Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: I feel that we talk obsessively that the problem in
Speaker 2: politics is at the extremes, far right, far left. I
Speaker 2: think the problem is actually in the center.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to voter Nomics, where politics and markets collide.
Speaker 1: This year, voters around the world have the ability to
Speaker 1: affect markets, countries and economies like never before, so we've
Speaker 1: created this series to help you make sense of it all.
Speaker 3: I'm alegro Stratton and I'm Adrian Woodridge.
Speaker 1: In a week of difficulties for political leaders around the world.
Speaker 1: I Love Schultz in Germany just about clinging on in
Speaker 1: an important election, Prime Minister Michelle Barnier in France in
Speaker 1: power but struggling to see how he will get his
Speaker 1: agenda through the French Parliament. And in the UK, Keir
Speaker 1: Starmer hit by a scandal around free gifts that pretty
Speaker 1: much nobody saw coming. We're going to talk more to
Speaker 1: the gentleman you heard at the top of the podcast.
Speaker 1: Michael Ignatief was the leader of Canada's Liberal Party from
Speaker 1: twenty or six to twenty eleven. He led his party
Speaker 1: to an historic defeat. More of that interview later, but
Speaker 1: first of all, we're heading into the final stretch of
Speaker 1: this year of elections, aren't we, Adrian and I think
Speaker 1: actually the realities even for some of those elections which
Speaker 1: have been and gone and we have conclusive results like
Speaker 1: the one in the UK, it is not plain sailing
Speaker 1: for those new governments. It's quite a startling turnaround, isn't it.
Speaker 3: It's quite extraordinary. We have the Labor Body conference it
Speaker 3: order to be a great celebration. You know, Labor has
Speaker 3: just come back to power with a massive majority of
Speaker 3: the tours have collapsed. They have i think the goodwill
Speaker 3: of most people in the country, and yet it's a
Speaker 3: pretty miserable atmosphere reading between the lines, partly because of
Speaker 3: this extraordinary scandal over accepting gifts that Starmer has got
Speaker 3: itself involved in, partly because of his sort of miserablest
Speaker 3: a gender. He's talked constantly about how bad things are
Speaker 3: and now they're trying to change it a bit, but
Speaker 3: in a very performative way. But the problems of this
Speaker 3: country are really very deep and it's going to take
Speaker 3: a long time to fix them. It's difficult for you know,
Speaker 3: what are essentially centrist politicians to come back into power
Speaker 3: and you know, righte onto victory.
Speaker 1: But Sir Adrian, I'm interested in your take on the
Speaker 1: free clothes, get tickets, spectacles, uh, personal shoppers. Froth Or
Speaker 1: says something deeper.
Speaker 3: You only get one chance to make a first impression,
Speaker 3: and their first impression has not been good. And they've
Speaker 3: also acted in you know, hypocrisy is the greatest of
Speaker 3: all sins in the democracy, and they've been hypocritical. They
Speaker 3: lacerated the Tories for corruption, for party gates and all
Speaker 3: the rest of it. They come in to pow and
Speaker 3: they do what most people consider as be very similar things.
Speaker 1: When Rachel Reeves made her speech to conference, the backdrop
Speaker 1: was something we called it read out the booming gloom.
Speaker 1: You know, it's gone too far, And as you say,
Speaker 1: they all were sort of instructed to go out and
Speaker 1: course correct and be less gloomy. And one of the
Speaker 1: nuggets in her speech was this idea that you know,
Speaker 1: the investment is the answer, and that maybe even the
Speaker 1: government treasury rules might be looked at in order to
Speaker 1: allow borrowing to invest. So I think they're trying to
Speaker 1: say to their supporters, are who are immensely grumpy that
Speaker 1: they've had to go out and defend these free clothes,
Speaker 1: which they don't think are defensible. They've contorted themselves into
Speaker 1: all sorts of weird arguments in order to make the case,
Speaker 1: which they're not comfortable with. So they're having to say
Speaker 1: to their own followers, look, you know, there is a
Speaker 1: point to this labor government after all. Just just wait
Speaker 1: until the budget, which is six weeks away.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The problem is that they sort of have this mentality
Speaker 3: of basically saying, invest in Britain, We're a basket case.
Speaker 3: I mean, they've spent so long saying how awful things
Speaker 3: are and how many deep structural problems Britain has, which
Speaker 3: it does that it's also now very difficult to get
Speaker 3: foreign investors to come here and invest. Also, a lot
Speaker 3: of the solutions to the shortage of money, for example,
Speaker 3: such as public private partnerships, which I think they will
Speaker 3: revive in some sort of way. In the past they've
Speaker 3: demonized and said is a terrible set of ideas.
Speaker 1: Adrian looking further afield France, you know, the kissed armor
Speaker 1: could take some comfort from thinking he's you know, he's
Speaker 1: not alone looking across to France, where Michelle Barnier has
Speaker 1: become Prime Minister, but it is still not clear how
Speaker 1: he can get through Parliament what he'd like to get through.
Speaker 1: And then Olas Schultz in Germany just about clung on
Speaker 1: in an election at the weekend, but it was a
Speaker 1: very very close wrung thing. So, as is the theme
Speaker 1: of this podcast, the travails of world leaders continue.
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely, Barnier is trapped in a really paralyzed political system,
Speaker 3: and Schultz, I mean, the way the only way he
Speaker 3: sort of survived I think in this election was not
Speaker 3: appearing himself, you know, he sort of he sort of disappeared.
Speaker 3: He hid himself during the election campaign because he's so
Speaker 3: so unpopular. He's a drag on the ticket. But I
Speaker 3: think there's something bigger here that's going on, not just
Speaker 3: France and not just Germany, Europe as a project. I
Speaker 3: read that the Draggy Report on European economic performance, and
Speaker 3: not only is it incredibly depressing, but the one solution
Speaker 3: that Draggy seems to think we need to have, which
Speaker 3: is much more centralized investment in high tech and the
Speaker 3: rest of it, seems to be something that we can't do.
Speaker 3: So it's hard to see the great phrase the light
Speaker 3: at the end of the tunnel, which Kisamoril and doubtedly
Speaker 3: use in his speech today. It's hard to see any
Speaker 3: light at the end of the tunnel for the whole
Speaker 3: of the European continents, so not good news for anybody
Speaker 3: at the moment.
Speaker 1: Didn't somebody want to say that the lights from the
Speaker 1: end of the tunnel is an oncoming train.
Speaker 2: Be careful of those lights at the end of the probably.
Speaker 1: Okay, Now let's get to our main conversation of the podcast.
Speaker 1: We're joined by former politician and professor in the history
Speaker 1: department of the Central European University in Budapest, where he
Speaker 1: was also president for five years, Michael Ignatief. Michael led
Speaker 1: Canada's Liberal Party and official opposition from twenty ozh six
Speaker 1: until he lost his seat in the twenty eleven election.
Speaker 1: That elections saw his party win the fewest seats in
Speaker 1: its history and be reduced to third party status for
Speaker 1: the first time ever. Now, Michael, we often have analysts
Speaker 1: and academics and writers on this podcast, but we don't
Speaker 1: frequently have politicians or people like yourself who've actually been
Speaker 1: on the front line. Before we get onto sort of
Speaker 1: high minded questions of voted discontent and so on. Just
Speaker 1: talk to us about you know, just for me reading
Speaker 1: out those sentences, fewer seats in history and so on.
Speaker 1: Is it still painful?
Speaker 2: Oh? Sure, sure, you don't go into Pola digs unless
Speaker 2: you think you got a pretty good chance of winning.
Speaker 2: And the Liberal Party of Canada was like to think
Speaker 2: of itself as the adults in the room, the natural
Speaker 2: governing party of the country. I think we failed to
Speaker 2: respond to the two thousand and eight financial crisis. I
Speaker 2: think we failed to understand just how radically destabilizing that
Speaker 2: had been to everybody's expectations and how destructive it was
Speaker 2: to their confidence in the center of Canadian politics. And
Speaker 2: so I ran as a centrist, moderate gradualist of a
Speaker 2: kind that we'd known for many years, and it didn't
Speaker 2: fit the sense of radical destabilization and uncertainty that hit
Speaker 2: the Canadian public in two thousand and eight and two
Speaker 2: thousand and nine. So we got clobbered, and to go
Speaker 2: back to where we started it's a very very difficult
Speaker 2: experience to get over. I've had a fantastic time since politics,
Speaker 2: and I'm all fine and don't cry for me, Argentina,
Speaker 2: but it wasn't easy.
Speaker 3: I'm can I ask you a little bit about the destabilization.
Speaker 3: I just wonder there was a sort of formula that
Speaker 3: liberalism reached, which was economic liberalism to social liberalism, and
Speaker 3: that did brilliantly in the nineteen nineties under Blair and Clinton.
Speaker 3: But are we seeing that formula falling apart everything like
Speaker 3: immigration and public health and all sorts of areas. Do
Speaker 3: we need a new formulation of liberalism to deal with
Speaker 3: the fallout of the economic of the financial crisis and more.
Speaker 2: Andrew, I think there's something to that. I feel that
Speaker 2: we talk obsessively that the problem in politics is at
Speaker 2: the extremes, far right, far left. I think the problem
Speaker 2: is actually in the center. I'm a liberal, proud liberal,
Speaker 2: but I think we didn't listen at all to the
Speaker 2: white working class that in my childhood was in unions,
Speaker 2: was organized, felt intense pride in the work they were doing,
Speaker 2: and then lost income, lost status. From the early nineteen
Speaker 2: seventies onwards. We didn't listen or pay attention to the
Speaker 2: staggering increase in inequality that began to set in after
Speaker 2: the oil crisis of the seventies, and so instead we
Speaker 2: focused this is the more controversial part on a revolution
Speaker 2: and inclusion, which men embracing a multicultural society, embracing the
Speaker 2: consequences of feminism, bringing racial minorities into the center. I'm
Speaker 2: in the universities now, and we've enormously promoted the entry
Speaker 2: of recent immigrants, minority groups, women into the heights of
Speaker 2: higher education, preaching the doctrine of equality of opportunity. But
Speaker 2: the equality we delivered were for those groups and not
Speaker 2: for the white majority, and I think that's triggered an
Speaker 2: enormous backlash and it's threatening the center of politics. Let
Speaker 2: me be clear, I am a passionate believer in the
Speaker 2: revolution of inclusion. It's been the best thing that liberalism
Speaker 2: did since nineteen sixty. But I think we neglected to
Speaker 2: realize how disruptive it was to the subtle expectations of
Speaker 2: the white majority, and that now has left our politics
Speaker 2: open to politics of revenge, of politics of resentment, which
Speaker 2: simply has to be dealt with. These are good citizens,
Speaker 2: they need to be listened to. We need to think
Speaker 2: this through, but without I woult to want to emphasize
Speaker 2: walking back on the inclusion that I think has done
Speaker 2: so much good to society.
Speaker 1: Michael, what would you do differently?
Speaker 2: Boy? That's such a good question and so difficult. I think,
Speaker 2: first of all, we'd simply acknowledge that this is a problem.
Speaker 2: Instead of acknowledging that it was a problem. We condemned
Speaker 2: white working class voters as racist or sexist when we
Speaker 2: weren't addressing the politics of feeling disempowered, excluded, and not
Speaker 2: listened to. There are racists out there, there are sexists
Speaker 2: out there. But we adopted a kind of conviction that
Speaker 2: our moral belief in a multicultural, feminist, inclusive society was
Speaker 2: such a self evident good that it didn't need to
Speaker 2: be politically defended. And I think we lectured people instead
Speaker 2: of listening to people. That's kind of number one. Number two,
Speaker 2: since immigration has become the ferocious source of discontent across Europe,
Speaker 2: we didn't manage something basic, which is a have a
Speaker 2: regular legal immigration stream that is, welcome immigrants through a
Speaker 2: legal channel, and secondly, have an extremely tough repatriation strategy
Speaker 2: for illegals. The thing that is devastating the fragile consensus
Speaker 2: on immigration is a sense that the country's borders are
Speaker 2: not secure. Is a problem in the United States, it's
Speaker 2: become a problem in Canada. It's a problem in every
Speaker 2: European state, and until we re establish the legitimacy of
Speaker 2: national borders and the credibility of immigration control, we can't
Speaker 2: sustain what I firmly believe in as the son of immigrants,
Speaker 2: a regular, lawful immigration stream that compensates for our declining
Speaker 2: birth rate, fills the jobs that need to be filled,
Speaker 2: and creates avenue of opportunity for the fantastic people who's
Speaker 2: so enrich for example, Britain, Canada, every society.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're talking about twenty eleven when you left power.
Speaker 1: We're now in twenty twenty four. This is thirteen years
Speaker 1: where the dynamics don't seem to be hugely different from
Speaker 1: the ones you're describing as getting wrong in twenty eleven.
Speaker 1: Have you been surprised to watch things over the last
Speaker 1: thirteen years not change and possibly get even worse than
Speaker 1: successive governments not dealing with them.
Speaker 2: I think I am surprised. I think you've got a
Speaker 2: good point there. I think what's staring us in the
Speaker 2: face is a capacity problem as well. I'm struck by
Speaker 2: the fact that we have so much difficulty controlling borders.
Speaker 2: I mean, in Italy, I get it, it's got such
Speaker 2: a huge literal and it's exposed into the Mediterranean. But
Speaker 2: I am a bit surprised that two powerful nation states,
Speaker 2: Britain and France cannot control these boats. I simply don't
Speaker 2: understand it. And then the solutions that are proposed flying
Speaker 2: everybody to Rwanda are so ridiculous that you can't imagine
Speaker 2: that they aren't laughed off the table of British politics.
Speaker 2: So there is something very odd about what's going on.
Speaker 2: And I think it's corroding not just support for migration,
Speaker 2: it's corroding support for the liberal democratic state. If you
Speaker 2: can't control your borders, you're failing the primary obligation of
Speaker 2: any state, liberal or otherwise.
Speaker 3: But I wonder if there's a sort of strange paradox
Speaker 3: here that if liberals, if centrists, fail to deliver policies
Speaker 3: that can be judge in a practical way improving people's
Speaker 3: living standards, they get punished, But if populists fail to
Speaker 3: deliver practical solutions to problems, they get rewarded, in the
Speaker 3: sense that people ask the more and more extreme populist policies.
Speaker 3: There's a sort of asymmetry here in the way that
Speaker 3: the politics is judged, which is extreme destabilizing.
Speaker 2: That's a very interesting remark, Adrian, and I think it
Speaker 2: has to be true, but it reinforces my point that
Speaker 2: the center can hold only so long as the center delivers.
Speaker 2: When the center lectures the public, why aren't you more rational?
Speaker 2: Why aren't you more reasonable? Why don't you accept our
Speaker 2: entire liberal agenda? And then doesn't deliver the basics that
Speaker 2: is a health service you can trust, a secure border,
Speaker 2: and some degree of economic stability. Then the credibility of
Speaker 2: the center gets punished, and then, as you say, the
Speaker 2: extremes get rewarded. And that seems to be to capture
Speaker 2: some of what's going on with our politics.
Speaker 1: So I mean, let's just stay in the abstract for
Speaker 1: a second before looking perhaps if you at your home
Speaker 1: country of Canada. But before that, is this a problem
Speaker 1: of maps, which is that we say that the center
Speaker 1: can hold as long as it delivers, But the problem
Speaker 1: is delivering. Delivering is now really expensive, and delivering requires
Speaker 1: with all of the problems facing advanced nations around aging
Speaker 1: populations and so on, it just requires a lot of money.
Speaker 1: In therefore, tax increases, and that is not something that
Speaker 1: many people vote for.
Speaker 2: I think that's certainly true. I live Allegra in Austria,
Speaker 2: where the center holds because it's basically a high taxation
Speaker 2: environment that manages to hold its legitimacy because it delivers
Speaker 2: the trains around time. The health service is pretty good,
Speaker 2: the education is okay, that you get a kind of
Speaker 2: balanced equiliverum, high taxation but good public goods. In Britain
Speaker 2: you appear to have in international comparison, low rates of
Speaker 2: taxation and very poor public services. And the whole privatization
Speaker 2: effort in the nineties seems to have not delivered the
Speaker 2: service improvements. You have a kind of constantly discontented electorate
Speaker 2: paying more for less, and that's just pulling the center
Speaker 2: out of liberal centrist politics.
Speaker 1: Can you talk to us about the Canadian situation right now,
Speaker 1: which is you've got Trudam in power. He's supposed to
Speaker 1: face an election next year, but it could happen at
Speaker 1: any point, couldn't it. Michael, just talk to us about that.
Speaker 1: And apparently he's facing a politician that some people are
Speaker 1: calling a polite Trump. You may not look.
Speaker 2: I think that my successor as leader of the party
Speaker 2: led the party to a thumping victory in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 2: I left the party in third place, and he took
Speaker 2: it to first place and has been in power ever since.
Speaker 2: But he is now the least popular politician in the country.
Speaker 2: I think the irony there is that I said at
Speaker 2: the time he's an actor who fully inhabits the role,
Speaker 2: which people thought was a very snarky, unkind remark, but
Speaker 2: actually was meant its praise since I was a poor
Speaker 2: actor who didn't inherit the role. I actually intended it
Speaker 2: his praise. But I think people have got tired of
Speaker 2: the act. He's always on message, he always sticks the landing,
Speaker 2: every speaking point is hit, and yet the cumulative effect
Speaker 2: is of inauthenticity. People simply don't believe it anymore. And
Speaker 2: so he's in that terrible situation of often saying the
Speaker 2: right things, but nobody's listening. And I think at the
Speaker 2: moment he faces the prospect of defeat, although he would
Speaker 2: be the last person in Canada to admit it, and
Speaker 2: believes he will lead the party into the next election
Speaker 2: and that he will win the next election. I don't
Speaker 2: quite see how. But one of the great things about
Speaker 2: political leadership is you sometimes have to believe in yourself
Speaker 2: when nobody else does, and that's clearly what he's doing.
Speaker 2: As for his opponent, he's facing a man that I
Speaker 2: knew well in the House of Commons, Pierre Polief, who
Speaker 2: has an extraordinary story. He's from the Midwest of Canada,
Speaker 2: very poor, difficult childhood. This is enormously in his favor,
Speaker 2: but he's the downside, and this is a feature of
Speaker 2: British politics and other politics. He's never done anything other
Speaker 2: than politics. He's been a staffer since the early twenties.
Speaker 2: He's learned and attack dog style of politics, taken straight
Speaker 2: from the US Republican Party. And when people say he's
Speaker 2: a small version of Trump, I think he's adopted the
Speaker 2: entire style of American politics, and it's disturbing that's finding
Speaker 2: an audience in Canada. But because Canada walks around saying
Speaker 2: we're a nicer, kinder America, and our national identity survives
Speaker 2: on invidious comparison with our awful neighbors to this south,
Speaker 2: whom we frantically envy but simultaneously despise. But I think
Speaker 2: we're gonna get possibly a version of Canadian version of
Speaker 2: Trump in twenty twenty five, and that I think is
Speaker 2: not good for the country. Because the fact about Canada
Speaker 2: is that it is this gigantic democracy on tiny population,
Speaker 2: on a huge landscape. We're so spread out from Atlantic
Speaker 2: to Pacific to Arctic that the job of a prime
Speaker 2: minister is basically one thing, keep the show on the road.
Speaker 2: And you can't keep the show on the road if
Speaker 2: you run one section of the country against the other,
Speaker 2: one group of Canadians against the other. Unity is the
Speaker 2: only thing a Canadian prime minister has to do. And
Speaker 2: I fear that Pierre Poliev has forgotten that.
Speaker 1: Because Polief's major proposal is axe attacks, which is, get
Speaker 1: did this forcecoming increase in carbon tax? Do you think
Speaker 1: that's putting one bit of the population against another.
Speaker 2: Well, he's figured out something that is a real issue
Speaker 2: in liberal democratic politics everywhere, which is that climate change
Speaker 2: politics is not religion, it's politics. It's highly divisive, and
Speaker 2: at a time of rising inflationary pressures on people's household
Speaker 2: incomes the prospect of spending money on a carbon levee
Speaker 2: on your gasoline is extremely unpopular, and so he's seized
Speaker 2: on that and hopes to ride his way to power.
Speaker 2: But it's symptomatic of a wider problem across liberal democracies
Speaker 2: is that climate change policies are becoming more and more
Speaker 2: and more unpopular, and so a liberal politics that cares
Speaker 2: about climate has got to stick with its convictions. And
Speaker 2: you know, Trudeau has sacrificed some of his legitimacy by
Speaker 2: warbbling on carbon tax issues at a time when I
Speaker 2: think we need to double down.
Speaker 3: You've been very pessimistic about liberal democracy during this talk,
Speaker 3: which I resent a bit normally my job when you've
Speaker 3: speeds the mantle. But I wonder if there's anything sort
Speaker 3: of positive that we can think about over the last
Speaker 3: year or so, and whether there is a chance that
Speaker 3: we may be seeing that sort of the end of Trump,
Speaker 3: you know, in the next in the coming election, doesn't
Speaker 3: seem to be the leader in this election. Rate Is
Speaker 3: there any good news that you can see in the
Speaker 3: past and potentially in the future.
Speaker 2: Boy, I'm I'm struggling a bit. Yes, I think liberal
Speaker 2: democracy is having a very difficult time at the theoretical level.
Speaker 2: And that's not the right way to answer the question,
Speaker 2: I know, but let me go there. The reason we
Speaker 2: should care about liberal democracy, in my view, is that
Speaker 2: it's power checking power to keep the people free. One
Speaker 2: of the things that I think has got lost is
Speaker 2: we have a liberal democracy in which we have an
Speaker 2: ever more overpowering state that is ever less competent, so
Speaker 2: it fills the gap between its power and its actual
Speaker 2: competence with lecturing the public, and the public is more
Speaker 2: and more impatient with this, when in fact we need
Speaker 2: to deliver a liberal politics that really says we care
Speaker 2: about your freedom. I don't mean the thatcheri freedom. I
Speaker 2: mean the freedom that is sustained by just good, decent
Speaker 2: public goods that we all share. But if you don't
Speaker 2: have hospitals that care for your mom and dad, if
Speaker 2: you don't have schools that educate the kids, if the
Speaker 2: real way is always late, the liberal democratic vision of
Speaker 2: freedom sustained by public goods just begins to collapse. And
Speaker 2: my own view is that it does require a very
Speaker 2: solid tax space, and that tax space and then is
Speaker 2: being eroded by accountants to super rich people who basically
Speaker 2: game the system and drain the treasury the resources we
Speaker 2: need to sustain public goods for all. And then we
Speaker 2: have to say to middle and upper middle class people, folks,
Speaker 2: if you want a society, if you want a place
Speaker 2: that holds together as a place you want your kids
Speaker 2: to grow up, and you got to pay for it.
Speaker 2: And most liberal politicians, I include myself, are very reluctant
Speaker 2: to say, if you want public goods, you got to
Speaker 2: pay for But this is what I think we have
Speaker 2: to go to.
Speaker 3: We have a labor government here that is trying to
Speaker 3: do exactly what you're saying. But partly because they've handled
Speaker 3: it very badly, taking a lot of phoebees and all
Speaker 3: sorts of weird things, they're not getting the message you costs.
Speaker 3: But also because it's difficult, It takes a long time,
Speaker 3: and democracies are impatient places.
Speaker 2: I wish kir Starmer could listen to Franklin Delano Roosevelt's
Speaker 2: speeches again, because the thing that old Franklin got right
Speaker 2: is whenever it's really tough, you can't spend the whole
Speaker 2: time blaming Herbert Hoover. You can't keep saying there is
Speaker 2: more darkness before the dawn. You have to say there
Speaker 2: is nothing to fear, but fear itself will get through this.
Speaker 2: You know, the thing that he got better than any
Speaker 2: liberal democratic politician of the century, last century or this one,
Speaker 2: is here was a guy who couldn't walk, who made
Speaker 2: people believe in hope. It's just continually inspiring to me.
Speaker 2: And somehow Kure Starmer, who I think is a good politician,
Speaker 2: serious guy, has overdone the grimness so much that he's
Speaker 2: forgotten that key function of liberal democratic politics is just
Speaker 2: to say, there is light at the end of this tunnel,
Speaker 2: and I am going to get you there and you know,
Speaker 2: hang on. I think Tony Blair had a bit of
Speaker 2: that quality, but we badly need somebody who has that
Speaker 2: magical quality to inspire hope and belief and confidence.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're gloomy about the prospects in abstract the
Speaker 1: political theory of liberal democracy. Is there a country you've
Speaker 1: talked about Austria where you live now, Is there a
Speaker 1: country that you think is doing it well and we
Speaker 1: should be studying more?
Speaker 3: Please?
Speaker 2: Well? Well, well, Austria is a pretty odd example because
Speaker 2: it's got a center right government. It could have a
Speaker 2: far right government at the end of this month. So
Speaker 2: people listening to me, see what has happened to Ignatiev.
Speaker 2: He's lost he's lost his mind there in Vienna. Can
Speaker 2: I think of it? Can I think of a place
Speaker 2: that's getting it right? It's a little difficult I mean
Speaker 2: the usual suspects come in here, Finland, Sweden, and Norway.
Speaker 2: I think I'm pretty fond of Finland at the moment,
Speaker 2: partly because it's doing such a good job on two things.
Speaker 2: It's facing up to the Russians, and b it's investing
Speaker 2: hugely in education. And I think that's as close as
Speaker 2: I can think of a society that's succeeding. But all
Speaker 2: of these places, let's also be the reason people are
Speaker 2: irritated by the Scandinavian example is if you've had, you know,
Speaker 2: two hundred years of peace, you know everything's easy. It's
Speaker 2: much tougher, and it's much easier if you're small. That's
Speaker 2: one of the disturbing implications the good countries are all.
Speaker 2: The bigger you get, the more difficult managing these societies becomes.
Speaker 2: And so that's a disturbing implication. Small really is beautiful
Speaker 2: in democratic terms.
Speaker 3: Do you think that the corporate world could be doing
Speaker 3: more to solve these liberal democracy.
Speaker 2: Well, I certainly think they could be paying more tax.
Speaker 2: And I'm please understand me, I'm a liberal. So I
Speaker 2: believe in capitalism, I believe in markets, I believe in competition,
Speaker 2: I believe in innovation. But the problem with capitalism is
Speaker 2: we have so little of it. We have so much oligopoly,
Speaker 2: we have so much market dominance, and they keep telling
Speaker 2: us that market dominance is necessary for innovation and growth.
Speaker 2: But I think that's been one of the biggest developments
Speaker 2: of my lifetime has been the steady consolidation of economic power.
Speaker 2: And then a further more disturbing implication again that frankly,
Speaker 2: socialists and social democrats have been quicker to see than liberals,
Speaker 2: which is the stacking of power. Economic power gives you
Speaker 2: political power. Political power gives you economic power, cultural power,
Speaker 2: social power stacked on top. The very idea of liberal
Speaker 2: democracy is that power is unstacked. That is, if you
Speaker 2: have economic power, it doesn't translate to political power. If
Speaker 2: you have political power, it doesn't make you rich. If
Speaker 2: you have cultural or social power, it doesn't translate into
Speaker 2: economic or political The unstacking of power is a healthy society.
Speaker 2: And we have an unhealthy society because power is stacked
Speaker 2: in a kind of funnel in which everything appears now
Speaker 2: to depend on access to political power. The guys in
Speaker 2: Silicon Valley, the guys at Google, the guys at Microsoft,
Speaker 2: are tremendously dependent on what could be called regulatory capture.
Speaker 2: They've got the state by the throat, and this is
Speaker 2: an enormous, an enormous challenge. And having said that, we
Speaker 2: have to have a liberalism that understands we want innovation,
Speaker 2: we want entrepreneurship, we want people sitting in a garage
Speaker 2: making the next big thing. But God almighty, they've got
Speaker 2: to pay their way.
Speaker 1: I think that's probably as good a big thought as
Speaker 1: any place to leave it. Thank you very much, Michael,
Speaker 1: And that was brilliant. Thanks for listening to this week's
Speaker 1: voton Nomics from Bloomberg. This episode was hosted by me
Speaker 1: alegra Stratton with Adrian Waldridge. It was produced by Someasadi,
Speaker 1: production support from Chris Martlu and Isabella Ward. Sound designed
Speaker 1: by Blake Maples. Brendan Francis Newnham is our executive producer.
Speaker 1: Sage Bowman is Head of Podcasts and Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Michael Ignatief. Please subscribe, rate, and review wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to podcasts.