Patrick Allen

Chair and Founder of PEF

 

Patrick Allen is the founder, chair  and principal funder of  the Progressive Economy Forum. He is also a solicitor and the Senior Partner of Hodge Jones & Allen  (HJA), a law firm which he founded  in  1977. HJA began with a radical agenda to enable clients to use the law to assert and defend their rights  and to correct miscarriages of justice, often   against powerful opponents such as the police and the state .   The firm, still true to its founding ethos,   today has 230 staff and operates from modern premises in Euston which also provides offices and meeting rooms for PEF.

Alongside his  successful career in the law, Patrick has a long-standing interest in macroeconomic policy and decided to create  the Progressive Economy Form in 2018  in reaction to the policies of neoliberalism,  especially  the austerity introduced in the UK from  2010,  and the failure of opposition strategies to defeat them.

Austerity, with its massive cuts to public services, alongside  outsourcing and privatisation,  has severely undermined the welfare state and the NHS , increased poverty, insecurity and inequality and undermined public health.  The purpose of PEF is bring together the finest progressive economists and like-minded academics in the country to join with progressive politicians  to show the failure of neoliberalism,  the futility  of austerity and provide credible,  Keynesian-inspired policies to  achieve a stable, equitable , green, sustainable  economy free of poverty .