{"id":327252,"date":"2025-12-20T23:50:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T23:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/327252\/"},"modified":"2025-12-20T23:50:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T23:50:07","slug":"zarah-sultana-82-of-britain-backs-her-economic-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/327252\/","title":{"rendered":"Zarah Sultana \u2014 82% of Britain backs her economic revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

82% of Britain supports an economic transformation of the country, according to polling from anthropologist Jason Hickel<\/a> and the Lancet<\/a>. This is brilliant news for Zarah Sultana MP who is campaigning<\/a> for a<\/p>\n

socialist economy that includes workers running their workplaces through cooperatives. It means public services run for need, not profit, with workers and users on the boards of those organisations. Democratic ownership. And it means the entire economy run by workers, not the billionaires and the corporations that run it today.<\/p>\n

The Zarah Sultana transformation with huge majority support<\/p>\n

The survey asked a large representative sample of people in the UK whether they support a full proposal for transforming the economy, which included:<\/p>\n

Scaling down unnecessary production that is ecologically damaging
\nReducing economic inequality
\nDelivering universal public services with a public job guarantee, re-organising \u201cproduction around need\u201d
\nDemocratising finance and production lines
\nRemoving neo-colonial extraction of \u201cunequal exchange\u201d from the Global South to the north<\/p>\n

Hickel pointed out that other studies also show strong support for \u201ceco-socialist\u201d policies. The academic also said the polling shows that<\/p>\n

the transformative vision and policies advanced by ecosocialism are popular and can form the basis of a winning political campaign. The common notion that these ideas are too \u201cradical\u201d and cannot gain support, is clearly wrong. People want these things, and are likely to support political leaders who can credibly promise to deliver them.<\/p>\n

The main obstacle to transformation is not popular will, but the capitalist class that currently holds predominant power over production and within political institutions.<\/p>\n

Perhaps Your Party (or\/ and the Greens) don\u2019t need an electoral pact<\/a> with a more \u2018progressive\u2019 Labour party \u2014 after Keir Starmer \u2014 to win a majority in the UK.<\/p>\n

Job guarantee<\/p>\n

One policy that is largely absent from discussions within progressive parties is a job guarantee. And the Lancet polling shows it\u2019s popular. When the rate of people, in the UK, who are not in employment has risen<\/a> to 5.1% (at<\/a> around 1.85 million), this is a policy worth considering. Especially when one notes that a further 9.1 million people are economically inactive.<\/p>\n

At the same time, in the three months leading up to September 2025, the UK reported approximately 717,000 job vacancies. So there are millions more people who are not in employment than there are jobs, before taking into account whether they have the skills necessary.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, 22% of people work<\/a> a 60+ hour week in the UK and many more work 50+ hours, while unemployment figures continue to rise.<\/p>\n

This makes no sense. People should be sharing such jobs rather than some working zero hours and some over 60 hours. A jobs guarantee could help re-organise the economy and ensure people have both fulfilment and a lot of time for socialising with friends and family, as well as their interests.<\/p>\n

Campaigning labels<\/p>\n

Another striking finding from the Lancet polling was that labels are highly important when campaigning. When asked about the label \u201cde-growth\u201d without any description, only up to 26% of UK respondents supported it. And when asked about the label \u201ceco-socialism\u201d without any description, only up to 58% of respondents supported it.<\/p>\n

Progressive parties should take heed: traditional wording isn\u2019t the way forward. It\u2019s better to talk in language that isn\u2019t politically charged.<\/p>\n

The polling from Hickel and the Lancet used two groups in the UK and found some variation in results. But the study is certainly promising for anyone who wants progressive change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"82% of Britain supports an economic transformation of the country, according to polling from anthropologist Jason Hickel and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":327253,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[84,1294,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-327252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}