Meet the author: Jon Moynihan on Return to Growth: How to fix the economy

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2024 on Sunday 20 October at Church House, Westminster.

ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION

The UK has, in recent years, been suffering from what is nothing short of an economic crisis. Growth has now completely stalled in those Western democracies, the UK included, where high government spending and high taxes have steadily grown, decade after decade. Free-market economies now threaten to leave us behind in terms of wealth, opportunity and standards of living.

At the end of Rishi Sunak’s 2024 government, expenditure was at 45 per cent of GDP and taxes were 36 per cent of GDP and rising – yet still nowhere near sufficient to cover public expenditure. The government’s net annual borrowing is now a completely unsustainable 4.4 per cent of GDP, with our overall national debt growing rapidly and alarmingly.

In his new book, Return to Growth Volume One: How to Fix the Economy, Jon Moynihan analyses the UK’s decades-long stagnant economy and looks at what can be done to resuscitate it, exploring the key dynamics affecting economic growth – ranging from government borrowing, expenditure, tax and regulation to the way national resources are deployed on non-productive and futile, growth-stifling endeavours.

But how can we practically reverse this decline and restructure the economy to stimulate growth and improve living standards? As everyone, from the new Labour Government to Liz Truss, loves to emphasise the need for growth, how can we ensure this isn’t just a rhetorical slogan and becomes a reality?

SPEAKER
Jon Moynihan
businessman; former chair, Vote Leave; Conservative peer

CHAIR
Phil Mullan
writer, lecturer and business manager; author, Beyond Confrontation: globalists, nationalists and their discontents