Podcast special: Britain’s role in the global economic recovery

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🗓️ 31 December 2022

⏱️ 35 minutes

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Summary

Covid 19 has been a crisis without borders. In a highly interconnected world, every country has felt the impacts of the pandemic, from supply chain disruption to low productivity and high inflationary pressures. Should the post-pandemic economic recovery be a global project? For decades, the UK has been a key player on the economic world stage, but is this still relevant today at a time when the UK faces domestic financial challenges and global supply chains are decoupling? Or can the ripple effect of lending a hand to one economy, become a good investment for Britain's future?

The Spectator’s economics editor, Kate Andrews speaks to Simon Clarke, MP for Middlesborough South and East Cleveland who was chief secretary to the Treasury at the start of the pandemic; Professor Nouriel Roubini, economics expert and author of the book MegaThreats: The ten threats the imperil our future and how to survive them; Megan Greene, the global chief economist at the Kroll Institute and Michael Jacobs, who is a professor of political economy at the University of Sheffield.

This podcast is kindly sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's been another extraordinary day. Stock markets opened in a state of high anxiety, which gave way to panic.
0:06.7	Cities emptied, manufacturing stopped, restaurants closed. Everything paused.
0:12.3	Yeah, it's the great difference with the epidemic of the 2030s in 2003.
0:16.5	As we are watching, the end of trading today right now, the Dow is settling down somewhere in the down
0:23.5	2,300 range and the end in a standstill.
0:27.1	It has been nearly three years since COVID-19 changed everything.
0:42.1	Over 6 million people have died, with an estimated 700 million people infected.
0:47.6	Governments across the world race to impose emergency relief, such as the UK's furlough
0:52.1	scheme.
0:53.0	But the lasting effects of the pandemic are still
0:55.2	with us and are set to linger for years to come. Everyone knew there would be an economic consequence
1:00.8	to lockdowns. Was the trade-off worth it? My name is Kate Andrews. I'm the economics editor at The
1:07.5	Spectator and your host for the last of a series, sponsored by the Bill
1:11.6	and Melinda Gates Foundation, where we've taken a look at Britain's role in the global pandemic
1:16.1	recovery. For this episode, we shall be hearing from the major players when it comes to the
1:20.3	British economy and its responsibilities as a global player. To begin, let's take a look back
1:26.2	to the start of the pandemic. My first guest was
1:29.1	chief secretary to the Treasury at the time, when news was breaking in February 2020 that a
1:34.1	dangerous coronavirus was spreading across the world and had arrived in the UK. Simon Clark,
1:39.9	who is the MP from Middlesborough, South and East Cleveland, and was the leveling up secretary
1:44.2	and Liz Truss's administration, was one of the decision makers back in 2020 that saw spending
1:49.8	during peacetime skyrocket to unprecedented levels. Simon, thanks for joining me. Cast your mind
	...

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