The 2021 Budget – comment by PEF Director James Meadway

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…