The Political Economy Blog is a free newsletter. You don’t have to subscribe to read the posts, but if you do you will receive them by email as soon as they are published. I will not write prolifically enough to become annoying.

What can you expect? Above all, a critical look at economic policy ideas and developments, mainly in the UK, from a classical political economy perspective. Interrogating ‘ideology’ is one of my favourite pastimes. I also want to use this space to write more about social class and inequality - which I haven’t done nearly enough in the 9-to-5 in recent years. I most definitely have a chip on my shoulder.

By trade, I do policy research for a charity (but the newsletter expresses only my personal views obvs). I am also co-editor of the journal Renewal.

I will always be a political economist, even though I am no longer an academic. But I do have affiliate roles at both University College London’s Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP), and the University of Cambridge’s Bennett Institute for Public Policy.

As an academic, I worked previously as Associate Professor of Economic Policy, and Head of Policy, at IIPP; as Reader in Political Economy, and Head of Future Economies, at Manchester Metropolitan University; and as Deputy (and Acting) Director at the University of Sheffield’s Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute. I have also worked at the University of Warwick and University of Manchester, and founded the Political Studies Association’s British and Comparative Political Economy Group.

In addition to my current role, I have worked in various public policy roles at the Treasury, the Trades Union Congress, and the International Longevity Centre-UK.

I have published several books, including Pensions Imperilled (Oxford University Press, 2021), The Political Economy of Industrial Strategy in the UK (Agenda, 2021, with Julie Froud and Tom Barker), Developing England’s North (Palgrave, 2017, with Arianna Giovannini), Austerity Politics and UK Economic Policy (Palgrave, 2016), and Globalisation and Ideology in Britain (Manchester University Press, 2011). I am working on a new book on the history of the British state with James Silverwood.

I have written op-eds for many publications, including Newsweek, The Guardian, New Statesman, and Prospect. I am also a published poet and an unpublished children’s author, and quite recently nearly wrote a sitcom.

Find me on Twitter or Mastodon or Linkedin

Subscribe to The Political Economy Blog

A regular newsletter exploring the political dimensions of economic policy.

People

Political economist and policy researcher. Writing mainly about social and economic policy.