Liberalism at Large

by Alexander Zevin

103.Robert Moss, The Collapse of Democracy, London 1975, pp. 8, 12; ‘National Association for Freedom: Into Its Stride’, Economist, 28 August 1976. In 1974 Thatcher spoke at the first fundraiser for the NAFF, whose house magazine Free Nation focused on confronting trade unions, and often suggested the Army ‘intervene’ to restore order to British politics: see Andy Beckett, Pinochet in Piccadilly: Britain and Chile’s Hidden History, London 2002, p. 188. The NAFF shot to prominence when one of its twin millionaire founders, Ross McWhirter, was assassinated by the IRA. McWhirter had authored a pamphlet, ‘How to Stop the Bombers’, which offered £50,000 for the capture of IRA members. As an example of the NAFF finding its way into the Economist via Moss, see ‘Quis custodiet?’, 22 January 1977. This argued against the right of British postal workers to boycott communications with South Africa as part of an international labour protest against apartheid. Not just because ‘anybody who thinks it is in the nastiest 10 [governments] is conveniently ignoring how other tyrannies treat all their peoples’. It also hailed an unnamed ‘libertarian group’ (NAFF), which saw that this could be the wedge for a wider struggle against the trade unions. ‘At a time when there is some threat to democracy in Britain (or at least when many serious people think there is), when government elected by minorities of the electorate sit through full parliamentary terms … when measures of federal devolution are in the air, when over half of national income passes through the hands of the state, it will be better to become rather more American … In some other democracies these actions against freedom of employment and against freedom of speech would be regarded as infringements of inalienable human rights. It is time to move towards the installation of such rights in Britain.’

  104.A democracy in death throes had ‘two alternatives to anarchy, not one … authoritarian or totalitarian rule’. Despite ‘semantic confusion characteristic of much public debate’, the former left ‘certain areas’ of social, intellectual and economic life alone. Ibid., 10–13. Brian Crozier, then crisscrossing Britain to give lectures on this very issue to army officers and cadets, congratulated Moss. Moss replied to Crozier: ‘Whatever is said for or against this book, it cannot equal praise from the man who has taught me more about the central challenge of our times than anyone else. I have often felt that I was following in your footsteps. I now feel that we are joined in a common cause.’ Moss to Crozier, 21 November 1975, Crozier Papers, HIA, Box 2.

  105.Richard Vinen, Thatcher’s Britain: The Politics and Social Upheaval of the Thatcher Era, London 2009, p. 84.

  106.Hastings, Editor, p. 68.

  107.Tom Bower, Outrageous Fortune: The Rise and Ruin of Conrad and Lady Black, New York 2006, p. 58.

  108.Edmund Fawcett and Tony Thomas, The American Condition, New York 1982, pp. 2, 6.

  109.Other Labour profiles included James Callaghan’s in 1979, ‘Labour’s Conservative’, 28 April 1979; Leonard, interviewed by the author.

  110.Neil, Full Disclosure, p. 20.

  111.Neil and Stelzer formed a consultancy firm, a version of Stelzer’s National Economic Research Associates, with the aim of ending the BBC broadcast monopoly (‘British TV was ready for a multi-channel revolution’). Writing articles in favour of US-style deregulation of the airwaves while running a business devoted to the same did not strike him as a conflict of interest. Ibid., p. 21.

  112.‘The Unions Don’t Know Where They Go Now – Except Down’, 10 September 1981.

  113.‘At the End of the Day’, 19 June 1982.

  114.Peter Clarke, A Question of Leadership: From Gladstone to Thatcher, London 1992, p. 304. When 364 academic economists signed a letter to the Times in 1981 protesting a budget that slashed spending in a recession, the Economist advised patience – waiting six more months for signs of economic turnaround. ‘Britain’s Recession’, 4 April 1981.

  115.‘Thatcher’s Britain’, 4 June 1983.

  116.Simon Jenkins, Thatcher and Sons: A Revolution in Three Acts, London 2006, p. 27; ‘An Anti-Tory Tactical Voters Guide’, 4 June 1983. Seumas Milne and Simon Jenkins, interviewed by the author.

  117.‘Queen Margaret or Shakespeare Goes to the Falklands’, 25 December 1982.

  118.Andrew Knight, ‘The War of April Fools’ Night’, 19 February 1983.

  119.‘Peter Pennant-Rea’, The Times, 12 March 2007.

  120.‘From 1977 to 1986, I think you will see the paper’s economic coverage and approach changed significantly.’ As for Macrae, ‘I think he felt he could leave the economics coverage to Sarah and me, and then to me and Clive. He was changing his own views, not least because he could see that many of the supply-side measures taken by Thatcher were having a positive effect on growth, without the need for a Keynesian fiscal stimulus.’ Rupert Pennant-Rea, interviewed by the author. A glance at his signed articles, surveys, and co-authored books partly confirms this. Reports from East Asia, India, Sri Lanka, Britain, Brazil and Zimbabwe had new focus after 1979: the market was by and large the best way to move people off farms and into cities and factories, not state-led investment or planning, while selling off state-owned assets, creating export zones or lowering trade barriers made a place attractive to foreign investors; Hogg took the same line in Israel, Austria, Britain and West Germany.

  121.Jacob Weisberg, ‘The Tweed Jungle’, Vanity Fair, June 1993.

  122.Sample dialogue: ‘“Bastards,” she said aloud, still thinking of the South African strikes. “Parasites on society.” She found it very easy to slip into the quasi-Marxist jargon of her student days. But then wasn’t she a leech as well?’ Rupert Pennant-Rea, Gold Foil, London 1978, pp. 124, 91, 156, 159, 100, 185.

  123.Interview with the author.

  124.Richard Stevenson, ‘Sex and Bank of England: Downfall for No. 2 Official’, New York Times, 22 March 1995. Alexander Cockburn provides some context to these events in his memoirs. Alexander Cockburn, A Colossal Wreck: A Road Trip through Political Scandal, Corruption, and American Culture, London 2013.

  125.Though much copied and expanded since, London’s Big Bang remained ‘the most rapid and complete regulatory reform of any market.’ John Plender, ‘London’s Big Bang in International Context’, International Affairs, 63, no. 1, 1 December 1986, p. 40; Eric K. Clemons and Bruce W. Weber, ‘London’s Big Bang: A Case Study of Information Technology, Competitive Impact, and Organizational Change’, Journal of Management Information Systems 6, no. 4, 1 April 1990, p. 42.

  126.‘Capital of Capital’, 11 October 1986. On the ‘pre-Big Bang scramble’, see David Kynaston, The City of London: A Club No More, London 2002, Vol IV, pp. 715–20.

  127.‘Capital of Capital’, 11 October 1986. See also, Philip Augar, The Death of Gentlemanly Capitalism: The Rise and Fall of London’s Investment Banks, London 2000.

  128.‘Guided Tour’, 8 October 1983; ‘Lemon Aid’, 3 January 1987.

  129.‘June’s Choice’, 6 June 1987.

  130.‘May the Worst Lot Lose’, 4 April 1992; ‘Mayhem’, 19 September 1992. Major’s government spent £6 billion propping up the pound, and George Soros gained £1 billion betting against it – itself a case study in misallocated resources.

  131.Weisberg, ‘The Tweed Jungle’, Vanity Fair, June 1993.

  132.In searching for a historic parallel, the Marshall Plan had little resonance – a much closer fit was the concept of unconditional surrender: Burnet, America, p. 257; ‘Yankee Stay On’, 10 February 1990; ‘As the Tanks Rumble Away’, 1 September 1990; ‘Doing Well by Doing Good’, 15 June 1991.

  133.‘If it comes to a choice between fudge without war and victory with war, Mr Bush should go to war.’ ‘Saying No’, 11 August 1990; ‘The Man with No Illusions’, 25 August 1990.

  134.‘Blood on His Hands’, 19 January 1991.

  135.Brian Beedham, ‘Niech zyje wiosna: Long Live Spring’, 12 August 1989.

  136.Brian Beedham, ‘1989, and All That’, 23 December 1989.

  137.‘Beedham criticises me for arguing that seven or possibly eight civilisations now exist and says there are really onl
y three: Western, Confucian and Muslim. I can think of no scholar of civilisations, dead or alive, who would agree with him.’ Brian Beedham, ‘Islam and the West’, 6 August 1994; ‘Letters’, 3 September 1994.

  138.‘1989, and All That’, 23 December 1989.

  139.Ibid.

  140.Brian Beedham, ‘As the Tanks Rumble Away’, 1 September 1990.

  141.Brian Beedham, ‘A Better Way to Vote’, 11 September 1993.

  142.Norman Macrae, ‘The Next Ages of Man’, 24 December 1988.

  143.Norman Macrae, ‘Future Privatisations’, 21 December 1991.

  144.Ibid., p. 19.

  145.‘Future Privatisations’, 21 December 1991.

  146.‘Mrs Thatcher’s Place in History’, 29 April, 1989.

  147.‘Banks in Trouble: Sweaty Brows, Slippery Fingers’, 8 September 1990.

  148.‘Time to Choose’, 31 October 1992; ‘Getting His Way’, 7 November 1992.

  8. Globalization and Its Contents

  1.As Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan was the most eloquent spokesperson for the new economy, which his loose money policies from early 1995 to mid-1999 helped sustain – boosting stock market valuations, and creating a ‘wealth effect’ that fuelled corporate and household borrowing. The Economist lauded him – ‘Man of the New Year’, 7 January 1989; ‘Prosperity Not Politics’, 27 August 1995; ‘Almighty Alan Greenspan’, 8 January 2008 – with one short hiccup along the way, when it suggested he might honourably step down to make way for someone younger in ‘A Bias towards Change’, 26 April 2003.

  2.Philip Augar, Chasing Alpha: How Reckless Growth and Unchecked Ambition Ruined the City’s Golden Decade, London 2009, pp. 119, 105, 34, 10–11; Lucinda Maer and Nida Broughton (2012), ‘Financial Services: Contribution to the UK Economy’, House of Commons Standard Note, SN/EP/06193.

  3.Brian Groom, ‘Manufacturers Remain Divided over Legacy of Thatcher Policies’, Financial Times, 12 April 2013.

  4.Augar, Chasing Alpha, pp. 10–11. Outward signs of decline could become a paradoxical source of strength: proof that, freed from fixed exchange rates and imperial currency commitments or controls, the City could float above the dwindling industrial economy.

  5.Angela Monaghan, ‘London’s West End Is Most Expensive Office Location’, Daily Telegraph, 19 February 2013; ‘Opening of Sake No Hana’, Tatler, 1 December 2007.

  6.Over nine years, John Micklethwait earned above £500,000 per year on average, and though Zanny Minton Beddoes is on track to earn less, she made five times an ordinary section editor in her first year as editor: The Economist Group 2016 Annual Report.

  7.R. W. Johnson, interviewed by the author. See also, R. W. Johnson, Look Back in Laughter: Oxford’s Postwar Golden Age, Newbury 2015, pp. 118–19.

  8.Cameron’s other close contact was Xan de Crespigny Smiley, who went to New College, Oxford. David de Crespigny Smiley, his father, was a race car driver, food critic, baronet and spy – who swept through Arabia in a cloud of camels, tanks and planes in the Second World War; parachuted behind enemy lines in Albania in 1944 and then served in East Asia. David Smiley, Arabian Assignment, London 1975; David Smiley, Irregular Regular, Norwich 1994; ‘Colonel David Smiley’, The Telegraph, 9 January 2009. Lisa O’Carroll and John Plunkett, ‘David Cameron Admits Close Friendships with Journalists’, The Guardian, 14 June 2012. Cameron appointed Lockwood to his Policy Unit in 2013.

  9.In 2010, the Economist praised Ridley’s bestselling Rational Optimist for claiming ‘exchange is to cultural evolution as sex is to biological evolution’, with markets the 100,000-year-old fluid of transmission for innovation. The book also called climate fears overblown: just look at the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which killed only 4,000 humans and indirectly benefited local wildlife: The Rational Optimist, London 2010, pp. 5–7. After his departure from the paper, Ridley was often cited – on evolution (‘Story of Man’, 20 December 2005), fossil fuels (‘Engine Trouble’, 21 October 2010), climate change (‘Americans and Global Warming’, 16 February 2011), and gender imbalance at work (‘Too Many Suits’, 26 November 2011). In a review of the Rational Optimist, even the Economist thought him ‘slightly unfair to government’, which could do some things, like ‘enact a carbon tax, and cut payroll taxes’: ‘Getting Better All the Time’, 13 May 2010. It was left to Bill Gates to criticize Ridley’s proposals to abolish ‘top-down aid’ in favour of an internet marketplace for ‘bidding’ on it. Bill Gates, ‘Africa Needs Aid, Not Flawed Theories’, The Wall Street Journal, 30 November 2010.

  10.Emiko Terazono, ‘Lunch with the FT: Perfectly Pitched’, Financial Times, 10 March 2006.

  11.After a second meeting went no better, R. W. Johnson rang Knight and said ‘Andrew, you’re a snob! You only like Magdalen boys who went to Eton!’ Johnson, interviewed by the author.

  12.By 1986, almost 40 per cent of all its exports were bound for the US, where the relative strength of the dollar was a major boon. Brenner, The Boom and the Bubble: The US in the World Economy, London 2002, p. 105.

  13.Bill Emmott, The Sun Also Sets: Why Japan Will Not Be Number One, London 1989, p. 95.

  14.Emmott, Sun Also Sets, pp. 8, 37.

  15.‘The Post-Hirohito Century’, 17 October 1987.

  16.Emmott, Sun Also Sets, pp. 271–73.

  17.Calls for a ‘federal industrial policy’ in the US in imitation of the Japanese – which might grow louder, if budget cuts and tax rises took place under Bush Sr., – were dangerous, in that ‘America will learn from the wrong Japanese example, will emulate something Japan has in fact abandoned.’ Ibid., pp. 93, 95, 97, 100, 271.

  18.Net exports of long-term capital were $65 billion in 1985 and $137 billion in 1987, roughly equalling the GNP of Sweden or Switzerland. Emmott, Sun Also Sets, p. 17; ‘The London of Asia’, 8 December 1984.

  19.Ibid., pp. 34, 67, 87, 89, 127. In the City, Nomura was ‘for a time, the largest private recruiter of new graduates from Oxford and Cambridge’: Bill Emmott, Japan’s Global Reach: The Influences, Strategies, and Weaknesses of Japan’s Multinational Companies, London 1991, pp. 151–52.

  20.Emmott, Sun Also Sets, pp. 126–28.

  21.Emmott, Japanophobia: The Myth of the Invincible Japanese, New York 1993, p. 222; Emmott, Japan’s Global Reach, pp. 177–78, 189. The reason for his uncanny serenity? Bank consolidations, better ratings of investment risk and, above all, a rebound in stock prices stimulated by government policy.

  22.‘International Banking: Survival of the Fittest’, 26 March 1988; ‘Apocalypse When?’, 15 October 1988. Christopher Wood, Boom and Bust: The Rise and Fall of the World’s Financial Markets, London 1988, pp. 5, 22, 145.

  23.Taking on debt for tax purposes using leverage to fund mergers and acquisitions was in accordance with the ‘sound principles of finance’. ‘International Finance’, 27 April 1991.

  24.Amidst his optimism, he did note criticisms of the ‘productivity miracle’; and that, after a decade of Thatcher, inflation and current-account deficits were rising: ‘Business in Britain’, 20 May 1989.

  25.The other contenders in 1993 were Jim Rohwer, Hong Kong chief; Frances Cairncross, environment editor, Daniel Franklin, Britain editor; Johnny Grimond, foreign editor, and David Lipsey, writing for the Britain section. See Jacob Weisberg, ‘The Tweed Jungle’, Vanity Fair, June 1993.

  26.Ibid.

  27.Bill Emmott, Rivals, London 2008, pp. 123–24.

  28.Bill Emmott, ‘The Long Goodbye’, 30 April 2006.

  29.‘An Idea Whose Time Has Passed’, 22 October 1994. Letters poured in from across the globe, almost without exception hostile to this republican turn: the Monarchist League in London, New Zealand Young Nationals in Auckland; the peer Lord Ampthill; a patriot in Nova Scotia; a royalist from Denmark; a New Mexican tourist. ‘Long to Reign over Us’, letters to the editor, Economist, 5 November 1994.

  30.Jenkins, Thatcher and Sons, pp. 57–58. ‘A Wit May Also Be Wise: In Praise of an Unconventional Democrat and Scholar of Walter Bagehot’, 10 March 2012.


  31.‘Politics and the Prince of Wales: All Dressed up and Nowhere to Go’, 19 July 1986. According to Andrew Neil, Queen Elizabeth sent her son to the Economist to be interviewed, wishing to indirectly distance herself from Thatcher, who – Neil claimed – she reportedly considered uncaring and insufficiently critical of apartheid. Neil, Full Disclosure, p. 202. But the piece was not exactly dictated by her, relaying the Prince’s complaints about being kept on a short leash by his mother’s minders.

  32.Why else did only 22 per cent of Cambridge graduates still go into business, he asked, opposing this noble pursuit to useless paths in the professions, academia or … financial journalism? ‘Business in Britain’, 20 May 1989.

  33.‘An Idea Whose Time Has Passed’, 22 October 1994.

  34.Blair’s government returned the compliment, elevating him to the peerage as Baron Lipsey of Tooting Bec in 1999. After stepping down as Bagehot in 1997, Lipsey had stayed on part-time as social affairs editor until then: David Lipsey, In the Corridors of Power: An Autobiography, London 2012, pp. 173–75.

  35.‘The Strangest Tory Ever Sold’, 2 May 1998.

  36.‘Vote Conservative’, 2 June 2001. Welfare reform, public-private partnerships, university top-up fees, war in Iraq; all endeared New Labour, if not Blair or Brown, still further. See, ‘There Is No Alternative (Alas)’, 30 April 2005.

  37.‘The Case for Gay Marriage’, 26 February 2004.

  38.‘Controlling Guns’, 18 May 1996; ‘America’s Blind Spot’, 24 April 1999.

  39.‘The Case for Legalisation’, 28 July 2001; Bill Emmott, 20:21 Vision: The Lesson of the 20th Century for the 21st, London 2003, p. 11.

  40.In 1996, it justified its choice based on the ‘fiasco over health care’, ‘foreign policy made on the hoof’, slowness to enact welfare reform and ‘ethical problems’. ‘What a Choice’, 2 November 1996; ‘If It’s True, Go’, 31 January 1998; ‘Unwanted’, 12 September 1998; ‘Just Go’, 19 September 1998; ‘Resign, Rumsfeld’, 8 May 2004.

  41.Bill Emmott, The Fate of the West: The Battle to Save the World’s Most Successful Idea, London 2017, pp. X, 61.