Everyone's committed to Osbornism. (Ben Pruchnie/Getty Images)
John Gray was the prophet of the postliberal age, describing global capitalism as a false utopia as early as 1998. In his most recent writing, he has returned to geopolitics, and has described the populist moment, the pandemic, and the growing threat of superpower conflict as existential threats to the liberal, technocratic order.
Amid this chaos, Rishi Sunak — former Goldman Sachs banker — has become Britain’s new prime minister. Has the technocratic order of the 2010s returned? Or has the modern world moved beyond its reach? Read Gray’s diagnosis, as well as his interview with Freddie Sayers, below.
The revenge of the technocrats
The point about these people is they’ve learned nothing. There’s no practical way of going back to before 2016. Already in 2016, the world hadn’t fully recovered from a near catastrophic financial crisis which these adults in the room, these extremely intelligent men and women, had given us. The halcyon period of technocratic competence included, going back to the start, long-term capital management melting down in 1998, after Russia defaulted on its debt. That was patched up but it also began what later was called quantitative easing … You then had the 2007-2008 crash. And you also had gruesome sideshows like 20 years in Afghanistan. This is what the adults in the room, this is what the technocrats, the people who are now coming back as safe hands, as competent administrators, this is what they did. So their record is not at all one of competence. It’s one of repeated near-disaster.
They think of themselves as the way of the future. But the future has melted down. It’s not there anymore; their future’s gone. Their future was one in which the whole world would marketise, in which geopolitics would surrender to geoeconomics, global markets. All the states that were emerging, China, Russia and others, would see that their advantage lay with integrating into the global market. Geopolitical struggles would attenuate. They would still be there, but would become less important over time. The opposite has happened. The global market doesn’t exist the way it seemed to exist then and it’s certainly not evolving towards this global market stability that they expected. So, the fundamental problem in this nostalgia, this Osbornist technocratic project, is that they’re adapting to a world that no longer exists, and isn’t coming back. It is a hopeless nostalgia.
What the Tories get wrong about Brexit
Insofar as Brexit’s a Tory project, it is: Global Britain, supply-side reforms, free market, open the British economy even more to the buffeting of the world. Whereas what people wanted in the North and the Midlands, and other parts of the country, from Brexit, I think, was some shelter from those storms. They wanted not a smaller state, a state that had retreated even further. They wanted actually, maybe not a bigger state, although most of them I think probably did, but one which was more protective of them and more concerned with their wellbeing and more active. So the majority of those who voted for Brexit did not vote — perhaps the overwhelming majority — for the reasons that the Tory Brexiteers thought. And that, of course, introduced a contradiction in the whole Tory Brexit project, which meant it couldn’t work.
Why the technocrats don’t get populism
The only way they could understand these movements, what they called populism, was to say that these are stupid, ignorant people. If they merit any sympathy, it’s that they’re being misled by demagogues. But there can be no real merit, no logic, no justice to their claims. And so that itself was a failure of intelligence. I think populism is a term liberals apply to the political blowback of their policies that they fail to comprehend. It was caused by them…
But I think apart from anything else, apart from the morally, profoundly repellent and even abhorrent attitude these technocrats, these liberals, these progressives, technocratic and otherwise, had for their fellow citizens — apart from that — it’s a failure of understanding. Where did it come from? The devil? Where did this strange sort of diabolical combination of demagoguery and mass stupidity suddenly emerge from? It’s a tremendous failure of intelligence and it’s being repeated.
The technocrats now believe they’ve got a second chance and they’re back in the seats of power. They haven’t got the conceptual equipment to understand that forces other than those that fit into their largely economic view of the world — and of human beings themselves and of human action, it’s an economic view of human action — isn’t realistic and doesn’t really work and they can’t acquire the skills without taking too much out of their worldview.
Why Rishi will fail
Anyone who thinks Rishi Sunak is going to be able to stabilise the boat of the British economy to the point at which growth can resume in a few years — they’ve only got two years more in office — is completely delusional. Because the recessionary forces — put aside even war — in the world economy are very, very strong. And the combination of tightening monetary policies with tightening fiscal policies, with higher taxes, lower spending, and cutting back on quantitative easing, can only exacerbate all kinds of painful trends for the general population. So it’s not going to be politically stable. I’m not convinced that the internal cannibalism of the Conservative Party will permit Rishi to even last to January 2025. There could be another cycle of regicide and folly. But then Labour come in, and then what do they do? Because they are actually also committed to Osborne’s vision.
Why Labour will fail
They’ve joined the critique that the Tories were being fiscally irresponsible, and that the responsible thing is to obey the markets… But where’s the money going to come from? If they do shut down remaining forms of energy production, which they regard as damaging, where are the workers going to go? What will happen to Labour when it stops working, when the mixture of Osbornism and green utopianism breaks down, is that the party will internally fracture. I don’t necessarily mean a revival of the Corbynites but there are lots of people within Labour who are prepared to accept the bland neo-technocratic ideology of Starmerism because they think it’s a winning one. And it is a winning one, if only because the Conservatives have made such a mess of things.
Why the far-Right might rise
Mosley didn’t get very far in the Thirties. There wasn’t a single fascist MP in the Commons. We’ve remained, actually, relatively untouched by that. But one of the reasons we’ve remained, not untouched, but where we’ve been able to fend off those dangerously anti-liberal movements, is that the Conservative Party actually was able to moderate them and incorporate them within a broader political project that included social democracy, that included a paternalistic High Toryism, which included various strands. If the Conservative Party is going to melt down, which I think it’s in the process of doing now, then there are obviously risks, even in Britain, of something like that. I don’t know if people really, 10 or 15 years ago, thought that in Sweden there would be a government which depended for its support on having more or less a de facto coalition with the far-Right. But that’s the case now, is it not?
Why we need Proportional Representation
The best outcome would be a change in the electoral system. I’ve not always accepted first-past-the-post. I used to support, 20 or 30 years ago, changes like the Alternative Vote. I think the only way that we’re going to get fresh thinking and a way through the intractable conjunctions that we face — the failure of the Global Britain Brexit, and the almost non-attempt at the more protective and state-centred Brexit that people really wanted — is by breaking up the existing party system and having a wider variety of parties and ideas.
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SubscribeWorking people voted so that their vote could move the dial of policy. They voted neither for a bigger nor a smaller state but an effective state that: controlled borders;helped to promote localities; provided good education; kept law and order; defended the country. The reason why technocrats don’t get “populism” is because they think they know better. They should read Amartya Sen on why democracy is vital and elections deliver crucial signals.
Hallelujah. Someone gets it at last. Also, what people wanted is to see the taxes they pay going to provide excellent services & to help those in genuine need who are IN THIS COUNTRY LEGALLY! It’s not racst, it’s common sense.
I agree, but the very term “common sense” is now considered racist. Just like mathematics.
You will never get an effective state whilst you are governed by the big State
I’m a businessman, and a global capitalist at heart. But, knowing companies as I do, I certainly do not wish to be de facto governed by big companies. Which is what happens nowadays.
Why do you imply that it’s one or the other?
Exactly. What the elites have done over decades is outsource policy from themselves and de facto their successors. Whilst the EU is the most garish example in the UK context, it is far from alone. What has been left is nothing but a hollowed out state, citizens with no recourse and ossified elites that can survive a debacle on an Iraq-war-followed-by-bank-crisis scale. So we do not have a democratic deficit, rather we have a constitutional deficit.
Populism in itself may take many forms borrowing analyses from the classic left and classic right, for example some see intergovernmentally-driven migration as a tool of the elites to drive down citizens’ prospects, so leading to a conclusion that immigrants (as distinct from immigration) and initiatives to support immigrants are the problem on the side of the elites. Some see the problem as being the elites being too willing to prop up quasi-elite structures like global whilst allowing workers’ production lines to fail. So bankers are the problem on the side of the elites. In any case the fundamental point is the analysis of elites vs others – from the perspective of elites populism is thus seen little more than parochialism or nativism. Outdated ideas redolent of a time the elites left well behind.
Essentially the elites want the liberalism, the natives want the democracy. I think that PR is thus a red-herring. The problem is not that we end up with leaders like Truss or Corbyn or Swinson who go down a bomb with party faithfuls, rather the problem is party faithfuls aren’t big, broad or engaged enough to act as the filter they theoretically should. As politics have been hollowed out by outsourcing policy, so too have our political parties. They now comprise of unhealthily narrow cross-sections and interests. Nothing gets up the nose of the elites like the 2016 referendum vote or Orban’s impressive majorities because they are facts that can’t be denied by some clever-clever technocracy, just undermined.
It wasn’t really, ‘I want my country back,’ rather, ‘I want my politics back.’
‘I think populism is a term liberals apply to the political blowback of their policies that they fail to comprehend.’
Profound observation. A thought worth remembering.
Fantastic interview. For me, John Gray isn’t always easy to follow but Freddie interrupted and clarified or focused the discussion where needed.
On Unherd and elsewhere I often ask for possible solutions to the social and economic problems the West currently faces. I’m usually disappointed. Listening to Prof Gray, I realize more than ever that we’re in a period of massive economic, political, and social change. There is no clear way forward. Perhaps the best we can do is, as Gray suggests, make space for a more flexible political system that nurture new ideas and approaches, and, by implication, make space for more free expression in general so that new ideas can emerge. Sadly, freedom of expression is an endangered concept these days.
I’m looking forward to part 2 of this interview.
The EU has rowed itself up a creek without a paddle and the noise of the falls is getting closer. The (British) idea of supranationalism was to give authority to experts. To take politics out of politics. It can’t work. Because globalisation is an irreversible, technically driven phenomenon, the signs lying power of elections become ever more important.
I am enjoying the image of the EU rowing without a paddle upstream and approaching a waterfall from below, ie safe from going over them.
Mixing metaphors is like skating on thin ice- eventually you get burned.
“I smell a rat. I see him floating in the air. But I will nip him in the bud>”
You can take a horse to water, but he’ll gather no moss.
Fear not….there will be a queue.
You’ve been saying that for decades. Dream on
The falls to worry about are always downstream, not up.
Gray did well describing the problem, the cross-fertilisation that has produced left-leaning people voting for the Tories, and Labour adopting Tory ideas( déja Vu…again) as an attempt to build a ‘blue wall….
But PR?!! – always worth flying that flag when the majority find elements of your manifesto absurd…especially when it’s been nearly 2 decades since you’ve won an election.
Great to see John Gray back on Unherd. His voice, though usually somewhat gloomy, is necessary in the public sphere.
There’s a theory called Cliodynamics which proposes that history is made up of new elites coming to power, ruling for around 70 years or so, and then being replaced by a set of new elites. In-between the two regimes is a period of chaos as the old order and the new order contend for power.
I believe we are in that period of chaos at the moment. The old elite are typically old – look at the ages of the top elites – and hanging on grimly to power. What will the new elites look like? I don’t know but I worry that we may be drawn into an age of commercial and defensive confederations – a Global Hanseatic League.
Technocrats fail because the only alternative to a Treaty based system in which democracy can be bypassed is a centrally planned one. Thus at heart, technocrats are socialist in their outlook.
This explains the special importance that they place upon themselves as the vanguard, with anyone not agreeing with their enlightened self importance condemned as idiots.
This has as much to do with a superiority complex as it does with grandiose narcissism. This is why they can only relate to those they label as vulnerable and marginalized through the lens of vulnerable narcissism.
Their worldview is based on ought and how everyone should see and align with the Rousseaun potential of a highly collaborative human enterprise. This is how they see their vanguard selves. They see themselves as the enlightened leaders amidst a corrupt and incompetent world and so are blind to their own competitive instincts which seeks to undermine and destroy their democratic and autocratic enemies.
Of course, the economic premise and goal of a Rousseaun collaborative human enterprise is economic growth and increasing the material standards of living of all, despite thermodynamic limits to energy and material throughput.
In this regard, the technocratic utopia is elitist since growing the pie is seen as more important than sharing the pie despite the illusion of infinite growth on a finite planet. To explain this paradox, the delusion goes deeper with imaginative technological fixes for every perceived problem.
The technocratic Tories are of the same family as the technocratic Progressives with the same goal but achieved instead through national structures. A global family of Nations instead of a world wide society.
However, both deny the Commons Dilemma concerns of the ordinary people. What if there is no growth, especially per capita growth as the human population steadily increases.
This alerts and activates survival anxiety and the demand for sustainable, resilient and sufficiency systems which technocrats are now desperately trying to spin as a front for yet more elitist growth, especially with regards green utopianism despite the global scarcity of critical raw materials.
The ever deepening uncertainty of the human enterprise, despite what technocrats believe, is why Rishi Sunak is in power. Despite the unseemly organic chaos of Conservative Party direct democracy, he has been cultivated to act as a bridge between modern and traditional Britain and act as a bridge between the human centred project of technocracy and the ecology centred project of democracy.
So far so good and Rishi has downplayed the illusionary narrative of economic growth and has instead emphasised stability and unity, which in current global circumstances is an acknowledgment of the need to cultivate economic and cultural cohesion in order to achieve a steady state Britain.
The arch technocrat Macron has talked of the End of Abundance and Energy Sufficiency. Are the democratic technocrats listening at last? Or are strictly hierarchical political systems insufficient to meet the demands of the day and so in order to build up societal resilience, a diversity of political policy platforms is deeply required.
Of course we’re in a period of economic and social change – but are we really in political change? I think it’s politics as usual, where dealing with reality is further away than ever. We in the West are far too self-indulgent and in thrall to the blank pages that are young people. We’ve bred generations that are not prepared to do what it takes to increase productivity and we’re too reliant on too few people to pay for the benefits people have become dependent on.
The result of low productivity is not down to young and/or working people but down to the big State that overburdens us with tax and bureaucracy
Exactly! But as regards tax, always reduce the tax on the low to middle earners because they will spend the extra money. High-earners invest and save. In its self that is not a bad thing but it does not get the economy moving
Criticism of our young by a generation that benefitted from i) reasonable house prices followed by ‘pull up the draw-bridge’ behind us inflation and reduced supply ii) less costly University education iii) more often proper occupational pensions iv) North sea Oil insulating us from energy price problems until now and creating additional tax revenues v) the ‘end of Cold war’ peace dividend vi) extended life expectancy from significant clinical advancements. vi) rapid increases in green house gas emissions without any real price penalty for this. Etc etc. I could go on.
Ignorant and lacking insight isn’t it to then rail at our young when we had so much advantage that they will not. In fact it’s remarkable they are not far angrier with us.
Of course when you are young you have a little less perspective and less experience. But we were the same. Overall I see our young having much better attitudes than those of my generation (baby boomer). They have moved from the atrocious sexism, racism and lack of understanding of mental health to a much better place and credit to them.
What are we bequeathing? It’s shameful.
I agree with much you say, besides the mental health understanding being in a better place. The medicalisation and the over production of and reliance on experts is no improvement
Debt is stealing from the future – the future for our young has been stolen. The only way back is asset taxation, to claw back the capital. The alternative is default. They should not be bound to servicing the profligacy and corruption of their predecessors.
The professional class have profited from making our younger generations unwilling to display the type of resilience that was once mandatory.
“They wanted actually, maybe not a bigger state, although most of them I think probably did, but one which was more protective of them and more concerned with their wellbeing and more active. So the majority of those who voted for Brexit did not vote — perhaps the overwhelming majority — for the reasons that the Tory Brexiteers thought. And that, of course, introduced a contradiction in the whole Tory Brexit project, which meant it couldn’t work.”
Yes. This was actually a great and missed opportunity for Corbyn. Had he stuck to his true Bennite principles and supported Brexit he could have forged a Labourite version, holding on to the RedWall; instead he was weak and backed down, foresaking the working-class for the bourgoise Guardian interest…ah the man of iron principle.
Whilst I can only agree re the detachment of those oozing self-regard, I find the author’s inability to comprehend what Brexit was about surprising.
There can be no disputing the British public’s unease with our entry into the Common Market and the smoke and mirrors employed to persuade them it was beneficial. That Britain enjoyed one year of trade surplus throughout our entire membership and it happened to coincide with the year a referendum was held on membership was no coincidence. The retention of sovereignty was promised, with there never being the slightest intention of honouring that promise and the blunt cynicism of the Lisbon treaty merely brought matters to a head.
“Taking control of our borders” meant having a directly elected and accountable government, incentivised by what is best for its constituents. The tricky bit is finding one. Yes, we voted for change and Boris Johnson was swept to power to clear the logjam very deliberately created in parliament by those who would not accept the result of the referendum. Johnson didn’t really either, he just wanted to be Prime Minister, without the slightest care for what that should entail. Sunak has his own interests and they certainly aren’t ours. Whether or not Machiavellian plotting got him to the position he too coveted is a matter of opinion, but it certainly wasn’t merit.
Hear hear
and don’t forget it was Boris & Sunak who created the current financial black hole that Sunak now wants to “fix” (Liz never had time to create a black hole, it was shutting down the economy and paying everyone to stay at home because another group of elites knew better)
“Taking control of our borders” meant having a directly elected and accountable government, incentivised by what is best for its constituents.
“Taking control of our borders” meant stopping imigration and reducing imports.
“… having a directly elected and accountable government, incentivised by what is best for its constituents” – dear God – are you really that naive?
“The tricky bit is finding one.”
Try cleaning your glasses.
Very interesting. Regrettably, as so many, he says why what we are doing now will not work, and why, but he cannot say what should be done instead, except that it should be different. Which is unfortunately not enough. Liz Truss proposed something different, so did Corbyn, but you cannot argue “We need to do something different; this is different, therefore we should do it“.
BTW I think most remainers would agree with his Brexit analysis: The problem was not that the goals of the people voting for Brexit were wrong; the problem was that Brexit was never actually going to give them what they wanted. As indeed it has not. Which is why getting Brexit ‘over the line’ required Johnson, who could convince people that they really could have their cake and eat it.
I think what it boils down to is that we should accept a less affluent society as the price for some independence from the international economic ringmasters.
A price worth paying in my view.
“The price of freedom is high. It always has been. And it’s a price I’m willing to pay. And if I’m the only one, so be it, but I’m willing to bet I’m not.” –Steve Rogers, Captain America
You must be well enough off then
A less affluent but better society might be a good idea, but generic “independence from the international economic ringmasters” is a red herring. Countries that are genuinely independent are the US and China (because they are big enough to boss the others around), Saudi Arabia (because everybody want their oil), and North Korea (because they have already given up everything the outside world has to offer them). More normal countries have to adjust. Do you want to borrow money on the international markets? Do you want to trade with other countries? Then you have to adjust to the rules and the power of the others, particularly to your main trading partners, particularly if they are bigger and stronger than you are. EU membership gave guaranteed market access and a voice, in return for agreeing to go along with EU policy in all areas. Brexit means no voice, and market access that has to be paid for in each specific case. Overall power to influence the world is likely less after Brexit.
If you can name *specific* things you want to do without foreign influence (like getting out of the ECHR), it might make sense to see what the price is, and how much poorer you have to get to achieve it. Just general ‘independence’ is too likely to be mirage. Or a con.
I agree: that is why I wrote “some independence”.
Are you saying that, before Brexit, Britain had NO independence? Seriously?
According to the section 2 ECA 1972, yes.
I think most of us have a lot of stuff we do not need to be happy. Being told we are insatiable animals that must keep consuming in order to be satisfied is obviously a lie.
‘The problem was not that the goals of the people voting for Brexit were wrong; the problem was that Brexit was never actually going to give them what they wanted’ – in a nutshell RF, concur.
But it did give Farage a media profile, and significant income opportunities arising without ever having to take responsibility. And it did delight Xi, Putin, and Trump (what a trio – it must have been the right decision – doh!). Plus of course it gave Johnson the chance to create the opportunity to be PM, despite never having indicated leave sentiment before. So some undoubtedly did gain didn’t they by mugging alot of us off.
Now this does not mean the EU did not urgently need serious reform, including how immigration, and the perception it was uncontrolled, had to be tackled. It is one of the great tragedies that the country that could have done so much to redirect key elements of the project instead walked away.
That old chestnut again … Proportional Representation
John Gray rails on about extremism in Europe, and how we have escaped it, but clearly doesn’t recognise that PR is the problem!
In Europe PR has delivered decades of coalitions to which the electorate have responded by putting extremist parties into the Parliaments across Europe
I was cheering him on until PR. We need a government of the people, which sounds good if you’re a student revolutionary but, as we don’t have a “people”, it’s cobblers.
About time to recognise exam passing ability and intellect from Oxbridge only gives us aloof patronising snobbery or similarly, BBC comedians who have to claim they support Labour to stay employed.
PR may work in Germany, they have a people, a Volk. The Brit only rallies when attacked. We need a benevolent dictatorship like old style schools, policemen, magistrates and vicars.
Christ
For me this article has put into focus what I vaguely perceived without being able to put my finger on why Brexit seemed to be proceeding in the opposite direction I anticipated: Continuing mass immigration, pursued with apparently lunatic obstinacy in the face of majority public opinion (the main reason the Brexit vote won), and trade deals, with India for example, that would outsource even more high-tech jobs, leaving workers in the UK less skilled and lower paid then ever.
Love John Gray. Don’t know whether he’s right but I love the grand conclusions!
I don’t want PR in the House of Commons, but I think it’s a good idea to have it in the Lords instead of appointments. Different electoral systems will yield different interests to be represented in the different houses – and that’s what we need.
Meanwhile, those new ideas Gray refers to will be aired in the Lords and hopefully find their way into the commons before too long.
Inheritance should be the norm in the Lords.
I’m against any sort of election for the Lords. Maybe a better appointments’ system could be devised, but not having to bend to the will of a fickle electorate and be buffeted by the latest “thng” means that they can be a viable check on the excesses of democracy.
100% agree
No, we do not need proportional representation. I will never vote to find that somebody who was not my first choice was elected because of my other choice. I have difficulty voting for one person and finding an alternative will never happen.
What we need to do is to get rid of the political parties which create division and conflict and have independent MPs and far fewer of them. We need a first pass the post with a new post. That post must require votes from 50% of those on the electoral register voting to be elected. That will focus their attention on us.
What we need Alan is to diminish the power of the political parties and enhancing the power of the MP’s who must be directly accountable to their constituents.
Only then can the Parties be reigned in.
“reined in”, mate.
Essentially, you’re stating a preference for plebiscite over representative democracy. You want MPs to be mere ciphers who say “how high” when the excitable masses say “jump”.
Be careful what you wish for.
No, he is talking about reigning in the parties not the electorate. The MPs represent their electorate, and should not be beholden to party officials, who seem to be on the extremes compared with the electorate,
As the father of two young graduates I have to tell you the problems start in the schools and universities. Most middle class millennials have now completely bought into elite ideologies that will destroy their futures unless they can become individually as wealthy as those who promote these ideologies. As they age they will have none of the free healthcare, state pensions, protection from crime that our parents’ generation took for granted. Unfortunately I fear the brainwashing is now so advanced they cannot be rescued from it.
Democracy as sold to us in recent years should be grounds for prosecution under the Trades Description Act. The Age of ‘Politics’ is over.
I don’t agree with the analysis of Brexit above. I do however agree that its political implementation, so far at least, has been hamfistedly mishandled for the same reasons described above in the context of the technocratic failures of the past couple of decades.
Technocrats don’t understand societies and they don’t understand much about economics either. The EU is a technocratic project, and therefore it is not hard to see that escaping the ideological failiure inherent to it can form the basis for a socially and economically coherent project for rebirth of the nation-state. This has not happened yet for the simple reason that the same technocrats are in charge of it who would, if they had the choice, just put us back in the EU. Of course those people aren’t fit to be in charge of an independent nation, it ought to go without saying.
But is Brexit politically undeliverable as argued above? I say no, because although the vote certainly comprised voters of very differing motives and political tribes, the assertion they made in June 2016 was a matter of principle, and one that is logically and economically consistent with the social conservatism of the traditional patriotic Left – law and order, effective borders, a fair social contract etc – and the economic libertarianism of the Tory right – free markets, open trade, individual liberty etc.
These things are not politically incompatible at all as implied above, but they are practically difficult to achieve in the presence of a large and expensive state which exists principally to serve itself, which is what we’re stuck with, unfortunately. I’m not saying that solving this problem is easy, merely that it’s not logically impossible to do so within the parameters set out by Brexit.
Does a “fair social contract” not require “a large and expensive state”? At least in the sense of how the word “fair” is understood by traditional Labour voters.
There is an awe-inspiring feature in the political landscape and has been for several years. – (What ought to be deemed) the literally incredible reaction of the New Establishment running our country and the western world to (a) our Leave victory in the 2016 Referendum and (b) Donald Trump’s success in his presidential bid that year.
You can believe that Trump is too flawed a man to put things right (I do). You can suppose that the Remain campaign offered no enticements, rather than terrors, to the voters during our EU Referendum and that this was a mistake.
Yet surely any human being who likes the status ante quo and claims to be even slightly intelligent, confronted by those events, would sit down for at least 10 minutes and do some hard thinking. He or she would say to themselves ‘Clearly a lot of people in the UK and the USA are very unhappy, or angry. What are the causes of their disaffection? Are any of those causes justified? IF SO – not otherwise, but if so – what should be done to address and remedy their discontents?’
None of that happened – with (so far as I am aware) the sole exception of the Labour MP for Wigan, Lisa Nandy, effectually reacting in that way.
It is beyond Arrogance and Self-Importance that almost an entire Ruling Caste throughout the western democracies have behaved like this. It is psychotic.
I deduce that, as regards the technocratic class now governing us, we are in the hands of maniacs.
Even the French aristocracy, confronted by their country’s First Revolution in the 1780s and ’90s, broke ranks and developed more complicated views of what had caused that development.
The Banks massaged Sunak into the seat of power – he is one of them. We have no one who represents us. I would rather our home grown buffoon to this danger – however competent and polite he may be.
Come back Boris, all is forgiven?
Could you endure any more lies and piffle. It would appear that he didn’t read before signing contracts. I thought he was a clever man under the cover of a buffoon. How wrong I was but still remain a brexiteer.
Yes you’re correct, triumph of hope over EXPECTATION, I’m afraid.
“How wrong I was but still remain a brexiteer.”
The cultist nature of Brexit – now matter how many times it blows back in their faces, a true Brexiter will always believe.
Boris back on a tight rein and Sunak as Chancellor.
Boris needs discipline, something that Eton failed miserably to instil. However “ where there is life there is hope” as they say.
Addendum: Sadly Boris comes from poor genetic stock, his wife punching father should have been forced to eat his own testicles, and had his right hand cut off, but sadly escaped such censure.
Boris himself is NO Tory but in reality a bedwetting Liberal spastic, masquerading as a Tory. However perhaps his venality will produce a Damascene conversion, although rather late in the day it must be said.
No. it’s not.
I find it puzzling anyone, other than Johnson himself, would want him back in any position of authority. His rise to the role he coveted is owed entirely to the opportunity to address the public’s growing frustration with a treacherous parliament doing all it could to impede our withdrawal from the EU. Having got the job, he had little idea what to do with it, having no interest in responsibility or detail, and his handling of the concocted Covid-19 problem could have been rivalled by a headless chicken. Whether his actions were lawful or not will likely never be properly examined, but he set his stall early by lying to the Queen re his antics in parliament to “get Brexit done.”
Those of a trusting nature might excuse the first lockdown, if there had been significant extra pressure upon a perpetually struggling NHS, but someone in such an elevated position should have been fully and properly informed that such a move would be hugely damaging and could not be justified. Not only were the effects ignored, he continued to double down and the legacy of his actions will be felt for decades. Neither he, nor his current successor offered anything to address the long-term damage they caused and I have no expectation Sunak will admit to any failure when handling the country’s finances.
MPs owing their presence in parliament to the red wall votes are most likely only too aware substance was required behind any promises, but found their leader to be substantial only in his physical presence and the the chummy Boris brand to be nothing more than a PR creation. We are well rid of him and heaven help us all if he ever comes back.
If only John was in charge of everything. I suppose an academic life can be very frustrating if your will is to power.
The solution is that working people start voting out incumbents until they start getting the folks representing them. Hopefully, this will start to happen in November in America. It could be too late, but we will see. The combination of greedy finance/tech, bent bureaucrats, and bought politicians will be pretty tough to overcome. The comfortable latte and Amazon lifestyle may be here until the revolutions.
Astute criticism of the established order, as ever. I have one minor quibble which is that an alternative voting system may not promote the fresh thinking that Gray hopes for. Just look at Ireland – literally every single party adheres to a Bidenite view of the world, supported lockdowns etc. Fresh thinking comes from having a culture which does not promote conformism and does not seek to punish dissenters. That prospect is a long way off.
A great article but an anachronistic conclusion – we don’t need PR, the solution is Direct Democracy, and an end to Representative Democracy, given, as the article so clearly points out, our Representatives have no interest in our wishes. The only thing missed is the inherent corruption and systemic kleptocracy in the staus quo.
QE began in the West in 2009 after the GFCm and this guy seems to be making history up with him having it begun 1998, if you want to play his game it began in the Great Depression when a similar sort of thing happened 1930, sort of..Now Japan began QE in 2001 – but they had a very different thing going on.
OMG, at minute 13 he is saying Boris had an ancient Pagan View….haha..
and
”technocratic and otherwise, had for their fellow citizens — apart from that — it’s a failure of understanding. Where did it come from? The devil? Where did this strange sort of diabolical combination”
This guy is one of those people who despise Christianity so want it reduce it to pure mechanisms of evolutionary. psych-biology like Dawkins….They become obsessed, I think because deep they know it is real but will not allow themselves to admit that, sort of Panglossian.
This guy’s Thesis is No One Understands! That is it – none of the Technocrats understand, they all think it is 2015, that everyone is wrong so they are messing everything up – but for him, because he sees it clearly –
He is psychoanalyzing ‘Technocrats’ as a species, and also the world’s Nations as a sort of Bestiary of outlandishly differing creatures, and finding they all fail to ‘Get It’, and just do not understand as he does – and says noting I can glean from it all..And the big thing is he only references the Disastrous Covid response and Ukraine WWIII the West made of a regional conflict, in passing, although they are the Elephant..
An odd interview, sort of like listening to ‘Jungian Dream Interpretation’ or other esoteric wandering, but on economics and human failings….
I would check out some of his other writings and you tube interviews – he absolutely does not despise Christianity and considers religious faith an integral part of what it mean to be human. If anything he reserves his scorn for the new atheists.
As others have said – read what he has written over the years. He is one of the most challenging voices out there.
If you’re going to be so sneering you should have a better understanding of events. Gray is right to say that monetary expansion began in the aftermath of the Russian/Asian crisis of 1998. What he missed was the “helicopter money” policies of the Fed in the early 2000’s (Greenspan/Bernanke) to avert a recession following the dotcom bust in 2001, which led directly to the crazy lending of those years and thus to the 2008 crisis. Essentially monetary policy for the last 25 years has inflated asset prices, led to periodic busts, and disguised the economic exhaustion of the Western G7 countries. The party has been wild and nobody dared to take away the punch bowl.
If you want to understand the ‘pagan’ reference to Johnson, then try this 2020 article by Freddie Sayers: https://unherd.com/2020/02/the-two-faces-of-boris-johnson/
“The rhetorical world view… sees people as changeable and contradictory like the universe they inhabit; they are the sum of their outward performances rather than possessing a single inner truth.”
“In this light, the populist politics of the past few years looks like the revenge of the rhetorical world view on a technocratic elite who have been found out: the world is not as coherent and serious as they pretended.”