Brexit - remember it? Way back in the distant past of 2019 it felt like it was all the newspapers could talk about. It might feel like it’s done and dusted, but the process is still rumbling on.

We’ve got an Internal Market Bill that the government itself admits will break international law. MPs just voted through a Bill refusing to guarantee food and farming standards after we leave the EU. And apparently we’re moving the UK border to Kent.

So, what exactly is going on? What will happen when the transition period ends on New Years Eve? And what does it all mean for the UK economy?

Ayeisha is joined Marley Morris, Associate Director for Immigration, Trade and EU relations at the Institute for Public Policy Research.

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Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone.

Music by Poddington Bear and Christian Bjoerklund under Creative Commons license.

Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF!

The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

“We want to build back greener as we recover from Covid-19” - that was the message this week at the Prime Minister’s Conservative Party Conference speech. But in all the talk of wind turbines and technology, the place of care in our economic recovery didn’t really get a look in.

Why is care often so overlooked when we think about the economy? And how would our lives change if we put care at the centre of our economic decisions?

Ayeisha is joined by Jo Littler, Professor of Social Analysis and Cultural Politics at City University of London, Marion Sharples, Project Manager and Researcher at the Women’s Budget Group and NEF Senior Economist, Sarah Arnold.

The Care Manifesto: The Politics of Interdependence is available on the Verso website https://www.versobooks.com/books/3706-care-manifesto

Read the final report of the Commission on a Gender-Equal Economy https://wbg.org.uk/commission/

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Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone.

Music by Poddington Bear and Blue Dot Sessions under Creative Commons license.

Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF!

The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

Our track-and-trace system will be “world-beating”. The development of the Oxford Covid-19 vaccine is “months ahead” of its competitors around the world.

This is how politicians and the media have been talking about our lines of defence against the coronavirus pandemic. But when facing up to a global problem that connects us all, why is competition the only language we have to talk about it?

How has competition come to define our economy and society? What do we miss out on when we focus on competition? And is there a way out?

Ayeisha is joined by Michelle Meagher, author of new book, Competition is Killing Us and Grace Blakeley, staff writer at Tribune and author of upcoming book, The Corona Crash: How the Pandemic will Change Capitalism.

Grab a copy of Michelle's book https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/315/315772/competition-is-killing-us/9780241423011.html

Grace's book is out on the 27th October https://www.versobooks.com/books/3723-the-corona-crash

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Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone.

Music by Poddington Bear under Creative Commons license.

Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF!

The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

Amid the coronavirus crisis, the number of people becoming members of a union has skyrocketed. Unison reported 65,000 new members since the start of the year, and in the last six months, 50,000 people have joined the National Education Union. The TUC worked with the chancellor to create the furlough scheme, and teaching unions were partly responsible for the government U-turn over face masks in schools.

It certainly looks like union influence has had a boost, as they fight against redundancies and for the health and safety of their members. But what about outside of the workplace? Can unions and their members change the rules of the economy?

Ayeisha is joined by Alice Martin and Annie Quick, authors of Unions Renewed: Building Power in an Age of Finance.

Grab a copy of the book at https://politybooks.com/bookdetail/?isbn=9781509539116&subject_id=2

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Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone.

Music by Poddington Bear and David Hillowitz, used under Creative Commons licence.

Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF!

The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

It’s a cliche by now to say that Covid-19 has upended our economy. Industries have ground to a halt, and are only just beginning to start up again. Just this week the UK plunged into recession, with the worst drop in GDP of any G7 nation.

But what about outside the G7? How have the effects of Covid ricocheted around the global economy?

In the last few episodes we’ve heard how Covid-19 has affected government spending, unemployment, and the hostile environment in the UK. For this episode, we want to look farther afield at how the pandemic is affecting economies across the world - especially in the Global South.

Ayeisha is joined by Dr Tobias Franz, Lecturer in Economics at SOAS and Shreya Nanda, Economist at the Centre for Economic Justice at the Institute for Public Policy Research.

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Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone.

Music by Blue Dot Sessions and Poddington Bear, used under Creative Commons licence.

Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF!

The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

We’re facing two global crises. We have scientific evidence for how to deal with both of them, but governments aren’t acting quickly enough. They both show how we are all more connected than we previously thought. And to tackle them will require massive changes in how we run our economy.

The first problem is Covid-19. The other, though it’s fallen off the front pages, is as urgent as ever: the climate crisis.

How do we keep climate in the picture? Should we bail out struggling polluting industries? And how can we make sure our Covid recovery is green?

In this episode of the Weekly Economics Podcast, Ayeisha is joined by Chaitanya Kumar, Head of Environment and the Green Transition at the New Economics Foundation and Fatima Zahra-Ibrahim, co-director of Green New Deal UK.

Read new NEF report on decarbonising the Bank of England's corporate QE programme here: https://bit.ly/30yURpe

Vice investigation into company bailouts is available here: https://bit.ly/33HFtcd

Write to your MP to stop blank cheque bailouts on the Build Back Better website: https://bit.ly/30yRVZM

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Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone.

Music by Blue Dot Sessions and Poddington Bear, used under Creative Commons licence.

Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF!

The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

For most of the last decade, the Conservative government has said they want to cut government spending to balance the books as they rolled out austerity nationwide. But since the start of lockdown, something seems to have changed. The chancellor keeps saying “this is not the time for ideology” as he announces new, expensive schemes to keep the economy afloat.

So - what’s going on? It’s not the first time that politicians have announced ‘the end of austerity’. But, with the government paying the wages of up to a third of the UK workforce through the furlough scheme, has something shifted? Has the government truly moved ‘beyond ideology’? Will austerity be back - but by another name? And where does conservatism go from here?

In this episode of the Weekly Economics Podcast Ayeisha Thomas-Smith is joined by NEF CEO Miatta Fahnbulleh and Director of Research & Advocacy at Common Wealth Miriam Brett.

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Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone.

Music by Chad Crouch and Poddington Bear, used under Creative Commons licence.

Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF!

The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

It feels like every day there are new dire predictions of the state of the UK economy and jobs. Last week we discovered that the number of paid employees in Britain has plunged by 650,000 since the start of the pandemic. As the furlough scheme winds down, the Office for Budget Responsibility says 1.4 million furloughed people are at risk of unemployment. And almost a third of companies plan to cut jobs in the next three months.

So, did the job retention scheme save jobs or just delay the inevitable? How are unions supporting workers during this time? And what can we do to avoid a tsunami of job losses?

In this episode of the Weekly Economics Podcast Ayeisha Thomas-Smith is joined by Alfie Stirling, Head of Economics at the NEF and Nikki Pound, Policy and Campaigns Support Officer at the TUC.

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Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone.

Music by Jahzzar, used under Creative Commons licence.

Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF!

The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

At the end of June Keir Starmer said of Black Lives Matter protesters in an interview: “Nobody should be saying anything about defunding the police.” At the same time, the UK government announced four new prisons. Olympic athlete Bianca Williams has said she felt like “being black is a crime” after she was stopped and handcuffed by police while driving in London. And last week it emerged that the Met police carried out 22,000 stop-and-searches on young Black men during lockdown.

Some campaigners, especially in the US, are talking about defunding the police. But what does that actually mean? Should campaigners be calling for it in the UK? And do police and prisons really keep us safe?

In this episode Ayeisha is joined by Dr. Adam Elliot-Cooper, research associate in sociology at the University of Greenwich and board member of the Monitoring Group.

References:

Read "Are Prisons Obsolete?" by Angela Y. Davis https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/angela-y-davis-are-prisons-obsolete

Find out more about Black Visions Collective https://www.blackvisionsmn.org/

Read the report "Race and Racism in English Secondary Schools" by Dr Remi Joseph-Salisbury https://www.runnymedetrust.org/projects-and-publications/education/racism-in-secondary-schools.html

Find out more about United Family and Friends Campaign https://uffcampaign.org/

Visit Community Actions on Prison Expansion's website for more info https://cape-campaign.org/

Go to https://movementforjustice.co.uk/ for more on Movement for Justice

You can learn more about JENGbA's work at https://jointenterprise.co/

Cradle Community are fundraising for healing and transformative justice work in the UK. If you donate, you can get an abolitionist package including their new zine "how to be an abolitionist today". More info here https://www.instagram.com/p/CCa1VtVhZXK/?igshid=hgtrn7bhwlc4

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Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone.

Music by Podington Bear, used under Creative Commons licence.

Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF!

The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org

The end of June marked the anniversary of the arrival of the Windrush Generation in the UK, and sparked renewed conversations about the Hostile Environment. It’s been reported that UK immigration policies have stopped migrants from getting healthcare during the Covid-19 pandemic, despite a government exemption from immigration checks and fees. Just this week, MPs passed a new immigration bill which ends freedom of movement and introduces a point-based system instead.

So, how has the Hostile Environment affected people, particularly during the pandemic? Have migrants been hit harder by Covid-19? And what does the new immigration bill mean for migrant communities in the UK?

We’re back for a new series of the Weekly Economics Podcast, Ayeisha is joined by Zoe Gardner, Policy Advisor at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI), and Akram Salhab, Advocacy and Campaigns Officer at Migrants Organise.

Take a look at the New Deal on Migration on the JCWI's website https://www.jcwi.org.uk/news/we-need-a-new-deal-on-migration

Read new research from Migrants Organise, Medact and NEF looking at how the Hostile Environment is preventing migrants accessing healthcare during the pandemic https://bit.ly/38ooewJ

More from Migrants Organise on their website https://www.migrantsorganise.org/

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Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone.

Music by Podington Bear, used under Creative Commons licence.

Enjoying the show? Tweet us your comments and questions @NEF!

The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org