This paper starts from a paradox:  the post 2008 financial crisis is the most profound financial and regulatory crisis in the UK since before the First World War and yet it has (so far) produced negligible reforms  like the Vickers proposals for ring fencing. Because, in terms of fundamental principles and priorities,  the UK is  trapped  in a groundhog day kind of time loop with elite politicians still biased in favour of finance .. Our explanation is two fold. First, finance wins because the crisis has strengthened the power of  conservative financial, bureaucratic and political elites within our governing structures. Second,  a series of democratic disconnects have disempowered the critics of finance in the technocracy and civil society who have been unable to turn popular hostility into effective reform of finance.  The disconnects are such that, after the decline of the mass parties, it is difficult to convert the radical technocratic agenda or civil society activism into effective policy reform.  Reform will be postponed until some means is found of linking programmatic action with civil society discontent.

See the links below for a downloadable pdf of the paper and a press release.