UK’s 800,000 school leavers and graduates need jobs and education offers amid turmoil, says thinktank

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Youth unemployment in Britain will reach the 1 million mark over the coming year unless the government provides job guarantees or incentives for school leavers and graduates to stay on in education, a thinktank warns.

The Resolution Foundation (RF) said that in the absence of action an extra 600,000 people under the age of 25 would swell dole queues, with a risk of long-term damage to their career and pay prospects.

Greece’s former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis and Irish economist David McWilliams on the hope for a global new deal

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David McWilliams: I think it is fair to say that capitalism – in the course of this unprecedented crisis – has been suspended. We are not going back to where we were, to business as usual. The state has come back, and this episode will not be forgotten by the electorate. I don’t know where we are going, but one thing seems clear: we are not going back.

Yanis Varoufakis: I like this phrase: capitalism has been suspended. The last time capitalism was suspended in the west was during the second world war, with the advent of the war economy: a command economy that fixed prices. The war economy marked the transcendence of the standard capitalist model.

The fact that Germany is now in the same pile of shit as the rest of us offers a glimmer of hope

My sense is that the period when you could travel, engage, move, we might have reached the end of that open period.

This is an edited version of a conversation that will appear in A Vision for Europe 2020: Nothing But an Alternative, published this month by Eris.

Climate advisers call for work and training in low-carbon heating, water efficiency and flood-protection

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Restarting the economy and getting people back to work after the coronavirus lockdown should focus on low-carbon work programmes, the UK government’s climate advisers have urged.

They said this would generate new jobs, protect the climate and ensure a fairer economy for everyone.

Related: Green stimulus can repair global economy and climate, study says

Related: Airlines and oil giants are on the brink. No government should offer them a lifeline | George Monbiot

Income subsidies

Pandemic risks exacerbating economic and social divisions between countries

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The coronavirus pandemic threatens the future of the eurozone by creating huge economic divisions between its 19-member states during what is expected to be the deepest recession since the Great Depression, the European commission has warned.

The EU’s economic commissioner, Paolo Gentiloni, said there was an urgent need to mitigate the inevitable exacerbation of existing social and economic fissures, as countries emerge at different speeds from the unprecedented economic downturn.

Threadneedle Street says the economy hasn’t been as bad as this for 300 years – so it can only can get better

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It’s hard to be all that cheerful when you are bracing yourself for the biggest annual contraction in the economy since before the South Sea Bubble crisis of 1720, but somehow or other the Bank of England has managed to find some nuggets of hope amid all the gloom.

To be sure, the short-term news from Threadneedle Street was as grim as everybody had expected. Having fallen by 3% in the first three months of 2020, activity is projected to drop by a further 25% in the second quarter and by 14% over the calendar year.

Related: Don't expect a snapback for the UK economy after lockdown is lifted | Larry Elliott

One of the two main definitions of recession in the UK is at least two quarters of negative economic growth. Judged by this yardstick, the UK was last in recession in 2008-09, when there were six consecutive quarters of negative growth. 

Former Bank of England governor attacks government’s response to pandemic

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Mervyn King, the Bank of England governor during the financial crisis, has warned that Britain’s economy will take longer than expected to recover from the coronavirus pandemic.

Launching an attack on the government over its emergency loan guarantee scheme for businesses struggling during the crisis, Lord King said ministers needed to urgently “get a grip” on the situation to prevent lasting damage to the economy.

Related: War and the weather: what caused the huge economic slump of 1706?

Business models reliant on maximum footfall are at odds with social distancing, leaving space for local shops and mutual aid

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With most local shops shuttered and online sales booming, it’s easy to imagine that coronavirus will deal a mortal blow to the high street. The images of empty public spaces that have come to define this crisis could be a warning of what life will be like after the lockdown, when people will fear crowds and social distancing will continue, either through self-policing or government directive.

The decline of public life is one of the biggest casualties of Covid-19. Zoom, Amazon and Netflix are unlikely to replace our human craving for it. Public discourse has shrunk to encompass the virus, while our daily lives have retreated into the private domestic sphere. Streets and public places, high streets in particular, are the physical setting for public life, and the impact of the virus is that life lived outside – socialising, shopping, working – has been almost entirely curtailed.

Social preferences, economic realities and government policy will shape the future of the high street

Related: 'It's really shocking': UK cities refusing to reveal extent of pseudo-public space