This event has now passed. You can watch the video recording above or on our YouTube channel.
The last decade in the UK has been extraordinary. Professor Simon Wren-Lewis, Emeritus Professor of Economics at Oxford University and member of the PEF Council, posits that it has been shaped by three big lies in which the mainstream media were complicit.
The first was austerity, where most of the media ignored mainstream economics and pushed the nonsensical idea that we should reduce the deficit in the middle of a recession. The second was the 2015 election, where the slowest recovery for centuries and unprecedented falling real wages were sold as a strong economy. The third was Brexit, where one part of the media acted as propagandists and the other part balanced truth with lies.
In this special public lecture, hosted by the Progressive Economy Forum, Professor Wren-Lewis explored the phenomena behind these lies, building on the themes in his most recent book The Lies We Were Told (Bristol University Press). His argument is that much can by explained by the idea of ‘neoliberal overreach’: attempts to pursue neoliberal goals that are no longer popular by deceiving the public, e.g. by lying about the need to eliminate the deficit and/or reduce immigration.
Simon’s lecture was followed by comment from Maya Goodfellow, researcher, writer for the Guardian and author of the upcoming book Hostile Environment (Verso); Ann Pettifor, member of the PEF Council and Director of PRIME – Policy Research in Macroeconomics -and Professor Aeron Davis, Deputy Head of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths University of London and author of Reckless Opportunists (Manchester University Press).
The lecture was introduced and chaired by Patrick Allen, Chair and founder of PEF, who argued that Simon Wren-Lewis’ writing has been indispensable in debunking austerity economics and pursuing economic justice.
View a full album of photos from the event on Flickr here. Banner image: wandererwandering / Flickr.