129.Bank bonuses should be paid out over longer periods and tied to performance; trading divisions, which took bigger risks, ought to pay higher capital costs. Central banks, in particular the Federal Reserve, had erred: doing nothing as asset price bubbles inflated (market prices were always right, on the way up) – only to rush in with low interest rates to stop them from popping: ‘Credit and Blame’, 11 September 2008; ‘The Bonus Racket’, 29 June 2009; ‘Taking von Mises to Pieces’, 19 November 2010.
130.Stagnation, inflation, default, or a mix of all three, were the likeliest outcomes: Philip Coggan, Paper Promises: Money, Debt and the New World Order, London 2011, p. 249.
131.Coggan, Paper Promises, p. 239. For the trade-off argument in the Economist, see ‘The Question of Extractive Elites: Bankers and the Public Sector May Both Be Enemies of Growth’, 13 April 2012.
132.Zanny Minton Beddoes, interviewed by the author.
133.‘True Progressivism’, 13 October 2012.
134.Ibid. For a countervailing view of the neoliberal turn in Sweden, see Göran Therborn, ‘Twilight of Swedish Social Democracy’, New Left Review, no. 113, September 2018, pp. 5–26.
135.The Economist denied there was a crisis in living standards. Even though wages had fallen continuously since 2008, low wage, precarious work was still ‘preferable, both in economic efficiency and social equity, to the French or Italian diseases of mass joblessness’. ‘Britain will be a model for Europe if the Tories can boost productivity’: ‘Who Should Govern Britain?’, 30 April 2015.
136.‘If he had his way, he would be the most economically radical premier since Margaret Thatcher’: Ibid.
137.‘The Land that Labour Forgot’, 5 September 2015. ‘Only in the time-warp of Mr Corbyn’s hard-left fraternity could a programme of renationalisation and enhanced trade-union activism be the solution to inequality.’ Rent controls would ‘exacerbate the shortage’ in housing and a ‘people’s QE’ – after the quantitative easing undertaken by central banks to prop up asset prices and stimulate private lending after 2008 – ‘threatens to become an incontinent fiscal stimulus’. Scrapping university tuition fees ‘would be regressive and counterproductive’: ‘Backwards Comrades’, 19 September 2015.
138.‘The Way Ahead’, 8 October 2016.
139.‘The West should help Saudi Arabia limit its war in Yemen’: 15 October 2016.
140.In addition to a civilian death toll of at least 6,500 as a direct result of war (the actual number likely far higher, according to the UN), 85,000 children are estimated to have died of starvation since 2015. By 2018, over 1 million Yemenis were infected with cholera, and 16 million (over half the population) were ‘food deficient’. Derek Watkins and Declan Walsh, ‘Saudi Strikes, American Bombs, Yemeni Suffering’, New York Times, 27 December 2018. See also the Yemen Data Project.
141.Guardian, 29 May 2016.
Conclusion
1.‘UK Newspapers’ Positions on Brexit’, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, 23 May 2016.
2.‘Some Britons despair of their country’s ability to affect what happens in Brussels. Yet Britain has played a decisive role in Europe – ask the French, who spent the 1960s keeping it out of the club. Competition policy, the single market and enlargement to the east were all championed by Britain’: ‘Divided We Fall’, 18 June 2016.
3.‘A Tragic Split’, 24 June 2016; ‘Brex and the City’, 24 June 2016.
4.‘Republicans should listen carefully to Mr Trump, and vote for someone else’: ‘Trump’s America’, 5 September 2015; ‘Brawl Begins’, 30 January 2016. ‘Fortunately, Mr Trump will probably lose the general election. A candidate whom two-thirds of Americans view unfavourably will find it hard to win 65m votes … the share of women who disapprove of him is even higher.’ ‘Trump’s Triumph’; ‘Fear Trumps Hope’, 7 May 2016.
5.‘The Dividing of America’, 16 July 2016. ‘America’s Best Hope’, 5 November 2016.
6.‘The Dividing of America’, 16 July 2016.
7.‘America’s Best Hope’, 5 November 2016.
8.‘The open markets and classically liberal democracy that we defend, and which had seemed to be affirmed in 1989, have been rejected by the electorate first in Britain and now in America. France, Italy and other European countries may well follow. It is clear that popular support for the Western order depended more on rapid growth and the galvanising effect of the Soviet threat than on intellectual conviction. Recently Western democracies have done too little to spread the benefits of prosperity. Politicians and pundits took the acquiescence of the disillusioned for granted’: After Trump, ‘the long, hard job of winning the argument for liberal internationalism begins anew’. ‘The Trump Era’, 12 November 2016.
9.‘A bigger majority would leave Mrs May freer to strike sensible compromises with the EU’ and ‘to stand up to her ultra-Eurosceptic backbenchers, some of whom seem actively to want Britain to crash out. That explains why the pound rose this week’: ‘Game Change’, ‘Theresa May: Tory of Tories’, ‘Hard Work for Labour’, 22 April 2017.
10.Raising the minimum wage would mean ‘60% of young workers’ salaries are set by the state’. Free tuition was ‘a vast subsidy for the middle class and a blow to the poor, more of whom have enrolled since tuition fees helped create more places’: ‘Britain’s Missing Middle’, ‘Cor!’, 3 June 2017.
11.‘Britain’s Missing Middle’, 3 June 2017; ‘Europe’s Saviour’, 17 June 2017. Sophie Pedder, the paper’s Paris chief, was a perfervid Macron-booster; for her sense of why France needed him, see her Le déni français: les derniers enfants gatés de l’Europe, Paris 2012, and ‘France in Denial’, 31 May 2012.
12.‘Mr Corbyn has revolutionised the British left’: ‘The Remarkable Mr Corbyn’, 3 June 2017; ‘The Second Eleven’, 10 June 2017; ‘Jeremy Corbyn, Entrepreneur’, 17 June 2017.
13.‘A Regretful No’, 26 November 2016; Enrico Franceschini, ‘L’Economist vota No? Giornale spaccato. La sua edizione speciale è per il Sì’, La Reppublica, 25 November 2016; ‘Renzi’s Gamble’, The World in 2017.
14.‘Paid sales fell in 2014 for the first time in 15 years’: Henry Mance, ‘Zanny Minton Beddoes Appointed Editor of the Economist’, Financial Times, 22 January 2015.
15.Economist Group Annual Report 2017, pp. 3, 8.
16.Edmund Fawcett, Liberalism: The Life of an Idea, Princeton 2014, pp. xi, xiii–xiv, 5, 25, 293.
17.Ibid., pp. 61, 80–81, 85.
18.In Britain, the MP Robert Lowe (author of the 1856 Companies Act) warned of a threat to property and political economy in 1866, and in the next decades historians Henry Sumner Maine and W. E. H. Lecky decried democracy as ‘monarchy inverted’ and ‘the rule of the most ignorant’. Fawcett, Liberalism, 152–53.
19.Ibid., pp. 144, 152–53, 156.
20.Ibid., p. 248.
21.Ibid., p. 277.
22.Ibid., p. 307.
23.Ibid., p. 380.
24.Ibid., p. 389.
25.Ibid., p. 407.
26.Letters, 14 March 2014.
27.Fawcett, Liberalism, p. 144.
28.Ibid., p. 22.
29.Ibid., p. 235.
30.Ibid., p. 89.
31.Ibid., pp. 113, 116.
32.Ibid., p. 215.
33.Fawcett incorrectly attributes the ‘Red scares’ of 1919–20 to the Harding administration; in fact, the Palmer raids took place under Wilson. Ibid., p. 231
34.Ibid., pp. 21, 227.
35.Ibid., pp. 198–200.
36.Ibid., pp. 358, 336, 353.
37.Ibid., pp. 267, 248.
38.Ibid., p. 6.
39.‘The Economist was sceptical of imperialism’ and ‘Liberalism was not born with the umbilical link to political democracy that it now enjoys’: ‘A Manifesto’ and ‘The Economist at 175: Reinventing Liberalism for the 21st Century’, 13 September 2018. In the same issue, the Lexington columnist gave his seal of approval for Trump’s cold war against China as ‘popular, overdue and irrevocable’.
40
.Daniel Singer, Whose Millennium?: Theirs or Ours?, New York 1999, p. 265.
41.Mill, Autobiography, London 1873, p. 239. Among Mill’s Anglophone heirs, Bertrand Russell, J. A. Hobson and John Dewey all received a similar jolt that led them to embrace a version of liberal socialism.
42.‘Experience and Reform’, 5 May 1860; ‘Defeat of the Ministry and the Prospects of Reform’, 2 April 1859; ‘The Practical Difficulties of Secret Voting’, 2 September 1859; ‘A Simple Plan of Reform’, 24 December 1864.
43.‘Conservative Criticism of Liberal Politics’, 25 February 1860; ‘Plurality of Votes: The True Principle of a Reform Bill’, 24 March 1860; ‘True Liberalism and Reform’, 27 January 1866.
44.Bagehot, CW, Vol. V, pp. 208, 299.
45.‘Democracy and Economy’, 15 August 1931.
46.‘The Way We Go to War’, 26 June 1971; ‘Voices’, 10 July 1971.
47.‘True Purpose of the War’, 2 December 1854.
48.‘As the improvement both of Turkey and Russia will be consequent on the war now happily at an end; so any war with China which should result in bringing her people more completely into trade communication with all other nations’: ‘Peace the Result of Free Trade’, 9 May 1857.
49.Barbara Smith, ‘Not So Hard Labour’, 20 December 2003.
50.‘For me, Johnny never saw one he did’, according to Bill Emmott.
51.‘Retiring Editor’, The Bankers’ Magazine, 1907, p. 150.
This eBook is licensed to Karim Mamdani, [email protected] on 12/02/2019
Index
Aberdeen, Lord, George Gordon, George (4th Earl of Aberdeen), 50
Acheson, Dean, 273, 351, 352
Allende, Salvador, 285–9
Allison, Graham, 351, 352
Amery, Leo, 240
Amin, Hafizullah, 305
Anderson, Sir Alan, 203
Andrade, Marcos, 357
Angell, Norman, 160, 174
Arendt, Hannah, 325
Arnold, Matthew, 55
Ashley, Lord, 39, 42
al-Assad, Bashar, 364
Assange, Julian, 367
Ash, Timothy Garton, 392
Asquith, Herbert Henry, 118, 133, 136, 139
Attlee, Clement, 207, 208, 241, 242, 249, 272
Avebury, Lord, 150
Azaña, Manuel, 6
Bachelet, Michelle, 4
Balfour, Arthur, 132, 133, 138, 188
Bagehot, Eliza, 146, 165, 166
Bagehot, Thomas, 73
Bagehot, Walter, 12, 17, 24, 35, 70, 71–114
Baldwin, Stanley, 188, 218
Balfour, Nancy, 262, 300
Ball, Sidney, 143
Balogh, Thomas, 205, 233
Bannon, Steve, 3
Barlow, Frank, 340
Barry, Gerald, 209
Bartlett, Vernon, 220
Bastiat, Frédéric, 10, 36
Batista, Fulgencio, 267
Beddoes, Zanny Minton, 367–72, 373–4, 378
Beedham, Brian, 260, 267, 280–5, 287, 289, 290, 297, 298, 299, 300, 302, 314, 316, 318, 325–9, 330, 348, 349, 366, 394
Bellairs, Carlyon, 192
Bell, Daniel, 290, 358
Bell, Hugh, 165
Belloc, Hilaire, 142
Beloff, Max, 358
Benenson, Peter, 383
Benn, Tony, 312
Berlin, Isaiah, 8, 239, 383
Berlusconi, Silvio, 4, 345
Berry, Gerald, 220
Berry, Vaughan, 207, 208
Bethell, Sir Richard, 77
Beveridge, Sir William, 183, 187, 203, 225–6, 233–5, 383
Bevin, Ernest, 235, 241, 242, 248, 249, 255, 330
Bird, Roland, 228, 254
Black, Conrad, 302
Blair, Tony, 343, 377, 378, 390
Bloomberg, Michael, 367
Bolton, John, 352
Bonham Carter, Lady Violet (Baroness Asquith of Yarnbury), 182, 348
Bonnemaison, Colonel Antoine, 259
Bosch, Juan, 286
Bourgeois, Léon, 382
Bowring, Sir John, 58
Boyd, Andrew, 258
Bracken, Brendan, 202, 227, 240
Brandt, Willy, 384
Bright, John, 23, 106, 113, 126
Brogan, Hugh, 266, 282
Brown, Gordon, 343, 361
Bruce, Thomas (7th Earl of Elgin), 49
Brüning, Heinrich, 6
Brunner, Sir John, 152
Bryce, James, 71
Buchanan, James, 384
Buckley, William, 358
Burgess, Anthony, 330
Burnet, Sir Alastair, 272–3, 277, 278–80, 300, 316, 319, 342
Burns, John, 161
Bush, George H. W., 2, 324–6
Bush, George W., 18, 350, 352–3, 355, 361, 387, 388
Butler, Rab, 261, 271
Byron, Lord George Gordon (6th Baron Byron), 11
Cadbury, Sir Adrian, 340
Cadbury, Laurence, 201, 202
Callaghan, James, 304, 311, 312, 317, 343
Cameron, David, 334, 363, 372, 375
Campbell, Alex, 267
Campbell-Bannerman, Henry, 132, 133, 138, 144, 148, 149, 152, 156, 173
Canning, Lord John Charles (1st Earl Canning), 67
Cardwell, Edward, 77
Carnegie, Andrew, 146
Carlyle, Thomas, 36, 106
Carr, E. H., 232, 255
Carter, Jimmy, 305, 308, 313, 315, 316
Castlereagh, Lord. See Stewart, Robert (Viscount Castlereagh)
Castro, Fidel, 267, 288
Catto, Lord Thomas (1st Baron Catto), 242
Cecil, Lord Robert (1st Earl of Salisbury), 179–80
Chadwick, Edwin, 41, 381
Chamberlain, Joseph, 130, 133, 137, 138
Chapman, John, 34
Charles, Prince, 278, 342
Chávez, Hugo, 4, 377
Chesterton, G. K., 144
Chevalier, Michel, 10
Churchill, Winston, 6, 139, 149, 152, 153, 156, 160, 173, 183, 184, 189, 190, 202, 210, 219, 226, 255, 387
Clinton, Bill, 331, 332, 344
Clinton, Hillary, 376
Cobden, Helena, 146
Cobden, Richard, 10, 23, 74, 381
Coggan, Philip, 369
Colchester, Nico, 319, 339
Colefax, Sibyl, 202
Comte, Auguste, 8, 92
Constant, Benjamin, 8, 9, 380
Cook, A. J., 206
Corbyn, Jeremy, 318, 372, 377, 378, 392
Corzine, Jon, 344
Cowley, Lord. See Wellesley, Henry Richard Charles, Lord Cowley (1st Earl Cowley)
Craddock, John Francis (1st Baron Howden), 49
Croce, Benedetto, 12, 380
Cripps, Sir Stafford, 208, 238
Croly, Herbert, 382
Cronkite, Walter, 278
Crook, Clive, 319, 322, 333, 335, 339, 345, 368
Crosland, Anthony, 316, 343
Cruikshank, Margaret, 227, 257
Crowther, Geoffrey, 198, 199, 204, 206, 208, 216, 219, 227–9, 268
Crozier, Brian, 258–60, 263, 266, 267, 269, 281, 285, 287, 288, 314, 366, 394
Crump, Norman, 205
Dale, Edwin L. 257
Dalton, Hugh, 207, 228, 242
Darwin, Charles, 34–5, 72, 106, 140, 335
Davenport, Nicholas, 205–208, 232, 233, 242, 246
David, Peter, 349
Davies, Howard, 322
Dawnay, Major Guy P., 203
De Ruggiero, Guido, 380
De Staël, Madame, 9
Derby, Lord, 49, 50, 57, 59
Desjobert, Amédée, 113
Deutscher, Isaac, 232
Diaz, Porfirio, 392
Dicey, Albert, 88
Dickinson, Lowes, 183
Diem, Ngo Dinh, 282
Disraeli, Benjamin, 90–1, 108, 123, 132
Dornbusch, Rudiger, 322
Douglas-Home, Sir Alec, 271
Drucker, Peter, 290
Dru
mmond, Eric, 183
Dufferin, Lord, 126
Dulles, Allen, 257, 261–2
Dulles, John Foster, 262
Duncan, Emma, 318, 353, 354
Durbin, Evan, 207
Eden, Anthony, 218, 261–3
Edgeworth, F. Y., 142
Einaudi, Luigi, 146, 213, 380
Elgin, Lord. See Bruce, Thomas (7th Earl of Elgin)
Eliot, George, 35
Elliott, Mike, 339
Emmott, Bill, 322, 335–355, 368, 371, 378, 396–7
Eyre, Edward John, 106
Fallows, James, 2
Fawcett, Edmund, 314, 315, 379
Ferdinand, Archduke Franz, 159–60
Ferranti, Marcus de, 356
Ferry, Jules, 387
Fisher, Herbert, 204
Foot, Michael, 312, 377
Forest, William, 209
Fould, Achille, 55
Friedman, Thomas, 357
Friedman, Milton, 280, 290, 310, 358, 384, 389
Fukuyama, Francis, 327
Gaddis, John Lewis, 351
Gaitskell, Hugh, 207, 241, 261, 270, 272
Gates, Bill, 344, 356
Gaulle, General Charles de, 259, 270
George, David Lloyd 13, 144, 149, 150, 152–8, 162, 163, 165, 171–5, 178, 179, 181, 183–185, 190, 192, 199, 204, 209, 230, 382, 387
Gibson, Thomas Milner, 61
Giffen, Sir Robert, 146
Giscard d’Estaing, Valéry, 300
Gladstone, William, 12, 50, 57, 77, 79, 84, 105–6, 110, 131–2, 141–3, 147, 173, 180, 182, 381, 387
Glazer, Nathan 358
Goldring, Mary, 300
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 324–7
Gordon, David, 300
Gordon, Scott, 31
Granville, George Leveson-Gower (2nd Earl Granville), 77
Grant, Duncan, 186, 187
Greaves, Clive, 302
Green, T. H., 134, 140, 382
Greg, Walter Wilson, 166
Greg, William Rathbone, 32, 34, 76, 79
Grimond, Jo, 348
Grimond, Johnny, 284, 300, 314, 315, 348, 349, 351, 393, 396
Guizot, François, 10, 55, 380–1, 386
Haass, Richard, 352
Halsey, Sir Lionel, 203
Hamilton, Mary Agnes, 147, 159, 166
Hammond, J. L., 142, 143
Harmsworth, Alfred Charles William (1st Viscount Northcliffe), 149, 163
Harrison, Frederic, 110
Harvey-Jones, Sir John, 340
Harris, Ralph, 309
Harrod, Roy, 244
Hastings, Max, 301, 318
Liberalism at Large Page 67