After the financial crisis, governments in the UK and elsewhere in Europe adopted austerity policies to reduce public sector deficits.
Some seven years later these policies are increasingly being questioned by new political movements, on the left and the right.
Both the controversy over migration into the EU and the UK splits over Brexit are linked to growing public concern about worsening economic opportunities and strains on public services.
The debate about austerity has been shaped to an extent by the media and therefore raises a number of questions:
Was the media too hasty to embrace austerity as the only viable option?
Has the climate of opinion now turned? How can we improve the quality of the debate on alternative economic policies? How well does the press coverage of Brexit reflect the economic arguments?
To try to answer those questions, the journalism department at City University London and the Cardiff School of Journalism are jointly sponsoring a round-table discussion tomorrow (10 May), Beyond the crisis: the media and austerity, at City University.
On the panel will be Larry Elliot, the Guardian’s economics editor; Anastasia Nesvetailova, professor of international political economy at City University; and Simon Wren-Lewis, professor of economic policy at Oxford university’s Blavatnik school of government.
In the chair will be Steve Schifferes, Marjorie Deane professor of financial journalism at City University.
It begins at 6.30pm, and is free to attend.
