The programme does not reproduce the findings of these publications in full. Where specific data points are cited across the programme's pages, sources are noted in context. Readers seeking the full analytical basis for arguments on public investment, community wealth, fiscal rules, and rail investment are directed to the publications below, which in several cases preceded and in others run in parallel with the programme's own analytical development.
Common Wealth and the Democracy Collaborative are independent organisations. Their inclusion here reflects the relevance of their published research to the programme's arguments, not affiliation or coordination.
Common Wealth
Think Tank
Common Wealth
Founded 2019. UK and US. Organising principle: ownership as the mechanism through which economic extraction operates and through which democratic economic alternatives must be built. Director: Mathew Lawrence. common-wealth.org
Popular Radicalism in Post-Industrial England
Place-based qualitative and quantitative research into the lives, values, and political dispositions of voters in post-industrial England. Examines how progressives can build durable political coalitions in communities that have moved toward Reform UK and examines what those communities actually want from politics as opposed to what Westminster assumes they want.
TBP relevance: The empirical foundation for the Makerfield test. Published three weeks before the Makerfield result, this research documents what post-industrial voters want from politics and how progressives can connect with them. The 55/35 Makerfield result is the electoral validation of Common Wealth's analytical findings. Essential context for the Makerfield test analysis.
Who Owns Britain?
A comprehensive examination of how four decades of privatisation have transformed British society across utilities, energy, transport, health and care, and housing and land. Documents the privatisation premium: the compulsory elevated costs to consumers that result from private ownership of essential services, and establishes the case for public ownership as the mechanism for overcoming the higher cost of capital that privatisation generates.
TBP relevance: Provides the ownership evidence base for the community wealth building page's public utility pillar and the Bee Network argument. The privatisation premium framing directly supports the case for municipal energy companies and publicly controlled transport as mechanisms for reducing household extraction rather than as ideological preferences. Connects to the public investment extraction dynamic argument.
Retail Reimagined: How Regional Energy Boards Could Deliver a Fair and Flexible Energy System
Argues that the current supplier-switching model of energy retail is an obstacle to housing decarbonisation, an administrative burden on fuel poverty relief, and a threat to local grid resilience. Proposes regional energy boards as the institutional replacement: publicly accountable bodies setting retail prices at a local level, coordinating demand flexibility, and delivering fuel poverty relief without the coordination failures and cost premiums of the competitive retail market.
TBP relevance: Resolves the North Sea and net zero unresolved flag in the programme. Regional energy boards, operating within the Great British Energy framework, provide a deliverable-on-existing-mandate mechanism for energy devolution that does not require full nationalisation of energy retail and is compatible with the no-new-licences North Sea position. The programme's position: managed transition through regional public boards, not nationalisation of production.
Fixing the Price: How a Single Buyer Model Could Slash UK Electricity Prices and Build Consent for the Clean Power Mission
Proposes a single buyer model for UK wholesale electricity, in which a public entity purchases all generation output at cost-reflective prices and sells to retailers at a regulated price. Argues this would reduce consumer electricity bills significantly by eliminating the marginal price-setting mechanism that currently ties the cost of all electricity to the price of the most expensive generation source, typically gas, regardless of how much renewable energy is available.
TBP relevance: Connects to the fiscal rules argument about productive public investment generating its own fiscal space. Reducing household energy costs through structural market reform rather than subsidy releases disposable income in exactly the post-industrial communities the Makerfield test targets, without requiring current expenditure that would breach the stability rule. Complements the community wealth energy devolution pillar.
Mapping UK Green Planning Architecture
Produced as part of the Green Planning Commission, a multi-year initiative bringing together leading thinkers and policymakers from the UK and the US. Maps the existing institutional landscape of green planning in the UK, identifying gaps, overlaps, and the institutional reforms required to deliver the clean energy and housing targets the government has set without the coordination failures that have characterised previous planning reform attempts.
TBP relevance: The institutional framework within which the social housebuilding programme operates. Green planning architecture is the planning and regulatory environment that determines whether a 100,000-unit annual housebuilding target is deliverable within the existing mandate or requires new institutional structures. Relevant to the Land Acquisition Fund argument and the Mayoral Development Corporation extension proposal.
The Democracy Collaborative
Think-do tank
The Democracy Collaborative
Founded 2000 at the University of Maryland. US-based, international reach. Originator of the Community Wealth Building economic development model and the Preston Model framework. President: Joe Guinan. UK Index launched in collaboration with the Centre for Health and Social Equity at Northumbria University. democracycollaborative.org
UK Index of Systemic Trends
A dashboard charting the health of Britain's political economy across indicators including economic growth, inequality, poverty, financialisation, life expectancy, productivity, environmental degradation, and trust in government. Launched 29 May 2026 at Northumbria University. The central finding is that Britain's economic growth is neither likely nor sufficient for the challenges the future presents, and that the Westminster Consensus across six governments since 1979 has produced structural decline rather than cyclical difficulty. Written by Joe Guinan, Thomas M. Hanna, Neil McInroy, and Howard Reed of Landman Economics.
TBP relevance: The single most important analytical foundation for the programme's economic framework. The nine-percentage-point investment gap, the 4.5x rise in financial assets versus 2x wages, the 53% rise in poverty since 1970, the regional inequality data placing the North East at Slovak levels of output while London matches Switzerland: all cited across the public investment, fiscal rules and community wealth analyses. The Index also provides the critique of growth-chasing fiscal frameworks that the fiscal rules analysis develops, and the Westminster Consensus argument that contextualises why a Burnham programme needs to be structurally different rather than incrementally adjusted from the Reeves settlement.
This reading list will be updated as further relevant research is published. The programme's analytical development is ongoing and the research landscape is active: Common Wealth, the Democracy Collaborative, the New Economics Foundation, IPPR, and the Institute for Fiscal Studies are all producing material relevant to the questions the programme addresses. Updates will prioritise publications that either validate or substantively challenge arguments made across the programme's pages.
Readers wishing to suggest additions should note that inclusion requires the publication to provide empirical evidence or analytical framework that directly bears on the programme's policy positions, not general ideological alignment with its direction.