The Decade the Rich Won

Episode
Episode Two
Broadcast Info
2022 (59 mins)
Description
In the second episode, the government and the Bank of England are forced to react to the economic shocks brought on by Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic. Insiders from the world of finance tell us how these crises create an opportunity for the rich to vastly increase their fortunes. Theresa May enters office in the aftermath of Brexit, setting her sights on tax-dodgers, bloated executive pay and unethical multi-national companies. But as May struggles to implement Brexit, wealth inequality and executive pay are increasing while average wages are barley growing... sparking anger and protests. With first-hand accounts, the episode takes us inside No.10 as the Prime Minister and her closest advisers try to reset the economy in favour of ordinary working people. Theresa May’s Joint Chief of Staff Nick Timothy recalls the Prime Minister’s first speech in Downing Street: ‘what we were trying to do was demonstrate that this was going to be a different government to the one that had been led by David Cameron and George Osborne.' But the Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond has different ideas: ‘It was clear that having gone as far as we had as a nation, we had to finish the job... That is, the process of getting the public finances back in good order and... to reassure foreign investors, big businesses that things weren’t about to change in a way that would be disruptive to them.' Former Chancellor George Osborne says that Theresa May fundamentally misunderstood her brief: ‘I think, you know, she thought ‘I’m here to demonstrate a change from David Cameron’. That was not why she had been chosen, she had been chosen to find a consensus on Brexit.' QE was meant to be a short-term solution, but the Bank of England resorts to printing money again in July 2016 after the Brexit referendum causes global markets to plummet. Mervyn King, one of the original architects of QE in the UK, says that the tool has gained an outsized importance in policy making: ‘the problem is that people have regarded now central banks as being the only game in town so that whenever there’s bad news then they have to do more of it...that was a terrible mistake because there were lots of other policies that might have helped improve economic growth.' Meanwhile, the Chancellor is growing increasingly concerned about the PM’s perceived anti-business rhetoric following her 2016 party conference speech: ‘that was quite an aggressive tone and it really woke up investors around the world. a lot of people... took the trouble to seek me out and say what the hell was that all about?' Theresa May becomes the first foreign leader to meet Trump at the White House. Her team is taken aback when the new President gives her advice on how to secure Brexit. Nick Timothy recalls the meeting: ‘the things they were saying in the meetings were so unbelievably simplistic and I think not really cognisant of how it really worked... Steve Bannon just didn’t really have a grasp of the details or an understanding of Britain’s status as an outgoing member of the European Union’ The President’s Chief Strategist recalls the meeting: ‘You think the European Union... are just going to let England just walk away because they had a vote... it’s not going to happen, you’ve got to fight for this.... that whole collection was the most feckless hapless group I’ve ever seen and quite frankly a disgrace.' In a bid to increase her parliamentary majority Theresa May calls an election, but the decision backfires spectacularly when the election results in a hung parliament. The PM’s Director of Strategy Chris Wilkins recalls the moment: ‘we’d thrown away an opportunity to deliver the changes that Theresa May really thought that the country needed. And for me that was a devastating moment. It was the worst night of my life, without question’ After May fails to get her Brexit deal through Parliament, Boris Johnson enters office promising to ‘level up’ the UK economy but his plan is derailed by the Covid-19 pandemic. Andrew Huszar who led the U.S. Federal Reserve’s QE programme in 2009 says that the policy is driving inequality: '[QE] is ultimately benefiting the most privileged.. and so you do now have billionaires launching rockets into space... you do now have certain elements of society that are, that are soaring and other parts of our society that are being unfortunately left ever further behind.' The Bank of England says that QE has prevented greater inequality by preventing higher unemployment, particularly during lockdowns. As Central Banks around the world say they will begin to take a step back, Mervyn King agrees that now is the time an alternative approach: ‘we have been through the biggest monetary policy stimulus the world has ever seen. And the obvious fact that jumps out of it is if you’ve had the biggest monetary policy stimulus the world’s ever seen and you still haven’t had adequate economic growth, maybe the answer is not yet more monetary policy stimulus.'
Genre
Economics; Business Studies; Politics; Government

How to cite this record

The Open University, "The Decade the Rich Won". https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ou/search/index.php/prog/241280 (Accessed 10 Jan 2025)