Minouche Shafik: Recipe for a Better Society

We live in a world of discontent: four out of every five people in China, Europe, India, and the United States feel that the system is not working for them. This is a time of polarized politics, culture wars, conflicts over inequality and race, tensions over climate change – and to top it all, the pandemic has hit the most vulnerable hardest. Minouche Shafik is the director of the London School of Economics and a hugely influential economist who was formerly Vice President of the World Bank and Deputy Governor of the Bank of England. In a landmark new book, What We Owe Each Other, she argues that it is time we created a new social contract – to pool risks, share resources and balance individual with collective responsibility. In a conversation with Kezia Dugdale, former leader of the Scottish Labour Party, Shafik explains that we need to fundamentally reorder and equalise how opportunity and security are distributed across society.

This is a live event, with an author Q&A.