This is a Summary of PEF activity since 2018
5 public lectures , 11 workshops , 3 webinars, 8 launches of books or papers , 4 annual conferences , 7 Party Conference meetings , 6 Shadow team seminars , 210 blogs, 25 published papers , i book of essays
Some of the papers published
| The Dangerous Fiction of the Fiscal Black Hole | Jo Michell | Rob Calvert Jump |
| The Case for a £15/hour Minimum Wage | James Meadway | Howard Reed |
| Reviewing the TCA: How to Salvage Something from the Wreckage of Brexit | Peter Holmes | |
| Bidenomics: the economic strategy of the Joe Biden administration | James Meadway | |
| Can the Bank of England Do It? The scope and operations of the Bank of England’s monetary policy | Jan Toporowski | Jo Michell |
| From false multipliers to ‘nonsense output-gaps | Geoff Tiley | |
| How to achieve shorter working hours | Robert Skidelsky | |
| Basic Income – piloting a transformative policy | Guy Standing | |
| Progressive care | Sue Himmelweit | |
| Taking forward a National Investment Bank | Stephany Griffith-Jones | Peter Rice |
| The Great Brexit Wrench | Jeremy Smith | |
| Jubilee 2022 : Defending free tuition | Danny Dorling | Michael Davies |
| J M Keynes, Industrial Strategy and the Road not Taken | Sue Konzelmann | |
| 10 years from the crash: causes, consequences , the way forward | Patrick Allen, Ann PettiforJohn Weeks, Johnna Montgomery, | Stephany-Griffith-JonesMichael Davies |
A great achievement was PEF’s first annual conference, the 2022 Progressive Economics Conference at Greenwich University with 80 speakers, 26 events and 500 delegates.
Rachel Reeves and Andy Burnham spoke at the PEF 2021 event at the Labour Party Conference at Brighton. the Degrowth webinar with Jason Hickell was very well attended
The report by Jo Michell and Rob Jump on the black hole had 14000 page views on PEF’s website and 27000 twitter hits
Influence on Policy
From 2018 to 2019 PEF worked closely with John McDonnell and his office. John was a regular speaker at PEF events. Two papers were sponsored at his suggestion – the Basic Income Pilot by Guy Standing and How to Achieve Shorter Working Hours by Robert Skidelsky. . Some events were jointly organised eg on macro prudential policy.
Some PEF ideas were in the 2019 manifesto
PEF maintained a strong focus opposing austerity and believes it helped shift the debate towards a new consensus that austerity was misguided and damaging.
From 2020, PEF made close links with the new shadow team, organising 6 seminars for shadow ministers and their advisors. Anneliese Dodds, Rachel Reeves, Ed Miliband have attended PEF council meetings by Zoom. Rachel Reeves now Shadow Chancellor , spoke at our Brighton fringe event in 2021 . Ed Miliband spoke at the PEF June 2022 Conference. Our views have been sought on a range of policy issues.
