The former governor of the Bank of England meets the renowned Financial Times commentator for a reckoning on why the relationship between democracy and capitalism is coming undone – and what we can do about it.



We are living in an age when economic failings have shaken faith in global capitalism. Political failings have undermined trust in liberal democracy and in the very notion of truth.


The ties that ought to bind open markets to free and fair elections are being strained and rejected, even in democracy’s notional heartlands.
Some now argue that capitalism is better without democracy; others that democracy is better without capitalism.


Live on stage in London and via livestream, Martin Wolf – one of the wisest voices on global affairs – will argue that for all its recent failings – slowing growth, increasing inequality, widespread popular disillusion – democratic capitalism, though inherently fragile, remains the best system we know for human flourishing. Most important of all, he will present a programme for renewal, with fresh ideas to rescue our democracy.


Martin Wolf is Chief Economics Commentator at the Financial Times. He was a member of the UK’s Vickers Commission on Banking, which reported in 2011. He holds an honorary doctorate at the London School of Economics and is an honorary Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford. He is a member of the International Media Council of the World Economic Forum. In 2000, he was awarded the CBE for services to financial journalism and in 2019 won the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Gerald Loeb Awards. His books include The Shifts and the Shocks, Fixing Global Finance and Why Globalization Works.


Mervyn King was Governor of the Bank of England from 2003 to 2013 and is currently Professor of Economics and Law at New York University and School Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics. Lord King was made a life peer in 2013 and appointed by the Queen a Knight of the Garter in 2014. He is the author of The End of Alchemy.