Vicky Pryce is Chief Economic Adviser and a board member at the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR). She was previously Senior Managing Director at FTI Consulting, Director General for Economics at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and Joint Head of the UK Government Economic Service.

Andy Ross is a fellow of the Society of Professional Economists, Royal Economic Society and the Academy of Social Science. He is a Visiting Professor at Birkbeck Business School, University of London.

Together, they have written Mismanaged Decline: What Politicians Won’t Tell You About the Economy. In an urgent reality check that will embarrass politicians from all parties, hugely experienced economists Vicky Pryce and Andy Ross track the forces that have shaped the UK economy since the Industrial Revolution. 

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist. Her recent books include An Uneasy Inheritance: My Family and Other Radicals and The Only Way Is Up: How to Take Britain from Austerity to Prosperity, a post-election book co-authored with David Walker.

The event offers an interactive discussion on what lessons from the past can tell us about politics and the economy ahead at what is a crucial time for the UK in its position in the global order, but also for the world finding itself right now in a dangerous geopolitical juncture.