Start the Week

28/03/2011

Andrew Marr talks to Niall Ferguson about the history of civilisation, and how the West came to triumph over what appeared to be superior empires in the East, and whether that ascendancy is in permanent decline. While the economist George Magnus questions whether emerging markets, like China, really are about to dominate the world. The Queen will celebrate her Diamond Jubilee next year, and the commentator Peter Whittle presents a robust defence of the monarchy as one of Britain's leading institutions. And as revolution and change sweep across the Middle East, Professor Madawi Al-Rasheed looks at the impact on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Producer: Katy Hickman.

Duration:: 41m
Broadcast on:: 28 Mar 2011
Audio Format:: other

Thank you for downloading the Start the Week podcast from BBC Radio 4. For more information, go to bbc.co.uk/radio4. Hello, big-scale economics and politics today. Later on, we're going to be hearing tales of two monarchies, one of them's constitutional. The other is the Saudi Kingdom. Prince is sitting atop a country of 26 million people rich with oil, but nervously looking around the rest of the Arab world as the wave of protest in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain ripples towards Riyadh. Medawi al-Rashid, viewed by the regime as a dissident, has written its history. The constitutional monarchy is our own one, whose huge success will be much discussed ahead of the royal wedding and next year's diamond jubilee. Peter Whittle is an unabashed champion who's calling upon intellectuals to join the cheering. Before that, though, world-sized politics in the aftermath of the global financial crisis are China, India, and Brazil poised to swipe world leadership away from the West. George Magnus of the Investment Bank UBS was a rare man in his world in predicting the size of the crash to come, and he is skeptical about the rise of the bricks. What, though, of Neil Ferguson, the historian whose latest book and series is called simply "civilization", "the West and the Rest", and describes the six big advantages, or as he puts it, "killer apps developed by Europe and America", but he concludes on an "eligiac warning" note about our own loss of faith in our history and our values. Neil, it seems to me that you see this as a very important potential turning point in world history right now, and it's about self-confidence. I'm pretty sure it is a turning point. We've had a roughly 500-year period when the big story, not just in economic history, but in political history, was the rise of the Western world to a position of dominance over the rest, including the great populous countries of Asia, and I think we're living through the end of that half-millennium of Western ascendancy. Now, that's partly because they finally got it about the Industrial Revolution, in other words, China and other Asian countries have achieved rapid growth after half a millennium of stagnation, but I think it's also partly because things are going wrong in the West, in Europe, and in North America, and in some ways I'm more concerned about that loss of self-belief, which is, I think, part and parcel of decline. It's not a simple decline in story. I'm not saying allow Oswald Spengler, "The end is nigh," because one of the points I try to make in the book is that decline isn't one of those gradual things. You look sort of slide gently downhill. Sometimes you can collapse quite suddenly, and it's understanding the roots of collapse, what makes a society vulnerable to a sudden breakdown. That's what really motivates me. I'd like to come back to what might cause a collapse or not in a moment, but let's just go through the crucial part, the six-killer lapse, as it were, competition, which we sort of understand because it starts with national competition. A huge number of states in Europe. Having a very, very fragmented policy was certainly part of Europe's advantage, as compared with Asia, when there was one very large policy, the Chinese Empire ruled by the Ming Dynasty in the period that I'm interested in the period after around 1400, when the West begins to take off. That competition between states could have been, and sometimes was dysfunctional, but constant war and competition for control of trade routes did promote innovation. Also, there was competition within European societies, and one of the interesting points I tried to emphasize is that medieval England was characteristic in that way. It had, for example, a more or less semi-autonomous corporation, the city of London, over which the crown had very little control. That's part of the competition that makes Europe more innovative than the East. This can go alongside democracy, as it were, in a way, because it allowed Western countries to correct themselves when they made mistakes, to steal ideas from other people, but also some system of self-correction and balance, which the larger, more monoglots or societies didn't have. I'm very leery of making democracy one of my killer apps. By the way, sorry if you hate the phrase "killer apps", it was a way of getting my teenage children interested in my argument. We could call them, if we were feeling more middle-aged, complexes of institutions on our ideas. Much prefer. But democracy isn't really one. I mean, lots of people experiment with universal suffrage in the modern period, and it works in some places, and not in others. For me, the interesting thing about this story of competition is that you get competition over trade. That really drives the great economic expansion of Europe. You get competition over science, which produces the scientific revolution, and you get competition over legal systems. For me, the rule of law is more important than democracy per se. It's more important how you, in a sense, keep politicians under legal control than how you elect them or choose them. The rule of law is killer app number three. In some ways, I think it's pretty clear that the system of law that emerged in the English-speaking world had all kinds of advantages over alternative systems of law, such as for example, Sharia, which I suspect we'll be talking about later. So that's three out of six. The others are medicine, which roughly doubles life expectancy, the consumer society, and the work ethic, and those six things together, I think, explain why the West does so well for 500 years. And one of the interesting arguments about the work ethic, you talked about Spengler, but there's also the great arguments about Protestantism and the rise of capitalism, which at least you're a bit skeptical about, because there are areas of the world which have had religion and haven't had the work ethic, and there are other parts of the Protestant world where it seems to me to be more a consumer ethic these days than a work ethic. Right. I'm very interested in Weber's great hypothesis that there was some kind of link between the rise of capitalism and the reformation. And that's an argument that often gets caricatured. So in the book, I try to give him a break and show why he thought there might be some connection after a trip to the United States, where the connection seemed very obvious between lots and lots of little churches and a very, very dynamic economy. But the critical point that I want to make in that sixth chapter is it's not really a work ethic that you get from the reformation. It's a word ethic, because the reformation is all about literacy. It's all about reading the scripture in the vernacular. And there's really compelling evidence from recent research on, say, Protestant missionaries, that there is a link from that from spreading literacy to economic success. So it's a slightly different argument from Weber. It's a further stage. Yeah. So let's return to the here and now. And we have America still producing huge numbers of new ideas and all the technologies and people sit on their Apple computers and their iPads and so on. And yet you think there is a danger of this being the moment when we suddenly get one of those accelerating parts of change. And this is caused possibly by America's excessive debt. There is a potential for a sudden and dramatic moment coming. I think there's no question and more and more people begin to accept this argument that the United States isn't in an unsustainable fiscal position. I've been warning about this for years since before the financial crisis and now in a situation where public and private debt together are more than 350% of GDP, that's unprecedented in history. So far, America can swallow this because it's still got this AAA rating. Everybody says, of course, the Americans are going to be fine in the end. And it requires only something to go wrong for opinion to turn. Well, it has, of course, become heavily reliant on China because China's been financing the U.S. deficit for some years now on a self-interested basis. The Chinese have bought lots of U.S. treasuries to keep their currency from appreciating. But if you want to become dependent on your principal strategic rival for financial support, don't expect to be a great power for terribly much longer. I think that's a pretty clear lesson of history. Are the Chinese not equally dependent on the Americans? Well, that's what Americans love to say. You know, they need us as much as we need them, Neil. I hear that every time I go to Washington. I actually don't think the Chinese need the Americans as much anymore. One of the things the financial crisis revealed was that China could keep growing without being exclusively reliant on the U.S. consumer. George Magnus, we're going to be talking about your book in thesis in a moment. But what do you make of that point in particular? Well, I think it's correct that clearly the Americans are in hawk to China. And it's a dependency, which they would be well advised to diminish. But I do think, in some respects, the situation does cross both ways because, of course, the Chinese have a choice. They don't have to be, you know, continuously buying U.S. assets and restraining their currency all the time. And actually, if they were to succumb eventually to a huge appreciation of their currency, the losses would be very, very considerable. The other thing which I think is also unspoken most of the time in terms of the media is Chinese dependency on American technology and on effectively how they rip off technological ideas from companies that basically set up in China to do business. Not just American, but European companies too. And it is actually something that American and European companies feel really passionate about, much more so than the exchange rate issue, which is often in the newspapers. But that's an issue which I think China does have. What makes this turning quite interesting, George, is that at the same time, the Chinese are shifting very rapidly from a sort of piracy model, intellectual property rights, which they basically steal through copying, to a model in which they build their own intellectual property rights. The degree to which they are investing in innovation is really impressive. For example, they will overtake Germany very, very soon in terms of numbers of patents granted each year. And that's something that, when I told a bunch of German industrialists, completely staggered them. They couldn't imagine being overtaken by China, but it's about to happen. It is. But the point is, Neil, isn't it about cited patents? I mean, there's a lot of evidence that suggests that quantity rules in China, and there are huge numbers of scientists and engineers being churned out of universities and lots of articles and so on and so forth. But actually, I think as far as cited patents are concerned and the real technological added value, you'd Monday morning. I think China still has a lot to prove, in my view. Where are we? Well, the interesting thing about this debate between the West and China is you see it from the perspective of the Middle East. And what I have noticed over the last 10 years is that the West with its military power, the scientific killer app that Neil talks about, is actually moving ahead and clearing the ground for the Chinese to move in in Afghanistan, in Iraq. And this is something that is not talked about and you see it and you feel it in the Middle East. So in a way, the dirty work is done by the West for China to move in. It's very interesting, hugely important point. I've heard so many people on the left say, "Oh, the war in Iraq was all about oil," to which I reply, "If that's so, why is it that the Chinese, rather than the Americans, are taking over the Iraqi oil assets?" And that's part of a broader picture in which the Chinese free ride on very expensive American security. And yet the Chinese actually get much more oil from the Middle East than the Americans. It's a profound paradox of our time. And one of the reasons, I think, talking about American decline is not illegitimate. When you talk about American decline, Neil, I'm interested in what you say about this loss of faith, generally, of the words. It seems to me that there is a difference between America and Europe here. I wonder whether you agree with this, because, yes, sure, in Europe, it's more than, I'd say, a loss of faith. It's an outright sort of self-loading, which is taken over. But I don't detect this in America. I don't detect a loss of faith in America and isn't American most important player. I think the trouble is that Americans have a tendency to have faith in symbols rather than in the real foundations of their power. Let me illustrate this with a simple example. The most important language, the most international language in the world is not English. It's mathematics. But if you look at attainment at age 14 in the field of mathematics, the Asians are now miles ahead of Americans and Europeans alike. So when I say we've lost faith in our institutions, I'm not really talking about the stars and stripes. I'm talking about the fact that we've lost faith in the real main springs of our part. We've got soft. I think we have. And I think it's there in the schools, it's there in the universities. And those institutions, of course, I'm in education, so I would say this. But those institutions are hugely important because they transmit our culture from generation to generation. And I genuinely believe they have got a lot worse at doing that over the years. George Maggars, let's turn to your book Uprising. Will emerging markets shape or shake the world economy, which is a quite a beady look at the case that China, India, Brazil and others will rise into the ascendancy as a result partly of the world crash. And you seem to be a little more skeptical than Neil. I should say straight off, I mean, I subscribe completely to Neil's assessment of why are we making such a mess of our own existential issues in the West. I don't think much of that is actually in contention. But I think it's just too easy just to think that the last 25 years of astounding success, which for example, China has achieved, can be drawn in a straight line into the future. And I think that a lot of what China did in the last 20 years, for example, I mean, was based around the introduction of market mechanisms. Deng Xiaoping once said to a Communist Party Congress, I don't care if it's a black cat or a white cat, so long as a cat that catches mice. And that was widely attributed to mean that, you know, we communists, but actually, we don't have to have Marxism as our kind of lodestone. And of course, what happened after that, land reform, giving, you know, farmers, you know, rights, giving people economic rights, largest privatization of home ownership ever recorded in history, reform of these cumbersome state owned enterprises, these are the bedrock of China's success to date. But I think that the crisis has changed everything, what the Chinese call the North Atlantic crisis, I think has changed everything, because the way the world works has changed. So these export markets on which China and many of the other developing and emerging countries depend clearly will not be the same again. And I think this is going to give rise, apart from the kind of geopolitical tensions between the US and China, I think this is giving rise to domestic tensions in China, which are going to become more and more important as they get richer. Because reminders, China needs, it's ruined by, he says, 6%, 7% growth every year just to kind of keep people fed and keep things on track. Yeah, I mean, we often forget, you know, that there are 780 million people in China who depend on the countryside for their livelihoods and their well-being. And income inequality, although it's officially measured, that, you know, the difference between the top 1% and the bottom 1% is about sort of eight or nine to one on Chinese measures. Most people think it's more like 20 to 30 to one. And I think this is a big problem, because the good thing about rapid economic acceleration, which is what China has done from per capita income of $1,000 to $4,000, you know, the handmade and of economic expansion like this is social and political tension. So if Neil was arguing that the West is on the edge of a big moment or world history is on the edge, China is too, in the sense that the system can't carry on like this for much longer. That's my contention. And I think there are two main areas that will become increasingly apparent within the next five to 10 years. One is the embedding of Chinese inflation, which is something which the authorities run scared of, because obviously it caused, it was the background at Tiananmen Square, Tiananmen Square, if you remember, in 1989. And the other is what the Chinese call the rebalancing of their economy. So they fully recognise that they have to change. But that will require, I mean, I remember somebody saying on this program, actually, a little while ago, that the difference between China and the West, according to the Chinese Communist viewpoint is somebody said, well, you in the West, you've got all sorts of different parties. They're like restaurants in a road, all serving the same thing. We only have one restaurant, but we have a large number of different possibilities on the on the cart. Well, I think that's the issue. If I could, if I could kind of try to rephrase that in a different way, the the rebalancing of the economy, in other words, to become the more consumer and service oriented place, actually, it's not just a question of ticking off boxes and say, well, you know, we'll have a budget this year and we'll do something next year and then three years time, we'll do something else. This is about taking power, real power away from people that have it, which is companies, coastal regions and cities and giving it to people that don't have it, which is the consumer and the countryside and the inland provinces. And I think that rebalancing is or the political nature of that is much underappreciated. I'd like to ask both you and Neil Ferguson, the same question, which is that if rule of law, democracy, competition are the really, really important things, why aren't we sitting here saying that India is about to take over the world? Well, I've just got back from India, funnily enough. And I think India is in many ways sitting pretty if you buy George's argument, which I largely do. I mean, I would say the China's problem is absolutely that they don't have the rule of law in the sense that I mean it in civilization. They've downloaded everything else, science, for example, but they and indeed competition, because it's now very competitive economy in some ways more capitalistic than than our own, but they do miss the rule of law. As I understand it, that's to say that private property rights are genuinely protected from arbitrary intervention by the state. Go to India and what you see is that all the killer apps are there, including private property rights and representative government, but they just work very slowly. And I would say India's like one of those PCs, one of those computers that's got all the software, but some things they need to go in and make a cup of tea before you can actually do it. And I think they need to get some antivirus software and to get rid of the corruption and the red tape. And then India could work really well. Well, I think we agree completely about that. I mean, I think there are 135 labor laws in India, many of them dating back to independence, which dictate how and in what way companies are allowed to pay wages and hire people and fire people and so on. I mean, this is just one small example of the kind of bureaucracy. And of course, there's obviously widespread corruption. And that's India's kind of load stone, really, that it's really got to get on top of. Otherwise, it could have an incredibly powerful future. I mean, it has one third of its population raged under 14. So its working age population will grow in the next 20 years by more than the entire working age population of Western Europe today. Very, very strong background if they can exploit it. George Magnus at UBS is looking at the emerging economies around the world. Of course, Saudi Arabia providing all of that oil is very, very much part of that story in the middle. Well, exactly. But I think there are still some limitations to China and India playing greater role. The Saudis, for example, try to build bridges with China and India. And they do have close economic connections. But there is something that is slowing down that kind of relationship. And this is the inferiority complex of the ex-colonies towards their masters. In Saudi Arabia, like many other Western Arab countries, there is still this fascination with the West. When they compare themselves, when they talk about themselves, they talk about themselves vis-a-vis the West, and they're not willing to look East. And this is a well, a deeply ingrained kind of complex. They cannot see that they can learn something from China or India, but they do want to learn it from Britain or the US. I think that's very interesting. Is this the point that you raised Neil as well, which is about even though Western ascendancy may be in decline, the Western model seems to be the commonly accepted model. And I think when we think about how is the world going to evolve post the crisis and so on, the idea of some sort of loose multilateral kind of new world order to me doesn't kind of ring right. You have to have leadership. And even if it's benign leadership, and there's two choices. I mean, it's an American leadership or Chinese? Well, let's move directly to Madawi Arashid's Saudi Arabia in history, because if we're talking about Western leadership at the moment, there's been at least a long pause or a long blink before Washington decided what it really wanted to do about the Arab Spring, and even now we're not sure. But at the heart, sitting at the big question mark, it seems to me Madawi at the middle of the Arab Spring is what happens to Saudi Arabia, because there is the great oil producer, what has been the great regional power in many ways. And we don't hear very much about protests there. We know there have been some on the edges, but every other country pretty much seems to be in turmoil. And I suppose the question is how long the al-Saud family can continue the game they've been playing? Well, Saudi Arabia, like any other Arab country, has the same social, economic and political problems. The only difference that Saudi Arabia has is oil. Now, Saudi Arabia, like again, most of these states that we have seen, the post-colonial states of the Middle East, was founded on the basis of Britain promoting one kind of chieftain against the others. And it's the same sort of British imperial logic, you know, work through the Maharaja in India, but find chieftains in Arabia. And so this model, this British model, continues until the present day. What Saudi Arabia had as an extra is a religious tradition, and that is known in the West as the Wahhabi tradition. The Saudis don't like the name and prefer to call themselves Muslims, but it is a specific Saudi Wahhabi local tradition that existed to domesticate the population, discipline them and punish them. And the British, when they dreamed Saudi Arabia in 1914, they decided that they needed someone to act as a buffer zone between British interests and those sort of backward conservative Wahhabis or religious fanatics. And therefore, the system was put in place during the First World War, and it continues until the present day. It's a sort of basic, very simple deal. Is that right between the outside family and the Wahhabis? Well, it is a deal. It is based on the outside providing political leadership and the Wahhabis, the religious establishment in Saudi Arabia, providing the religious texts, the practices that would discipline the population and prevent it from engaging with the global discourse on democracy, human rights, civil rights, gender equality. So the outside cannot rule without this Wahhabi tradition. And what we hear in the West is that this outside are actually a bunch of progressive princes. Most of them are educated in the western great tradition in western universities from the US and Britain. And therefore, they are the progressive agents in society that keep these radical Wahhabis in their place. But the Al Saud are actually part of the problem. And we have seen how they are part of the problem over the last 70 years. Well, 9/11 produced the crisis in this in this deal, didn't it? Well, the relationship had always been tense because you have two totalizing system, the domineering Al Saud and the religious establishment, and they compete over the hearts and minds of the people. In the West, the wisdom was that those princes actually protect us against this uprising of the Wahhabis, the radical. And in the 19th century, early 20th century, they thought they would protect the Indian roots so that they don't go and raid the Gulf ports and disrupt trade to India. But the equation hasn't worked nicely as dreamt by Britain. And we find that there were moments in history whereby this relationship gets upset and sort of stops working. 9/11 is just one episode when the relationship didn't actually work. Up to now, the Al Saud clan or family, a very, very large number of people in it, have been able to keep the population happy enough by basically providing very high standards of living or increasing standards of living. That's become more difficult recently. It's become different difficult because of two issues. One of them is the increasing corruption of the Al Saud and the princes. And the second thing is because of the demographic explosion that is being experienced at all levels. And therefore, the more you have of the public purse taken by the Al Saud, the less there is going to be for the population. As in Yemen, as in Libya, as in Syria. It's the same story. The only difference is that this economic foundation that is often known as the Rontier state economy whereby you distribute largesse on the population in order to gain loyalty is not working because people are not accepting that they can only live by bread alone. And this is the slogan that has come in recent years. I think it's a fascinating book. It strikes me that while it's true it may have been dreamt up by the British, it's become a nightmare for the United States. And it's a nightmare because everybody in Washington knows what the reality is of Saudi rule. And they know that the money from the oil comes in, too Saudi Arabia, too red is redistributed, too radical Islamists, not only within Saudi, but much more commonly abroad to keep the problem abroad. And so in a sense, Saudi Arabia has become this channel for money to flow to the most radical elements. Wahhabist elements in Islam and political Islam all over the world is financed this way. But what can the Americans do? Because there's a worse alternative, isn't there? Which haunts the United States, namely of the Islamic Republic of Arabia. The Saudi, the Saudi royal family overthrown the 3000 or 4000 or 5000 princes take to their heels end up in the south of France. And you have an Iranian star regime, only it's Wahhabist, an Islamic Republic like that would be surely the ultimate nightmare of American politics. Well, this is absolutely inaccurate because this is reiterating the discourse that takes place in Washington think tax about how we have no alternative in Saudi Arabia. First of all, America didn't just inherit the system from Britain, it did encourage it after the Second World War, when America became the patron of Saudi Arabia. And they are the supporters and the guarantors of Saudi security, by which I mean the security of the regime and not the Saudi people. So in a way, the Americans have contributed to creating this problem and making it even better, to just give you an example in the 1980s, Saudi Wahhabism, the despised preachers of hate, played a great service to Margaret Thatcher and Reagan when they mobilized the population of the Muslim world and shipped them to Afghanistan in the Cold War scheme of things. In retrospect, possibly a mistake. It was definitely a mistake, but the problem is the short-sightedness of the British and American forum policy created this monster called Al-Qaeda. Before we move to other matters, I just want to ask you about the sort of politics of dissent at the moment in Saudi Arabia because there are lots of parallels with other parts of the Arab world and indeed I would have thought with Pakistan. But it's been a protest, there is no sign of a kind of Egyptian-style revolution yet, but the protests that there have been have been very heavily driven by the internet, by Facebook and so on. But also that's been manipulated by the regime. I mean, you yourself were on the nasty end of this, weren't you? Oh, yes. I was accused of being behind the Facebook calls, although I don't have my own Facebook and I have written to Facebook several times to ask them to actually deactivate all the Facebook pages that are set up in my name. But there is a great difference between Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia, Mubarak was a dictator, but Saudi Arabia is a different kind of dictatorship. Saudi Arabia does not allow civil society organizations. There's no human right, independent human right organization. There are no trade union. So Saudis, for them to organize, they have no institutions to go back to the to the civilization, the institutional base. And therefore, the only thing left for Saudi is to mobilize on Facebook, but to meet to actually have bodies meeting on the ground is the mosque. And this is not because Saudis are religious or particularly conservative. It's because the state has blocked every single outlet, every single civil society organization that allowed those people to organize. So are the things going on there in the mosques in Saudi Arabia that we don't know about in terms of the beginnings of a rebellion? At the beginning of the call for demonstrations on the 11th of March, the religious establishment, the Wahhabi establishment, which has a double sort of fraud. It encourages Saudis to mobilize and douji had abroad, but keep them quiet and never at home. And this was so obvious in Afghanistan, it was so obvious in Iraq, and obviously in other places, such as in Bosnia, Chechnya, and other other locations. George Magnus. Briefly, Madawi, and following the same, we'll pursue the same theme. I was interested in your book, you know, you talk about how over the years that actually Saudi hegemony in the region at the Gulf, obviously has been chipped away, not least by Iran. And now obviously we have these, you know, obviously the crisis and demonstrations and repression in Bahrain, where a lot of people think that this is a kind of a focal point for, you know, a skullduggery between the Iranians and the Saudis and so on. Can you talk about a little bit about how you see, you know, is there a sectarian issue that we should be concerned about here? Oh, definitely. The sectarian issue is here in London on our university campuses. There are two regional powers that are competing. And what has happened is that the Saudi religious tradition that we call Wahhabism here is extremely sectarian. One thing to remember about this tradition, that it actually, its first target was other Muslims rather than infidels or so-called infidels. Its first wars with other Muslims, such as, for example, the Shia, the Ismailis, the Sufis in the Hejaz, not everybody is a Wahabi in Saudi Arabia, but because of this oil wealth that is spent on this religious tradition and the institutions that are actually embodying it, we find that it is spreading. So what has happened in Bahrain is that Saudi Arabia has moved in to guarantee the rule of the al-Haulifa in Bahrain and give a message to its own Shia population on the other side of the bridge, that if you do anything like, for example, demanding your basic rights, because this is a community that is a minority deprived of some basic human rights. And therefore, this lesson was given to the Shia. But above all, the reason why Saudi Arabia is involved in Bahrain and heavily involved is to give a message to the majority Sunni population of Saudi Arabia that is beginning to feel the heavy hand of the princes. And therefore, it wanted to scare them that it will not allow any kind of uprising, but also most importantly, by taking the sectarian stand, it is saying to the majority that we defend the Sunnis and therefore, you have to forget your internal problems and conflicts and support the Al Saud leadership. I was trying to think of a very clever link between the al-Saudi and Wahabi tradition and our own royal family and the Church of England, but somehow it doesn't quite coat here. Nonetheless, we can move from a monarchy in trouble to a monarchy that is not in trouble at all. Peter Whittle, you've written a robust defense of the monarchy, what it's called, "Monarchy Matters". And you're interested in the monarchy. It's very interesting where people get their first connection, but yours came very, very early when you were a child. That's right. I mean, it was an interest in history and all of those great sort of BBC programs, like the Six Wise of Henry VIII and all of that. And sort of parents who took one, therefore, round to sea castles and palaces and all the rest of it. And from that, I sort of became quite interested in the present day incumbents. What the point of the book really is that, which has written very much with the diamond jubilee in mind, is that we live, it seems to be in large year an anti-monarchist atmosphere on the whole, I'd say. But what is interesting is that that atmosphere is to a great extent created or maintained, if you like, by our elites, who generally speaking have been much more republican than the majority of people. And if you look at the monarchy, which, okay, might be successful now, but 15 years ago, if we've been having this conversation, I think people would have been thinking it was on its way out. Throughout the whole of the past 40 years, the amount of people who support the institution, that's not the queen, but the actual institution, stayed almost static. This is extraordinary. I think Maury has said that, in fact, it's the most steady thing that they've actually ever tracked of any subject they've polled on. It's usually around about 70% of people who want the institution to continue, and usually it never gets above about 19%, 20% of people who want to republic. Let me interrogate you about this republican atmosphere you talk about, because there are certainly parts of the establishment, which could be called that a bit, but most newspapers would be pretty monarchist and pretty loyal. So sure about that, actually, more Andrew. I think that if you're talking about, like, Middle England and the Daily Mail, that's sort of quite caustic now. Even the Times, which is meant to be under a republican proprietor, seems to me to be pretty robustly monarchist, isn't it? No, I think the Telegraph stands out, probably, as sort of the real bastion, if you like it wrong, but on the whole, I think that there is a kind of irony in the way in which it's treated now. I think more importantly, maybe than the press coverage, is that we've got a tradition in this country, which Orwell talks about, which is generally of shame about our national character. I mean, he famously said, "The English intellectual is unique in the world," in that he'd rather steal from, as he put it, "a poor box than stand for God save the queen," or "God save the king," that it was. But he also went on to say, and he was far from being an imperialist or monarchist, that it was probably the best system, and this was during the war, in that we couldn't probably, therefore, have a Hitler or Stalin coming to power here. So what I would say is, right up to the present, and indeed to people who are making their voices felt before the world wedding, there is this general sort of attack on the institution, a sort of sense in which people have a kind of false consciousness in supporting it. So people, you think it's a layer of irony and deprecation there that you have to... Yes, and also condescension. I mean, will self, for example, particularly, recently, in a prospect magazine has done a big thing on the monarchy. Basically, he says the same thing. The tone of criticism of the monarchy is basically that we should grow up. Now, here we are, we've been discussing great civilisations, and we have been one of those, and we've shaped the modern world. I don't quite know how else you show how grown up you are, other than shaping the modern world. But somehow, this is the tone of much of the criticism, is that somehow or other way, it keeps us infant hard, and I would strongly disagree on it. Isn't the biggest problem in the many ways that the British monarchy has faced, is the changing nature of the media, in the sense that much more intrusive, much cheekier, much more aggressive, although you go back to the 1840s, and it was just all of those things, but in modern times, it's become much harder. And therefore, this notion of the monarchy as the ideal family, representing the national family, has been harder to maintain, simply because of the number of lenses and microphones, and commentators and bloggers. And the number of divorces, of course, in the raw family. I don't think it's actually, I think the crucial thing is when it comes to the media, is this idea of daylight, and a water badger, you know, famously said, you mustn't let daylight in upon magic. Well, I think that- Well, like a searchlight. Actually, it is a searchlight, but in fact, I think that it shows that the monarchy actually doesn't need magic. Or maybe it was the wrong term magic, if you like, because it has survived. And I think people, you know, they have more of an- they don't need smoke and mirrors. I think they can want a monarchy without feeling that it has to be mysterious. Neil Ferguson. I thought there was a great connection that you could have made, Andrew. I think it's only today that Prince Andrew's trip to the Saudi economy has been canceled, owing to some difficulties he's been experiencing, not only at the hands of our media. I mean, the Daily Mail on newspaper, I despise above all others, has been waging a campaign against him, and I'm sure there's no smoke without fire in that case. But nevertheless, I think it illustrates the point that's being made here, that you can't really count on Middle England anymore. You can't really count on the- on the mid-market press. And I think the critical issue here is the- is there is just a gap between our ideal of monarchy, King's Speech ideal. I mean, I was a similar- there wasn't a dry eye in the house at the end of that movie, and the reality, which appears in the papers on a regular basis. And my sense is that over time, particularly after Majesty has gone, perished the thought, but it must happen, it's going to be difficult. My sense is it's not really as solid as you hope, and that the expectation that you- that you raise in your book, that we're all going to have wonderful street parties for the Diamond Jubilee Agnes' expectation may turn out to be somewhat out of date. It's not- I don't think- I'm encouraging that to happen. I think that, you know, you can't make people have street parties and- and- and accelerate if they don't want to, but I mean, you should be able to maybe help them if they want to. I disagree with you, actually, Neil, here. When people are asked, you know, do you want the monarchy to continue? It always stays roughly the same amount, which I've already mentioned. If you ask them, do you think it will be here in 50 years, then that figure goes right down simply because it's quite untalable. If you keep hearing it knocked all the time, you must sort of think it's on its way out, but it could collapse really sudden it, and that's my central point. Something can be fine until it's not fine, and after the Queen it would be quite easy, I think, for the royal family to lose legitimacy very, very quickly. Madawi Arishid. It's very difficult to imagine Britain without a monarchy, I think. I think it is the ideal, the dream monarchy. It is pomp without power, and this is extremely important. It's interesting that you said, and you justified it, for us to say, that the monarchy can play unifying role in the United Kingdom in a time of great political fragmentation. Isn't the contradiction that actually the fragmentation is taking place actually undermines the tenets and the sort of the structure of the monarchy, unless something really does change in the way in which the monarchy reaches out to the people? Yes, I think it's actually got to take a much more active role there. It's been quite passive during this development where we have actually started to, there's been a sort of social breakdown, a fragmentation. I think that the chances of the monarchy unifying really rely on it taking a much more active role. If you like it sort of in the teaching of history, something as small as that. This is interesting because people always say Prince Charles, the problem is he's got too many strong views. He's a passionate man with, you know, a powerful opinion, and he will hate being king because you'll have to shut up. But you're suggesting possibly that there are areas where he wouldn't need to shut up. Well, no, no, I'm not saying I think that I don't agree with Prince Charles on many of the things he says. I would have thought that probably he would understand the position enough not to do anything once he becomes king. But I say in the book, in fact, that, you know, the reason that people might feel rather ambivalent about Charles is not really to do with, you know, his love of organic food or farming or anything. It's much more to do with his history and his marriages and all of that sort of stuff. So the danger for Charles is that he tries to reform the monarchy. That's the Charles the first mistake and it's the Louis the 16th mistake. Well, poor man, he's going to have to curb his eloquence and his opinions and not speak very much at all when that happens. Something I think all my guests today would loathe if it happened to them. Peter Whittle's monarchy matters and Neil Ferguson's civilization, the west of the rest, are published this month. Neil's television series on Channel 4 continues on Sunday. Madawi Al Rashid's history of Saudi Arabia has been updated and George Magnus will be giving a talk entitled "Can the economies of Asia flourish in the post-crisis world at Asia House in London tomorrow night?" Next week, faith, love and punishment with the Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, Lisa Apignese and David Eagleman. But for now, goodbye.

Producer: Katy Hickman.