Grace Blakeley | |
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 Blakeley in 2019 | |
| Born | 26 June 1993 Basingstoke, Hampshire, England |
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| Website | graceblakeley |
Grace Blakeley (born 26 June 1993) [1] is an English economics and politics commentator, [2] [3] columnist, journalist and author. She is a staff writer for Tribune and panelist on TalkTV. She was previously the economics commentator of the New Statesman and has contributed to Novara Media.
Blakeley was born in Basingstoke in Hampshire, England. [4] She is half Welsh on her father's side. [5] She was privately educated at Lord Wandsworth College, [6] and later attended the Sixth Form College, Farnborough. [7] She studied philosophy, politics and economics at St Peter's College, Oxford, graduating with a first class honours degree. [7] [8] Blakeley then obtained a master's degree in African studies at St Antony's College, Oxford. [9] After graduating, she worked as a management consultant for KPMG in their Public Sector and Healthcare Practice division. [8] Blakeley then worked as a research fellow for a year at a left-wing think tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research, in Manchester, specialising in regional economic policy. [8]
Blakeley joined the magazine New Statesman in January 2019 as its economics commentator, writing a fortnightly column and contributing to the website and podcasts. [10] Her articles for the magazine included support for Lexit and a Green New Deal. [11] [12] Her first book, Stolen: How to Save the World from Financialisation, was published by Repeater Books on 10 September 2019. [13] Michael Galant writing for the openDemocracy website, praised the book as a "convincing critique of modern capitalism for socialists and sceptics alike". [14] CapX's Diego Zuluaga commented in his review that it was a "sweeping polemic against the market economy", and felt the author had been selective in how she presented evidence for her arguments. [15]
Blakeley became a staff writer for the democratic socialist magazine Tribune in January 2020. [16] She sits on the Labour Party's National Policy Forum, which is responsible for policy development. [17]
Blakeley's second book, The Corona Crash: How the Pandemic Will Change Capitalism, was published in October 2020. [18] Her next book, Vulture Capitalism: Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts, and the Death of Freedom, was published in 2024. [19]
Blakeley identifies as a democratic socialist [20] and supports the use of capital controls. [21] She supported Jeremy Corbyn and voted for him in the 2015 and 2016 Labour leadership elections, though she criticised him in 2016 for failing to "challenge the hegemony of neoliberalism" in the way she had imagined he would. [21] [22]
Blakeley promotes a Green New Deal. [21] [23] Though she has emphasised it as running "counter to a capitalist system", she has argued that "even those who do not identify as socialists" may soon realise that a green industrial revolution is the "only option". She calls for a "fair transition towards a low-carbon economy". [24]
Blakeley is a Eurosceptic, and has branded the European Union as "neoliberal", "neo-colonial" and "run in the interests of financial and corporate elites". [21] [25]
The Third Way, is a centrist political position that attempts to reconcile centre-right and centre-left politics by synthesising a combination of economically liberal and social democratic economic policies along with centre-left social policies.
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Tribune is a democratic socialist political magazine founded in 1937 and published in London, initially as a newspaper, then converting to a magazine in 2001. While it is independent, it has usually supported the Labour Party from the left. Previous editors at the magazine have included Aneurin Bevan, the Minister of Health who spearheaded the establishment of the National Health Service, former Labour leader Michael Foot, and writer George Orwell, who served as Literary Editor.
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Costas Lapavitsas is a professor of economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London and was elected as a member of the Hellenic Parliament for the left-wing Syriza party in the January 2015 general election. He subsequently defected to the Popular Unity in August 2015.
The 2019 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 12 December 2019 with 47,074,800 registered voters entitled to vote to elect members of the House of Commons. The Conservative Party won a landslide victory with a majority of 80 seats, a net gain of 48, on 43.6% of the popular vote, the highest percentage for any party since the 1979 general election, though with a narrower popular vote margin than that achieved by Labour over the Conservatives in 1997.
Richard Leonard is a British politician who served as Leader of the Scottish Labour Party from 2017 to 2021. He has been a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP), as one of the additional members for the Central Scotland region, since 2016. He ideologically identifies as a socialist, democrat and internationalist.
Kerry-Anne Mendoza is an English writer, journalist and social commentator. She is the former editor-in-chief of The Canary, a left-wing new media outlet.
Dawn Hayley Foster was an Irish-British journalist, broadcaster, and author writing predominantly on social affairs, politics, economics and women's rights. Foster held staff writer positions at Inside Housing, The Guardian, and Jacobin magazine, and contributed to other journals such as The Independent, The New York Times, Tribune, and Dissent. She regularly appeared as a political commentator on television and was known for her coverage of the Grenfell Tower fire.
Repeater Books is a publishing imprint based in London, founded in 2014 by Tariq Goddard and Mark Fisher, formerly the founders of radical publishers Zero Books, along with Etan Ilfeld, Tamar Shlaim, Alex Niven and Matteo Mandarini. It was launched by Watkins Media.
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Oh God, What Now? formerly known as Remainiacs, is a British hour-long twice-weekly political podcast about Brexit, speaking from the pro-Remain point of view. It was started on 26 May 2017 as Remainiacs after the European Union membership referendum as "a no-holds-barred podcast for everyone who won't shut up about Brexit". In October 2020, Remainiacs was renamed "Oh God, What Now?", due to the nature of Brexit making the unlikelihood of re-joining and changing nature of the British government.
A referendum on the Brexit withdrawal agreement, also referred to as a "second referendum", a "rerun", a "people's vote", or a "confirmatory public vote", was proposed by a number of politicians and pressure groups as a way to break the deadlock during the 2017–19 Parliament surrounding the meaningful vote on the Brexit deal.
The 2020 Labour Party leadership election was triggered after Jeremy Corbyn announced his intention to resign as the leader of the Labour Party following the party's defeat at the 2019 general election. It was won by Keir Starmer, who received 56.2 per cent of the vote on the first round. It was held alongside the 2020 Labour Party deputy leadership election, in which Angela Rayner was elected to succeed Tom Watson as deputy leader.
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