Grace Blakeley

Blakeley became a staff writer for the democratic socialist magazine Tribune in January 2020. She sits on the Labour Party's National Policy Forum, which is responsible for policy development.

Blakeley joined the magazine New Statesman in January 2019 as its economics commentator, writing a fortnightly column and contributing to the website and podcasts. Her articles for the magazine included support for Lexit and a Green New Deal. Her first book, Stolen: How to Save the World from Financialisation, was published by Repeater Books on 10 September 2019. Michael Galant writing for the openDemocracy website, praised the book as a "convincing critique of modern capitalism for socialists and skeptics alike". CapX's Diego Zuluaga commented in his review that it was a "sweeping polemic against the market economy", and felt the author had been selective in how she presented evidence for her arguments.

Blakeley identifies as a democratic socialist and supports the use of capital controls, calling them necessary to "avoid economic blackmail by the markets" and protect the economy from financial flows. She opposes financial globalisation, arguing that it concentrates capital into financial centres that are more integrated into the global economy than they are with their own countries and leads to unfair trading practices that prevent countries from being able to protect their infant industries. Blakeley supports keeping interest rates low to prevent increased capital investment flows into financial assets and real estate, instead proposing greater public investment into the non-financial sectors to promote economic growth and raise living standards. Blakely also supports local and regional devolution across the UK, reasoning that decentralising the country's "grossly unequal" economy is the only way to rebalance it. She is critical of international law and European Union law in particular as a legal system, describing it as being selectively enforced "in the interests of the most powerful states" who are more able to influence its development than the weak, citing the Stability and Growth Pact as an example. Blakeley supports Jeremy Corbyn's views on the economy and campaigned and voted for him in the 2015 and 2016 Labour leadership elections, though she criticised him in 2016 for failing to "challenge the hegemony of neoliberalism" in the way she had imagined he would.

Grace Blakeley (born 26 June 1993) is a British economics and politics commentator, columnist, journalist, author, and Labour Party activist. She is a staff writer for Tribune and was previously the economics commentator of the New Statesman. She also contributes to Novara Media and has appeared on programmes such as This Week, Question Time, Good Morning Britain, Politics Live and The Andrew Marr Show.