Grace Blakeley and Zoe Strimpel chaired by Stephen Law

Journalists Grace Blakeley and Zoe Strimpel debate whether Britian is broken and, if it is, how do we go about fixing it?

Our waterways are contaminated by sewage. Social services are collapsing, and infrastructure appears to be rotting. It can take more than three weeks to get a GP appointment, and a train ticket from London to Manchester can cost more than £100. Three in four people say Britain is becoming a worse place to live. Does our political and economic system just need managing better, or has something more fundamental gone wrong, something requiring a more radical solution?

Blakeley is a journalist at Tribune Magazine and author. She is former economics commentator for the New Statesman and a former research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research. Blakeley recently published her third book, Vulture Capitalism: Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts and the Death of Freedom.

Strimpel writes regularly for both The Spectator and The Telegraph. She is an author, historian and journalist who specialises in gender, relationships and sexuality. She has published three books, her most recent being Seeking Love in Modern Britain: Gender, Dating and the Rise of ‘the Single’. Her next book is about why money, sex and power are, after all, and always have been, good for women.

Discussion is chaired by Dr Stephen Law, philosopher and academic, and author of bestselling introductions to philosophy for adults and children, including The Philosophy Gym. Law is also the editor of the Royal Institute of Philosophy journal, Think, and the festival’s major projects director.