Here’s another ‘Labour’ MP talking utter garbage about the UK’s monetary system. MPs like David Pinto-Duschinsky try to fool the public into thinking a good society is unaffordable. It’s despicable, dishonest politics. But have you noticed how politicians like this guy can always find the money for war?
You may have seen @ZackPolanski speaking about economics this week. But the theory behind his thinking is a pretty wild one – and could end up costing you dearly 👇 pic.twitter.com/gFW12sO9ku
— David Pinto-Duschinsky MP (@DavidPintoD) March 20, 2026
The reality is the government issues the currency so it has access to as much money as it wants. But nobody is saying the government can spend without limit. Not me, not Zack Polanski, not Richard J. Murphy, not anyone else. Governments are limited by the availability of real resources in the economy such as workers, infrastructure, machinery, energy, transport, etc. If governments spend beyond the economy’s ability to absorb that spending, then inflation will ensue. Governments should focus their attention on building these real resources to make the country more resilient when crises occur around the world, like the illegal war being waged against Iran by Israel and the US. This MP also refers in his fancy video to government borrowing. But he is wrong about that, too. For a start, government ‘borrowing’ is a misnomer. What governments are really doing is selling government bonds. So in reality, if truth be told, the government is providing savings accounts for banks, insurance companies, pension funds, and wealthy individuals.
Governments, however, are not obliged to sell bonds to fund government spending for the reasons I have already spelt out. Interestingly, the Bank of England, which is owned by the government, holds around 30% of government bonds. So to use David Pinto’s terminology, that’s the government ‘borrowing’ from itself. It’s a bit like taking £10 out of the left pocket of your trousers and putting it in your right pocket, and then saying the right pocket of your trousers owes the left pocket £10. But it’s the same pair of trousers. Of course Mr Pinto might be spreading this blatantly false propaganda because he doesn’t understand how the monetary system works. That wouldn’t surprise me because I can tell you from my time as an MP, most parliamentarians haven’t got a clue about the intricacies of the monetary system. If that is the case, I hope he will start reading Richard J. Murphy and maybe read Stephanie Kelton’s book ‘The Deficit Myth’, because as Mark Twain said: “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
It was the American industrialist Henry Ford who reportedly said: “It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.” We need to bring about that revolution to sweep away politicians like David Pinto, who defend this broken neoliberal system, and replace them with representatives who will stand up for the people instead of faceless corporations and wealthy oligarchs.
For those who prefer to learn more:
