Festival of Economics: The new economics of the left

The election in 2024 of the first Labour government in a generation was followed by higher spending, increases in taxation and a loosening of fiscal rules. Workers rights were strengthened, parts of the rail system were nationalised and a state-owned energy company, GB Energy, created. Despite this, the government has lost support on the left while the Greens have surged under the leadership of Zack Polanski. Politicians, commentators and thinktanks on the left have made proposals for how a social democratic government could go further on economic policy, despite the constraints imposed by high interest rates and public debt. This panel brings together leading commentators to discuss whether a coherent economic strategy of the left is possible, the barriers to implementing such a strategy, and the likely economic consequences — for growth, living standards and inequality — of the choices the government has made and those it has yet to face. Tickets are now available via the Festival of Economics website. – Speakers: Eshe Nelson (The New York Times) A business and economics reporter for The New York Times in London. Before joining The New York Times, she was a global economics and markets reporter for Quartz and a currency and bond markets reporter for Bloomberg News. In 2020, she completed the Knight-Bagehot Fellowship in Economics and Business Journalism at Columbia University. Adrienne Buller (The BREAK-DOWN) The Founding Editor of The BREAK—DOWN, a new media initiative focused on the political economy of climate and ecological crisis. She is the author, with Mathew Lawrence, of Owning the Future (Verso, 2022) and The Value of a Whale (Manchester University Press, 2022), which won the 2024 Eric Zencey Prize in Ecological Economics. She is an Associate Fellow at Common Wealth. David Klemperer (RENEWAL) Co-editor of RENEWAL: A Journal of Social Democracy, and a researcher within the Institute for Policy Research at the University of Bath. He specialises in political economy, the history of social democracy and constitutional reform, and has held previous research roles at the Constitution Society and Institute for Government (IfG). James Meadway (Verdant Thinking) Director of Verdant Thinking, a progressive think tank. He was formerly a political advisor to Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, and Chief Economist at the New Economics Foundation. He has taught in economics at SOAS, Cambridge, Sussex and City Universities, and has published widely on economic policy and theory in the New Statesman, Guardian, Jacobin, Tribune, and Novara. – Artwork by Alys Jones Illustration.