Our highlights from 2024

2024 was another huge year for Positive Money. We rallied together nearly 15,000 people to petition Chancellors old and new, and all the party candidates during the General Election. We had more than 200 pieces of media coverage, with headlines in the Guardian and the Mirror, and interviews on LBC, Channel 4, and TalkTV to name just a few. We published 7 new research publications, shared our policy insights with Ministers and civil servants across dozens of consultations and launched a shiny new website!

Take a trip down memory lane with us, as we recap some of our highlights below.

We kicked off the year by launching our report ‘Inflation as an Ecological Phenomenon’. A joint effort with our EU team, it explains how together, fluctuating fossil fuel prices, severe weather, nature loss, and other effects of the climate crisis, are pushing up energy and food prices across the world. And ‘climateflation’ isn’t just a worry for central banks: with 3 in 4 UK adults concerned about the impact of climate change on their bills, and 2024 on track to become the hottest year on record, this work is more important than ever.

Our Head of Economics, Danisha Kazi, visited the House of Lords in February to give evidence as part of their inquiry on the sustainability of the UK’s national debt. She warned about the dangers of austerity, and how an obsession with public debt is hiding the greater concern of rising private debt. We continued sounding the alarm on this throughout the year, challenging the government’s arbitrary fiscal rules, talk of ‘black holes’ and misleading comparisons of government budgets to ‘households’.

In March, following our policy paper on how the Bank of England can stop subsidising fossil fuels, we coordinated a joint letter with over 50 economists and civil society experts calling for the Bank to re-prioritise climate work. The letter gained coverage in The Mirror, Independent, The Standard, and we celebrated a win when Labour strengthened the Bank’s climate remit, and included reference to nature for the first time, in November. The Bank has powerful tools it could use to regulate and direct finance, so this is a big step in ensuring that the financial sector takes the climate crisis seriously.

Ahead of the spring budget, we kicked our campaign to #TaxTheBanks up a gear. Over 8,000 of you signed our petition to Jeremy Hunt and helped by chipping in to fund an advert in his local paper. Together we brought your voices to his doorstep, by delivering the petition to Number 11 Downing Street, alongside MPs Rebecca Long-Bailey and John McDonnell.

The future of money remains a core part of our work, and in April we launched our ‘Fiscal Benefits of a Digital Pound’ report, together with an explainer video on the concept of ‘seigniorage’: the difference between the cost of creating money and how much it’s worth - take a watch below to learn more if you missed it! Our Head of Policy, Simon Youel, also joined the Digital Pound Foundation’s podcast to discuss, if you’re keen for more details.

Throughout the year, we also held several engaging in-person events, with MPs, academics, and policy experts.  We held a parliamentary event on solutions to the housing crisis that go beyond building, with the London Renters Union. We brought an international group of experts together with UCL’s IIPP for a series of roundtables to discuss approaches to a global green and just transition, and continued the conversation with an event at Labour’s Party Conference hosted with War on Want.

Our local groups kept busy with events this year too! From stalls at local festivals, to talks and discussion groups, video screenings, and much more, we owe our local group organisers a huge thanks for all their work.

When the general election was called (much earlier than expected!) we quickly launched a petition to all party leaders to #BreakTheLink with big finance. Thousands of you signed, telling politicians to end the oversized influence finance has over our democracy. Our latest analysis of Treasury meetings revealed the government’s cosy relationship with the sector is just as strong as when we first published our Power of Big Finance report in 2022, but we did celebrate a win in July as the new government launched a review of second jobs for MPs, one of our petition demands!

In July, we got a whole new look with the launch of our new brand and website. If you haven’t already, make sure to explore all our international work in one place, by toggling the location icon in the top right corner.

This year was not an easy one for many however, with turbulent times politically across the globe, and the devastating impacts of the climate crisis reaching the doorsteps of more and more people. In August, a wave of violent, racist, and Islamophobic riots erupted across the UK. Many of you told us how much you appreciated our statement standing in solidarity with all those affected. Our financial and monetary system is not neutral or isolated from racism, and other structures of oppression, and we strive to put this at the heart of all our work.

And we’re proud to be just one part of a wider movement for change, as a member of so many impactful coalitions. In April, we partnered with Fossil Free Parliament, pushing to free Parliament from the polluting influence of fossil fuels, and we joined the Warm This Winter campaign to tackle sky-rocketing energy bills, in August. As part of the Climate Justice Coalition, we supported the March for Global Climate Justice, and celebrated a win for the #StopBankingOnGenocide campaign in November as Barclays dropped investments in arms manufacturer Elbit Systems.

Over the summer, we were one of the first organisations to draw attention to the under-scrutinised National Wealth Fund - one of the flagship ways the new government is promising to deliver investment in climate action. Recommendations from our policy paper were covered in a Guardian exclusive, and our explainer blog was one of our most-read of the year. We’ll be following developments closely in 2025.

In September, with Green Central Banking, we launched the Green Central Banking Scorecard for 2024; the latest edition of our work to calculate and rank the performance of G20 countries’ central banks on tackling the climate crisis, with a webinar with experts from the sector. The report received global coverage and featured in a speech from senior officials at France’s central bank.

We were cited dozens of times in Parliament and the media this year, and our incredible Influencing team submitted responses to 14 consultations and calls for evidence. We were in the news responding to bank profits, commenting on a controversial bank ad and dodgy political donations, and gave radio interviews on inflation and the state of public finances, to name a few.

Autumn marked the first budget from our new government, and the launch of our #TaxTheBanks petition and action outside the Treasury, aimed at new Chancellor Rachel Reeves. As we highlighted, Reeves used to have some very Positive Money-aligned views on economic policy, so we were disappointed not to see a tax on banks, although the Treasury did respond saying they “look forward to continued and constructive engagement” with us - we’ll be holding them to account on this in 2025! 

Continuing to push the new government to do all it can to build a better economy, over 1,000 of you emailed the Treasury on the dangers of an over-inflated finance sector, in response to their Financial Services Strategy call for evidence. Not only this, but the open letter we coordinated with 50 economists and experts made it to the front page of the Guardian!

To round off the year, we published another report ‘Beyond Dollar Dominance: New money and payment systems for a multipolar world’. The report tackles how our unjust international monetary and financial system and unequal currencies,  severely disadvantages countries in the Global South. This couldn’t be more timely, with recent calls for tariffs from US president-elect Donald Trump to keep the dollar's power. We launched the report with a webinar of expert panellists - one of whom called our work “groundbreaking, daring and very useful for everyone in the space of monetary reform”. 

You’ve reached the end of our wrap-up - what a year it was! Thank you for reading and a huge thank you to every one of you whose support makes our work possible. If you can join them by making a one-off or regular donation, so we can achieve even more together next year, we’d be extremely grateful. With your support, we’ll continue our mission to redesign our economic system for social justice and a liveable planet into 2025 and beyond.

The whole Positive Money UK and EU teams at our international retreat this summer.

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