New book from Kate Pickett and colleagues explores radical vision for our future
Kate Pickett, Chair of the Cost of Living research group, has published a new book: ‘Act Now: A Vision for a Better Future and a New Social Contract’.
The book which is researched and co-authored by the Common Sense Policy Group, which also includes Richard Wilkinson and Danny Dorling, is described as “an inspiring manifesto offering a radical vision for our political future”.
Act Now presents a compelling and achievable vision for a progressive future, outlining clear policies for welfare, health and social care, education, housing and more. Arguing for a rolling forwards of the state, the researchers call for a new era of active citizenship and economic democracy, grounded in robust and resilient institutions.
The book explores the big questions we face while living in an age of crisis and decline. In its description it explains that:
“The right presents 'solutions' that only worsen the situation, driving a downward cycle in which desperation leads to despair. But the left is also to blame: progressive politicians have consistently failed to recognise both the urgency of people's need and their receptiveness to new solutions.”
In a recent op-ed article on child poverty for the Big Issue, Kate Pickett explains that the book sets out how today’s challenges – including 300,000 more UK children falling into absolute poverty during a single year at the height of the cost of living crisis - “can only be addressed by a policy programme as ambitious as the Labour government establishing the welfare state in 1945 under manifestly worse circumstances.”
Act Now argues that a comprehensive and integrated approach, based on clear evidence of feasibility and popularity, can provide a pathway to the secure, democratic and prosperous Britain of tomorrow and it calls on politicians, pundits and the British people to ‘act now’.
Act Now: A Vision for a Better Future and a New Social Contract is available via Manchester University Press.
An ‘Act Now’ book tour is already underway. Find out more and book tickets for the following dates: