Around the world the economic ideas and policies that have dominated for the past 40 years are rapidly losing legitimacy in the face of multiple crises: stagnant or falling living standards, sharply rising inequality of income and wealth, financial fragility; racial injustice and environmental breakdown.
The Global Financial Crisis of 2007/08 brought an end to the so-called ‘Great Moderation’ – the period of relative economic stability since the 1980s – and laid bare the underlying weaknesses of free market orthodoxy. The impact of the crisis, and the austerity policies that followed, have fractured the political argument in many countries, contributing to a series of political shocks across Britain, the USA and Europe.
