Will Hutton

London

Political economist, author, Observer columnist, President of the Academy of Social Sciences and host of the We Society podcast. All views are my own!

Articles

‘Britain must stop building firms for other ...

2 weeks ago | observer.co.uk | Will Hutton

Britain is beginning an overdue gear change that until now it has only half-heartedly accepted. It is to recognise that the great companies of tomorrow, the key to delivering growth, are not going to emerge spontaneously as creatures of the marketplace, but from an ecosystem of publicly created support. And once they are built, we have to work much harder to keep them here. That’s why a news item last week that didn’t attract much notice really should have.
America is dragging us down. Let’s grab the EU lifeline before it’s too late

1 month ago | observer.co.uk | Will Hutton

When the US economy falters, ours follows. It’s time to stop tripping over Trump’s coat-tails Reactions to Keir Starmer’s modest “reset” of UK-EU relations last week in the rightwing press took hyperbole into new realms of the absurd. It was a “surrender” in which we could “kiss goodbye to Brexit”.
Venture capital: the great hope for UK growth

1 month ago | observer.co.uk | Will Hutton

The US boasts all the world’s $1tn hi-tech companies, each backed by VC. Britain could do the same Britain is sitting upon the alchemist’s growth stone, but doesn’t realise it. The industry of venture capital (VC) is committed to identifying ambitious young companies with the ideas, mission and capacity to grow. It gets behind them not only with successive rounds of funding, but crucially closely engages with them across the gamut of challenges.
Labour’s new look won’t win over progressive voters

1 month ago | observer.co.uk | Will Hutton

Reform is a joke party with joke policies, joke values and a consummate joker as its leader. If it ever won national power planning to implement even part of what it is promising, there would be a collapse in business and financial confidence with devastating economic consequences. Yet, terrifyingly for British politics, it has struck such a chord with a strand of the electorate that it was the decisive winner in the May mayoral, local council and Runcorn byelections.
The death and life of the center-left

1 month ago | lse.ac.uk | Will Hutton |Robert Kuttner

LSE Player is home to the latest films and podcasts from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Here you can watch videos on cutting edge research, find the award-winning LSE IQ podcast, and listen to more than 5,000 public event recordings featuring some of the world’s leading thinkers.
Let’s end this sorry tale of state neglect and make childhood magical again

1 month ago | observer.co.uk | Will Hutton

From child poverty, to unemployment among young people, to a lack of skills or training, the trends are deeply alarming Britain’s neglect of its children is a disgrace – a crisis for too many of our kids but also a condemnation of the absence of a rallying national purpose.
'This unholy alliance between bond markets and forecasters will ruin us'

2 months ago | observer.co.uk | Will Hutton

Economic forecasters and the bond markets are locked in a dysfunctional embrace that increasingly rules our lives. Three million British families will be poorer next year as a result of Rachel Reeves’s £5bn of welfare cuts. The chancellor didn’t dare risk incurring the wrath of the all-powerful bond markets in her spring statement, after the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast that, without such savings, she would run out of financial road in five years.
British Steel must now join the modern economy, not be a prisoner of the old

2 months ago | msn.com | Will Hutton

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British Steel must now join the modern economy, not be a prisoner of the old | Will Hutton

2 months ago | theguardian.com | Will Hutton

The fate of incoming Labour business and industry secretaries seems to be to launch emergency rescue packages for industries that would otherwise face imminent closure. Witness Jonathan Reynolds at last Saturday’s extraordinary parliamentary recall arguing for the legal right to take over the running of British Steel from its Chinese owner, Jingye, in order to save up to 3,500 jobs and Britain’s strategic capacity to make steel.
David Marquand: One of our Great Progressive Thinkers

2 months ago | onlinelibrary.wiley.com | Will Hutton

Professor David Marquand's struggle both intellectually and politically to marry social liberalism with social democracy may have failed in his lifetime. But he was right, and anticipated what must happen. The decades ahead promise to be more propitious to his cause.