Stewart Lansley
Stewart Lansley is an economist, financial journalist and award-winning television producer. He is a visiting fellow at the Townsend Centre for International Poverty Research, the University of Bristol and the author of Poor Britain (with Joanna Mack), Rich Britain, Top Man, a biography of Philip Green and Londongrad: From Russia With Cash. He has written for academic and specialist journals as well as the Guardian, Independent and Sunday Times.
He is a former executive producer in the current affairs department at the BBC, and his previous academic posts include the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, The Henley Centre and the Universities of Reading and Brunel.
BOOKS:
The Cost of Inequality: Why Equality is Essential to Economic Recovery
 | The soaring income gap in countries like Britain and the US has been very bad news for their economies. Allowing the gains from growing prosperity to be colonised by a super-rich elite has squeezed real incomes, sucked the lifeblood out of productive enterprise and made the global economy much more prone to crisis. The book shows that rising inequality has been a central, if largely ignored, driver of the 2008 Crash and the current crisis. It provides compelling evidence that British and American capitalism has become little more than a wealth-diverting machine, geared to enriching the few at the expense of the rest. While there has rarely been a better time to reverse this process of enrichment at the top, failure to grasp this opportunity risks permanent economic fragility. |
| Published | 27th October 2011 |
| ISBN | 978-1908096067 |
| Published by | Gibson Square |
Selected by Peter Wilby as one of his books of the year... 'Exposes the truth about the economic catastrophe that afflicts the western world: neoliberalism has created consumsr societies in which millions are so poor they cannot afford to consume. `
New Statesman
'Lansley's new work belongs on every “people's library” shelf in an Occupy movement encampment. Your bookshelf, too.'
Institute for Policy Studies
'Compelling.... the central arguements of Lansley's book - and the solutions he proposes - deserve a wide hearing and an urgent place on the policy agenda.'
Times Higher Education
'Most politicians think that our wellbeing depends on pandering to the interests of the rich. Lansley shows that the opposite is true: the crashes of 1929 and 2008 resulted from too much inequality and a failure to cut the rich down to size. It's a great book - read it!'
Richard Wilkinson, co-author, The Spirit Level
'As the seminal book, The Cost of Inequality, has set out – we are suffering from a historic demand deficit.'
Guardian Comment
'This timely book examines the toll that inequality takes on the economy… shows how the real lessons of the financial crisis risk being quietly forgotten.'
Europe’s World
'Crammed with data and evidence, with this book in your hand you never need go into an argument unarmed.'
Red Pepper
Recent articles
Other books:
Londongrad: From Russia With Cash, The Inside Story of the Oligarchs, Fourth Estate, 2009 ( with Mark Hollingsworth )
‘A racy and alarming investigation of the effect of Russian money on Britain.’ Economist
‘A gripping chronicle of the decadence, danger and sheer power that defined a phenomenon… the definitive investigation of the oligarch phenomenon which rose and fell in the short years of the bubble of the past decade… a gobsmacking, head-shaking read.’ City AM
‘A mind-boggling and magnificently emetic exposition of Russian expats who have made their homes in London.’ Sunday Times
Top Man: How Philip Green Built His High Street Empire, Aurum, 2006 ( with Andy Forrester ).
Chosen as one of the Financial Times’s six top business books of 2006.
‘A top-notch, even-handed biography… Top Man is a model of clarity. It will be enjoyed by business pundits and general readers alike`. Times Higher Education Supplement
‘Thorough and well-written… A rattling good story'. The Observer
‘Scrupulously researched.` Financial Times.
Poor Britain, Allen & Unwin, 1985, ( with Joanna Mack )
This developed a new 'censensual methodology' for measuring poverty - one based on majoritarian public opinion. It is a concept that has been adopted by the UK, Australian and New Zealand Government and the European Union and applied in many countries across the world from Sweden, Finland and Germany to Russia, South Africa and Japan.
For more details see www.poverty.ac.uk