The Political Economy of Starmer's Labour

When: Thursday, March 13, 2025, 12:00 PM - 1:15 PM
Where: Online - Zoom

Join the Mile End Institute for its latest lunchtime webinar to explore the tumultuous political economy of the new Labour government. What have we learnt about Labour's economic strategy?

The first eight months of the new Labour government have been tumultuous, and nowhere more than in the politics of economics. Rachel Reeves has hiked taxes and increased borrowing, but her Treasury are also in tense negotiations with other departments over spending constraints. The Bank of England is trying to cut interest rates, but in a volatile market environment highly sensitive to developments across the Atlantic. This new government has already made itself vocal enemies ranging from tractor-driving farmers to child poverty campaigners, and businesses, trade unions, and lobbyists are currently battling to shape its developing policies, from workers rights to planning reform, oilfields to airport expansions.

What have we learned about Labour's economic policies? What are its motivating ideas or interests? Do they have a coherent strategy? How united is the Labour Party and are there emerging tensions in the grassroots, the parliamentary party, and in the government itself? What would a successful economic strategy look like, especially given the UK's longstanding weaknesses of underinvestment and regional inequality and newer dangers like trade wars and recessionary risk?

Panel:

Chair: Morgan Jones is a freelance writer, with work, primarily focusing on British politics, appearing in the i, the New Statesman, Bloomberg, Prospect, The House magazine, OpenDemocracy, The Observer, Political Quarterly, and elsewhere. She has worked as a reporter for the Labour and trade union focused website LabourList, and is currently a contributing editor and regular contributor to Renewal: A Journal of Social Democracy.

Sam Freedman is a Senior Fellow of the Institute of Government and was Senior Policy Advisor at the Department of Education from 2010 to 2013. He is the co-author of the widely read Comment is Freed Substack and author of Failed State: Why Nothing Works and How We Fix It.

Dr Kate Alexander Shaw is Research Officer at the London School of Economics, editorial board member of Political Quarterly, and a specialist in British and European political economy. She has also worked as a senior policy analyst at HM Treasury.

Dr Theo Bertram is the Director of the Social Market Foundation and was a Special Advisor at No 10 Downing Street from 2006 to 2010. He has also worked in government relations and public policy for Google and Tik Tok.

Dr Colm Murphy is Lecturer in British Politics and the Deputy Director of the Mile End Institute. He is the author of Futures of Socialism: 'Modernisation', the Labour Party, and the British Left, 1973-1997 and writes on contemporary British politics for various outlets.