Political Observer comments.

The Reader confronts the latest of Mr. Ganesh’s essays, with his ability to view the 14 years of Tory rule, that has been shortsighted, across a range of issues. To express it in the blandest terms: which just might be the raison d’etre of this Ganesh intervention? The trivialization serves as the backdrop, for an apologetic that simply muddies the waters, of what an actual critical evaluation of those 14 years might be argued!

Boris Johnson, 2017: “We hear that we’re first in line to do a great trade deal with the US.” Liz Truss, 2019: “My main priority now will be agreeing a free trade deal with the US.” Dominic Raab, a cabinet eminence at around the same time: “President Trump has made clear again that he wants an ambitious trade agreement with the UK.”

Then Rishi Sunak on the same subject last summer. “For a while now, that has not been a priority for either the US or UK.” Oh.

This government’s single greatest disservice to the UK has been to misunderstand the US.

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Mr. Ganesh’s political myopia eventuates, realizes itself , into an expression of a self-serving political refraction, that might capture the The Reader’s attention, in the moment. But on reflection is judged as disingenuous? And or leads The Reader to treat this as propaganda?

Editor: Brexit in the next paragraph becomes the ‘Paradise Lost’ in this narrative. A a huge bet on the economic openness of America is then argued as Derrida might have argued it, as an aporia ?

Brexit was, from the start, a huge bet on the economic openness of America. A bilateral trade deal with Washington was meant to offset the loss of unfettered access to the EU market. That no such deal emerged was bad enough (though as predictable as sunrise). But then Donald Trump and later Joe Biden embraced a wider protectionism. World trade is fragmenting as a result. So for Britain, double jeopardy: no agreement with America, but also less and less prospect of agreements with third countries.

Editor: I’ll select some quotes from the remainder of the essay.

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In essence, the nation staked its future on trade at the exact historical moment that it fell out of favour as an idea. It is the geostrategic equivalent of investing one’s life savings in a DVD manufacturer circa 2009.

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Anyone with a passing knowledge of Washington could have warned them not to confuse the place for a free-market bastion.

In 1992, the trade sceptic Ross Perot won 19 per cent of the national vote as an independent presidential candidate.

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Editor: Potted American History:

Look at the dates here. This was the high summer of “neoliberalism”. Imagine how much stronger the protectionist impulse was in normal times. Or rather than imagine, check the record. It shows the tariff walls of the 1800s. It shows the statism of Alexander Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln. Smoot-Hawley wasn’t an interwar aberration.

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But protectionist sentiment is a force in American life to an extent that it can’t be in a mid-sized, resource-poor archipelago. It is then transformed into policy via sectoral lobby groups of a scale and sophistication that must be seen up close to be believed.

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If I lived in a continental-scale market with superabundant resources, I’d need a lot of persuading from David Ricardo and The Economist that I am still better off trading. But that is the point. The Tories think the crucial fact about America is that it is made up of Britain’s “cousins”. (It isn’t, unless we are consulting the census of 1810.)

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After that, the next most important fact is its status. America is defending a position as the world’s number one power.

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Editor: Mr. Ganesh must realize that the Hegemon does as it pleases. The very history of Britain is defined by that practice, that claim!

One needn’t admire this about the US. One can suspect it of hysteria, in fact. But the job of a British government is to fathom these things before betting the nation’s entire future on a hunch that America will forever uphold world trade.

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Editor: the final paragraphs of this churlish meandering philippic come to an end!

This mistake came from “Atlanticist” Tories, remember — the ones who read Andrew Roberts and track the exact co-ordinates of the Churchill bust in the White House. (Barack Obama was hated for moving it.) Well, after giving it all that, these people failed on their own terms. They failed to understand US politics. Britain will foot the bill of their error for decades.

“Trade”: even the moral connotation of the word is distinct in each nation. It has had a high-minded ring to it in Britain ever since the abolition of the Corn Laws helped to feed the working poor. In America, where the cotton-exporting Confederates were free-traders, history isn’t quite so clear-cut. It is almost as if these are different countries.

https://www.ft.com/content/8f229e15-9842-46ce-a828-19647a48f6d6

Political Observer