Daniel makes it a hat-trick

A RIPON Grammar School student is celebrating winning three major national essay prizes in rapid succession.

Shortly after learning he was runner-up in one prestigious University of Oxford competition, Daniel McClean discovered he had beaten hundreds of entrants from all over the country to win first place in another University of Oxford essay contest.

Then, on his return from attending two separate glittering awards ceremonies at the world-famous seat of learning, Daniel discovered he had also won first place in the Economasters national economics essay competition.

“I must admit, it was very unexpected, I was just blown off my feet,” said the 17-year-old from Knaresborough, who has ambitions for a career in politics.

“I was interested from the beginning of sixth form in doing some essay competitions, and what I learnt about essay writing in lessons helped me to feel ready to take on the challenge of doing a competitive essay.

“I feel fortunate to have had access to these competitions and am grateful to everyone who gave me the opportunity to write about what I’m passionate about.”

In his Economasters essay, Daniel argued that economist John Maynard Keynes remains the most influential figure in the UK economy today.

Judges, who awarded Daniel first prize of £500, said his submission stood out for its command of economic theory, his ability to apply key concepts in a modern context, his skill in crafting a persuasive argument and the maturity of his expositional style.

“It was, overall, an excellent piece of work which effectively demonstrated his capacity for critical thinking and his obvious talent for economic analysis.”

Daniel explained that Keynesianism is of particular interest to him: “Being able to link politics and economics is something I enjoy seeing in action.”

Earlier, he had beaten off stiff competition to win the highly competitive St Hugh’s College, Oxford, Kavita Singh politics essay prize.

Studying maths, economics and politics at A-level, Daniel, who hopes to study politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford, received a £100 prize.

Judges told him that the St Hugh’s politics tutor was very impressed with his essay, titled ‘Democracy will not help us solve the issues facing the world today’.

Daniel argued that democracy in its current form was impotent to help us solve the issues facing the world today, arguing that a form of ‘global administration’ was needed to deliver a legitimate consensus binding upon all nations.

He was also runner up in Oxford’s Brasnose College Massolit video essay competition, entered by more than 200 students from across the UK.

For this ‘talking head’ style ten-minute video lecture, he chose to explore the life of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founding father of the Republic of Turkey.

“I discussed how his legacy had changed over generational and geographical contexts. It allowed me an outlet for an interest I have had in Turkey dating back to when I first went there with family, and some reading I did during lockdown, and it was rewarding to finally get to put my knowledge together.”

Reviewed by a panel of distinguished judges, including Brasnose academics, this was the fourth annual Massolit competition.

A volunteer campaigner for the Liberal Democrats, Daniel explained: "My interest in politics dates back years, to before I was a founding member of the Harrogate Youth Council in 2021. But my study of politics at school has helped that interest crystallise."

He said: “I’m delighted to have received these awards and look forward to the next steps in applying to Oxford – what felt like a dream when I was younger now seems possible and within reach, and I’m excited to get to work.”

A qualified glider pilot and Air Cadet instructor, Daniel founded the student Aviation Society at RGS.

The teenager, who has been playing drums for 11 years, is also a member of the band Yellow Number Five and has also been active in the Scout movement, having been awarded a commendation by the County Commissioner for his work at the World Scout Jamboree in 2023.

*You can read Daniel’s prize-winning University of Oxford politics essay here:

McClean_Daniel.pdf (ox.ac.uk)

See his Massolit video essay here:

The Changing Public Face of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk - Take 2.mp4

*See his prizewinning Economasters essay below:

The Cambridge Dictionary defines “influence” as the ability to have an effect on people or things[1]. Influence, therefore, can be seen as the potential to make effective one’s beliefs and opinions. In economics, there is one person who better than anyone has made their beliefs and opinions heard. The subject of 26 portraits at the National Portrait Gallery[2], a baron[3] and a multimillionaire[4], it is unsurprising that in his time John Maynard Keynes had “power” in the conventional sense. But it was how he turned his ideas into the fundamentals of our modern economic system that make him the most influential individual in the UK economy, even today. Furthermore, Keynes deserves this spot for, in contrast to his neoliberal opponents, Keynes’ theories are better suited than ever to the modern macroeconomic context. Therefore, Keynes both is and should be the most influential person in the UK economy.

To understand the enduring influence of Keynes’ work, it is essential to understand his macroeconomic context. Keynes’ seminal ideas were published in his 1936 General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, written during the Great Depression. American unemployment rates were approaching 25%[5] and output was on track to fall by 5% in Keynes’ native UK[6]. The neoclassical orthodoxy of the time practiced extreme fiscal prudence, believing the state ought to keep deficit financing to a minimum. If a budget deficit occurred, the government’s moral duty was to equalise it[7]. Such sentiments are evident in the Geddes Axes that affected the UK in the 1920s, an attempt by government to eliminate the structural deficit. Here, the desire for fiscal equilibrium necessitated spending cuts during a slump, exacerbating the problem[8].

Against this backdrop, Keynes’ argument set out a radically new vision of the macroeconomic model as its premise, not its conclusion. His argument modelled an economy where the demand-side, not the supply-side, was the epicentre, and where aggregate demand (AD) was the primary determinant of economic activity, including employment[9]. This argument refuted Say’s Law, which claimed, simply, that “supply creates its own demand”. Keynes argued that the phenomenon was the other way around[10]. Effectually, this made AD the independent variable of the entire macroeconomy. The impact this had, and continues to have, on policy making is profound. First, the Keynesian model places an enduring emphasis on demand-side interventions when AD is deficient. An example of this would be the furlough scheme deployed by the UK government during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and associated recession, a £70 billion demand-side stimulus[11]. Secondly, Keynesianism legitimised unbalanced budgets, as the government aimed to achieve full employment levels of AD ahead of balancing budgets, a phenomenon that has shadowed a rise in the UK deficit at an average of 3.7% since 1970[12]. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Keynes introduced the concept of imperfection and irrationality into economic discourse. Discussions about sticky wages[13] and “animal spirits”[14] illuminate a skepticism about the viability of modelling economic agents as rational that arguably provide the basis for much of modern behavioural economics.

In answering the second part of the question, the temptation is to seek a contemporary economist, but this is unnecessary. Keynes is not only the most influential person in the UK economy today, he deserves to retain this position. Furthermore, a greater application of his theories would be the best way to maximise his legacy, because his theories are more pertinent than ever in our era of crises. The “Keynesian consensus” is often considered to have ended in the 1970s, when Keynesianism was threatened by the onset of “stagflation”, not accounted for in the Keynesian model[15]. As Hegel would predict[16], an antithesis to Keynesianism soon emerged in the form of neoliberalism. Neoliberals emphasise free trade, competition and deregulation, all traditional supply-side ideas, and they found their outlet in politicians such as Margaret Thatcher[17]. In the case of Thatcher, an extensive neoliberal programme of deregulation took place during her time as Prime Minister. An example would be the 1986 deregulation of the financial markets[18]. However, neoliberal theories rest on the idea that growth can be infinite[19], and this theory is deeply flawed.

In his book Growth: A Reckoning, Daniel Susskind argues that growth – in efficiency and performance – is a natural human instinct. However, as he demonstrates, economic growth cannot go on forever[20]. The reasons are best summarised by the famous Kenneth Boulding quote:

“Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist”[21]

The world does not have infinite resources for infinite growth. Extensive works, for example theEcological Threat Register 2020, show that unchecked resource consumption has already extensively threatened the ecological wellbeing of the Earth[22].

Neoliberal theories depend on economic growth. Milton Friedman, a leading monetarist and neoliberal, famously said:

“Most economic fallacies derive from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another”[23]

But what if the pie could not grow forever? This makes the argument of many anti-Keynesian economists – namely, that economic growth benefits everyone via the trickledown effect and is therefore the paramount objective of government policy[24] – less convincing.

The argument Keynes delineated seems more compatible with the limits of economic growth we have seen. Our present economic system internalises Keynesian principles, but not Keynesian solutions. In short, it has heeded the introduction, but not the conclusion. The Keynesian emphasis on full employment and welfare, rather than increasing employment and welfare as a tertiary result of economic growth, is far more relevant to the aforementioned limits of economic growth. Therefore, the influence of Keynes lives on – creating a viable alternative in a world where endless economic growth is impossible. For this reason, he is not only the most influential person in the UK economy, but he ought to remain so too.

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[6] D Smith, Sunday Times (UK) 9 November 2008

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