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<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Jonathan Hinder’s call for ‘economic nationalism’ is tragically misguided <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n From energy to housing, Britain’s economy has stagnated due to a lack of liberalisation <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Unproductive state-owned industries will not improve life for ordinary Britons <\/p>\n Jonathan Hinder, Labour\u2019s MP for Pendle and Clitheroe, has taken to X<\/a> to deliver what he clearly hopes will be received as a bracing call to arms. In a forty-second video (the medium is very much the message) he laments that \u2018Trump\u2019s whims, tariff wars, global energy prices\u2019 now \u2018dictate living standards in Britain\u2019. The culprit, naturally, is \u2018Thatcherite thinking\u2019, which \u2018handed our state power to the markets\u2019. The remedy? \u2018A new economic nationalism\u2019. Rebuild our industry. Strengthen our defences. Develop our own technology. Are we just going to complain, he asks, or actually do something about it?<\/p>\n It is a stirring performance: it is also entirely wrong.<\/p>\n Let us begin with the premise that privatisation sold off \u2018our common assets\u2019 and left ordinary Britons \u2018renting back what is ours\u2019. The claim sounds intuitive, which is precisely why it has survived every encounter with the evidence.\u00a0<\/p>\n Take water. The public is told that \u2018greedy\u2019 private companies have extracted profits while infrastructure crumbles. Under the Water Industry Act 1991<\/a>, Ofwat conducts a price review every five years that determines not just what companies can charge customers, but how much they are permitted to spend on infrastructure. At the latest review, called PR24<\/a>, water companies requested \u00a3112 billion of investment; Ofwat initially proposed cutting that to \u00a388 billion, the largest proposed cut in the sector\u2019s history, before settling on \u00a3104 billion<\/a>, which is still a 7% reduction on what companies said they needed. Five companies have since appealed to the Competition and Markets Authority<\/a>, arguing the settlement is inadequate. On dividends, the picture is bleaker still. This is not a market running wild, but rather it is in a straitjacket, where the regulator decides how much can be invested, how much can be charged and how much can be returned to the investors whose capital is supposed to fund the entire enterprise. I\u2019d be delighted to learn which neoliberal economist or politician was advocating for those policies. <\/p>\n The surprise is not that some companies have underperformed, but rather that anyone is still willing to put capital in at all. The failures people blame on privatisation are, in almost every case, failures of a regulatory regime that has simultaneously constrained investment and then expressed outrage at the consequences.<\/p>\n Energy tells a similar story. Hinder implies that a state-owned energy system would insulate Britons from the global market shocks. The energy crisis of 2022\u201323 was driven by the wholesale price of gas on international markets following Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine \u2013 a price that no domestic ownership structure, short of autarky, could have avoided. Britain\u2019s liberalised energy market, regulated through Ofgem under the Gas Act 1986<\/a> and Electricity Act 1989<\/a>, has in fact provided the mechanism through which prices have since fallen: the price cap for Q2 2026<\/a> is set at \u00a31,641, down 7% quarter-on-quarter, and more than \u00a3200 lower than a year ago. Ofgem reports that supplier switching has increased by nearly 20% year-on-year, with consumers increasingly taking advantage of time-of-use tariffs and competitive fixed deals. Those on fixed tariffs paid around \u00a3115 less than the cap on average last year. Competition is working. It is not perfect of course, but just like democracy, the market is an imperfect but superior process.\u00a0<\/p>\n But the most damning indictment of Hinder\u2019s \u2018economic nationalism\u2019 is that his own Government is actively undermining the domestic energy production he says he wants. In November 2025, Labour published its North Sea Future Plan<\/a>, formally banning new exploration licences for offshore oil and gas<\/a>. No new Seaward Production Licences, no new Seaward Petroleum Exploration Licences. Meanwhile, the Energy Profits Levy<\/a>, introduced by the Conservatives in 2022 and enthusiastically extended by Labour to 2030, imposes a combined effective tax rate of 78% on North Sea producers. <\/p>\n CapX readers will not be surprised at the results: UK crude production has more than halved in five years<\/a>, falling from around 1.1 million barrels a day in 2020 to roughly 474,000 barrels a day by September 2025: an all-time low, even during a Europe-wide energy crisis. US majors Apache and Chevron have announced their intention to exit the UK Continental Shelf entirely. According to Offshore Energies UK<\/a>, without reform, production will fall by a further 40% by 2030, and the UK is on track to import 80% of its oil and gas by the end of the decade.<\/p>\n The real irony of Hinder\u2019s complaint is that Britain\u2019s genuine economic weaknesses are the product not of too much market liberalism, but far too little. Start with housing<\/a>. The planning system, governed by the Town and Country Planning Act 1990<\/a> and shaped by the National Planning Policy Framework, has for decades strangled supply. There is no known \u2018neoliberal\u2019 system which requires you to go through a full, lengthy and expensive planning process to build a pond<\/a>, never mind entire housing estates. The well-documented planning absurdities that spawn from Whitehall and are proliferated through every planning authority in the land are not the fault of the market, but of zealous regulation. The great Blue Labour hero Clement Attlee created the planning noose around our most productive and growing cities (the Green Belt), which the Government have thankfully pledged to breaching<\/a>.<\/p>\n