Economist explains why Britain is poor

day in day out we get up and we think what changes small they don't need to be radical they need to be right that will give us higher growth and low inequality do that every single day do it for a decade and then you're living in a better Britain to Austin Bell chief executive of the resolution Foundation hello how are you I'm very well I'm mainly cold but I'm glad to be here hopefully that coffee will do a job for warming you up it's doing the job um yes very grateful to have you here we're going to be talking about the UK economy today some of the structural causes perhaps that have led us to this position but before we get there perhaps you could just tell us who you are and what you do yeah so I'm philson Bell I'm the chief executive of the resolution Foundation we're a economic research charity that particularly focuses on raising the living standards of families on low and middle incomes okay and if we were to well let's say before we get to the the here and now and the situation we find ourselves in if we wanted to put some context on it and try and figure out how we got here where do you think we need to go back to well that is a good um uh question we'll go 1066 no uh them right let's go I'll say the big picture that people need to understand about the British economies that we're living with the results of two different decades so we're living with the uh the high inequality that the 1980s gave us the um uh when earnings spread out we saw a big increase in unemployment for those on lowest incomes but those at the top of the middle did really well in the 1980s and although inequality everyone says it's always getting worse broadly that's not true broadly we're just living with the inequality of the 1980s that's given us a high level of inequality they're the highest of any major economy in Europe and then on top of that we've got the slow growth of the 2010s the stagnation of the 2010s and it's the two together that Define the big picture of Britain in the 2020s before the cost of living crisis came on and smacked Us in the face I'd like to we'll get we'll talk about the economy more but it's just interesting for me because um both that those two periods are talking about the 80s and the 2010s those economic circumstances um significantly as they were that both the conservative party actually in both periods was able to build a successful auditorial Coalition wasn't it and that's quite revealing that you know you're talking about um you know let's say stagnant real term wages or widening inequality that regardless of that perhaps because of quirks of the electoral system political parties were actually still able to remain in power despite people being worse off in some instances yeah I mean so in the 1980s I think I answered your question more ways with the first answer which is um inequality went up in the 1980s but lots of people also got better off yeah right so it's not surprising Margaret that she went on winning general elections in 1980s saw quite a lot of economic change but the higher productivity and higher wage growth particularly for higher earners and people like that and they're very conservative through several uh general elections and actually if you look at you know the 1980s Legacy problem is what is the inequality problem not the stagnation problem but if you look at the 80s public opinion anxiety about inequality doesn't actually rise with the inequality going up right the anxiety about inequality happens actually after 2010. it's when the stagnation turns up the people start worrying about inequality so to some degree unless you are unlucky and remember in the places that had the concentrated pain in the 80s so the difference between now and then is specifically the pain in the 80s is very concentrated in certain places big de-industrialization you've kind of your Port closed your mind your big Factory closed and decimated the local economy that was the defining feature but you know the conservatives are popular in those places right but there wasn't enough of those places to lose them general elections what's happened since 2010 is people were saying well hold on maybe I could live with the high inequality when everybody was getting better off or at least getting a bit better off but if now lots of us aren't getting better off well maybe I'm not so happy with seeing some people absolutely Reiki in and that's when you see so it's post it's post a financial crisis you see concern about inequality taking off which is why I think focusing on the interaction of the two is so important so it's inequality but in and of itself obviously not great stagnant wages in and of itself again not great but it's the combination of the two that are sort of yeah and exactly and like some people would say um some people don't care about the inequality anyway right but so I'm not one of those people but some people say they don't care about the inequality I think even for those people I would hope they did do care about the stagnation and as you're saying when the two interact then you get really bad outcomes and that's where we are today yeah I mean the situation we find ourselves in currently it is bad isn't it and I'm going to illustrate that by taking a look at a couple of resolution Foundation headlines all the best headlines always always the best from the resolution foundation so a couple that I found out uh before coming down to chat to you average real earnings have fallen by seven percent since a year ago and it's predicted that earnings will take four or five years to recover and then about a quarter of people in a survey that you guys did said that they couldn't afford regular savings of 10 Pounds a month couldn't afford to spend small sums on themselves couldn't afford to replace electrical goods and couldn't afford to switch on the heating when needed more than 10 of respondents said that at times over the previous 30 days they'd not eaten when hungry because they didn't have money for food I mean this is meant to be one of the richest economies in the world in reality is that still the case or is this is this just like the sharp end of what you were talking about there in that that widening inequality between the top and the bottom um so that's a big question so um yeah we shouldn't get totally pessimistic in the sense that you're still very lucky to be born in Britain on places you could be born around the world this is still a very good place to live your average incomes are still much higher than the vast majority of the world and obviously much higher than all of human history right so we don't you know if you're if you believe in any you know lifestyle choices you know ability to not just fit to conform to a particular way of living then this is a great time to be alive so there's lots of good things that we shouldn't forget those um but given how rich the country is the kind of um results we see from surveys that you've read out are pretty horrendous and if we I think it is worth saying those are obviously stats lots of people probably know versions of that because all of us are struggling paying our energy even if you're pretty middle income you're probably struggling with your energy bill this year I think from that survey you were talking about which we did of 10 000 people back in the Autumn they um the food bit actually stands out quite a lot and the News discussion has been very much on the energy process right and that's the big thing doing the big inflation up pushing this year and last year the um food part of this is a big deal and we and it's a particularly a big deal for poorer households where food is a much bigger part of what they spend on and yeah for the survey the thing I took away was the food insecurity bit the number of people who either are eating fewer meals or smaller meals or less healthy meals because of their financial constraints has gone up a lot in the last year and that is really staggering they're the um now on your bigger question which is why is a rich country struggling broadly which is a good question for us all to be focused on then I think it is this interaction between the slow growth that's mean meant that we have got poorer relative to the countries we consider ourselves comparable to maybe we shouldn't but we do to France Germany the Netherlands some people America are the ones that are more the optimistic end um but like Australia Canada uh those are the countries I think there's a reasonable comparisons those are the ones I think most punters have in their heads is like okay we're a bit like that the slow growth of the last uh 15 years the um so not just after 2010 but before 2010 big financial crisis people remember when I was busy nationalizing banks in the treasury the um uh they that slower growth means that on average we're a lot poorer than those countries now and then when you take into account that we're more unequal than all the ones I mentioned except for the US which is like an inequality basket case so let's forget them but all the others were more unequal once we take that into account poorer households in Britain are far poorer than poor households in France Germany right and that's the key problem and then when you have a costly living crisis driven by the cost of Essentials so energy food which are imported so we can't we don't set the price as a global price for the more at least a European price for Energy so we've got to pay it whatever then poor households are going to really struggle and they're going to struggle particularly in the UK because they're so much poorer than their equivalents in France and Germany that's really interesting because you you're talking about these economies these countries that we kind of view as peer countries right almost and I don't know whether it's perhaps because of hit shared history whether it's because of European history whether it's because of we talk about G7 G20 Nations with if you were to look without those let's say Rose tinted glasses across should we say Europe or maybe the rest of the world where do you think a good or a close comparison can be found well so in terms of our actual income levels we're now kind of you know not at the very top of European countries but not in the poorer half so we're like I'll put upper middle uh kind of things I think those are the right countries to compare ourselves to because they're the ones we have been similar to in the past they're the ones that have similar similar kind of strong institutions well-developed States rule of law and all the rest we're not they're not kind of ones that are in a fast catch-up phase that should have lots of growth Eastern Europe for example they um but they're also not ones that are like right at the global Frontier at the US for example or or even like Norway where you've got to shed loads of oil to do it right so they're the good I think they are the right but they are all ahead of us the doubt the like pessimistic reading of that is oh God we've fallen behind all these countries so I think that the positive reading of that is there's lots of catch up to be done right so can we do better but we don't actually need to be like the best in the world we just need to get a bit more like those ones and that is definitely doable uh and is a reason for relative optimism I would say but the um yeah but I don't think we should you know we shouldn't I think we should like rule out seeing ourselves as comparable to those countries because we had ketchup before like you go to the 1990s Britain is catching up Britain 1990s through to the mid-2000s Britain is catching up with those economies after like the long decline phase the um so we can do it again so we're kind of a sort of cold maybe a bit more miserable Italy perhaps well we're not we're a bit richer than Italy but I think Italy is a good one to think about because well Italy it's not just colder but we don't have a village we don't have the food we have some nice food but yeah and the weather we definitely don't have um the uh the commercial Italy I think is relevant less because of the economies are similar because they're not that similar really the um the similarity is that what Italy shows is if you have a phase of relative decline which we are definitely in and one of the things that's at last kind of trickle through is it's been clear Britain's in a phase of relative decline for quite a while but basically everyone's been in denial the denial is over people have now got okay this isn't like this is not what good looks like uh we need to sort this out they may or may not have an answer to that but I think that is good Italy shows though that there's nothing automatic about getting out of your relative decline phase and in particular it shows that you can get a talk remember you go to the 1980s right in America everyone's writing these hilarious articles saying whoa whoa whoa these Italians they haven't just got pizza they have now got the future of capitalism and they're going to overtake us remember Italy got richer than Britain then right they were like Italy is going to overtake America because of their genius small companies that are the new way of doing capitalism it's like some kind of like Tech Guru from the west coast of California now right so they they're all writing those articles these Italians are coming for us they're going to get really rich Italy hasn't grown since broadly or all nonsense no growth now they're not quite none but basically no growth like Italy is a like 25-year disaster um now some of those specific circumstances so let's not learn from those but what we could learn from is there is a dangerous Loop you can get in which is bad economics bad politics chaotic governments oscillating between mad populists and then bringing in some technocrats so you can't have any Democratic legitimacy back to some mad populists back to some technocrats no one ever gets anything done uh the guy that becomes the prime minister is like possibly some kind of porn star no one really knows that isn't what uh that isn't what good like politics and economics looks like and you definitely need to avoid those Doom Loops so you mentioned a couple of things there catch up sort this out and I once we'll come to that in a moment but just interestingly those that Loop you're talking about there we find ourselves in a situation now where the public is almost kind of caught between the bank of England right we have to hit a two percent inflation figure and then the fiscal rules the government's own self-imposed fiscal rules the choices that they're making in terms of their policy and we've got the economy Contracting the bank's trying to put the brakes on the big way and equally the student government isn't really you know they're not trying to earn it's it's like the whole thing is just squeezing around do you think that's the same case of we're sort of Trapped in a negative feedback loop where things are getting worse and worse or um so I don't think that is this it's not the same as the Italian situation where you've got um so Enterprise there's a related issue so in the Italian situation you've got this politics economics Doom Loop going on for like 20 years the um uh Italy today in so far as it's living with a problem like that is that it does have higher levels of public debt and it's not because Italians have been borrowing shed loads in the recent past where it's because of this it's because of debt they pulled up in the 1990s it's like a previous problem and then once you get in that situation being in it is harder to escape from them not being in it okay and it makes everything else harder today even though nobody recently did anything wrong right so I think people don't pay enough attention to that like you can make a mistake 25 years ago and be living with the consequences to some degree and so I think that is worth pondering although it's quite a worthy uh point in terms of today and what's going on so the country that's struggling with the legacy of that high inequality and low growth is obviously them being hit by a cost of living crisis which is being mainly driven by in the short term I'll come back to second but it's mainly being driven by uh Rising costs of imports basically energy food Goods because the Yanks just keep buying everything like there is no piece of electronic equipment Sports kit or like dodgy musical instrument you might learn that the Yanks are not buying in great truths is an idea there's definitely yes generally true that by anything they're sold for Chinese but uh it's particularly true in the last three years the Yanks are wearing everything so Global prices for everything have gone up right and it's complicated global trade patterns and the rest and alongside all the common Supply chains but like big picture the Americans kept buying stuff so we had to pay more for it as well the um now that makes us poorer as a country the stuff we import is more expensive but the stuff we export hasn't got more expensive relatively so we're poorer and really what we're doing as a country is having a row about who gets poorer and how and when so like should the government borrow which they are doing to give us all discounts off our Energy bill today that's a rare about whether we get poorer today or tomorrow so we get poorer we get bit supporters Bill payers today and we get poorer tomorrow as taxpayers that's what we're doing or if you think about um public sector strikes that's really a debate about whether we get poor as a country by concentrating the pain on some public sector workers or sharing the Pain by taxpayers or um I mean generally wage negotiations are basically like do we get poorer because profits go down or do we get poorer because workers get poorer now we're getting so much poorer that both those things are happening but the relative balance between them is why you're getting strikes and Industrial action and people being angry with their employers and that is that is the defining kind of political economy of the right now is just happening to a country that has this Legacy so that's the situation let's talk catch up let's talk sorting this out I mean obviously you'll work the resolution we should do that yeah we should we should deck this out should definitely do that plan to pull your finger out Brian yes exactly um your ideas the ideas that you advocate for the ones that will help lower and middle earners what would you like to see or would you think is a potential path for us to navigating this crisis um right so um I think the first thing to say is so right now the most important thing is to make sure that when we're making those choices about how we get poorer who gets poorer that we basically protect those on the lowest income from that because the nature of the crisis focused on Essentials heating your home being able to eat like we're a rich country that can't be leading to destitution so that's the most important thing the government's done some good things in that um space in April the benefits will be going up by 10 if you'd said a conservative government would be doing that on average you wouldn't have thought that would happen it is happening and they're focusing next year's Energy bill support on poorer households that's the 900 pounds cost of living payments that anyone on means tested benefits will be getting those are both big deals and are the right thing to be doing broadly they um you don't want to be poor and not getting benefits because you get zero of anything I just said but um uh but you know there are reasons why that's harder so I think generally we should think that's a good thing to be doing we need more of that as we are going forward the um and obviously we're hoping we get lucky in a lot of these problems disappear and there is some good news on wholesale Energy prices falling in Europe in particular by July those will feed through into lower prices for you and me so that's very good that's doing much harder than they were so don't get too perky they'll still be like twice what you were used to paying in 2020 2021 but they won't be five times or whatever okay so that's the good news NG builds maybe 2 200 not 1 100 like we're used to but not 3 000 like they're going to be in April to July so some good news to come do the right policy support people in hard times um and all the rest then there's that and in some ways that's actually quite easy like those are the those are like the textbook answers when this problem happens then the question is what are we trying to achieve in the longer term so my answers would be one it's time the country got serious about what it's trying to achieve and what we're trying to do is what we should be trying to do anyway is we've got to get growth up we've got inequality down and we need to stop pretending those things are intention every now and again a politician gives a speech which goes along the lines of there's two versions of it there's one version which is um everyone's got too focused on um inequality these days uh um and actually all we need to do is get growth up and there's no problem with this inequality thing and if we try and focusing in a quarter actually that's harming the growth thing I hear that all the time but actually I hear and that's generally by people on the right of the political spectrum and on the left you're more likely to get arguments that who needs this growth anyway or it's impossible to get or it's impossible to get without damaging our wider environmental equation now clearly there are big constraints or the kind of growth we want from that but um I think it's a dangerous argument and knowledge because it tends to include people saying things like um there's no point getting growth because it won't feed through to ordinary people's living standards to which I say to them the the reason no one's wages have gone up for 15 years is because there has been no productivity growth like it's not anything else it's not because inequality went up it's because we haven't had any productivity growth and that is the ultimate driver of wage growth and that is why everybody is poor right so I think everybody should focus on both growth and inequality there is no evidence of big strong trade-offs between the two that constrain what we're trying to achieve um now it's hard to do those things like politicians Don't Like Houses being built because lots of punters Don't Like Houses being built people don't like putting up taxes because people don't like paying taxes so no I don't anyone should be naive about it but it is definitely possible to see a path if we're serious about doing those two things and those are our clear objectives um to doing better than we're doing mainly what I'm saying earlier because catch-up's possible we can catch up with countries that are faster growing than us that have higher incomes than us that don't look that different and we can catch up with them in terms of being more equal because they're all more equal than us as well and I'll give you like a sense of the prize so if we had the same uh average incomes and the same inequality as five countries we think of ourselves as being pretty similar to so like and France Germany the Netherlands Australia and Canada right these are yeah to like not Nirvana's not Utopias but like plausible countries a bit like us and we had the same as them then the typical Brit would be household would be eight thousand eight hundred pounds better off it's not 80 quid it's not it's not like 800 quid it's 8 800 pounds then you might be able to pay your energy bill when bad stuff happens so that is the size of the prize it's possible other countries have done it and they're not like completely different to us and it's huge let's get half of that I'll be pretty happy you will be yeah I mean we put that number on it it's um it's quite extraordinary really to put it in those kind of terms I just this is a bit of an aside I don't know if you've um if you've read the great level of by Walter scheidel who he talks about it's a very perky story yeah really if anyone wants anyone wants to be anyone wants to be lifted up then this is the book for you well you better so he kind of argues basically that the only way to the only proven way in history to reduce inequality is either Mass mobilization Warfare like horrific plagues so like the black death Etc violent revolution and I think the other one is like total collapse of the state I'm assuming you don't ascribe to those ideas well I'd like to avoid those four and those are not because because although some people sometimes say that and say like oh we should just do one of those and I'm like you may have got to the more equal place at the end but a lot of people died in the intervening period and it wasn't very fun to be living through it even if like later it was a bit better so this is so like I mean he's clearly right if you look at like when do countries um become fairer because they have a more fair they have a fair attack system it does tend to happen after big Wars and the reason that happens is basically because arguments about shared sacrifice we've got to achieve this thing but we'll only achieve this thing if we all do it together get put up in lights and then time that feeds into your tax system so like often not that didn't actually happen in during the first world war but it happened after the first world war and remember that's for me like a lot of the landed gentry in Britain because the wealth inequality in Britain despite what everyone always says actually has been basically fell all the way from the Victorian era to the 1980s and it happens basically because we're like the landed gentry is dying in the trenches in quite large numbers we've got quite a lot of inheritance tax uh going on for them after the um uh war and then you built some houses and stuff after second world war and other things happened but but in the sense that the big stuff does tend to be associated with those large things the um but our relative decline in the last 15 years wasn't associated with some massive war I mean we're talking about Economic Policy good bank regulation and lots of other choices I don't I don't ascribe to the the only way to make Eddie progress like um is to do a war or a plague um and I'm not sure it's that useful to policy makers so maybe don't read that book actually um but um so we can definitely make some progress without needing like violent revolutions would be my answer and also one thing I say I was I was doing a thing the other day I talked from um uh a live talk thing and someone put their hand and said like isn't the real problem that nothing's radical enough right people say it's all the time where's the radicalism now my view is there's lots of big radical things that need doing but she um the woman that was asking this question it was basically radical for its own sex which I said to her [Music] um it may be that you want to ask whether the answer is radical enough but how about the first question is is it right like is it actually a good idea is it like is it like vaguely based on an understanding of the nature of our country and the nature of the economic forces and the constraints posed by the global economy because is it radical enough is basically the question that Liz truss asked there and that went very well uh for us also pure radicalism is not the exam question it's is it right then you can plausibly ask is it big enough to move the dial without us having a war or a revolution and my answer is there is stuff that we can do but we shouldn't pretend that it's like one lever so I had more push back on like the only the only like single things that make a huge difference of these catastrophes but lots of doing the right thing year after year because you know you're focused on getting growth up and getting illegal down will make a difference it's kind of that one percent argument right uh Aggregates over time so to make this um expressly political then I would say you know over the last few decades anyway the the sort of the political discourse in this country has focused around how the conservatives are competent economically they can be trusted they're going to um reduce the deficit they're going to keep house prices buoyant and a lot of uh measuring around election time is how the labor party can't be trusted to do those things um you mentioned this trust just then so it seems like an app time to discuss whether you think those credentials well whether they're actually real or not maybe there was just it was just a perception before but do you think the arguments can still be made with the conservative party in its current iteration and the labor party too um I mean you can ask the British public that because there's surveys published every week on uh their views on relative economic competence I mean the first thing to be said is the British Public's current view is that there's not a lot of competence around full stop from anybody uh the um that's the dominant I'd say that's the dominant kind of political mood so then we're into like small differences basically not without justification as well it turns out the British public are my basic General view is you should your starting point should be the British public are more right than everybody asserts that's generally my general view about almost everything actually it's true in general terms and it's true specifically in elections where everyone's like oh the idiots like didn't know what they were voting for or they were tricked by the evil Media or like my basic view is the British public basically knows it knows what the big picture of an election is about whether it's a referendum or it's an election and basically gets what it moves for broadly but that's like you know some people think that's hopelessly naive and there's actually a conspiracy out there to fool the British public um so that's the big picture on the specifics yeah I mean the British public clearly have watched the Autumn and decided that wasn't a good idea and you can clearly see the Damage Done to the conservative party brand personally I am very very someone that professionally Works in this area very glad and actually as a Brit very glad things have calmed down the Autumn was a disaster for all of us collectively um slightly Fed Up having like Americans bring me up and be like is it all okay is it all okay yeah and like you know you lot are like we're you know we knew you're a bit rubbish after suitors but is everyone okay over in London Town now so I've definitely had enough of that but that might be just like personal preference but I think the punters are also like had enough of like mad politics and token so and that's obviously been calmed down and we basically semi got a contest between a new conservative prime minister saying I'm gonna calm it down and just get some stuff done half inflation not let the debts rise have somebody able to go into hospital at some point uh versus a labor leader who's also messages like I'm not that Jeremy Corbin guy I'm like Carmen sensible I'm also not listro wouldn't you like me look how good so that is what we're going to be and the question is can't reaching to like undo the brand damage to the concerted party um and then slightly chemical storm will get people to be vaguely enthusiastic about him over the course of what's going to probably feel like quite a long two years I mean you know even now people are like every week are writing a piece being like the long election campaign started where people want that like a bullet in the head I mean two years of someone that's like had to do some of that professionally over the years two years is a very long election campaign like so I prefer the six week option I think so I think I would as well it's I think it's I think that's telling though because particularly I mean you brexit perhaps maybe it's before that as well British politics has kind of felt as if it's in a state of Perma crisis you know just one one thing after another afternoon some of these things are going to be serious brexit the pandemic the war in Ukraine but I think you're right as a as a voter as just a consumer of the news you kind of just all of this to piss off and just I just want to have my cornflakes and not hear about how interest rates are going through the roof and if you're if you do take that sort of technocratic managerial approach to politics and you kind of go actually I'm just not going to go out and do much I'm not going to do many broadcast rounds because I think when it gets to election time they'll go actually you know I haven't heard too much from him I quite like the quiet life gone yeah you have a go yeah I think there's a lot in that people do people like you know things go in phases um yeah and I think that we're in a phase that people would like be quite happy to have less Madness uh for a bit the um I mean I think they also do want they also then like the right answer is less Madness and some Madness comes from the world okay so like everybody's had a bit of this pandemicular noticed the financial crisis was quite bad for everyone but we've obviously had a worse financial crisis but due to having a lot of banks uh and um and brexit right the um uh and then we happen to be in Europe which is the heart of the cost living crisis right now in terms of energy prices so some of it's specific to us but it's part of a wider this has been about 15 years for the planet particularly for the developed world over those 15 years but we've been winning I think the more worrying thing about Britain it's not you're not going to be able to stop bad things happening because they turn up sometimes the difference is we have ended up on moored like we don't even know like there's not enough of a view of what we're even trying to achieve anymore so I'll give you a concrete example Paul didn't say to me all the time the problem with Britain is all we've got is Banks and we should have factories or should have manufacturing that's basically what they say all the time they're like with now you can agree with that on the margins but it's obviously not true like Banks all about you know they're less than a 10 of our economy we have like World leading Services right across you know creative Services um lots of Business Services not just banking in fact bank has been shrinking over the course of the last um 10 years but basically they're embarrassed about what Britain's good at which is basically high value added Services they wish we were something else probably in Brackets a bit more Germany Then They Don't Really they want to level up the country so there's a consensus on that about how we got to the hard questions of how you actually go about doing that like how do you devolve provide real fiscal Devolution so actual levers to change taxes at a local level without making actual inequalities of how we fund local government bigger rather than smaller that's the actual interesting question the rest of it's easy that's really hard you can probably do that we should do that but it's difficult and we haven't gotten to any of that so I think the lack of like what is Britain actually about trying to do what's our plausible path to doing that is what the fact that we've lost that because we've been hit by repeated crisis some of which have like undermined our core economic model so they've like the banking sector was a core part of economic model we had a financial crisis being a part of a large single Market the European single Market was was Margaret thatchers like that was her Central thing about the British like if you want factorism everyone focuses on like tax rate changes other things the European single Market was a large part of it why was it because the view was if you want to be a rich economy in a globalizing world having a large Home Market is really important because your companies can get to scale and you and you impose competition on your company so the good ones Thrive and the rubbish ones go out of business right that was the like a large part of that tourism that everyone's forgot so that's blown up as well what we're putting in its place like what is the actual approach yeah Margaret Thatcher had a model you can like it or not but it's basically gone what do you want instead what are we actually trying to achieve and I'd say we are as I say unmored and that's what makes us look scarier that's one of the reasons why British firms aren't investing no investment growth in Britain since 2016. none totally flat now everyone's investment fell during the pandemic but ours hasn't recovered and it's then below where it was in 2016 whereas actually 2016 to 2020 boom time for lots of the advanced World lots of investment going in not in Britain that's what happens if you don't have a clear sense of what you're about it's a potentially damning observation but also an opportunity for someone to really do something quite transformative in the British economy yeah it's like governing yes governing where day in day out we get up and we think what changes small they don't need to be radical they need to be right that will give us higher growth and low inequality do that every single day do it for a decade and then you're living in a better Britain Dustin Bell thank you very much for the time really appreciate it not at all thanks

Channel: PoliticsJOE

Views: 1,283,216

Keywords: Politics, UK politics, British politics, Parliament, Government, Westminster, economist, torsten bell, nationalise banks, financial crash, financial crisis, stagnation, inflation, cost of living, interest rates, resolution foundation, tufton street, think tanks, conservative party, brexit, labour party, margaret thatcher

Id: ljVtYj-YSnk

Length: 32min 22sec (1942 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 02 2023