Sir Vince Cable – Boswell Book Festival

Sir Vince Cable, former UK Secretary of State for Business and bestselling author, shows how politicians have the power to transform people’s lives for better or worse, examining the legacy of 16 world leaders – from Thatcher to Trump, from Lenin to Bismarck – who transformed their countries’ economic fortunes and who also challenged economic convention, in Money and Power.

By contrast Peter S. Goodman, The New York Times’s global economics correspondent, reveals how billionaires’ systematic plunder of the world – brazenly accelerated during the pandemic – has transformed 21st century life, and in Davos Man he profiles Bezos, Fink, Schwarzman, Benioff and Dimon along with those caught in the wake, such as a Bangladeshi migrant in Qatar, a textile manufacturer in Italy and an Amazon warehouse employee in New York City.

In conversation, Cable and Goodman will examine the fascinating interplay of economics, politics, and the role of the billionaire class in dangerously destabilising democracy as wealth inequality increases, anti-democratic nationalism rises, our health-care systems display vulnerability and access to affordable housing disappears.