The Stakeholding Society Writings on Politics and Economics

For over a decade Will Hutton has been one of Britain's leading progressive voices. He has been at the centre of every significant economic and political debate that has reshaped and reimagined the British centre-left: the mounting calls for a democratic constitutional settlement, the criticisms of the short-termism of the domestic and international financial systems, the idea of a stakeholding society. In The State We're In he combined all three in a passionate and powerful diagnosis of Britain's problems and the possibility of a just and democratic renewal. This collection brings together the full range of Hutton's work as a journalist, pamphleteer and essayist, advocate and critic, and shows the spectrum of issues with which he has engaged. Yet Hutton has remained true to his best journalistic instincts. He has proved to be not only an acute thinker but an engaged writer and effective popularizer. Brought together, his work over the last ten years represents the emergence of a new politics and new political imagination in Britain. Founded on a coherent critique of neo-liberal economic orthodoxy and monetarist practice, and a sophisticated reassessment of neo-Keynesianism, Hutton has put the politics back into political economy. The case he makes for new economic institutions, the regulation of global capital markets, the refounding of British industry, has always been matched by the complementary requirements of a new politics which is consensual, democratic, open and innovative and which must be pursued as much in Brussels and the regions and nations of the UK as at Westminster.

Will Hutton is Editor in Chief of The Observer. He is one of Britian's most distinguished journalists and the author of The State We're In (1995, Vintage) and The State to Come (1997, Vintage).