A fundamental re-set is required in the West if we are ever to find our bearings again argues Professor Robert Tombs in an article for the Telegraph dated 25th June.
The cause of our decline is both economic and political: a lazy dependency on hostile regimes for our manufactured goods and raw materials along with a parallel attempt to globalise our political institutions above the heads of those they are supposed to represent:
“The starry-eyed utopianism, in which trade and prosperity would bring the world together and ‘end history’, has collapsed. But we cannot painlessly wean ourselves off the cheap energy, cheap imports and cheap labour that globalisation brought.
A parallel attempt to globalise government, transferring decision making to international bodies, such as the European Union, the International Monetary Fund, the World Health Organization, or the European Central Bank, opened a gulf between governments and electorates even in democracies.
Instead of a ‘vertical’ pattern, in which power went from national voters to their elected governments, a ‘horizontal’ pattern emerged, in which politicians made fundamental decisions by secretive diplomacy with other politicians. Many intellectuals cheered them on with vacuous internationalism and denunciation of the nation state.”
Unsurprisingly, electorates across the free world have risen in opposition to this agenda, much to the astonishment of those in charge.
Instead
“Our true course – the boldest and yet the safest – is to diversify our economic links and cultivate our political alliances. We know our friends and our foes, even if the former are facing their own political divisions. It is Britain’s pressing interest to foster a democratic alliance, an ‘Anglosphere Plus’.
In a newly dangerous world, we need realistic reassessment of our strengths, weaknesses, obligations and interests. We can save ourselves by our exertions and encourage others by our example. For that we need leadership.”
The full article can be read here with a link to the original beneath it:
Daily Telegraph
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