This Time No Mistakes: How to Remake Britain - Will Hutton (Paperback) 19-06-2024

'This Time No Mistakes is a brilliant book... an intellectual, historical, political read with some strong themes... read it if you haven't already.' Keir Starmer 'Represents the beginning of a new, urgent debate. The era that defined economics since the end of the Cold War is now giving way to more activist governments and a very different kind of globalisation, necessitating new economic strategies. At last we are beginning to discuss what they might look like.' New Statesman A book that could be a blueprint for a better future - if the Labour Party takes it seriously. Will Hutton's passionate book shows how the right and left have gone wrong over the course of the last century - and how we can remake a better Britain. Britain's inability to invest in itself is at the heart of our problems. The malevolent thread linking the grievous errors of the last forty-five years is the attempt to create the utopia of free markets and a minimal state. The terrible consequences scar our country today. We need an alternative economic and political philosophy, especially if we are to ward off a nihilist populism. Two great traditions - ethical socialism and progressive liberalism - can be brought together to offer a different way forward. Hutton describes the views of their major thinkers, and their common vision of what he calls the 'We Society' - combining the 'We' and the 'I'. The two strands of thought both believe in the duty to treat people fairly in a capitalist system that, without guiderails, spirals into inequality, monopoly and exploitation. Out of this shared worldview came the great reforming Liberal government of 1906-14, supported by Labour MPs who'd been elected in industrial areas with Liberal backing. This alliance, Hutton argues, was the great opportunity of modern British history. It was destroyed by the First World War. In 1945 a Labour government, informed by great Liberal intellectuals like Keynes and Beveridge, showed once again what can be achieved