The Post-history of Brexit: Britain's Growth Trap and the Limits of Economic Strategy post-Brexit
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 มิ.ย. 2023
- IIPP Visiting Professor of Practice Damon Silvers presents the final talk in the 'Pre and Post-History of Brexit - Race, Class and Finance in the Making of British Economic Strategy' Lecture Series. Silvers looks at the economic trap of post-Brexit, post financial crisis Britain, and why escaping from the growth trap Britain is in will require rethinking Britain's fundamental economic strategy in the neoliberal era.
This lecture series offers a clear vision about WTF is going on (and going wrong) in the world, and unlike so many other lectures this series ends with a prescription for positive change. I keep sharing with friends and family. And the question section is not to be missed! Amazing work 🙏
The history of human economies:
"Now that we have a surplus of goods, what should we do with it?"
"Give it to the richest people."
"Great idea!"
[economy collapses - some form of socialism evolves]
"Well, that was horrible but we made it through and now we have a surplus again. What should we do with it?"
"Give it to the richest people."
"Great idea!"
[economy collapses - some form of socialism evolves]
"Well, that was horrible but we made it through and now we have a surplus again. What should we do with it?"
...
In this line of thought i am regularly coming back to Warren Buffets quote and i maybe paraphrasing:
"There is a war between the rich and the poor and we the rich are winning"
So it is time again for the pendulum to swing back and proof the Warren Buffets of this world wrong.
If they are not willing to accept their connectedness to human societies and work rather on their virtues than gobbling up riches, then we the people need to show them the way.
I have been waiting for this lecture. I have learned so much from this series.
Me too.
I'm an Australian engineer and for the last few years I have been informally studying this stuff. It started because I got tired of people without engineering backgrounds (mostly economics graduates) interfering in projects. Its quite profound if you look around the world how badly so many engineering projects are being managed. Without doubt engineers have their parts in that but to the uninitiated we are very heavily controlled by the auspices of people with economics and business degrees. I just wanted to be able to communicate with them in a language they understood.
When he's talking about innovation. I can explain in detail (if you want) why we need massive investment in the innovation of energy technologies. I just found out recently from watching Economist Steve Keen explain how classical and neo-classical economic models *DO NOT* include energy. Other than being absurd neoliberal policies have *CAUSED* the current energy crisis. It has NOTHING to do with Ukraine other than Ukraine has exacerbated the issues that were already well underway.
I don't work in the power industry. I'm an industrial control system and automation engineer who stumbled across the Australian power industry issues back in 2016. When I checked other nations and states I found the same problem again and again. *I AM YET TO HEAR ANYONE ACCURATELY REPORT ON IT.*
This series was phenomenal. As an American I have a very superficial idea of the UK economy, but have been interested in the social effects of Brexit, and I also appreciated your perspective on future developments.
At about 28:00, policy makers here in the US seem to have concluded that labor force lack of participation is due to giving out too much assistance. They seem to think people would rather live on the US's generous welfare system than get a job. Has nothing to do with the fact that most jobs available to unemployed people don't pay enough to allow a person to eat and pay rent at the same time.
A great lecture and a great series on neoliberal political economy. I am rethinking my approach and attitude to UK politics completely.
I guess that's why the Rockefeller foundation funds it.
"breaking down barriers of class, race and region"
Eton College: "lets not be hasty"
A truly excellent tour de force on the causes and reasons for stagnation in Britain’s economy. But also a way in which the country can fundamentally transform its economy to meet the global challenges and meet societies needs. It can be done and it needs to be done.
This brings together all the issues of recent years & threads them together in a coherent, clearly understandable & persuasive format, which at the same time is fresh & pragmatic enough to offer a glimpse of the way out of the trap which is positive & motivational.
Thank you for a timely & v informative 4 part series. More pls.
Thank you for this incredibly interesting lecture series! Though I’m not entirely sold on the solutions outlined yet, I really appreciate the fresh perspective on how we got to this point. Suppose I’ll have to save final judgement until I finish The Entrepreneurial State to fully understand what’s being suggested
I think though the biggest problem is the lack of confidence. We should again just try something. There is a inclination to always assume the worst about government and so that makes them unwilling to try anything, especially if it disrupts private markets.
Very interesting and professional, thank you very much for this lecture
Brilliant. Thank you!
The third lecture appeared in my video feed; it looked interesting, so I watched it. I went back to the previous videos and ended with this video. This series is EXCELLENT! Dr. Silvers explained the concepts, in a way that was understandable, to a 'lay' person like me. It's a shame this series can't be required viewing for business school students. Thank you so much for making this information available to the rest of us.
53:15 "The UK has some extraordinary competitive advantages - its engineering legacy, its universities, its world class capital markets, and its cultural assets - the English language foremost among them".
... And Marmite! Don't forget Marmite!
First class series of lectures. Sadly, most of this is way over the heads of most of the electorate. We need a great communicator to turn this into some kind of Netflix series! I will certainly read the book. FWIW, I escaped Brexit and took Danish residency. Denmark has a far better balance. I have been fortunate to have lived and worked all over the world and nowhere is perfect, but the Danes have a good compromise. England has become an embarrassment and most of the population is unaware. Social detonation is possible I fear.
TBH I'm a builder and farmer and I understood it. At least it was about ideas and not a load of equations. Trouble is, most people just won't try to because they've been taught to think this is "somebody else's business".
Dr Silvers is far more optimistic about the UK's future than I am and his wish list is large. I don't see a positive future for Britain at all. Surprise me, Britain!
So on point and constructively delivered!
Gereat series of lectures!
The Tories are intellectually spent. I sincerely hope that the Labour party are listening to this lecture, but their latest nonsense concentration on continuous purges give me little hope. They should be tied to their seats and made to listen to this lecture.
I do so much agree with you. As I said above this lecture makes the political dialogue I the UK trivial and irrelevant and I blame our media in toto for this trivialising of politics. If I compare our media with the best European Press to which I have been exposed by living in Europe, the gap is not only ghastly but constitutes an obstacle to realising the thrust of these lectures. I do not want to be misunderstood so I will just cite two facing pages in one of my favourite newspapers Corrierra dela Sera. O one page an article on the Scientific Revolution of the 17 Century. On the facing page a picture of Miss Italy. A paper does not have to vulgar and it can to have Grace.
Germany in recession.
Eurozone in recession.
The Republic of Ireland in recession.
But the UK including NI isn’t in recession.
US-UK deal giving UK companies domestic producer status in the US so making them eligible for US subsidies under the Inflation Reduction Act. The EU hasn’t got those preferences.
Bonus - Nicola Sturgeon arrested over SNP finances. SNP implosion. 😂
@@aleph8888 I think the stuff addressed in this lecture series transcends getting US subsidies for British companies and temporarily having better growth than our European counterparts. The long term situation still suggests that UK economic policy is in need of radical reformatting. There's no use putting our fingers in our ears and saying blah blah blah
The whole of their model was to exploit and amplify inequality, to self-deal on a macrocosmic scale. They've succeeded.
The Tories are moving from the Neoliberal space to the Right-Wing Authoritarian (Neofeudal) space and the Labour party is moving from the Social-Democratic space into the Neoliberal space. The Tories *actually understand* that Neoliberalism is at the end of the road, drowned in unrepayable debt- the debt that financed the project in the first-place. Labour, intellectually bankrupt under Starmer, don't understand that, and are moving rightwards into the financially bankrupt Neoliberal space that the Tories are exiting rightwards from, instead of moving Leftwards into a Keynesian position to which other tendencies in the party would likely have taken them.
Listened to the whole series. Generally very informative and stimulating. However...the very end of the last question-time...is perpetual growth possible? The shuffling of feet and fingers-crossed-behind-the-back while unconvincingly claiming "yes"- was palpable. Of course the real answer is "no", but the question of how we get to steady-state then degrowth without economic collapse is for another day and other minds. Notwithstanding, very much appreciated the presentations.
So good
Great content. HORRIBLE slide design. Graphs should be on separate slide. Less text on slides. More slides with larger font. Trying to read these made my head hurt.😢
37:20 I imagine the reason this kind of data is hard to find for Germany is that the German education system doesn't map neatly onto the Anglo one. There isn't a straightforward equivalent of a "highschool diploma" in Germany.
After primary school (4 years), kids get tracked into different "tiers" of secondary school. The lowest tier school ends in 9th grade, the highest tier in 13th grade. Only the highest tier qualifies you for university. Students from the lower tiers typically go on to learn a trade through the apprenticeship system, or get a "practical" degree at a Fachhochschule (vocational university). That's the "non-tertiary post-secondary" education in that graph.
So under this system, your average chemical engineer (for example) isn't _supposed_ to have a "proper" university degree. Universities are for research, advanced job training is handled by vocational universities.
Anyone know if there are links to the slides for the lecture series?
I is astounding that there have been no comments especially in view of the controversy of Brexit and the government's Brexit ideology and the colossal absurdity of political dialogue in the UK
No mention of Scotland nor North Sea oil and gas.
The sense of doom reminds me heavily of early 00s Japan.
Actually, yes. We're all fucked environmentally, so the political situation won't matter too much longer anyway. Lol, the irony.
22:19 The graph he refers to is obscured; can you either move thigns around, or provide a URL to it, please?
At about 44:00, isn't lack of taxation of the financial markets a big factor in creating the large financial sector in Britain? If you take that away, won't the financial sector move to the Cayman Islands? If the financial sector doesn't provide many jobs or contribute to the tax base, what good is having it in the UK?
Corporate taxes on financial services in the City of London account for around 10% of all UK tax receipts. London more generally accounts for around a third of all UK tax receipts.
Arguably the UK should be dialling down financialisation and trying to get back into manufacturing, but the tax incentives for the government push against that.
The Enthalpy of Education
just unbelievable.
Great speaker, all 4 lectures, but horrible slide layout and design 😅🙏
At about 33:39, Policy makers don't seem to understand that public healthcare could be a driver of productivity here in the US. Many of the lower paying jobs available to people don't supply healthcare at all.
Why so long to put this up?
When you were looking at the NHS you should also be looking at another area of local government being the councils as they employ a massive amount of people and can historically be a good employer in large areas of the country. The councils are in a far worse situation that the NHS and part of that is social services which is struggling even more than the average in the councils which in themselves are really struggling and have been since 2009
43:37 "This would have added approximately £20 billion to UK tax revenue..."
But £20 billion isn't much compared to total GDP. £20 billion is a nice-to-have additional sum, but in terms of spending on the NHS or education it's almost chicken feed.
Those 'competitive advantages' are not unique and will not bring any long term benefits. Reliance on the history of universities and culture is unsustainable. British exports of goods have been in decline since 1948. You're right. Drastic change. Massive investment in infrastructure, employing people and an alteration of strategy that is more like the total turnaround of South Korea.
The UK is the world's 7th largest exporter; debunks your point already.
@@richardwills-woodward5340 doesn’t debunk anything: It’s the worlds 6 th largest importer which far outstrips its exports by billions : exporting what ? Whisky, Dysons and Japanese cars plus dodgey banking. Look at a balance of payments chart and zip it Here I’ll help you: researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-8261/CBP-8261.pdf
@@mindcache5650 You clearly have no idea what you're talking about with nonsense snide remarks on the UK economy that are rooted in ignorance of the subject.
The UK seems so frightened to actually act in the countries best interests which ever colour political party is in power it really needs a revival in how this operates? It would take years of careful management to realise this which again does not fit with the ever changing short term planning structure that just blows with the political wind of populism...
Will new requirements on ESG reporting for business strengthen measurements for prosperity broadly.
UK is not USA which has a big market share. US has businesses like Super Military, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Apple..etc..so because of Brexit seems UK becomes isolated to its "neighbor" countries which mostly EU countries. its like UK has a store but puts a fence on its property and now consumers cannot travel freely to buy on "that" store. So EU countries buys a neigbor that does not have a fence and welcomes them. UK is isolated because of Brexit and lost its shine
The people of Britain were doing so well having adopted 10s of thousands of EU regulation that, in spite of a huge propaganda campaign to swing the referendum vote to remain locked into the EU/US corporatocracy, the majority of people voted to leave. Britain is still in lock step with the unelected self appointed EU bureaucrats. The establishment will continue to mismanage Brexit and blame the collapse of Britains economy on Brexit to cover up the transfer of ever more wealth from the masses into the coffers of the mega wealthy corporate bond holder's (the 1%).
Q. How do you make a case to privatise an essential nationised service industry.
A. Underfund it so that it cannot deliver to the public.
Then brainwash the public into believing the only solution is to privatise it.
The NHS worked extremely well in its early days when the Labour Party used to be a genuine socialist party. Since Thatcher and Blair the NHS has been asset stripped and privatised by stealth piece by piece. This is Financial Capitalism on steroids, which only guys who have a comprehensive knowledge of all economic philosophies can explain. Sorry admirers, this guy is not one of them.
There was a chess boom in the USSR. This is a huge number of hands involved in the production of board games, as well as chess schools. I mean money. After the Rubik's cube boom came Tetris. It's kind of like going from a hoe to a horse to a tractor. For a hoe, a horse, a tractor, a 20% loan is, if not fatal, then bondage on the brink of survival, if there is no compensation from the state in an explicit or camouflaged form, for example in the form of benefits for children. You said that neoliberalism, if I understood correctly, is about power as an Olympic sport without rules, or rather, the future holds nothing positive?
A very interesting lecture series. I can't help but dwell on one question relating to the theme of central goverment as market facilitator or shaper and how central planning is critical to industrial development and the green transition. It's a national/unified strategy or project which can only really function to some extent with a degree of industrial protectionism (to help nurture), sovereignty in law, common purpose in government and business culture, and above all the general belief in the nation state and its borders. A kind of nationalism or common purpose. This is toxic to many liberals and those on the left. So what to do? The stratification of society and promotion of individual rights by social liberals and conservatives has made it harder to organise and promote the kind of polices needed to enact radical change or change at all for that matter. The other major obstacle to change here is the class system.
For me, the missing piece is that "individual rights" are still important but in very different forms. We have been taught that that these rights can only include the right to consume with abandon, the right to offensive speech, the right to extract rent/labour, the right to hoard profit etc etc... But you can satisfy the idea of individual rights with other more positive ideas: freedom of movement and association, access to the liberating effect of good health, access to representation and empowerment through participation in discourse and decision making within workers unions and industry. We need to completely discredit the idea that rights or freedoms are somehow supported by neoliberalism. From what we see in this lecture series (and personal experience) is that this current economic arrangement is incredibly oppressive and unfree.
Maybe we have to many dogmatic economic politicians and to few professionals? Thanks for this interesting lecture 👍🏼
An excellent series - hopefully there'll be more from the Institute. Regrettably the "Competitive advantages" slide seems like wishful thinking and I believe Professor Silvers would have been more than capable of demolishing his own arguments there: the engineering legacy is likely to be caught in the growth trap and at best unlikely to benefit a sizeable proportion of the workforce; universities are being buffetted by fees, strikes, the withdrawal of EU funding and the perception of xenophobia in many countries; the cultural industries continue to thrive but funding is derisory compared to leading European counterparts and Film/TV industries specifically rely on international co-production which may encounter challenges going forward. But we must be positive....
23:41 Great and useful example and analysis of the Truss regime as a last gasp of the neoliberal counter-revolutionary regime to resist the forces of nation-state re-formation and centralization. "Autocracy" is an ideological concept underpinning the neoliberal/Biden-led regime in DC. When we talk about private vs. public spheres, we're talking about who controls the political economy. The USA works where the USSR didn't because it's based on a political super-distinction between federal state and nation-state, roughly synonymous with the private and public spheres in American political economy. The American nation-state has to be thought of as 50 local political economies. On the national (as opposed to federal) level, America is integrated by three basic units: household, place and race. This is the "stuff" of politics that drives domestic and national politics. A truck driver in Tampa, an IT professional in Dallas, a homeless man on L.A.'s Skid Row or in the 7 train in Manhattan, this is the real face of the political economy. Each of these people falls into very clear categories across households, place and races. Statistics may be a perfectly valid science, but its political measurers know what to measure because they laid the foundations, they understand the nation-state as a separate entity of 50 local political economies who collectively compromise their way to national unity. This division of power in the US constitutional order is rooted in the formation of consensus that was required for the passage of the constitution itself, upon which "we the people" forced a sovereign bill of common rights apart from the federal commercial republic organized DC. It was British troops quartering themselves in Boston which represented the sense of invasion or encroachment on national powers. The 50 local political economies benefited after WWII as federal military-industry was dispersed across the states in places as far afield as L.A. to Texas and Route 128 in Boston in the Era of the neoliberal "Atari Democrats." These local political economies have of course reconfigured themselves greatly since the Reagan revolution, the old imperial middle class now is ensconced on all sides by people of vastly various categories of: household, race, place. If you do business in New Mexico you're probably at most a regional industry, because American industry is tied to household, race and place. That's how jobs are built into production. Companies hire local and most local workers are firmly comfortable in the patterns of their life across household, place, race. Hence the idea of a precariat to replace the proletariat. It's not that America has no jobs, it just doesn't have jobs that can easily be attained outside the parameters of the local political economy and its labor force. Janitors don't dream of being astronauts and vice versa. Hence there is both stagnation and dynamism in the American political economy. Americans are very provincial. People like Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis are national characters for a nation-state that remembers itself beyond the neoliberal era, both backwards and forwards. Anyway, this all may seem very remote and it is, but the use of the Truss regime as an example really helps sew together the larger picture of a neoliberal regime under siege at home and abroad. Look at how the DC regime responded to 1/6 when its local political economies stormed the image of federal centralized power. The roots of the American drama run deep. Even looking all the way back to Prussia, it was not until defeat by Napoleon's armies in 1806 that Prussia accepted the need of modernizing. It was not merely military defeat that forced Prussia to modernize, it was recognition that Napoleon commanded a superior model of politics and economy. The proof of the French Revolution was that it worked. The Truss regime didn't survive because ultimately its ideas stopped working,and that reflects the broader failure of neoliberal ideas/regimes and their siege by the leaders of the nation-state. Interests are wildly different across 50 states. Farmers and racists in Iowa get their first say in the national honor during a presidential election, but gradually the politics get more serious and integrated in a grand compromise of the needs of 50 local political economies, plus the federal state (and Superpower) which they compose based in DC and (via the UN) New York City. Biden is a caretaker for the regime, as was Truss. Meanwhile China has probably the most stable and effective regime in the world, relatively speaking.
Can you place some paragraphs in your text? Such a large block is unreadable.
Much of this prospectus requires us to rejoin the EU
Or arguably, radical long-term growth oriented economic reform can create the momentum for rejoining the EU. I don't think people will support rejoining without increased prosperity beforehand
I don't think that will fundementally address the UK's structural problems. Unless you want the UK inside United States of Europe (never going to happen) the EU is in the simplest of terms a market. Having access to that market won't/hasn't led to much economic reform here over the past 30 years. But there are a lot of 'other' agendas at play here.
The British Insularity is something of a myth, We were never alone, but since Brexit the absurdity of our myth is now a palpable reality. I think there has been a recognition that if Europe is to prosper we have to be part of the continent, and that reality is combined with a similar recognition in Europe because the Ukraine War has concentrated minds that the EU project is of strategic cogency rather than a remote ideal. I expect that some of the states outside the EU have understood what changes in Europe will arise if the Ukraine should be both in te EU and NATO . The reconstruction of a contingent economy in the UK is not possible outside the EU so the principles that have always been hitherto an obstacle will be diminishing objections to the forthcoming generation. Our defiance of Geography has now become a cogent argument to the understanding that divergence is not merely a principle but a positive and urgent incentive. There is o point in our strategically developing an economy that is not European, Geography and Strategy will compel us to accept tha thistory cannot be a guide to our future. It is one of survival at any viable standard of living. Currency, the myth of sovereignty even Monarchy are now issues of debate and negotiation. Expect may changes not only in Britain but in the attitude of other countries that have hitherto stood aloof. Covid, The Ukraine the challenge of China, the danger of an imploding or resurgent Russia are now contingencies in a future not of a post war delusion@@gethinhooper3671
@@benedictcowell6547 You speak of a 'common market' with a set of rules. Some of those rules were set in the context of a neo-liberal consensus amongst 'western elites'. This is central to the argument made in the lecture. The problem outlined in the lecture is that some of those rules are counter to the kind of structural reforms the UK would need to make to reform it's economy. For example, subsidising industry (or indeed nationalising a natural monopoly) is forbidden under the framework of the common market. Some of our strategic industries and infrastructure may perform better or develop with government intervention. Another example -the UK was forbidden ( by the letter of the law) to intervene and prevent the Chinese from flooding our markets with cheap steel (at their loss) to bankrupt our industry and capture the market. The Amercians can resort to temporary protectionist measures to save strategic industry and knowledge -we could not!
Good lecture but the over-emphasis on climate change is not helpful for future policy decisions. It is becoming apparent that the change in climate is small and limited and does not support the gadareen rush towards zero that is the present political mantra.
MMT examination of Provisioning concept and ensuring supply by coercive control Economy globally is another name for neoliberalism, it's a failure to recognise the Principle of unitary connection, of conscious awareness and sense-in-common cause-effect, ie, the fact of floating point coordination coherence-cohesion objectives, a metastable ecology, is subject to distracting sensationalism and denialist political posturing.
What do you expect?
How will the UK government keep spupporting the lie that taxes pay for government spending when in fact taxes return money previously spent into existence by the UK government?
This is obvious from the nomenclature tax revenues which is literally money returned. As a fiat (in Latin = let it be so) curency sovereign nation is the monopoly issuer of £Sterling, which is literally created ex nihili (from nothing)
Alan Kelly
Professors Silvers and Jhon Mersheimer are both necessary staples for understanding current world affairs. Congrats on this 4-conference series, they brought light to the most important issues of our time. Besides. This made me think of Colombia, a long stagnation, low innovation, the greatest inequality after Brazil, it all product of the neoliberal reforms of Cesar Gaviria and Álvaro Uribe that have brought an stagnation and horrible Gini that seems to me so but so close to what you described for the UK in these 4 amazing sessions. Greetings from Bogotá, Colombia.
Mearsheimer is great on Russia but his warmongering take on China is shocking
@@truthaboveall7988 Mearsheimer is awful on Russia. He understands nothing of the internal Russian politics that led to the invasion of Ukraine, denies agency to the parties involved, especially Ukrainians. His level of understanding of what is going on amounts to a game of Risk or a computer game, not real (geo)politics involving humans. Mearsheimer even ignores what Putin and his regime are saying about the war and Ukraine. Measheimer is a fool.
Mearsheimer is bad on Russia. His fails to understand internal Russian politics and treats everything as the result of what the US did or did not do. He gives no credence to what Putin actually says. While US policy, particularly on Ukraine and Nato expansion has been a car crash it is not the sole determinant of Russian policy. Consider that Estonia and Latvia have 25% ethnic Russian populations, mostly introduced by Stalin and the Soviet Union after World War 2. Had they not joined Nato they might already be occupied by Russia using the same "protect ethnic Russians" playbook used in Ukraine and elsewhere.
@Edgar Rodriguez @Truth above ALL
*its
Where is Nigel? Up the swannee without a bank.
The NHS needs to do the following approaches to be modern and efficient:
1. fully use New modern technology e.g. computers, tablets etc as we agree but more also modern drugs, diagnostics and medical devices.
2. Use of modern business and engineering methods.
Standardisation, benchmarking, process analysis, HR: performance pay and management, better control of finance.
3. Access to Capital markets independent of the Treasury i.e. private or public/private partnerships. There is under capitalisation of the hospitals is ridiculous and so unnecessary as there are organisations willing to invest in British infrastructure.
4. Recruit highly qualified staff with business and administration experience who can run the NHS. Although medical staff are well trained and qualified, NHS recruits basic people with low level qualifications and no experience outside NHS to do the management and administration.
Let Labour destroy the economy. At least that will bring about change. Maybe then Brexit will actually happen.
There has not been a Brexit. Britain is ruled by EU law.
Is this about neoliberalism being a really dumb and backwards policy? Please let me know because I've already heard the story that neoliberalism is happy and friendly and smart and I don't need to hear it again.
I really want to stop by neoliberalism his description....
Is this Institute US state run and funded , like the AFL CIO? In general US strategy has been disaggregation and weakening of Europe, using the UK to leverage US policy in Europe e.g. NATO expansion, no EU army, balkanisation of Europe. Listening with interest to this lecture.
UCL stands for University College London. The IIPP is a UK based institute.
A larger context is needed. First, going back to the beginnings of nationalism and nation states in the 1830s, after the failure of Napoleon's revolutionary regime in 1815 and the restoration of the ancien regime. The success of the bourgeois-democratic revolution had a long way to go, and we might remember the years 1815-1848 as similar to 1945-1989. There was a disintegration of the old revolutionary, pan-European, conspiratorial Left and its displacement by international solidarity and global institutions. The Great Powers acted together as the Concert of Europe, both to defend autocracy as much as to prevent another French Revolution. This is the origin of the modern "idea of Europe." The supra-European regime of 1815 finally collapsed in 1914, and broke up like so many Germanic tribes unmoored from their past and finally integrated into a new world order centered in the Western Hemisphere and in Asia-Pacific. The atomic bombs of 1945 were a sort of Monroe Doctine over the whole world, but particularly a forced recognition of North Atlantic supremacy in Asia as a rising center of global power which first rose through Japanese modernization and challenge to the 1815 regime in Europe. Thus after 1945 the idea of Europe started anew in the light of the Allied victory and the US atomic bombing of the Japanese empire. America had saved the post-1815 idea of Europe while also subordinating it as a junior power and integrating Asia into the 1815-order in Europe. Of course, this unique order of 1945 only lasted about as long as the original Concert of Europe, roughly 40 years. The 1945 regime had suppressed but not defeated the old post-1914 Left in Europe, and integrated ordinary workers into the new global world order through US-controlled production. Thus by the 1980s, the power center of the global order had undergone domestic neoliberal revolutions, which did not come out of nowhere, it belonged to a long-failure of the Administrative state and the failed ambitions of the 1960s Great Society and the decolonization movements of the 70s centered in the Vietnam War. In all of this context, we can understand the idea of Europe in the American century. Anglo-America stands at the head of an historical White Commonwealth across US, UK, Canada, Australia, South Africa. Much ado was made about the crowning of the new BritishKing, a most ghastly and medieval affair as Evelyn Waugh might say. The idea of the UK as the nation of Shakespeare, ia vastly different from the idea of the UK as a junior partner in a global order of 1945. The modern idea of Europe is either historical or it is not. Either it recognizes and supports American Superpower or not. Russia was never part of this idea of Europe since the fall of the 1815 order in 1914. The Russia Revolution was a rival to a capitalist idea of Europe. Ultimately, the US and the USSR split the difference down the middle and agreed to two spheres of influence, with the Third World as a proxy battleground. The US had accommodated itself to social democracy and socialist planning or industrial policy increasingly since the 1920s. Reagan and Thatcher finally broke all this up, and international Superpower turned into globalist liberal democracy and market fundamentalism. Nationalism has reassert itself against the 1945/1989 idea of Europe which is easentially peace through trade and no more war. The Russian war in Ukraine is something like 1848, the old Left has returned to threaten Europe's idea of itself. This is identity politics writ continental, in both the US and UK as well as Russia. They're like 3 children who bitterly resent each other yet grew up in the same house and same time and couldn't look and act more alike.
@@puretone4970 Interestingly both the construction of Senate House and the current IIPP programme were Rockefeller Foundation funded. No wonder the CIA-ometer was ringing away in the background during this talk.
@@jason8434 The US never reconciled itself to the Soviet Union. The Foundations (Ford and Rockefeller) were up to the neck in support for the Nazi regime, Rockefeller particularly involved with eugenics research, Mengele on the payroll at one stage. This lecturer didn't sound like an unprogrammed or politically independent academic . His remarks on reeling in UK shadow banking were particularly interesting. Support for a strong state role without workers control and basic rights is right wing Corporatism not socialism. I don't follow your comment on 1848. The 2014 events were a vanilla US coup. I don't see any relevance of identity politics. Proxy oil / resource war, more or less extension of the Iraq, Libya, Syria situation, surely?
@@casteretpollux I recommend recent lectures by Ivan Krastev which focus on the current drama in Europe as an emergence of a new post-1989 identity politics. If as you say the US never reconciled itself to the Soviet Union, neither did Russia. The emergence of a Russian nation/federation after Communist rule is a long story just now bearing fruit in Ukraine. Krastev details all of this.
Too depressing to watch.
brexit was not a very good idea.....evidence is now there to see.
Equality would mean unappropiate people Fox Hunting.
pro eu 🤢
Is that bad?
@@AnabsurdsuggestionVery much so!
@@Anabsurdsuggestion If this person had a point to make , they would have made it. They are just trolling.
Lots of socialist minds in this comment box I see. Allow me to debunk your entire lecture in a few sentences. The reason the UK and every other Western country struggles for growth and neoliberal economics is an incorrect term and blamed on the wrong people is as follows:
Growth: Too many socialist policies of high tax and over-regulation, which is the EU's favourite thing by the way. It has been proven in economics history time and again, you cannot raise taxes on the productive part of the economy endlessly and expect growth and jobs. Very simple economics. No lecture required. It is a fact and is proven without exception.
Neoliberal economics: A socialist concept which essentially means large companies work with socialists to get the regulation they want, enabling power and resources to move up the chain in a semi-corrupt manner. Taxes follow to replace the lost SME economy. It reinforces itself and you have a 'doom loop' which means the answer to everything is more tax and more bureaucracy and less democracy and less freedom. The Anglosphere boasts the most successful economies in human history precisely because of the opposite policies. The above is mis-labelled. It thinks it has something to do with Reagan and Thatcher. It does not. That is not neoliberal economics and it is a lie and fantasy to believe as such. This phrase is labelled by those that mistakenly think it was Thatcher's legacy. The free market was corrupted by the socialists from the EEC and their believers that then took positions of power in those companies later on, whom with the help of an appalling education system and 'Blairism' flourished. Thatcher [explicitly] states her opposition to markets being dominated by globalist utopian socialist ideals and the distortions of the market this creates. She spoke of how this would hurt the ambitious and poorer parts of society. We are now living in the results of a socialist distortion of free markets. Now they wear suits and infiltrate like the best fifth columnists you can imagine. It actually copies the mafia rulebook. They too took positions in the judiciary, police and other professional services to enable their world of corruption to flourish. The Woke copy this today. The result is corruption and pain for the lower and middle classes. Brexit was due to self-governance being critical. Without that you cannot have a successful economy relative to those that do have liberty under common law jurisdiction.
The issue now is how to eradicate the socialists from the civil service, education system, police, transport network and so on whose symbol is a rainbow (instead of the hammer and sickle) and get back to 1980's economics and the pre-wars economics. We can have a debate about the gold standard another time. The corrupting of young minds at university is criminal.
When I was in UK. I saw empty boarded up streets under a constant grey sky, litter everywhere. Homeless people sleeping in doorways. Opioid addicts out of their mind and women so drunk they urinated on the streets. It's a sad declined country