This Time No Mistakes : How to Remake Britain

Every thinking person knows that a great change is needed in our country. 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. Hutton describes the views of their major thinkers, and their common vision of what he calls the ‘We Society’ – combining the ‘We’ and the ‘I’. The two strands of thought both believe in the duty to treat people fairly in a capitalist system that, without guiderails, spirals into inequality, monopoly and exploitation.