else. We can come on to what's going on there. Inside the burough, there's a degree of discontent and that's what's coming through in the doorsteps. And then there's some more basic stuff, right? The record, and I have to be fair on this, the record of Aspire counselors in simple things like attending meetings, council meetings, running regular surgeries, answering emails is patchy, right? Some people are good, some people are not so good. In one worst case, you had someone who went off to Bangladesh to campaign to be an MP rather than turn up to council meetings, right? That's an extreme example of what's happened there. So this adds up to a lot of discontent.

[00:05:27]That's partly why you've had this split.

[00:05:28]I think what you got with the Greens is being able to say this isn't just a Tower Hamlet set of problems that people are looking to the Greens cuz they're disappointed. Maybe I'm being polite, but disappointed with Karma and they think there's an opportunity to do something different now and to do something better and we can all do better and we can do better collectively because if you elect Greens in Tower Hamlets, it's not just a Tower Hamlets party fighting the Tower Hamlets. you're there alongside the Greens in Europe, in Hackne, South River, in Lambeath, in Soduk, right? You can start to see that you have a potentially powerful Londonwide and even national nationwide voice to argue the case for this burough and for the whole of East London, for the whole of London. So, that's the kind of powerful I think counter to saying that you need to support Aspire or or the split from Aspire as a local party.

[00:06:14]You need a national voice. You need that national representation built into what's happening locally. So, you're talking about building into what's happening locally. One of the reasons we were really keen to get you on today was a campaign I suppose you're running against JP Morgan and about JP Morgan.

[00:06:27]Do you want to just talk our viewers through what the issue is with JP Morgan and Tower Hamlet?

[00:06:31]>> Well, this is um yeah, this is something that's that's really sort of blown up in the last sort of few months or so. Uh that Tower Hamlets also contains Canary Wolf. Um Canary Wolf is now London's, you know, the historic homes of the city of London for finance. It's now Canary Wolf. any number of big company headquarters all sorts down there. It's absolutely huge employer and that's Canary Wolf at the south end of the burough from which Tower Hamlets is in the fortunate position of getting about 170 million pounds of retained business rates. That's the taxes that these businesses pay every year that go straight to the burough. That is by the way how Aspire have been able to afford what they do. They're not doing something magic. They've just got more money coming in. It's three to five times more for example than Newm or Hacknne get from business rates. They don't have Canary Wolf. they don't get so many taxes. So that makes the question of taxes from Canary Warf which is a big old drain on local resources.

[00:07:22]You can go and look at the council um planning documents where they say there's real strains appearing in the provision of water services of electricity. If you want to build new homes, there's conflicts over this.

[00:07:34]We've got 20 data centers at least in Tower Hamlets that are using up water and electricity which means the council officers say that we won't be able to build housing in some parts of the burough for 10 years because of delays in getting those installations. Right?

[00:07:47]So this question about what gets developed and what the local community gets out of it is crucial. What's happened with JP Morgan is that the Treasury announced last November after Rachel Reed's budget that JP Morgan will open its new European headquarters in Tower Hamlets in Canary Warf and they put out a big press release about how wonderful this is going to be and the council signed up to this as well. It turns out not much later that JP Morgan obviously seeing Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Excheer and the Treasury coming like a mile away have gone, you're kind of desperate for big investment announcements. Do you know what? We don't want to pay business rates uh for this headquarter. We want 100% off our business rates. So, what they're saying, JP Morgan is the biggest bank on the planet at the minute. They made a record-breaking 43 billion pounds in profit last year. But because they're so big and because they're so powerful, they can go to the government and say, "Hey, we don't want to pay our local taxes." If you run a pub in Tower Hlet or a shop or a restaurant, you have to pay business rates. If you're JP Morgan, the Treasury is saying, "That's okay.

[00:08:49]We'll sort that out." And the heart of this one is that first I think the council has just sort of rolled over and said, "Oh, okay." They haven't got a guarantee from the treasury that even if JP Morgan is allowed off his business rates. And by the way, I don't think we should be allowing big wildly profitable banks simply to pay less tax than like you running a shop on Bethl Green High Street. Right? That's not fair in the most obvious sense. But even putting that to one side, we need a guarantee from the Treasury that at least at least 100% of those business rates are going to be returned back to Tower Hamlets. We haven't got that guarantee yet. It's not in the documents you can see from the council. If we can get that guarantee, I'd be very happy. But that is the very least we should be expecting for these whacking great new developments that being built in our burough and we have giant banks like JP Morgan essentially freeloading on that.

[00:09:40]>> I think I completely agree with you on all that. I think a sort of critic of your argument would probably say, well, you know, a local shop or a local pub wouldn't bring in thousands of jobs or x amount of POE tax, x amount of corporation tax, etc., etc. What would you say to those critics who would say, well, you know, the benefits of having JP Morgan's HQ both is a really great signal to the markets, is really great for the local economy, etc., etc. What would you say to that argument of go, well, you know, really, is it better for the UK to have JP Morgan's European headquarters here for that argument?

[00:10:11]We can make an argument about how great it is for the UK. What I'm saying is I am standing for relation to Tower Hamlet's Council. It is Tower Hamlet's Council and its local residents who have to bear the costs of having very very significant new developments in their burough which get in the way of and start to delay the construction of things that people need locally like council housing and like housing that people can afford to live there. that when you have council waiting list going through the roof, when you have extraordinarily expensive provision of rented accommodation at various bits across a burough, we need that housing built here. That is something we need to do. If you're doing these big constructions instead, it creates an additional burden on what the burough might be doing otherwise. So, okay, big national picture, maybe it's good and we can talk about that separately into our hamlets. We need that money. We need a guarantee that any retained business rates that JP Morgan is not now paying will be compensated for by the Treasury.

[00:11:02]Right? That seems the minimum ask out of doing something like this.

[00:11:06]>> How of spire this happened? Cuz I I noted in the the video that I watched that um went up on the London Green Party's ex Twitter. Uh you said that Labour councilors won't be able to stand up to a Labor government and reforming the Tories will cheer on the banks because it's their ideology.

[00:11:20]>> Where do Aspire play into all this?

[00:11:21]because obviously they ran the council and they got the mayoral as the other quote unquote progressive party in Tower Hamlets. Where do they stand on this?

[00:11:28]>> Well, as far as we can tell, they've just nodded it through. You know, look for Rame and the mayor welcomed the the construction. Is only after they put the press release out saying, "Isn't it great we've got this into our hamlets that it turns out there's some, you know, slipperiness around the kind of deals. It was the Guardian that broke the story originally, uh, around the kind of deal that the the Treasury might have forced onto the council. Um, I think there's a couple of things going on there. One of which is that, as I said at the start, I think Aspire have just ended up a bit too close to developer interests. All right, that's that's how I'd start to look at it. That when you have this sort of notionally center-left party saying things like, do you know what, half council land, we'll just give it to private developers rather than 100% of land being used, council owned land being used for council uh house development, which is what we really need locally. So, it's starting to get a bit too close to to developers there. when you have counselors going on all paid uh all expenses paid junkets to developers conference in K in France right the a property company is paying the cost of a property company with interest in to hamlets you can start to see it's all getting a little bit too close to developers interest so that's one part of it the other bit is I just think I just don't think they stood up to the treasury effectively I think the treasury is a big powerful national institution aspire is a small local party and they've just rolled over they've just been able to all over like that. It's back to that point about national representation uh working not only at a national level but you need it on a local basis. You need a national party represented locally in order that you can stand up for local interests at a national level.

[00:12:59]>> So moving on a little bit from specifically how Hamlet's book keeping it sort of local. Obviously you were quite a senior member of Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party working with John McDonald on set the economic policy. If you were to get into government in 2017 or 2019, why did you leave the Labour party and join the Greens and go so far to stand for election under the Greens? Because I think there is a difference between just joining as a lay member and then putting yourself to the banner and going, "Yeah, I'm with them." Why did you leave?

[00:13:25]>> A couple of reasons. Um the big picture one is simply that over the last few years I think it's become very apparent that even if we don't always perceive it like this that our lives are increasingly being shaped by uh environmental crisis in various different ways most obviously climate change that climate change is imposing itself on the cost of the food that we eat on the fact that every summer now we're getting these heat waves which are are really difficult for countries aren't used to it like ours to deal with and causing deaths. Of course, the people die during these things. That this is a real transformation of how we live our lives. And that a party that has always said we need to think about the environment front and center is well placed to be able to think about this and to think creatively about how we're going to adapt to a world that's changing like that in front of us.

[00:14:10]That's a really big picture part of it.

[00:14:11]The smaller part of it is I met Zach and I was really impressed with him. Uh I thought he was going to do well and he has done well uh since then in in building up the numbers. And the third part and I suppose the negative part is I think the age of the social democratic parties like Labor, not just Labor but similar organizations across Europe, similar parties across Europe is kind of coming to an end. That the particular constituency that would be represented historically by parties like Labor um the particular people who vote for it historically are not as clear-cut as they used to be.

[00:14:48]that for a long period of time people are frankly most people in this country are working class right you can have a university degree and you live in insecure rented accommodation you're poorly paid that makes you workingass but does it make you workingass in the same way 50 or 60 years ago where you didn't have a university degree because at the time you leave school at 15 and you had a more obviously secure manual working uh job it'd be a different kind of working class right so the the constituency has changed and parties that have sought historically to represent that working class in that way like Labor are on the wrong side of that change and that's increasingly something that's playing out. Whereas parties that are able to cut through this and to address I think in the fundamental sense the environmental crisis which means the Greens in particular in this country are the ones best place to do that. So that's that's in the NY left. That's the why I'm standing. I think there's a the negative part the really negative part is reform are going to do well in these elections and reform going to do well in these elections and use it as a springboard to challenging for national government power in three years time.

[00:15:45]Now, I don't want to be sitting here in three or five or 10 years time and having to explain to I've got a two-year-old child. I don't want to have to explain to him when he's old enough, right? Reformer in charge and what did I actually do? What did any of us actually do during all of this? Right? So, you have to at some point think about how you're going to make a difference and how you going to stop reform getting into government here. What are the coalitions you're going to put together?

[00:16:11]How are you going to stand and use your voice to prevent that happening? what are the different kind of politics you're going to offer to people to try and make that happen. So fundamentally that's why I'm doing it. That's quite a negative reason but I think for a lot of people out there it's also in their minds that these elections matter because it could be a springboard to what happens in the general election probably in 3 years time. So really important that people get out and vote and I would say get out and vote green.

[00:16:31]Of course >> you mentioned coalitions there obviously in Gordon Denton at the bi-election. And it was the Greens that won Greens first, reform second, Labour third.

[00:16:40]>> But there are many cases on a less high-profile level where the leftwing vote or the right-wing vote is split by Labor of the Greens or the tourism reform and it's the other party that wins. Would you see the Greens ever going into coalition with an Aspire or with a Labor or with another progressive party? Is that something that you can see Zapalansky and the Green Party doing to prevent reform from running a council or running government?

[00:17:02]>> I mean, on a local basis, we'll have to see what happens. Um it's it's extremely uncertain everywhere as to how these these votes will pan out. You know, polling is being all over the place because it's not really used to a world where there's kind of five parties that are standing in tow hamlets. It's particularly complicated because you have this strong local party. It's now split. There's a serious challenge from them. There's a serious challenge from us. So, who knows where it's going to land. Um we have had a green council in Tower's council who has worked pragmatically, I would say, with Aspire uh when we agree with them. And there's a lot of issues we do. I've mentioned preschool meals obviously but we disagree with them about low traffic neighborhoods and about the fact that you know we're trying to do something about town hamlets has one of the highest rates of child asthma uh in London certainly if not the whole country right so you have to do something about what's going on with traffic so we've opposed Aspire at different points on that so you work with people pragmatically when it comes to forming administrations I mean Zach has said himself he wouldn't want to work with a Labour party with Karma as leader now that might leave open something further down the line if K star isn't leader But I think we have to consider all of this when we come to it.

[00:18:04]I think this side of the election I can't preempt what kind of formations are going to exist in the future or where things are going to get to. But I would say the Labour party would have to look quite different if it's going to appeal seriously or try and appeal seriously and work with people who have seen what Karma has been like in government and the decisions that he's taken and how that government has behaved. It's going to be a hell of an effort for Labor to overcome that and to think about what it might do instead. So just on with your Labour party hat on obviously were really involved in the party for years and years and years.

[00:18:33]Kissed Armor is not looking very secure.

[00:18:35]You've got Angela Rainey. You've got Ed Milliband. You've got John Healey being floated obviously Andy Burnham up in Greater Manchester. Who would you want to be the leader of the Labour Party from that pragmatic perspective if it was to form a left coalition? Who who would your guy be?

[00:18:49]>> From my from my point of view, it's up to the members of the Labour Party at this point in time to decide and and if they're given an opportunity to decide.

[00:18:55]I mean the the the fight back from Karma and the people around him uh has been quite noticeable over the last few weeks. Um they are making the case it's not completely unfounded that uh Kistar has been standing up to to Donald Trump and this is something that that we need in a leader. uh that we're going to be hitting all sorts of economic chaos as a result of the Iran war which is true by the way we are and therefore we don't have the instability of electing new leader and it's quite possible although less likely than it was that Kama remains leader of the Labour party but honestly as somebody who isn't in the Labour party anymore that's one for the members and the MPs and everybody else who is in the Labour party to think about their options to think about what a likely future of the world is going to look like and vote accordingly it's a >> fantastic answer I I was trying to bait you I couldn't get I couldn't bring out.

[00:19:42]Um, obviously you've got uh a really strong green presence in that kind of area of London in Hackne and Islington.

[00:19:47]You've got some really, you know, quite high-profile candidates Friday morning when you're looking at the results. What does a good result for the Greens look like in London?

[00:19:55]>> Oh god. I mean, this is where into the land of I I hate doing this sort of thing, right? Because you're into the land of real speculation. What I know is what I've seen on the doors in tower hamlets which is that loads of people are voting greens from from right across the border from all sorts of different people are voting for the Green Party particularly younger I'll say that but not necessarily always uh younger and and you can see why and people say they need a change and they can see that also the positive response that Zach in particular has produced for a lot of people where they've seen him they've seen how the Greens have have presented themselves in in the last few months. Um so that's good and that story has been repeated across the London burrows I know about. So it could be it could be a really cracking set of results where we have lots of councils elect councilors elected maybe even a council that the Greens are starting to run. That's going to be challenging, right? Let's be absolutely serious about that. And I think everybody in the doorstep has been serious about that. But I also think that where Greens are standing, they're serious about standing. They're intending to win. They have serious programs for local government, well worked through manifestos that they can implement and start to make a difference to people's lives. I mean, Zora Mandani again, but I'm going to reference it.

[00:21:00]You get elected as a radical and you straight away want to start making a difference what people see. They know it's a new kind of administration that you have. that I think will be the challenge should the Greens do well enough anywhere to actually end up in office to demonstrate from the get-go that they're going to do something different to the old parties and you're going to repay people's trust in them.

[00:21:19]>> So very specifically in Tower Hamlets day one green council you've got the majority you need what do you do? What's that day one look like? But do you know what the thing that keeps coming up in town hamlets is the and it's so sort of day-to-day politics but it really affects people right because you open your front door and you see it and it's the fact that that we have the lowest recycling rate in the country there's litter all over the place the bins aren't collected properly now this is nothing to do with people actually doing the hard work collecting it but it's not managed properly it's not organized properly there's all sorts of institutional problems there day one I think we should say we're going to target making this work and you will have cleaner streets as rapidly as possible across the entire burough Uh, and that will be the difference that you will be able to start to see right in front of you when you open your front door. It will start to look different and better.

[00:22:01]>> James Bway, thank you very much for your time.

[00:22:03]>> Thank you.