A dinosaur rises?

The coronavirus brings us temporary war socialism but it may make Neo-liberalism into a dinosaur. Consider how Tony Blair was hailed as a son of Thatcher. That neglects the fact that he was therefore brother of Murdoch, Haig, and Duncan Smith.

But the brotherly Neo-liberal bonds which were so insidious that Margaret Thatcher described them more as a religion than a philosophy were creating entrepreneurial wreckers every bit as dangerous as the trade union wreckers of a previous era.

Their new prophet was William Rees-mogg with his Machiavellian book The Sovereign Individual. The intellectuals of Big Tobacco showed how black propaganda could be used for decades to fight the scientific consensus. With a similar relishing of the dark arts the climate deniers fought the corner of big oil. Margaret Thatcher’s dictum, “There is no such thing as Society”, was taken too far.

The English-speaking world had become a refractory furnace in which dodgy think tanks have reflected macho political sentiments back and fore across the Pond.

The similarity of sentiment between right wing politicians in the USA and the UK may not be obvious to those who think Donald Trump is a bit inane.

The present reversion to massive government intervention may be seen as the kind of war socialism which will be ditched as soon as we get these vaccines.

But the daunting task of recovering from global depression seems to demand the continuation of such policies long after the war.

Intellectuals are gathering behind the idea of a green Revolution. That idea may be the horses the poet Edwin Muir told us about in his poem set in the aftermath of a different catastrophe, nuclear war. Will interventionism become the new norm?

The historians of our era will be the judges of the much vaunted Neo-liberal era. They

are already sharpening their pens.

ANDREW VASS Corbiehill Place, Edinburgh