Dr Max Lacey-Barnacle

Senior Research Fellow @SPRU PI @BritishAcademy_ Policy @energysvgtrust @futureclimate PhD @WSofArchi. Exploring #communitywealthbuilding in #justtransitions

[Clive Lewis MP @labourlewis]

Westminster may finally be about to have the argument it has spent 40 years avoiding.

If Andy Burnham returns to Parliament, the political class will know how to cover it. A leadership drama. Who is up, who is down, whether Keir Starmer can survive, whether Labour is once again turning inward. The familiar machinery of Westminster psychodrama will whirr into life.

That framing misses the larger point. Burnham’s possible return matters not because of what it says about Labour’s leadership, but because of what it reveals about the British state: what it can still do, what it has forgotten how to do, and what kind of country it must become if it is serious about resilience.

Britain is finally having a more serious conversation about national security. The Strategic Defence Review, the pivot back towards Europe, the recognition that hybrid warfare turns citizens, infrastructure and civic institutions into part of the front line: all of it marks a real shift in how the state thinks about its own survival.
But at the centre of that conversation lies a question that the defence establishment, and most of Westminster, still does not want to answer. What kind of society do you need to be before resilience is possible?

Finland is now the model everyone cites. Comprehensive security. Whole-of-society defence. Civilian preparedness woven into military planning. British strategists admire the Finnish system and ask how it might be copied. But the admiration stops short of the uncomfortable question: why does it work there?

The answer is not geography or history or some mysterious quality of Finnish national character. It is structural. Nearly 80% of Finns say they would defend their country if attacked. In Britain, the figure is closer to 33%. That gap is not an accident. It exists because Finland has spent decades building a society in which people have a genuine stake in what they are being asked to defend. Energy is affordable. Housing is available. Public services function. Institutions command trust. The Nordic welfare state is not a sentimental add-on to Finnish security policy. It is the foundation of it. You cannot ask people to defend a country that does not work for them.

Britain has spent 40 years building the opposite. The privatisation of essentials – energy, water, transport, housing – transferred wealth upwards from households to shareholders while making the basics of everyday life more expensive. The state, stripped of the tools to control costs at source, has been reduced to compensating after the fact.

Out of every pound the Government spends on housing, 88p goes to subsidising private rents. Just 12p goes to building homes. When energy prices spiked in 2022, the Government spent £40bn in a single winter cushioning the blow, not because it had a resilient energy system but because it lacked one. Debt interest now consumes more than £100bn a year. Britain has the highest debt servicing costs in the G7: the compounding price of financing failure rather than eliminating it at source.

This is what bond market dependency actually looks like. It is not an abstract fiscal condition. It is the consequence of a state that has been stripped of the supply-side tools that would let it cure the problems it now pays, indefinitely, to manage. And here is the paradox the Treasury refuses to confront. The countries that borrow most cheaply are often those that have retained the public investment model Britain abandoned. The spread between UK and Dutch borrowing costs has widened sharply not because markets fear public investment, but because they have lost confidence in a model that borrows to subsidise private failure while never addressing its causes.

This is the connection Britain’s defence debate is missing. The familiar framing, that social spending is what must be sacrificed to meet the NATO target, is not merely politically toxic. It is strategically illiterate. Cutting the foundations of social cohesion to fund the hardware of national defence is self-defeating. You end up with planes and no pilots, submarines and no crew, an army that cannot recruit because the society it is meant to protect has stopped believing in itself.

I think Burnham understands this. That is why his programme is more interesting than the leadership gossip suggests. What he has been building in Greater Manchester – public control of transport, expanded social housing, investment in the productive foundations of the city economy – is not a nostalgic rerun of postwar nationalisation. It is a proof of concept for a different kind of state.

The Bee Network is the most visible example, but the argument behind it travels. A state that can shape markets is not condemned to subsidise their failures. A state that produces affordable energy through public generation does not need to spend tens of billions cushioning every price shock. A state with a serious public housebuilding programme does not need housing benefit to rise endlessly in line with private rents. A state that builds institutions people can see, use and trust begins to restore the civic confidence on which resilience depends.

The real constraint on Britain is not money. It is capacity: the workers, institutions, supply chains and public purpose needed to turn national will into national renewal. Britain’s tragedy is not that it has run out of money. It is that after 40 years of hollowing out the state, it has made itself less able to act.

Burnham’s critics will reach for the familiar warning. Borrow more, spend more, spook the gilt markets, repeat the Truss disaster. But this misunderstands both the problem and the opportunity.

Bond markets do not have ideological preferences. They have functional ones. They prefer clarity, credible revenue streams, productive investment, and a state with a plan. What they punish is not public ambition but incoherence. A properly designed productive state programme would not be a leap into fiscal fantasy. It would be an attempt to end the much costlier fantasy that Britain can keep borrowing to compensate for broken markets while refusing to repair them.

The defence conversation and the economic conversation need to become the same conversation. Finland did not build national resilience by choosing between welfare and security. It built resilience by understanding that they are inseparable: that a country in which the basics work, where people trust one another and the institutions around them, is one that can face danger with something more than anxiety.

That is the deeper argument Burnham represents. Westminster will be tempted to treat him as a leadership story. It should resist the temptation. The question is not whether Burnham can return to parliament. It is whether Britain can return to the idea that the state should make life work. Because a country that cannot command the confidence of its people cannot truly defend itself.

[CALL TO ACTIVISM @CalltoActivism]

🚨HOLY COW: Mamdani comes out SWINGING:

“So hear me, President Trump, when I say this: to get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us.”

Tonight, one thing is certain: Donald Trump is this country’s BIGGEST LOSER.

[ACCIONA (English) @ACCIONA_EN]

Great news! We’ve brought to life Site C: a hydroelectric dam in northern Canada that will power nearly 500,000 homes for the next 100 years 🇨🇦

A milestone in sustainable engineering, built under extreme conditions ⚡

🔗 Discover the full story:

[Ed Davey @EdwardJDavey]

The BBC are constantly fawning over Farage's every move despite Reform only having four MPs. Our national broadcaster should reflect the whole country, not just one man’s ego.

[Ed Miliband @Ed_Miliband]

We’re kickstarting a solar rooftop revolution.

All new-build houses will come with solar panels as standard.

Delivering lower bills, energy security, and tackling the climate crisis.

https://t.co/wXHwZolpiO

[Mariana Mazzucato @MazzucatoM]

Governments shouldn't behave like start-ups. The "chainsaw" rhetoric in the US and efficiency drives across Europe fundamentally misunderstand the nature of public sector work. While some critiques of bureaucracy are valid, the start-up model is arguably the worst possible solution.

My latest with Rainer Kattel for @ProSyn ➡️ https://t.co/yl29DlCxO6

[Matthew Brown @MatthewBrownLab]

Delighted that the 'North West Mutual', a people centred cooperative bank we are supporting have confirmed their HQ will be right here in #Preston! This will mean new job opportunities as well as a bank working for and not against our communities and local businesses.

[Dr Max Lacey-Barnacle @mlacey_barnacle]

Call for Papers!
'Building Community Wealth into Net Zero'
As part of my @BritishAcademy_ UK-Canada Knowledge Frontiers project, Siobhan Stack-Maddox and I @SPRU & Dr Martin Boucher @mboucher5822 @NorQuest have launched a Special Issue in Energy Policy: https://t.co/RvIKiEjbWp

[michael sheen 💙 @michaelsheen]

Michael Sheen: "I've written off £1 million of debt for 900 people" https://t.co/l4htcd6aR0 via @YouTube

[Ed Miliband @Ed_Miliband]

Colder, poorer, in the pocket of dictators. That's how Reform would leave the UK.

Their MPs are happy to benefit from renewables in private, yet they want to deny the British people that right🤔

Its not taking back control, its energy surrender.

https://t.co/rX2eagufC5

[The New Statesman @NewStatesman]

It’s time for climate populism, write @CarolineLucas and @GreenRupertRead:

As politics turns against net zero, we need to mobilise a genuine mass movement against ecological catastrophe.

https://t.co/yQY3e3GiGT

[Department for Energy Security and Net Zero @energygovuk]

The Regional Skills Pilot and Energy Skills Passport tool aims to support British workers looking to move from carbon intensive sectors to clean energy jobs 👷‍♀️✅

Hear from those who have already transitioned to working in renewable energy and why they decided to do so 👇

[Dr. Marie Claire Brisbois @mcbrisb]

'To go fast, we must go slow.'

5 years in the making, this @CoalTransitions paper highlights the dangers of rapidly pushing through an #energy transition from the top-down without taking the time to include people in planning and benefits. 1/5

@SPRU

https://t.co/OhbQcH1BUK

[Community Energy for Energy Solidarity @CEES_Energy]

Is a just energy transition possible? @DrSeaRotmann says no, not under the current circumstances. Community energy can put energy equity, democracy, and justice at the centre of politics, economics, and environment. https://t.co/9qx3GaWA8A #energycrisis #justtransition

[Ed Davey @EdwardJDavey]

This dangerous and irresponsible rhetoric is further proof that the UK can’t rely on the Trump administration.

It’s in our national interest to rebuild trade and security ties with our allies in Europe.

[David Watson @davidwatson__]

2025 will see the battle between those for and against new energy infrastructure reach new heights. Finding solutions to please everyone isn't possible, but we can find solutions that balances needs of the country and communities. Good article via the FT: https://t.co/RBiGCBR3FT

[The BREAK–DOWN @break_downradio]

NEW: our latest essay, Socialising Nature, Jacob Blumenfeld evaluates three strategies for transforming our relation to nature in the context of ecological crisis.

READ: https://t.co/ZwXGFb29ov

[The Economist @TheEconomist]

In a year that promises an unusual degree of change and uncertainty, The World Ahead helps you see around the corner and work out what might be coming next. Explore our future-gazing analysis, predictions and speculation for 2025: https://t.co/tzNRFINizU

Illustration: Ben Jones

[Bloomberg @business]

Australia’s government is funding cheap loans to help low-income workers buy electric vehicles in a bid to kickstart slumping sales of battery-powered cars https://t.co/Uo9wlgwBrP