Britain is in the midst of a fierce battle over government spending. With debts mounting rapidly, the ?700 billion annual bill is no longer sustainable. But cuts face a wall of opposition, with dire warnings that they will ravage our society: hospital waiting lists will grow, schools will close and the poor will tumble into a new Dickensian abyss. Yet much of what the government currently spends is wasted, and public sector performance is often woeful. In Burning Our Money, Mike Denham cas...

'Robert Peston's compelling account of global financial meltdown is a must-read.' ObserverWhat can we learn from the 2008 recession? ITV's political editor explains the global economic mess and how to escape it - in his characteristically straightforward way.'How do we fix this mess? I don't know. But don't stop reading now. Perhaps if we have a clearer understanding of what went wrong, we'll have a better idea of what needs to...

Winner of the Spear's Best Business Book AwardLonglisted for the 2012 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year AwardFor the past forty years western economies have splurged on debt. Now, as the reality dawns that many debts cannot be repaid, we find ourselves again in crisis. But the oncoming defaults have a time-worn place in our economic history. As with the crises in the 1930s and 1970s, governments w...

Compassionate, caring, green: this is how David Cameron presented himself before the election. Once in Downing Street, he threw off his disguise. The laid-back old-school Tory emerged as the leader of a party on a break-neck mission to fulfil Margaret Thatcher's vision.Polly Toynbee and David Walker, previously sharp dissectors of the Blair and Brown record, report that despite confusion and economic failure the Tories core commitment is unchanged. Looking in detail at the governme...

The west is in crisis Governments have grown too big, living beyond their means - and ours. The true costs of extra officialdom have been concealed. Parasitical politicians have been hopeless at holding to account the elites who now preside over us. As a result, Western nations are mired in debt and chronically misgoverned. Should we despair? Actually, no. Precisely because the West's Big Government model is bust, things are going to have to change. The West is on the cusp of a dramatic tr...

The Republic of Ireland, which declared itself in 1949, allowed the Catholic Church to dominate its civil society and education system. Investment by American and European companies, and a welcoming tax regime, created the 'Celtic Tiger' of the 1990s. That brief burst of good fortune was destroyed by a corrupt political class which encouraged a wild property boom, leaving the country almost bankrupt.What Ireland needs now is a programme of real change. It needs to become a fully mo...

Since the Great Recession hit in 2008, the 1% has only grown richer while the rest find life increasingly tough. The gap between the haves and the have-nots has turned into a chasm. While the rich have found new ways of protecting their wealth, everyone else has suffered the penalties of austerity.But inequality is more than just economics. Being born outside the 1% has a dramatic impact on a person's potential: reducing life expectancy, limiting educational and work prospects, and ...

The suddenness and depth of the recession has raised questions about the workability of capitalism not seen since the 1930s. One of the constraints on recovery is the growing belief that if the old model did not work there is no new one on offer. This book sets out to provide one, arguing that reconstructing a bust financial system is not just a technical question. It cannot be done without a wholescale revision of the wider system and values on which it is based. And fairness must be plac...

Why are so many adult children living still living with mum and dad? Why do young people seem so disinterested in politics? And what are the hidden threats to Britain's long-term prosperity lurking in the next few decades?First published in 2010, Ed Howker and Shiv Mailk's Jilted Generation answers fundamental questions about the society you thought you knew. It identified, for the first time, the perilous position of Britain's young adults and, with a title brandished by e...

The questions surrounding how the Irish economy was brought to the brink – who was to blame, and who should pay for these mistakes – have been rightly debated at length. But beyond this very legitimate exercise, there are deeper questions that need to be answered.These questions relate to why we made the decisions we did, not just in the last 10 years, but over the last 80. How did certain industries become prominent at the expense of others, banking as opposed to ...

Jim Sillars argues convincingly that the referendum gives the Scottish people the power to create a better country, helps renew our belief in socialism as the answer to the economic and social crisis facing the country, and challenges the idea in the Yes campaign that independence means “change but no change” and that a Yes voter endorses Alex Salmond and the SNP. There is a far more radical road, with better policies than those Salmond is offering in the first independence elections in 20...

Bored with endless grandstanding and people being wise after the event? Then The Age of Instability is the one book you should read on the financial crisis. Setting the near collapse of the international financial markets and banking system in a global and historical context, Sunday Times economics editor and bestselling author David Smith looks not only at the political and economic factors that contributed to the fall of Lehmans, collapse of Iceland and disintegration o...