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Will Hutton

Will Hutton writes for the Observer and is co-chair of the Purposeful Company

September 2024

  • A figure in a headscarf looks at pictures of the Grenfell Tower fire victims.

    The Grenfell report is a blueprint for an overhaul of our dysfunctional state

    Will Hutton
    An obsession with austerity over all other concerns can not be allowed to happen again

August 2024

  • Female figure in a white coat looks through a microscope at tiny factories balanced on a pound sign.

    Britain could be a sci-tech superpower – if the Treasury stopped holding it back

    Will Hutton
    The UK has the research base, the startups, the venture capitalists, but its presence in the global market is pitiful. The chancellor must step in

July 2024

  • Cutouts of Lachlan and Rupert Murdoch against a background of newspapers.

    Rupert Murdoch’s secret succession drama is a warning to rein in the super-rich

    Will Hutton
    Media mogul’s bid to extend rightwing influence beyond the grave must be resisted to the last
  • Rachel Reeves has announced a review into Britain’s pension fund system.

    Pension reform is the key to unleashing investment boom and turning round stock market

    Will Hutton
    Britain needs fewer and much larger funds that can diversify risks and invest in range of assets
  • Warren Buffet, pictured in 2006, speaks to a press conference.

    The rich were led to believe they were different. Those days are numbered

    Will Hutton
    Wealth is a privilege, and with it comes the obligation of paying tax to benefit society

June 2024

  • Illustration shows bees zooming in on a red rose being held out of a window

    Labour needs billions to fund its plans – and I know where it can be found

    Will Hutton
    By harnessing the power of pension funds, it truly can become the party of growth
  • Illustration of Margaret Thatcher and Conservative politicians blindly following her lead

    Thatcherism, austerity, Brexit, Liz Truss... goodbye and good riddance to all that

    Will Hutton
    For 45 years, Britain has been blighted by Conservative ideologies that promised a path to prosperity, but achieved nothing of the sort
  • Clement Attlee, centre, after Labour’s landslide victory in the 1945 general election.

    Socialism isn’t a dirty word. It’s simply about wanting to make a fairer society

    Will Hutton
    Labour’s leadership needn’t struggle to define the ideology; it’s in its very constitution

May 2024

  • The London Stock Exchange in the City of London.

    We’ve got the talent and the tech. So why can’t Britain grow its own world-beaters?

    Will Hutton
  • Katherine Gieve

    Other lives
    Katherine Gieve obituary

  • A paper with the text crossed out, a microscope and a whistle

    May Contain Lies by Alex Edmans review – fake news rules… and that’s a fact

  • Kemi Badenoch gives her endorsement to ‘research’  that dismisses the impotance of empire on the Britain’s wealth

    So empire and the slave trade contributed little to Britain’s wealth? Pull the other one, Kemi Badenoch

    Will Hutton

April 2024

  • Dom Mckenzie The Observer Comment Revised Economic History web version

    Britain was wise to cleave to Europe as the empire began to disintegrate. It’s time to do it again

    Will Hutton
    Ideas of exceptionalism and ‘laissez-faire’ policies are still driving economic myths that should be stone dead
  • FILE- Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, center, Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and Chinese President Xi Jinping stand for photographs prior to dinner hosted by Modi for leaders of BRICS nations in Goa, India, Oct.15, 2016. Putin and Xi will not be attending the weekend G20 summit in New Delhi, instead sending lower-level officials. While neither Russia nor China spelled out why their leaders were not attending, neither have traveled a lot recently and both seem to be putting a greater emphasis on the more like-minded BRICS group of nations. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup, File)

    Ditching European trade for China and India was ever a poor bet. Now it’s a farce

    Will Hutton
    Brexiters’ Asia hopes have foundered amid economic woes and hardline nationalism; it’s time to look at markets in our own backyard
  • Two tents pitched next to the River Thames. The Houses of Parliament can be seen in the distance.

    Conservatism’s biggest failure is the despair it has created about Britain’s future

    Will Hutton
    Fantasies about British exceptionalism have brought the UK to the brink of collapse. We need a new, realistic vision, says author and journalist Will Hutton

March 2024

  • Illustration of hands working at a jigsaw puzzle of the union jack

    The UK is trapped in a cycle of political, social and financial turmoil. But there is a way out…

    The Conservatives’ pernicious reign, defined by a toxic belief in self-organising markets, has brought Britain to its knees. But we now have an opportunity to turn things around
  • Rachel Reeves giving the Mais lecture at the Bayes Business School last Tuesday.

    For the birds? Far from it. At last Rachel Reeves has given Britain a plan for economic liftoff

    Will Hutton
    Despite being called continuity Hunt, the shadow chancellor has set out a proposal for meaningful change
  • Illustration shows a happy worker opening a gift to find miniature models indicating a good workplace

    Ignore the rightwing moaners. We don’t have 9m shirkers – they just want better work

    Will Hutton
    A wild west labour market and millions of people on NHS waiting lists are responsible for the ballooning benefits bill, not idleness

February 2024

  • Illustration by Dominic McKenzie showing a woman on a motorbike, bearing a pound symbol, roaring forward along a red arrow

    The first step to our economic liberation is to tear up these crippling fiscal rules

    Will Hutton
  • Local government with ticking time bomb

    The Tories starved councils, thinking no one cared. Now they’re bust – and we care very much

    Will Hutton
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