The unelectable budget: what Britain really needs

The UK finds itself in very difficult waters: a long term decline in growth, a need to spend much more on defence, very high taxes and multiple demands to increase public spending such as on social care, while borrowing so much that debt interest is one of our largest spending programmes. And the world is in turmoil as a result of climate change and “forever wars”.

Meanwhile our children have the lowest wellbeing in Europe and are near the bottom of Pisa’s list of all OECD countries. And we are struggling with over a million neets.

Can democracies solve these problems?

In our 2026 Annual Lecture, Gus O’Donnell will answer a slightly different question: even if we had a benevolent dictator, can we agree on what needs to be done and how to do it? We might then consider what changes are needed to allow us to preserve a working democracy while pursuing a policy path that solves our multiple problems.

Meet our speaker and chair

Gus O’Donnell is an economist who headed the Government economic service and then became permanent secretary of HM Treasury before being made Cabinet Secretary and head of the Civil Service. Post the civil service he has worked on how to make wellbeing the goal of policy. He is a crossbench member of the House of Lords, co-chair of the All party group on wellbeing economics, President of the IFS, Ambassador for Frontier Economics, honorary President of PBE (pro bono economics) and a trustee of the Economist as well as a Professor in practice at the LSE.

Coretta Phillips is Professor of Criminology and Social Policy at the LSE Department of Social Policy. Coretta’s research interests lie in the field of race, ethnicity, crime, criminal justice and social policy.

More about this event

The Department of Social Policy provides top quality international and multidisciplinary research and teaching on social and public policy challenges facing countries across the world. From its foundation in 1912 it has carried out cutting edge research on core social problems and helped to develop policy solutions.

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