Masters & Clerks’ Lunch Speaker: Larry Elliott

Larry Elliott is the Economics Editor of The Guardian newspaper, where he has worked since 1988, and is a visiting fellow at Hertfordshire University. He was educated at St Alban’s School, and graduated in History at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. From 1983-1988, he was with the Press Association.

Larry’s areas of particular interest are globalisation, trade and development, and the interface between economics and the environment. He is a regular speaker, and one of Europe’s leading writers from the left on the global economy.

Larry was part of the group that created the ‘Green New Deal’ proposal published by the New Economics Foundation in 2008: a response from the progressive left to increase public spending, drive recovery from the financial crisis, tax finance institutions more heavily, get people back to work, retrofit homes with better insulation, and introduce low carbon energy.

The son of a plumber, Larry believes strongly in vocational skills education.

Larry is a critic of the European Union. He believes that the British people’s decision to vote for ‘Brexit’, in 2016, is testament to the EU’s failure to act on its promises to protect its member states from the worst effects of globalisation.

Larry Elliott is the co-author of several books with Dan Atkinson: ‘The Age of Insecurity’ (1998); ‘Fantasy Island’ (2007), which warned that Britain’s growth under New Labour was a debt-driven illusion; ‘The Gods that Failed: How Blind Faith in Markets has Cost us Our Future’ (2008), an analysis of the forces that brought the global financial system to the brink of collapse; ‘Going South: why Britain will have a Third World Economy by 2014’ (2012); and ‘Europe Isn’t Working’ (2016).