Covid-19: UK needs a new "social contract" post-pandemic - LSE Director Minouche Shafik | Interview

The Covid pandemic has fundamentally changed almost social structure, from work to education to healthcare. Last time the UK experienced a similar social earthquake, during the second world war, a document produced by William Beveridge, who had previously been the director of the London School of Economics (LSE), proposed a blueprint for a “cradle to grave” social policy. It ultimately led to the modern welfare state – and with it, the launch of the NHS.

Now the present director of the LSE, Baroness Nemat "Minouche" Shafik, thinks we need to do it again. Her book, What We Owe Each Other, proposes we take another look at our social contract – how we interact with one another – and fix the bits that aren’t working.

Minouche Shafik joins this interview from her office at the LSE. Her appointment there, in 2017, was the latest in a line of high-ranking posts: she was deputy governor of the Bank of England in 2014-17, following stints as deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund and at the Department for International Development, as well as teaching at Wharton Business School and Georgetown University. At 36, she was the youngest-ever vice president of the World Bank.

In this video interview she joins Emma Haslett to discuss the need for a new social contract, as well as Covid-19’s impact on work, health, politics and much more.

Read the full article by Emma Haslett here:

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