Will Hutton

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.

Since the Second World War, our deeply unfair electoral system has allowed Conservatives to dominate government and commit a long series of great, avoidable errors. The Labour Party, fatally divided between socialist purity and timid pragmatism, must rediscover the ingredients that made for the success of the great reforming governments of the twentieth century. Capitalism must be repurposed to work for the common good. Our degraded democracy, the necessary means for such change, must be reformed.

Hutton's proposals are inspiring and rooted in values held by the overwhelming majority of us. Above all, they are achievable.

Will Hutton is a British journalist and author. He is a columnist for the Observer, is the President of the Academy of Social Sciences, hosts its We Society podcast and is Co-chair of the Purposeful Company. He was formerly Economics Editor of the Guardian, Editor-in-Chief of the Observer and Principal of Hertford College Oxford. Hutton's books include the bestselling The State We're In, How Good We Can Be, The World We're In and The Writing on the Wall.