Register for the PEF conference at the Brunei Theatre , SOAS on 15th May 9.30pm -6pm

In an open letter coordinated by the think-tank Compassion in Politics, academics including PEF Council members Ha-Joon Chang and Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson – authors of the widely read The Spirit Level – warn Starmer that his current approach mimics the “economic orthodoxy that has made this country poorer, less cohesive and more unequal than fifteen years ago.” 

Following the great success of our conference last year , the Progressive Economy Forum and the University of Greenwich Research Institute of Political Economy, Governance, Finance and Accountability bring you Progressive Economics 2023 –a conference of debate and education at a vital moment in the UK to debate the policies to tackle the alarming economic challenges of austerity, inequalities, Brexit, Covid-19, cost-of-living crisis, global supply problems, the war in Ukraine, care crisis and environmental collapse.What are the solutions and how to persuade the policy makers to implement them?

This paper by PEF Council member Ozlem Onaran analyses the political economy of the cost of living crisis in the context of the UK. It presents the long-term trends in the wage share, wealth inequality, labour’s bargaining power, and the real wages in the UK.

Josh Ryan-Collins writes in the Guardian “UK house prices are falling. In the year to February, prices fell by 1.1% to reach their lowest level for over a decade. The drivers are clear: inflation and rising interest rates are combining to put off mortgage borrowers…

“We think too many journalists lack understanding of basic economics or lack
confidence reporting it. This brings a high risk to impartiality. In the period
of this review, it particularly affected debt. Some journalists seem to feel
instinctively that debt is simply bad, full stop, and don’t appear to realise
this can be contested and contestable.”

PEF publishes a new report – The Macroeconomics of Austerity, written by PEF council members Jo Michell, Rob Calvert Jump, and James Meadway with research by Natassia Nascimento.
“Tory austerity ‘has cost UK half a trillion pounds of public spending since 2010’ “

A new blog in Project Syndicate by PEF Council member Robert Skidelsky “With the world increasingly turning away from economic integration and cooperation, the second wave of globalization is threatening to give way to fragmentation and conflict, as the first wave did in 1914. Averting catastrophe requires developing strong political foundations capable of sustaining a stable international order.”

This new report contends that there is a new growth and development story driven by investment and innovation in green technology, boosted by artificial intelligence (AI) – and this is a much more attractive and inclusive story than the dirty and destructive paths followed in the past.

A new book edited by Jerzy Osiatynski and PEF Council member Jan Toporowski Provides the first scholarly account of the criticisms that were made of the Keynes and White Plans at Bretton Woods

PEF Council member Will Hutton writes about the deadly legacy of George Osborne’s austerity

“Keir Starmer’s Labour party may well win the next election. Its leadership have begun to put together a story of where Britain is going wrong, and what Labour could do instead. But without commitments on spending, the party will fail in government.”

“All told, Labour now has a solid economic policy, and one which certainly cannot be characterised as “New Labour”. Its plans for industrial strategy, collective bargaining and workers’ rights are well to the left of anything done by Tony Blair and Brown.”

The PEF report on the so called black hole by Jo Michell and Rob Calvert Jump has had significant coverage in the national media

There has been a flood of articles in the past week on the folly of Brexit . A selection here from Martin Fletcher in the New Statesman, Matthew Parish in the Spectator and David Mitchell in the Guardian plus the Guardian leader

Two compelling videos consider the damage caused to the UK economy so far by Brexit. The Financial Times : The Brexit effect: how leaving the EU hit the UK And from the BBC Ros Atkins looks at the effect of Brexit on the UK economy

In this pamphlet, Stewart Lansley shows how poverty and inequality have once again become deeply institutionalised – and at a growing social, economic and human cost.

Academics David Hope and Julian Limberg show in a study in the Socio-Economic Review that tax cuts increase inequality and do not promote growth

Trussonomics and MMT

The Guardian cites PEF’s paper on the £15 per hour minimum wage