It is two years since Robert Peston left the BBC for ITV, but he doesn’t think his release from the corporation’s strict rules on impartiality has made any difference to him. I’m not sure I would agree. Since breaking the Northern Rock story in 2007, the broadcaster has become a kind of celebrity economist, and his delivery style, which swoops between languid and excitably falsetto, used to attract almost as much attention as his words. But while he still clearly enjoys his celebrity, today the 57-year-old seems more politically exercised – almost to the point of anguish – than he did even at the height of the financial crisis. Now ITV’s political editor, he appears to practise little if any self-censorship, swears exuberantly, and comes across as unexpectedly radical.

Had Peston been delivering the budget this week, it would have contained a dramatic announcement on NHS funding. “Because it was overwhelmingly clear from all the evidence that the single biggest determinant of leave’s victory in the referendum was the promise of an extra £350m for the NHS. So I think it’s scandalous that the government hasn’t said: ‘Obviously you want £350m more a week to go to the NHS. And whether or not we get it from the EU, we guarantee that whatever happens we will put that extra £350m a week into the NHS.’ It’s absolutely scandalous that the government has not committed to that.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Peston interviewing Philip Hammond on his Sunday politics programme this month. Photograph: Ken McKay/ITV/REX/Shutterstock

His new book, WTF, is notionally about Brexit, but presents a disturbing analysis of the underlying economic reasons why so many of us voted to leave the EU. With falling living standards, poor productivity, the decline of social mobility and relentless rise of inequality, Peston regards Brexit as neither a cause of nor solution to our grave economic problems. “I’m not saying Britain is finished or anything like that. I’m just pointing out that there are some very significant structural problems that we need to fix, whether or not we leave the European Union.” The current economic malaise, he adds emphatically, “is not a blip. This is the moment we have to stop pussyfooting around in terms of solutions.”

Peston advocates a “wealth tax” – an annual levy of 1% on all net assets greater than £500,000. “Workers have become too powerless,” he goes on, and argues for “new forms of online collectivism” – digital trade union platforms – and the creation of a new ombudsman to regulate the labour market along the lines of the financial services’ Financial Conduct Authority.

“Why isn’t there an equivalent body to make sure that unscrupulous employers don’t treat their staff appallingly? Of course, if you increase the power of workers, there will be company bosses who complain. But the truth is any sensible company boss will realise that the status quo is not sustainable, and if they don’t recognise that the pendulum has swung too far in their favour, we may well end up with a form of political extremism that throws the enormous baby out with the bath water.”

Stalled wages largely explain the collapse of social mobility, which Peston refers to as “the death of progress”. His book is full of depressing statistics about the vanishingly small prospect of disadvantaged Britons today climbing the economic or social ladder, but when I ask if he himself shares the worry that his own children will not enjoy a better life than his, he erupts.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘This is the moment we have to stop pussyfooting around in terms of solutions [for our economic malaise]’ … Peston has been ITV’s political editor since early 2016. Photograph: ITV

“It is fucking mad for middle class people like us to want anything other than a decent life for our children,” he exclaims. “If you’re on shit wages, it’s completely reasonable to want your children to be better off than you are. Completely reasonable. But the notion that we,” and he gestures around his elegant townhouse kitchen, “should want more [for our children] is shocking and appalling. We shouldn’t think in those terms. We’ve actually got to think, maybe we should make some sacrifices and be a bit poorer. Because if we don’t make those sacrifices and become a bit poorer, so that those lower down the scale have better lives, we may end up facing utter chaos.”

Is he worried that the country’s economic woes are leading us towards the threat of civil unrest? “Yes – or certainly just to the rise of politicians who don’t believe in our democracy. I think that’s a genuine risk. I am genuinely fearful for the fabric of what we think of as this nation, if we don’t address these problems.” In his lifetime is this threat unprecedented? “Yes, of course it is. This is the most scary time since the second world war.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Peston’s wife, the novelist Siân Busby, died in 2012. Photograph: David Levenson/Getty Images

The introduction of a universal basic income is, he believes, inevitable. This drastic reinvention of the welfare state would see the government pay every single citizen, irrespective of their wealth or employment status, a regular cash sum calculated to cover all their basic needs. The only country in the world to experiment with the policy so far is Finland, but Peston sounds almost nonchalantly matter of fact when he predicts, as if stating the obvious: “We will end up with it. We just have to reconcile ourselves to no growth. The natural tendency of the economy at the moment is to widen income and wealth disparities and in those circumstances, and particularly when you layer on top of that the rise of robots and artificial intelligence, it is very, very difficult to think of any alternative but guaranteeing some kind of universal basic income.” Does he assume this will become Labour party policy in the foreseeable future? “Yeah.”

Robert Peston: ‘People said I looked tense, but it had nothing to do with the financial crisis’ Read more

He puts Labour’s success in the election earlier this year down to voters’ sense that it already offered the best hope for avoiding a hard Brexit, and assumes that before long the party will make this its explicit offer to the electorate. “Yeah , totally. I’m very clear that that’s where Jeremy Corbyn will end up.” This would be a stunning volte-face for a politician who has always been at best ambivalent about the single market. “I think this is the inescapable logic. You can see it in the way Labour has shifted its position over the last six to nine months, from being very wary of the single market to now broadly being in favour of staying in the single market.” But only for a transitional period, I point out. “I think it’s becoming clearer that Labour will end up, as a minimum, signed up to a position where we are a bit like Norway.” In other words, a permanent member of the single market. “But it’s altogether conceivable that they end up being a party that says we have to have another vote on this. They will arrive undoubtedly at one or other of those positions.”

Peston is critical of Corbyn’s view that “the state can solve everything”, but isn’t at all surprised by his popularity. “Younger people think, ‘Fuck it, nobody’s running this place for me. And capitalism is shit, it’s doing nothing for me because when am I ever going to get any capital?’ So, it’s not surprising in those circumstances that they then say, ‘We want a public sector, state-based solution of the sort that Jeremy Corbyn is offering’.”

Does he assume Corbyn will become prime minister? “I think it is highly likely. A very strong probability. Because he has complete control over the Labour party now, and the Tories are in genuine disarray.”

He cannot recall any government in such a state of perpetual crisis. May’s position is only safe for now “because there is no unifying candidate to replace her. If the Tory party could get over its civil war about Brexit then Amber Rudd and Ruth Davidson are very impressive politicians and they would both give Labour a run for its money.” But as both are Remainers, neither could lead the party “until the whole Brexit thing is sorted out. Which is why I think May is secure.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Peston’s father Maurice rose from working class roots to become professor of economics at Queen Mary College London. Photograph: Central Press/Getty Images

He does, however, think it is quite possible that May will put herself out of her own misery and quit.

“She has a very strong sense of duty, I’m told by all her friends, and that’s what keeps her there. But you do wonder if at some point she just decides, in collaboration with her husband, that she’s had enough, and the party seems to be deeply unappreciative of her trials. So I think her fate is in her own hands.”

Peston himself, for all his dismay about the nation’s plight, remains indefatigable and upbeat. Only 12 years ago he was a hack on the Financial Times, little known outside City circles, but after joining the BBC as business editor in 2005 he became the face of the financial crisis. His popular persona straddles a laddish love of Arsenal FC and a somewhat dandyish taste in fashion, and his enthusiasm for social media is, if not quite in Piers Morgan’s league, inexhaustible enough to have earned him in excess of 800,000 followers. Even his hair has a spoof Twitter account. A lot of viewers find his rather showy broadcast style unbearable, and in Peston’s own bathroom hangs a cartoon of a man hiding behind a sofa, fingers jammed in his ears, gesturing towards a telly and wailing ‘Tell me when Robert Peston’s finished’. But I suspect that as long as people are talking about him, he will always be happy.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Peston with his new partner, Evening Standard journalist Charlotte Edwardes. Photograph: Dave Benett/Getty Images

He is, however, emerging from a dark chapter of private grief. In 2012 his wife the author Siân Busby, died of lung cancer, leaving Peston to raise their 15-year-old son alone. Last year he lost his father too – Maurice Peston, the distinguished academic born into working-class poverty in Hackney who ascended to the House of Lords. But Peston’s new partner, the Evening Standard journalist Charlotte Edwardes, lives just round the corner from him in Camden, and he rather bashfully acknowledges that they are in love. He also adores presenting his weekly politics show, Peston on Sunday, which still trails Andrew Marr’s programme in the ratings, but I get the impression Peston enjoys the role of audacious pretender to his rather grander rival.



He doesn’t think many politicians can be enjoying their jobs much, though. “Parliament has become such a depressing place to go. These almost abusive conversations between MPs on what kind of Brexit we want are really nasty. And then you’ve got this great dark cloud hanging over parliament because of all these sexual harassment allegations. It’s hideous.” I wonder if men in parliament are privately grumbling to Peston about witch-hunts.

“I’d say there are some men in parliament who are in total denial about how badly they’ve behaved, and now say ludicrous things to me like, ‘It’s now impossible to take a young woman out for a drink’.” What does he say to them? “Don’t be ridiculous, you’re being an arse.” He has heard rumours of more big names to come out – revelations that would be more scandalising than anything we’ve heard so far. Does he give the rumours much weight? He looks bleak. “In some cases, yeah.”

If Peston sounds angry with the state of British politics, this may be in part because he is also angry with himself. I can detect a slight tendency for self-flagellation, but do not doubt the sincerity of his self-recrimination. He did not see Brexit coming, he admits, for reasons that make him ashamed.

“I have a sort of self-image to do with an idea that because I went to the local state school, I was not in a sort of bubble of the privately educated privileged – or indeed in a bubble of the privileged in any sense – and that I was somehow more connected to people in this country than people who would have gone to Eton or Westminster or wherever. But among the pretty extensive circle of friends and family, not a single person that I could identify voted for Brexit. It was that bubble, that privileged ghetto – feeling completely disconnected from more than half of the people – that made me feel very ashamed. My whole self-image was rather challenged by the realisation that the only people I mixed with were broadly, sort of, metrosexual and liberal, for whom admitting you were going to vote for Brexit was the equivalent of farting in public. I just thought, ‘Christ that’s terrible, terrible’.”

WTF is published by Hodder & Stoughton. To order a copy for £17.00 (RRP £20), visit bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 3336846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.

Robert Peston will be in conversation with Hugh Muir at a Guardian Live event at Islington Assembly Hall, London, N1 2UD to discuss WTF on 27 November. For tickets, visit gu.com/live-peston.