School of Social & Political Sciences

I turned up early. Two hours early. Diary cock-up. Never mind, I have my laptop with me and I can find a café in which to work. Indeed, why not take the chance to visit the Oxford Bar – in homage to Ian Rankin’s Rebus – and work from the great detective’s unofficial second office?

At the second attempt it all made more sense. The Royal Society of Edinburgh was the venue, part of swanky Edinburgh new town and arguably the heart of the intellectual networks which track back to the Enlightenment, Adam Smith and David Hume. A large number of white-haired, white men, all of whom seemed to know one another, were gathering and chatting excitedly as they made their way into the lecture hall. Maybe I should have worn a shirt? Oh, hold on, there’s a colleague I know from the Poverty Alliance, I can sit with them.

The occasion was to discuss the Deaton Review, the Nuffield Foundation-funded review of inequalities in the UK led by the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS). This is a long-awaited and important review, coming at a time when inequalities have been amongst the highest in recorded history, and just weeks before the world's first trillionaire was recognised. The speakers were august, including economics professors, the directors of economics watchdogs and think tanks, and experts on inequalities. There was, however, no place on the stage for people experiencing poverty, or at the sharp end of inequality. 

The key messages from the Deaton review were summarised by two of the speakers. The problem was outlined as the increase in inequalities of various forms during the 1980s and 1990s. Those inequalities have remained at high and undesirable levels since then. Some successes were noted, including the narrowing of gender gaps in wages. Wealth inequalities had skyrocketed, and there was little prospect now for people without wealth to catch up through wage income. We were told that for too long we have relied upon taxes and transfers to mitigate inequalities, and that we needed to move instead to 'predistribution'. This was explained as being about moving skilled and well-paid jobs to more disadvantaged areas, accompanied by training to allow workers there to take up these roles. The focus should be on 'frontier firms', identified as those with the highest productivity and growth, and which would be incentivised through the taxation system to relocate. Economic growth was essential, and reducing inequalities was said to be unlikely without it. Green technologies would decouple growth from its ecological impacts. 

What wasn't mentioned was austerity, power imbalances, social class, racism, poverty (well, that was mentioned once, but only because there was some data on it), the structure of the UK’s economy, and certainly not neoliberalism. Indeed, the understanding and policy prescription laid out reminded me of something. Was this not a reheating of the economic development strategies of consecutive Conservative governments through the 1980s and 1990s (the very period during which inequalities widened so dramatically), and which was reinforced more recently as part of the 'Levelling Up' and 'Freeport' policies? Where was the political economy understanding of inequality? What about ownership of economic assets? What about taxation and wealth redistribution? What about something that might actually be evidenced to narrow inequalities?  

In truth, there were only one or two people in the audience who voiced anything critical or challenging, as well as one panel member who made a compelling case for economists to use qualitative evidence and methods, and who deferred to others on the question of the role of economic growth. Most agreed whole-heartedly with the analysis and prescription. Jokes were made about the power of the economics discipline in Scotland; about the Nobel laureates; about the orthodoxy that needed to be heard. For me, as a heterodox scholar, it was clear that my ideas (and my t-shirt) didn't belong. I was an aberrant presence. Polite Edinburgh society demanded that I was there to listen and absorb, not to question. So I ‘bottled it’ in the Q&A, asking something benign rather than challenging. Yet I know my privilege. The experience must have been even more alienating for audience members not in the academy, without an economics PhD, women, people of colour... 

This matters. It is clear that this was a highly influential group of scholars, immersed in the institutions which shape policy. These are the people who write policy briefings for political parties, appear on Radio 4 and elsewhere to interpret economic news for the public, to tell us what we can and cannot “afford”, and who lead commissions on fiscal policy for government. The establishment. Orthodoxy. This is how we are meant to understand the economy. 

But what if this cosy consensus (or even economic hegemony) is wrong? What if the diagnosis is flawed and the policy prescriptions misguided? After all, if what is being offered are reheated economic policies from the 1980s, can we really talk of success? 

Much has been written about the dissociation of the economics discipline from broader political economy, and in my view, this event was a stark example of the problems this creates. It was clear that the review findings rested on expert reviews, not systematic reviews of the literature. We know that these are misleading, and that empirical evidence has challenged many of the key assumptions which underpin what we were being told. Changes in the ownership of economic assets and taxation were dismissed or ignored, despite evidence of the extent to which these can be key means of reducing inequality. Where is the evidence that training programmes and tax incentives for firms successfully reduce inequalities? What would those most impacted by such inequalities say? Might an analysis of power, and how this shapes, and maintains inequalities have changed the findings? And why does economic growth continue to be promoted as the solution to all ills, despite the evidence that it is not being sufficiently decoupled from the existential threats to the planet upon which we all depend (even Elon Musk, despite his stated ambition to flit to Mars)? 

Economics has much to teach us, but it needs to re-engage with its roots in political economy if it wants to actually change societies for the better. A start would be to reflect on the organisation of its events to find and welcome voices beyond the cosy mainstream consensus, within economics, within the academy, and with the wider public. Of course, I do have privilege, and over the wine and canapes after the event (yes, on inequalities, did I mention?), I did corner one of the authors of the report, and he will have been in no doubt what my views were. If you do want to reduce inequalities in the UK then I recommend reading Andrew Sayer's book on the subject. The Deaton review, for me at least, is only on the additional reading list. 

I am grateful to Robert McMaster and Andrew Smith for their comments on an earlier draft. Responsibility for the content rests with the author alone.

Image credit: K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash.

First published: 1 July 2026

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