Hutton, Will 1950- (William Nicholas Hutton)

PERSONAL:

Born May 21, 1950, in London, England; son of William Thomas (a civil servant) and Dorothy Anne Hutton; married Jane Atkinson (a housing consultant), October 10, 1978; children: one son, two daughters. Education: Attended University of Bristol. Politics: "No affiliation." Religion: Church of England.

ADDRESSES:

Home—England. Office—The Industrial Society, Robert Hyde House, 48 Bryanston Sq., London W1H 2EA, England.

CAREER:

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC-TV), London, England, economics correspondent, 1978-88; European Business Channel, Zurich, Switzerland, editor in chief, beginning 1988; The Guardian, London, England, economics editor, beginning c. 1995; The Industrial Society, London, currently chief executive. Former director of European Business Journal; director of Industrial Society (England). Also former reporter for television and radio, including for programs Newsnight, Panorama, and The Money Programme.

MEMBER:

Insead Alumni Association.

WRITINGS:

The Revolution That Never Was: An Assessment of Keynesian Economics, Longman (London, England), 1986, Vintage (London, England), 2001.

Lies, Damned Lies and Official Statistics, Charter (London, England), 1988.

Full Employment in a Free Society, Unions (London, England), 1994.

The State We're In, J. Cape (London, England), 1995, revised and expanded edition, Vintage (London, England), 1996.

The State to Come, Vintage (London, England), 1996.

Jobs and Justice, Lawrence & Wishart (London, England), 1996.

Stakeholding and Its Critics, IEA Health and Welfare Unit (London, England), 1997.

The Stakeholding Society: Writings on Politics and Economics, Polity Press (Malden, MA), 1998.

(Editor with Anthony Giddens) Global Capitalism, New Press (New York, NY), 2000, published in England as On the Edge: Living with Global Capitalism, J. Cape (London, England), 2000.

New Life for Health: The Commission on the NHS, Vintage (London, England), 2000.

The World We're In, Little, Brown (London, England), 2002, published in the United States as A Declaration of Interdependence: Why America Should Join the World, W.W. Norton (New York, NY), 2003.

The Writing on the Wall: Why We Must Embrace China as a Partner or Face It as an Enemy, Free Press (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor to magazines and newspapers.

SIDELIGHTS:

Will Hutton told CA: "Glasnost and perestroika need to come to Britain. As an Englishman I am profoundly concerned about the economic, social, and political degeneration that increasingly define my country, most markedly in the last decade. Britain needs its own American Revolution—but it will come from Europe."

In his writings as a columnist for the Guardian and the Observer, and also in his books, Hutton has called for drastic changes in England's government and economic policies. Described by some as a Keynesian thinker, he advocates a republican state and a written constitution for Britain's government, as well as strategies to reform British social and financial systems. Hutton's 1995 title The State We're In was a nonfiction best seller in England and was described as "a classic of intellectual demolition" by Ian Aitken in New Statesman and Society. An Economist reviewer summarized Hutton's thesis in The State We're In thus: "He thinks that Britain's economy and society are deteriorating disastrously … [and] those guilty of letting (or making) this happen include the Conservative Party, free-market economists and all the country's financial institutions."

While some critics expressed strong reservations about Hutton's ideas in The State We're In and his edited work Global Capitalism, most commended him for the style in which his arguments are delivered and for his genuine concern for improving British society. In Management Today, Peter Parker maintained that Hutton "forces us to think harder and faster about what globalising means." Aitken found Hutton "required reading for anyone seeking an alternative to the disinterred 19th-century liberalism from which we have suffered for the past … years." The critic added: "He is one major reason why the Guardian is the thinking person's paper." New Statesman and Society correspondent Denis MacShane wrote: "Like the American general outside an enemy village in Vietnam, Will Hutton believes that British capitalism has to be destroyed in order to be saved. In a passionate, beautifully written book, the Guardian's economics editor narrates the barren failure of this country's capitalism and explains what is to be put in its place."

In The World We're In, Hutton points out the decline of the United States, analyzing the ways in which corporate interests, consumer brands, and popular culture have altered the face of the nation. He discusses how easily Washington is swayed by outside interests, and criticizes the way in which the government is growing steadily more conservative. John Kay, in a review for Management Today, agreed with much of Hutton's basic premise, but stated that the relentless negativity of his book eventually bothered him as a reader: "Hutton's relentless hostility to the US is wearing, and the attack on the forces of neo-conservatism is exaggerated." Kay concluded: "Hutton's real gripe is that the world is not run by sensible people like himself. The problem with that is that no one—not Hutton, Gates, Greenspan or Prodi—knows enough to determine the appropriate industrial structure and financial organization for a prosperous future." A reviewer for the Economist was somewhat harsher, stating: "Hutton's analysis seems to be of a different world from the one everyone else inhabits. It reads like the sort of books published about America in the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s: a collection of mostly accurate facts put together in such a way as to yield a wholly misleading conclusion." Irwin Stelzer, writing for Spectator, found the book to be "too error-ridden and shrill to persuade anyone other than the already converted."

The Writing on the Wall: Why We Must Embrace China as a Partner or Face It as an Enemy looks at the rapid growth in China near the beginning of the twenty-first century with an eye toward its continued growth into the future. With 20 percent of the global population in the early 2000s, China has the manpower, the technology, and the drive to emerge as a global superpower only second to the United States, and if the United States should falter, China will take its place as the premier nation on the planet. Hutton looks at how this amazing period of growth has affected the world economy, trade, and so on, and how future growth will continue to affect the world, but he also proposes that this level of growth cannot be sustained and addresses the fallout that might result from a collapse of China's economy. A contributor to Kirkus Reviews called the book "a middling effort at reconciling the interests of the Middle Kingdom and Middle America." A reviewer for Management Today questioned: "What is Hutton's solution? The former apostle of New Labour recommends what amounts to New Communism." He went on to state that "this will be familiar stuff to past readers of the Hutton oeuvre, and the freshest chapters are those on the structure of the Chinese economy."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

African Business, April 1, 2007, review of The Writing on the Wall: Why We Must Embrace China as a Partner or Face It as an Enemy, p. 97.

America, November 24, 2003, "Be a Partner," p. 21.

Australian Journal of Social Issues, November 1, 2002, John Tomlinson, review of The World We're In, p. 467.

Booklist, September 15, 2000, David Rouse, review of Global Capitalism, p. 192; November 15, 2006, Gilbert Taylor, review of The Writing on the Wall, p. 10.

Bookseller, September 22, 2006, "The Shaky Superpower: Will Hutton Tells Benedicte Page Why China Is in Crisis and the West Must Help," p. 18; January 12, 2007, review of The Writing on the Wall, p. 12.

Broadcast, July 29, 2005, "Another Flawed Hutton," p. 2.

Building Design, June 4, 2004, "Will Hutton, Head of Think-tank Work Foundation," p. 2.

Contemporary Review, January 1, 2003, "Mr Hutton on the Glories of Europe," p. 49.

Economic Journal, February 1, 2000, Keith Cowling, review of The Stakeholding Society: Writings on Politics and Economics, p. 197.

Economist, March 4, 1995, review of The State We're In, p. 85; May 15, 1999, review of The Stakeholding Society, p. 9; May 25, 2002, "Partners, Not Strangers," review of The World We're In; January 15, 2005, "The State of Denial We're In; Face Value," p. 63.

Far Eastern Economic Review, December 1, 2006, Hugo Restall, review of The Writing on the Wall, p. 74.

Harvard Business Review, May 1, 2003, review of A Declaration of Interdependence: Why America Should Join the World, p. 24.

International Journal of Manpower, March 1, 1998, Jonathan Payne, review of The State to Come, p. 200.

Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2003, review of A Declaration of Interdependence, p. 208; October 15, 2006, review of The Writing on the Wall, p. 1057.

Library Journal, August, 2000, Lawrence R. Maxted, review of Global Capitalism, p. 120.

Management Today, March, 1995, Patrick Minford, review of The State We're In, p. 34; March, 2000, Peter Parker, "Globalism's Bumpy Ride," p. 39; June 10, 2002, John Kay, review of The World We're In, p. 39; January 9, 2007, "Questions that Haunt China," p. 25.

National Post, January 20, 2007, "Tinny Hold on Powery," p. 6.

New Internationalist, August 1, 2002, Erin Gill, review of The World We're In, p. 33.

New Left Review, November 1, 2002, Robin Blackburn, review of The World We're In, p. 131.

New Statesman and Society, February 3, 1995, Denis MacShane, review of The State We're In, p. 37; April 7, 1995, Ian Aitken, "Why Will Hutton Is Wrong," p. 14; April 18, 1997, Ian Hargreaves, review of The State to Come, p. 44; May 1, 1997, review of The State to Come, p. 126; May 13, 2002, "To Remain in Splendid Isolation: Is Britain's Refusal to Commit to Europe Neurotic or a Mark of Common Sense? John Gray on Why Will Hutton Is Wrong about Our Place in the World and Why There May Never Be a Referendum on the Euro," p. 48; January 29, 2007, "Living on the Edge," p. 63.

Newsweek International, May 13, 2002, "America Has Lost Its Way," p. 56.

New York Times Book Review, February 18, 2007, "Made in China," p. 25.

Parameters, September 22, 2004, Norman Kass, review of A Declaration of Interdependence, p. 151.

Planning, January 17, 2003, "Interview: Political Stakeholder," p. 13.

Political Studies, March 1, 2000, Andrew Gamble, review of The Stakeholding Society, p. 159.

Publishers Weekly, July 31, 2000, review of Global Capitalism, p. 86.

Reference & Research Book News, February 1, 2007, review of The Writing on the Wall.

Spectator, April 12, 1997, Robert Taylor, review of The State to Come, p. 34; May 18, 2002, Irwin Stelzer, "Yank-bashing with Blunt Instruments" review of The World We're In, p. 51.

Time International, May 13, 2002, "The Fight for the Future: Will Hutton's Take on America vs. Europe Is Sure to Spark Debate. But Will It Be the Right One?," p. 57.

Times Educational Supplement, April 24, 1987, review of The Revolution That Never Was: An Assessment of Keynesian Economics, p. 30.

Times Literary Supplement, June 20, 1997, I.R. Taylor, review of The State to Come, p. 14; January 8, 1999, review of The Stakeholding Society, p. 29; June 7, 2002, "Back to the Future: Brussels and Britain of the 70s as Paths to Salvation," p. 4.