Jo Swinson on the new economy

How can we make the "new economy", just "the economy"?

In our July xChange Paul Skinner, founder of MarketingKind, interviewed Jo Swinson, former MP and leader of the Liberal Democrats, author of Equal Power and Director of Partners for a New Economy, to explore this question and more.

We discussed Jo's time in politics (including co-founding a cross-party parliamentary group dedicated to wellbeing economics), why she wrote Equal Power and her current role as Director of Partners for a New Economy (a philanthropic collective dedicated to funding initiatives transforming economic thinking and practice).

Jo shared that although the narratives around wellbeing have gone up and down over time, the last OECD conference on wellbeing, for instance, attracted huge numbers of participants and high level government representatives from around the world.

She inspired us with antidotes to polarisation, agency to change gender norms (which are unhelpful for both men and women), and how we might create public demand for significant change. 

Paul highlighted the crossovers between this discussion and our previous xChanges with Tim Jackson on The Care Economy, Will Hutton on the ‘We society’, Polly Mackenzie on purposeful enterprise and Andy Burnham on devolution to counter the silos of central government.

In the conversation Jo recommended checking out:

The Dad Shift - https://dadshift.org.uk

Smartphone Free Childhood - https://www.smartphonefreechildhood.org

Of Men and Boys - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Boys-Men-modern-struggling-matters-ebook/dp/B0932J3834

On Tyranny - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tyranny-Twenty-Lessons-Twentieth-Century/dp/0804190119

The Economy of Francesco - https://francescoeconomy.org

If you don’t yet have a copy of Equal Power, you can find it here: https://atlantic-books.co.uk/book/equal-power

And you can learn more about Partners for a New Economy here: https://p4ne.org

You can listen to the podcast version or watch the replay below.