The State We're in: Why Britain is in Crisis and How to Overcome it - Tapa dura

Will Hutton, the Guardian's Economics Editor, is the most respected analyst writing in Britain today. He argues that the weakness of the economy can't be divorced from the problems of the rest of society. This is a root and branch, total critique of our institutions. We have eighteenth century state doing a twentieth century job. Our business doesn't get the investment it needs because of the City's stranglehold on the economy. The cult of the Gentleman is killing creativity. Parliament doesn't get the people's respect because it is unreformed; the government of the revolutionary Margaret Thatcher got lost; the opposition is crippled by its own conservatism. Hutton has uncomfortable explanations for the attitudes that prevent us moving forward into the twenty-first century as a truly modern country. Essential reading.

Will Hutton has been economics editor of the Guardian since 1990. A former stockbroker, he spent ten years with the BBC, and from 1983 to 1988 was economics correspondent for BBC2's Newsnight. He was nominated Political Journalist of the Year by Granada TV's What the Papers Say for his coverage of the 1992 ERM crisis. His book on Keynesian economics, The Revolution that Never Was, was published in 1986. He is a member of the governing council for the Policy Studies Institute, the Institue for Political Economy and Charter 88. He is on the editorial board of New Economy and is a governor of the London School of Economics.