The government may hope Britain’s ailing economy simply needs a few nudges forward.
But a panel of top economists and leading civil society figures thinks it needs of a complete change in direction to address poverty, inequality and sluggish productivity.
The IPPR’s Commission on Economic Justice – a group that includes Sir Charlie Mayfield of John Lewis and the Archbishop of Canterbury – has warned that the economy is suffering from “deep and longstanding weaknesses.”
The commission’s “Time for Change” report makes for grim but necessary reading, with the experts describing the UK “unfit to face the challenges of the 2020s.”
Our economic model is broken
It finds that UK is the most geographically unbalanced economy in Europe. It also finds that the UK’s productivity levels are among the lowest of advanced economies, and remains one of the most unequal countries in terms of wealth distribution in the western world.
Although the unemployment rate remains low, the labour market has become increasingly insecure and casualised, and the share of national income in wages has been in decline ever since 1970s.