The following is a transcript of PEF Council member Will Hutton‘s lecture ‘Change Britain – Stop Brexit’, given on the 9 October 2018 at the Brunei Lecture Theatre, SOAS. He argues:
” We can build a new stakeholder capitalism and a new social contract, reducing poverty, boosting prosperity, and creating genuine opportunity for all young people across the country. Too much of Britain is too poor, too divided, too unproductive, too alienated. It needs to be enfranchised – by a stronger economy and society, and by a better political system.
And all of this will be enhanced by full membership of the EU. The EU solves the trilemma of being able to reconcile democracy, sovereignty and growing integration into global markets. It anchors the rules-based global trading system. It is the global standard setter. Its preferences – for stakeholder capitalism, for the rule of law, for a social contract, for exercising its heft against monopoly, for Enlightenment values – are the vast majority of our preferences.
