Old Socialist comments.
Who can forget that team of Adrian Wooldridge and John Micklethwait that birthed such best sellers: ‘The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea’, of 2005, ‘God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith Is Changing the World’ of 2009, ‘The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America’ of 2004, ‘The Witch Doctors: Making Sense of the Management Gurus’ of 1998, ‘A Future Perfect: The Challenge and Hidden Promise of Globalization of 2000.
Reading ‘Right Nation’ , long after its apologetics for Bush The Younger’s Neo-Cons, and its catastrophic crime of the Iraq War – I confronted an uneasy sense of déjà vu, as a long time reader of The Economist, that I’d read it all before, in another key…
I’ve written about Wooldridge before:
Who can forget that team of Adrian Wooldridge and John Micklethwait that birthed such best sellers: ‘The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea’, of 2005, ‘God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith Is Changing the World’ of 2009, ‘The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America’ of 2004, ‘The Witch Doctors: Making Sense of the Management Gurus’ of 1998, ‘A Future Perfect: The Challenge and Hidden Promise of Globalization of 2000.
Reading ‘Right Nation’ , long after its apologetics for Bush The Younger’s Neo-Cons, and its catastrophic crime of the Iraq War – I confronted an uneasy sense of déjà vu, as a long time reader of The Economist, that I’d read it all before, in another key…
I’ve written about Wooldridge before:
Tory Tribune Ferdinand Mount ‘reviews’ The Immortal Bagehot’s ‘The Aristocracy Of Talent : How meritocracy made the modern world’. Political Cynic offers some thoughts.
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AUGUST 6, 2021
Adrian Wooldridge on the Political Apostacy of The Quincy Institute’s Andrew Bacevich and Michael Swaine. Richard Fontaine, of the Centre for a New American Security, shares the stage!
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DECEMBER 9, 2021
Here is ‘Bagehot’s’ latest political intervention:
Headline: Britain | Bagehot
Sir Keir Starmer’s magic lamp
Luck often trumps skill and strategy in British politics
https://www.economist.com/britain/2023/06/19/sir-keir-starmers-magic-lamp
These paragraphs, after the bad news provided by Boris Johnson’s exercise of rank political stupidity, and his victimhood melodrama…
Luck is an overlooked part of politics. It is in the interests of both politicians and those who write about them to pretend it plays little role. Yet, as much as strategy or skill, luck determines success. “Fortune is the mistress of one half of our actions, and yet leaves the control of the other half, or a little less, to ourselves,” wrote Machiavelli in “The Prince” in the 16th century. Some polls give Labour a 20-point lead. Partly this is because, under Sir Keir Starmer, they have jettisoned the baggage of the Jeremy Corbyn-era and painted a picture of unthreatening economic diligence. Mainly it is because they are damned lucky.
Interjection: ‘Bagehot’ never lets that Oxbridger Education go to waste, as persuasive to his Readers. And because this is The Economist ‘Bagehot’ talks money:
If Sir Keir does have a magic lamp, it has been buffed to a blinding sheen. After all, it is not just the behaviour of Mr Johnson that helps Labour. Britain is suffering from a bout of economic pain in a way that particularly hurts middle-class mortgage holders, who are crucial marginal voters. Even the timing helps. Rather than a single hit, the pain will be spread out until 2024, when the general election comes due. Each quarter next year, about 350,000 households will re-mortgage and become, on average, almost £3,000 ($3,830) per year worse off, according to the Resolution Foundation. Labour strategists could barely dream of a more helpful backdrop.
The burning question of the purging of not just Jeremy Corbyn and Diane Abbott from the Party, but the denial of the the facts presented by the inconvenient:
The British Press is the servant of the collapsed Neo-Liberal Swindle, and its invention of an ‘Anti-Semitic Crisis’ within the Labour Party, in the control of the Left Corbynite Menace.
The Reader is then treated to the other political fortunes and misfortunes:
Nicola Sturgeon, the most talented Scottish politician of her generation, found herself arrested and quizzed over an illicit £100,000 camper van and other matters to do with party funds. The snp’s poll rating has collapsed and another 25 seats are set to fall into the Labour leader’s lap thanks to pc McPlod and (at best) erratic book-keeping by the snp.
…
It is not the first time police have come to Sir Keir’s aid. He promised to quit in 2022 if police fined him for having a curry and beer with campaigners during lockdown-affected local elections in 2021.
…
Luck will always play a large role in a first-past-the-post system that generates big changes in electoral outcomes from small shifts in voting. Margins are often tiny. Mr Corbyn came, according to one very optimistic analysis, within 2,227 votes of scraping a majority in the 2017 general election, if they had fallen in the right places.
…
Sir Tony Blair reshaped Labour and won three general elections. But he only had the job because John Smith, his predecessor, dropped dead at 55. (“He’s fat, he’s 53, he’s had a heart attack and he’s taking on a stress-loaded job” the Sun had previously written, with unkind foresight.)
Bagehot being a Thatcherite …
Without the Falklands War in 1982, Margaret Thatcher would have asked for re-election soon afterwards based on a few years of a faltering experiment with monetarism. Formidable political talent is nothing without a dash of luck.
…
Too much good luck can be a bad thing. David Cameron gambled three times on referendums (on the country’s voting system, on Scottish independence and on Brexit).
….
More Machiavelli quotation
“A Prince who rests wholly on fortune is ruined when she changes,” wrote Machiavelli. It was right in 1516; it was right in 2016.
In the final paragraph of ‘Bagehot’s essay
Fortune has left Labour in a commanding position. Arguments against a Labour majority rely on hope (perhaps inflation will come down sharply) not expectation. Good luck may power Labour to victory in 2024, but it will not help them govern. The last time Labour replaced the Conservatives, in 1997, the economy was flying. Now, debt is over 100% of gdp. Growth prospects are lacking, while public services are failing. It will be a horrible time to run the country. Bad luck.
When all else fails what ‘Bagehot’ can provide to his readership, is an ad hoc pastiche of Machiavellian Cynicism, in place of actual political thought. In sum The Reader must choose their Machiavelli : ‘The Prince’ or ‘Discourses on Livy’?
Old Socialist
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