As we emerge from the shadow of COVID-19, governments around the world face an unprecedented triple threat of global recession, a degrading environment and enduring and widening inequality. The pandemic has exacerbated international, national, and regional disparities, from access to digital services and housing, to education and health outcomes. Traditional macro-economic approaches to building prosperity have failed.
Politicians and policymakers have a choice to make. They can either continue with the decades-old orthodoxies that dominate social, political and economic policy, or they can take inspiration from radical thinkers such as William Beveridge and Beatrice Webb, whose work influenced policymaking and prosperity in the wake of the last global catastrophe of this magnitude, and implement bold, courageous new policies that build prosperous futures for all.
