Start the Week

10/01/2011

In the first Start the Week of the New Year Andrew Marr asks what has gone wrong in the West. The economist Dambisa Moyo charts 50 years of economic folly and argues that only radical changes in policy will stem permanent decline, while Lord Lawson, the former Chancellor, exposes the myths surrounding economic thinking. The journalist Stephen Kinzer calls on the US and UK to ditch its present allies in the Middle East - Saudi Arabia and Israel - and look to Iran and Turkey for support. And Labour's former Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, explores those seemingly intractable problems, with a series of debates drawn from the "too difficult" box.

Producer: Katy Hickman.

Duration:: 41m
Broadcast on:: 10 Jan 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, there's an agonised debate going on in the United States today, echoing around the world about the quality of American political debate. Well, today, we're going to be talking about some of the biggest challenges facing the US and indeed the rest of the West. Stephen Kennsour of Boston University argues that we should embrace our natural allies to bring a new time of peace in the Middle East and they are Turkey, which is no surprise, but also Iran. Charles Clark, the former Labour Home Secretary, wants Britain to take a leaf out of American books and put politicians and academics alongside one another, confronting problems he says have been in the too difficult box. First though, the great economic challenge is Nigel Lawson, Chancellor Under Margaret Thatcher says Adam Smith can save us from this world recession, but that we face the menace of protectionism, a return to trade barriers and beggaring of neighbours. Dambisa Moyer, the economist who's worked for Goldman Sachs and the World Bank as well as warning about the effect of AIDS or aid on countries like her native Zambia disagrees in how the West was lost. She says the United States may need to become protectionist again and even default on its debt. Dambisa, that's a pretty radical medicine that you're proposing there. Do you think that without this kind of shock the West is inexorable and inevitable economic decline? Thank you very much and good morning. First of all, I do not believe that America or the West decline is inevitable and in fact the main and fundamental thesis of my book is that it is not inevitable and really what needs to be focused upon right now is coming up with policies that don't focus only on the tactical issues, which of course are quite urgent, things like deficit management and making sure the economies are back on track, but really there needs to be a much more concerted effort around discussions or more structural issues and although there have been clear identif- it has been clear that identification of what the big issues are, things like resource constraints and energy efficiency, things like education and decline in education across much of the West and of course issues around pensions and so on, I fear that there is not enough discussion about what exactly is going to happen around those issues. We're of course trying to summarize complicated issues here, but reading your book I came away thinking that your analysis of the problem could be broadly summed up to say that the West was not creating enough wealth, however defined, was badly educated compared to the competitor economies and was spending far too much and saving too little. Is that a fair thumbnail sketch? It is, yes and I think just as in terms of a framework if I may, there are sort of three key ingredients that drive economic growth. The first one being capital, which you've alluded to which is essentially wealth, how fast are you growing? The second one is labor and both in terms of quality and quantity, labor is critical and then finally it's issues around productivity which many economists would argue counts for sort of 60% of why it is some countries grow and others do not, but if I may for a moment just come back to your opening remarks around protectionism. Just to be absolutely clear, I believe that free trade as it's defined in theory and in the textbooks is actually what we should be aspiring to. We do want more trade, we want more capital flows. Frankly, I would go as far as to say I think labor flows as well are something that we should aspire to. However, to quote General McChrystal, the former US commander in Afghanistan, we have to start where we are and not where we would like to be and the very clear reality is that all countries do engage in some form of protectionism. You would say the Chinese for instance do it through their currency. Absolutely, but also the Europeans and the Americans use subsidies to lock up many African countries through agriculture products. Although many of the headlines in the West read the Chinese are protectionist, I think it's an unfair indictment particularly given 60 years of subsidies that have been charged on many African countries. How would more protectionism help? Well, let me put it this way. There are about 30 million Americans, if I take the US as an example that are out of work, largely in the manufacturing sector. And my book is arguing that in an ideal world, markets would clear and there wouldn't be any form of distortions in the form of the protectionist policies that we've talked about a moment ago. However, the fact of the matter is many of the people in that group of 30 million in the US who are out of work are unlikely to see their jobs come back. They're simply uncompetitive in a global. And by the way, the same would be the case for a lot of people in this country. Absolutely, and a lot of that is really an artifact of many long-term errors in policy. So a lack of investment in education has finally come to manifest in a lack of competitiveness in a global scale. So we have failed as societies to keep advancing as fast as we need to do. Well, I believe that there have been the fundamental, as I said, capital labor and productivity have been eroded through deliberate policies. And I would essentially say unintended consequences. And so the case for protectionism would be that if you need to put up a wall for a short period of time in order to allow you to rebuild the society that you have allowed to, you've frittered away in the past. I would say that that absolutely is back on the table in the United States. Whereas a few years ago, it was the whole notion of protectionism was sort of seen as a fringe debate. It's certainly come back into sort of more me in the middle class, sort of middle part of the debate. And what about this suggestion that America should default on its debt? Because what has happened, again in broad terms, as I understand it, is that China has bought American debt. And then as it were passed the debt back to America, second time round, which has helped to fuel the banking crisis because of there's been as it were too much liquidity, defaulting on the debt nonetheless would be a very dramatic thing to do. Absolutely. And you know, I do in the book describe many countries, you know, going back in history, many countries that we look at today as developed countries as having defaulted on their debt in the past. However, I think here, what I would really like to emphasize is to have a discussion saying, oh, they should default on the debt or not default on the debt, I think is quite one-dimensional and in a sense quite simplistic. The points that I think are much more important around issues of debt are that are not the debt per se, but what you do with the money that you borrow. And I think that the United States, in particular, but many European countries as well, have been guilty of borrowing money and actually using that capital to fuel consumption as opposed to investing in what I would consider growth enhancing investments such as infrastructure and so on. And furthermore, I would argue that if you look at the United States today, the cost of borrowing is relatively cheap in the market for them. And in addition, one could argue that they're able to borrow in their currency, which suggests to me that they actually have, they shouldn't be focused only on the debt, they should be focused on figuring out what they can do with the money that they can borrow in the most effective way. Nigel Lawson, Lord Lawson, you are an absolutely robust, hardline free trader. But is there any part of Danby Samoyo's argument there that you find yourself assenting to? Let me say, sorry, I have a very high regard for Danbyza. I thought her previous book on aid told a number of home truths with great authority, which people still need to listen to, not least the present British government. But having said that, and because of that, I opened her new book with great excitement. And I'm afraid I was disappointed, obviously, because she's highly intelligent. She has put her finger on a number of things that are problems, like the pension system. It's a true public pension thing in this country is also a problem. There are a number of countries that have to address this, and they can. She also mentions things which are non-problems, as if they're problems, like resource constraints. There's no problem of resource constraints at all. That's a complete mistake. And her analysis is, I think, muddled and confused, if I may say so. And I think that there is one quotation, which from her book, which I'd like to read, but I don't want to give you a misquotation, which is the heart of her confusion. She writes, economics is one sort of warfare, one country seeking dominance over another. If you have that model, then I can understand why you might reach the conclusions that she does reach. But that is completely wrong. In warfare, you get winners, a winner and a loser in economic progress. And we've had astonishing economic progress over the past three years. You can all be winners. But if you adopt her policies, we'd all be losers. One of the things that has always worried me on the protectionist free market argument is, of course, the history that both America and Britain, British Empire, had had their own walls for a period of time and grew behind those walls before becoming free market converts when they were powerful. Is there a case for countries which simply can't hack it for a while putting up a wall for a bit to try and rebuild themselves? It's a slippery slope. You can make a case, the so-called infant industry case, for helping in the beginning. But that is certainly not the case anyway with the United States. The United States has a highly developed and mature economy. That's what the United States wasn't it? I mean, back in the 1870s, 1880s. But it is a slippery slope. And we, in this country, benefited enormously, even though, of course, there were downsides as well, because in anything you do in economics, there are always blasters and minuses. But the repeal of the corn laws when, in the 19th century, when we went to free trade under a liberal conservative government then, Sir Robert Peel, the problem is that Dambiza's recipe of protection and, indeed, the repudiation of debts, which is completely dishonorable and immoral. But it is also would be disastrous, because it wouldn't end there. It wouldn't end there then be, if they were, this were to be done against China, which would be appalling. I mean, we want China to succeed. And China is catching up in Shakespeare's time, for example. It was even still, after a hundred years, several hundred years, it would still the dominant economy in the world. Europe didn't really get ahead until the halfway through the 18th century. You would have China seizing American assets in China, because of a lot of American investment in China. You would then have retaliation there. It wouldn't just be a downward spiral, it would just be a downward spiral, it would be disastrous. As it was in the 1930s. Dambiza. Well, thank you very much for that. May I just start off by saying that my war-like analogy, I think, is quite, it seems I'm not the only person who has that view. Today's Financial Times on page 11, the Vice Premier of China, has written an incredibly interesting op-ed, which is entitled, "The World Should Not Fear a Growing China." And I think this is really part of the point I'm trying to raise here, that there's certainly, I agree, that we should live in a world where all boats should rise together. But the fact of the matter is that there certainly is a sense that it's a sort of a, if I mean, very simplistic, say, a US versus China, a West versus rest type of discourse that's been going around. I think, to reiterate what I said earlier, I am not against free trade. But, you know, I realize that Lord Lawson hasn't really addressed the point about agriculture subsidies. I mean, we've spent years and hundreds of billions of dollars over the past decades putting, implementing protections, policies against Africa. I don't hear such enthusiasm about removing those. And if I may just say one last thing, just to summarize, the fact of the matter is China is going to keep growing. It will continue to grow faster than Western countries. But I don't think it's a fatal complete that they will reach per capita income levels higher than the West. Charles Clark, I think the cool thing here, Andrew, is that you have to face up to the problems your society and your economy's got. If you find a way out, which protectionism may be a way out, or devaluation classically in Britain over many years was a way out of saying let's try and avoid this kind of problem, you end up not facing up to your public sector pensions issue, or your productivity issue, or your education investment issue, precisely because it's easier to devalue the pound or put up a protectionist wall than it is to try and reform your welfare state or whatever it might be. And all I feel is that Dambisa's focusing rightly on some problems that need to be resolved. I agree with Nigel that protectionism isn't the answer. I happen to agree the slippery slope argument is the right one. I think you end up taking a short term decision, which goes on forever. But you've got to face up to these core problems. But isn't there a problem about that, which is simply that the West hasn't faced up to these problems and that perhaps a jolt or a shock of some kind is going to be necessary before the two difficult boxes entered? Where I think that Dambisa's book has a great deal to contribute is that we've gone on very complacently in the West over a long period of time, not understanding the challenges coming from China or India as it will be, I think, and so on. And we just have to face up to those now and we can't get away from them. Stephen Kinsey. We've talked a lot about the overextension of Western economies, particularly that of the United States. And it's true that these economies have taken on more long-term obligations and they actually can support. But we haven't mentioned one of the main sources, one of the main destinations of that money, and that is the global military involvement that the United States still feels is fundamental to its identity as a nation. Here is a place where there really would be a chance, if we want to re-examine consensus, to save substantial amounts of money and avoid some of these conflicts we've been talking about so far this morning. Does the United States really need to maintain 700 military bases around the world? Do we need 75,000 American soldiers in Germany today? Do we need 11 carrier groups in the world when there is not even any country in the world that has more than one? Once we can break out of this consensus, then we can start to think more creatively about how to deal with our economic problems. This is something that you raised, Dambisa, in your book as well, isn't it? Absolutely. And it is, again, I think many people around the world are grateful to the United States and to the Western General for underwriting public goods. But if I may point again to the article on the Financial Times, the facts of the matter as other countries have passed the buck, they've allowed the United States to be spending a billion dollars a year in Afghanistan. And how can you do that when your young population is ranking 20th in mathematics and science, which is supposed to be the core background of your economy? Lord Lawson, you gave the first Adam Smith lecture and it's reprinted in Standpoint magazine, and you call it Five Myths and Amenists. And the menace is Protectors in which we've had a round of table on that already. Dambisa has been saying, well, there are bits of protectionism here there and everywhere, so why are you so fussed about it? It's rather like saying, well, there are criminal activities going on all over the place, so let's have more crime. I wanted to turn to some of the myths as well as the menace that you describe in this article. And of course you're writing it in the backdrop to the worst financial crisis for many, many years, indeed many decades. And you talk about, you have a real go at Keynesians for trying to believe that they can end or correct the business cycle. But in this piece, you argue interestingly that the crucial thing is not that we should imagine the business cycle goes away, but that the excesses of imagination, optimism, hope, despair that drive the business cycle and make it more dramatic can be addressed. And the question is how? There are two things that need to be done, I think, and you need to distinguish them. There's the business cycle, which I believe is ineradicable. It has always been there, and it's happened in every country and every time. And I don't think you can get away with it, get away from it. And Keynes actually was, I think, right about that in the sense that fundamentally, he said the main source of the business cycle is mood swings, swings from excessive optimism, and then after the optimism crashes against reality, and it's a bit bad, then it's excessive pessimism. And it is mood swings, and people are like that and you're not going to change it. And what I do say, what I do believe and say, is that if you are aware that economies are not going to move in a straight line, that there is always this cycle, that there's always this danger of excessive optimism leading to a bloody nose and worse, then maybe that will make people a little bit more cautious of the cycle will be less bad. But this time, it has been particularly bad because of the banking meltdown. And that is a separate issue, which needs to be addressed. Do you feel any embarrassment about the big bang and the deregulation of the banking system that you were part of way back? Because many people would trace it back to them, the sort of the disconnection between larger and larger parts of the banking industry and what we might call traditional banking? Now, I don't accept that. What I actually did when I was chancellor was to strengthen prudential regulation and prudential supervision. It was other forms of deregulation, which took place. But I was concerned about banking and crashes. And I did in the 1987 banking act, considerably strengthened banking supervision and regulation in this country. Unfortunately, Gordon Brown, when he became chancellor, abolished the system, I said, whether it would have been adequate or not, I don't know. But it was certainly a lot better than the one he put in place. It was other forms of deregulation, which were essential. It is perfectly true that in the light of the changes in the stock exchange, which was the heart of the big bang, this did lead to a merging of the ordinary high street banks, which had always been separate in this country. And the, what are now known as investment banks, which in those days were called merchant banks. And they did, after that, come together. And I think that has been a part of the problem. But that was, in a sense, unintended consequences. It was driven by American banks coming in to the United Kingdom to get around the Glass-Steagall legislation in the United States, which separated them. And that meant perhaps excessive abstraction, excessive mathematical abstraction, and a lack of concentration on real businesses and real growth and real ending. Well, that's another problem that I do identify, which is the mathematician of economics, which is a huge mistake. Economics is about human behavior, and you can't capture human behavior in mathematical equations. But beyond that, what the mathematicians did was they purported to take the uncertainty out of risk assessment. So that meant that the banks could leverage out as much as they like, because they felt that everything was all right. It was very convenient for them. I don't think that excuses the bankers at all. But it was a malign consequence. Charles Clark, I saw you shaking your head. Well, I just saw the idea of anybody thinking that you could take the uncertainty out of risk assessment. I just think is wrong. Absolutely. I plead guilty to doing mathematics at university, then changing into economics. But I share Nigel's view that you can't mathematize every human relationship, every aspect of human behavior. But I do think you've got to try and measure it. And I think measuring is a good thing to do, which is essentially what mathematics is about. And people do behave in different ways, in different circumstances. And their behavior has further consequences. Now, those people who try and say economists can predict the future, I agree. It's ridiculous. And the queen put that question at when she went to the London School of Economics, it started 2008 saying, "Why didn't anybody see this?" Anybody who says they can predict it, I think is wrong. But I don't think Nigel's right in saying that people are saying that. I think people are simply saying, "Let's try and measure it. Let's try and see how things go." We had two big waves of liberalization, or deregulation, or whatever, under the conservatives and then on the new labor watch. Do you think that looking back new labor was naive about the banking system, didn't understand it, simply assumed that it was going to be an ever larger cash cow for social spending? I don't think the cash cow thinks right, but I think the rest of it's right. I think the naive tastes right. And I think the biggest criticism that can be made is that when we decided to make the Bank of England independent, a decision which I supported, we didn't work through how that, the different institutions, the Financial Services Authority, the Bank, the Treasury, would work together at a time of crisis. And in fact, they didn't work properly together in 2008. And I think that was a failure, which we should have done much better on. Stephen Kinzer. When you look at global economics and when you look at global policies in other areas like security policies, I think one thing you really have to bear in mind is that we're in a period of considerable change in the world. The relationships among countries are changing quite dramatically. We're still stuck in policies of the past. This goes in economics as well as in security. We're caught in a straight jacket of old ideas, and we have great policies to address situations that existed in the past but don't exist anymore. The world changes much more quickly than our policies to deal with the world change. Stephen Kinzer. Returning to protection, does that not mean Nigel Lawson that protectionism at least needs to be there as a threat? I'm thinking all the way back to the plaza record when you did the deal with the Japanese and the Americans, which probably wouldn't have happened had there not been a threat of protectionism bubbling up from American industry at the time. The water threat of protectionism was in 1985 bubbling up from American industry and filtered through the American Congress, and it's always there. It's there now, and that's what concerns me greatly. Before the recent elections, the House of Representatives did pass a protectionist bill aimed at China. This is not law, but I think it is very alarming indeed, and I don't think it should be there as a threat. I think we should absolutely abstain from protectionism, and the bits of protectionism are already there, and Ibiza's mentioned some of them. We should do our best as I did when I started, and we should do our best to get rid of them. They do no good to anybody. They do a great deal of harm, and they could lead to many worse things. And the position is not as bad as you think, not as ambitious as Ibiza thinks, certainly not as bad as most people think. If you want to cheer up, I would advise everybody to read Matt Ridley's recent book, The Rational Optimist, which has been discussed in your programme, and which provides a completely different perspective, and one which, in my judgment, is much closer to reality. Well, let's move on to something. I don't know what Matt Ridley's view would be about Middle Eastern politics. I don't think he covered that in the book, but Stephen Kintzer's new book, Reset Middle East, Old Friends and New Alliances, does, and Stephen, on the cover of your book, you have references, flag references to Saudi Arabia and to Israel, and everybody knows America's close involvement with both of those countries, but also Turkey, which has been a long time ally of America and the West in the Mediterranean, and Iran, which is going to really surprise people, because you make the case that Iran is actually one of the natural allies, both from America and the West generally, in that region. Everybody is waiting to see whether there's going to be war or some form of ghastly confrontation over Iran's nuclear capabilities at this stage, and it seems counterintuitive to put it mildly. Well, being counterintuitive is what we've been doing here all morning, so I feel like I'm right in line with your thesis. I do think that it's time for the United States, also in its security policy, to look without emotion at the outside world, and I think that's true for the West in general. We are guided too much by our emotions when we're trying to look at the outside world, and we should be looking more coolly at self-interest. When you look for partners in the world, and I think this is something that the world needs to do more often, the West particularly needs to do more often, you try to ask yourself, who would make good partners for us? I do think that time has passed when Britain, the United States, and a couple of other countries could assume they could act freely in the world, and no one would protest. We need to work more closely with other countries, and that's nowhere more clear than in the Middle East. Now, when you look for partners, what do you look for in a country? What kind of a country makes a good partner for you? I think there are two criteria that you look for. First of all, you want a country whose society looks something like your own society. Iran, despite the reactionary overlay of this religious regime we have there now, is a country with an extremely vibrant civil society, and a country that has had a hundred years of progress toward democracy. They had their first constitution in 1906, and since then they have assimilated over a period of generations. What Western democracy is about. I don't know if it's still true, but until recently, Farsi was the fourth most popular language on the internet, which is always striking, because so many middle-class Iranians use it to talk to each other. I think sometimes we misunderstand where Iran sits, because we look at the map, and we assume it's like most of the countries around it, but it really isn't. It has a society that's actually very vibrant, very alive, and very democratic, despite the regime. And secondly, I think the thing you look for in an ally, or a partner, is a country whose long-term strategic goals are somewhat congruent with your own. Now, when you look at Saudi Arabia, for example, you see a society that has nothing in common with our society, and whose long-term strategicals have to do with promoting a form of fundamentalist religious intensity that's very dangerous to the West, whereas Iran, first of all, is an intense, bitter enemy of radical, Sunni movements like Taliban and al-Qaeda, who's leading... It's got a fair amount of fermenting religious extremism of its own, however, does it not? I would say that Iran in the Middle East now is betting on forces that we may not like, but there are forces that win elections. They're betting on Shiite parties in Iraq. They're betting on Hamas. They're betting on Hezbollah. These are movements that are very popular. We are betting on Pharaoh regime in Egypt and Mahmoud Abbas in the Palestinian Authority. In the future, this may not be possible at the moment, although I'd like to see us make a real, more concerted effort with Iran. Iran is a logical partner for the West because it shares our long-term goal. That could only be the case once this particular regime, the Ahmadinejad regime, and some of its religious overlay has gone, surely. I wonder how you would envisage America or any other Western country starting to open the door again to Iran. The first thing I'd like to see us do is offer a negotiating process that doesn't have the strict limits of the one we're offering now. Offer unconditional negotiations. Now, up to now, our policy toward Iran is you must negotiate on the nuclear issue and come to a conclusion that we're satisfied with on this issue. But it's really, if you put yourself in Iran's, it was not in Iran's interest to give away what is essentially the highest card in its diplomatic hand in exchange for nothing but a promise that later on we might be willing to talk about other things. Rather, we should approach Iran the way we approach China in the 1970s, which is to say, make a list of everything you don't like about us and we'll do the same about you and we'll go through the whole agenda. Then we might be able to find a larger scenario in which it would be in Iran's interest to make concessions on the nuclear issue because they would be receiving something on the other side. Without suggesting that Boston University is a wilderness, do you feel yourself a bit of a voice in the wilderness on this matter in America? I mean, are you a lone voice because all the rhetoric that we hear is the other way? I don't think I'm a lone voice in trying to tamp down the idea that Iran is an imminent threat to the United States or to the West and we have to go and bomb them right away or stop them right away. There is a large group of people that thinks America has gone over the top on this one, but I must say that trying to suggest that Iran could actually be a partner of the United States over the long term does put me a little out of the consensus like a few of the other people around this table. Well, actually, I'm not too sure that it's out of consensus. I think your point, the operative word that you keep mentioning is a long term. And I think the running theme around the table today is really about the fact that the political imperative, particularly around the West, is quite myopic. It's short term. The things about the two big issues that are too big to deal with, things around protectionism, things around security concerns and energy and so on are all long term, essentially intractable problems if you have two year, three year, five year cycles of politics. And I think you're absolutely right. I think there might be relatively little patience or interest in hearing something as strategic as you've just outlined, even precisely because people are incredibly myopic in the manner in which they govern. Nigel Lawson. I think Stephen is ahead of himself. It is absolutely true that Iran is bound to be the leading power in that region, in the Middle East, in the Gulf region and so on. There are only two large powers there really. They are Iran and Iraq and Iraq is an artificial creation created by the Ottomans inherited by the British, and then it continued with the great difficulty in keeping the Sunnis and the Sheyas and indeed the Kurds together. Iran is the major part of the region, but at the moment it is very difficult to see how we can deal with. We will have to, eventually it has got this middle class, absolutely right. It has, who have a civic sense, who have been kept down, we would call the recent elections and what happened there, and the killings on the street, kept down by the Mullers and even more the military in Iran, power is draining away, in my judgment from the Mullers and towards the military. It's coming very much from military state and it is very difficult at this moment. We want to see an evolution. Indeed, this is quite a big business class, too. Yes, but the business class is suppressed, but they are there, and they will, I think eventually, have said ourselves themselves, and I think one thing we can do now is we should drop economic sanctions, economic sanctions, all history shows, economic sanctions are either unproductive or counterproductive. They are very immune to, so I would certainly do that as soon as possible, but I don't think we can really form an alliance with the present regime. We have to wait until events within Iran develop, and I think they will, Stephen. I agree that an instant change in our relationship with Iran is not likely, although I would like to see us make more of an effort in that direction. Nonetheless, the political development and evolution of Iran is not over yet. This is a very dynamic process. We have probably the most pro-Western, pro-American society, maybe in the whole world, in Iran right now, as anybody who has visited Iran recently can testify. We should make an effort now to try to negotiate with this regime, but the real key is over the long term, as Dambiza pointed out, at the very least, we should do nothing to undermine the possibility that when the political situation changes, we will be able to appeal to the ordinary Iranians and say, "We never did anything to hurt you now is the time to be friends." Right. Well, that's very interesting, and it's a very, very good example of what Charles Clark would probably put in the two difficult box in the short term. I don't know. We'll hear in a moment. Charles Clark, former Home Secretary, you're now working at the University of East Anglia, and you've set up a series of lectures with guest lecturers from politics and from the civil service, and you've called it the two difficult box because these are perennially hard problems that you're looking at, which British governments find difficult to resolve, and you think the Americans are, by and large, better at the interface between think tanks, academics, and practicing politicians, and we are? I do think that. I do think there are a number of institutions in America where there is a serious effort to get practicing politicians, practicing administrators, talking to the academic political world, and I'm very keen to try and see that happening at the University of East Anglia in this lecture series that we're talking about. Why? Because it's absolutely essential that we look at ourselves and say, how can we solve the big problems that are there? And I want to make the case that democratic politics is the best way to do it because people have a very jaundistry of politics. I think it's all about theatre, all about personalities, all about rather petty drama, certainly all driven by short-termism rather than long-termism, and politics has to get out and say, no, actually, we are the best means of dealing with these long-term problems. It is pretty odd because there is a sort of mutual contempt between professors of politics who sit there and look at the theory of politics, but very rarely actually arrive inside whitehall or talk to people inside whitehall, and professional politicians who think they're all just airy, fairy academics who don't understand the real pressures. I think there is a problem. I think many people in academic politics think they've thought through the problems. The problems are really pretty easy to solve. Why can't they be solved? And so the politicians who don't solve them are duplicitous or self-serving or nodes and fools, and the practicing politicians say, actually, this academic analysis is all for the birds. It simply doesn't understand what the realities are that we have to face and what we have to do. Have you seen my polling? No, exactly. But I do think there's a big point that relates to the whole of this previous conversation, starting with Dambitsu, who started this conversation this morning. We have big fundamental issues in our countries that we have to face up to about where we are operating, how we're operating, whether in the economic field, in the international field, where the assumptions of the past simply aren't right for today. For example, from 1945 to 1989, we had a two-pole world. We then moved to a one-pole world for a period. It's now zero-pole world. So what are we doing in this circumstance? And that means we can't simply take the rhetoric and analysis of the past. We've got to say, well, what are we going to do for the future? And that's what the lectures are about trying to promote discussion around. They range from everything from party, political funding, public sector pensions. We've mentioned already nuclear disarmament to climate change. And I can see Nigel Lawson's nostrils flaring there. I mean, some of these are simply difficult because there needs to be a good, old-fashioned, robust political argument about them. That's true. Some of it is polemical, but also there needs to be a real understanding of the means, the tools by which these problems can be solved. Nigel, I think that that's a very good background because we've identified a number of real problems, real difficulties. So we should not be wasting our time on non-problems, but in fact, we're obsessed with the climate change problem, which is largely a non-problem, not because there might not be climate change. There might be, but because it is not a serious issue. It is something which can be readily dealt with, will be readily dealt with, but not the way that we're dealing with it now. In intakes of breath across the United Kingdom, as you say that, just elucidate a little more. One of the fascinating things about this holding is that there is a projection made of carbon dioxide, growth in carbon dioxide emissions, over the next 100 years. And then it is that this will raise the temperature. And this might have effects on sea levels, no sign of it at all now, so far, none at all. But it might have adverse effects. It'll have beneficial effects as well. So where there is net out, it's not entirely clear, depends how warm it gets. But what is absolutely clear is that this whole projection is based on the 21st century being the most remarkable century for growth and raising living standards that the world has ever known, because that is what drives the carbon dioxide projections. It's the economic growth. So if you don't have that great economic growth, you wouldn't have this rising carbon dioxide. And I think the rising living standards, which is projected for the developing world, are under these scenarios. Is that a very good thing? I'm delighted to see it. Charles Clark. Well, just to say, I think the science on climate change is much clearer than national acknowledges. But let's put that to one side for a second. There are two core issues quite apart from the climate change issue that are very relevant to this. Firstly, how long will the resources in the world that we currently consume oil, gas and so on exist? Will they go on forever? Infinitely, no, they won't. They'll stop at some point. Shouldn't we be preparing ourselves for that moment? But the second is the consequence of the problems about oil and gas, is a whole range of security issues, the Middle East, which Stephen's been talking about, is a classic example where they're security issues, or we move to Europe and Russian gas coming into Europe, whatever it might be. This means we have to be thinking quite apart from the climate change argument, which I actually accept, of how we conduct ourselves on how we consume energy, for a whole set of other issues, other than climate change. Dan Biese. So I absolutely agree with what Charles just said. I think that as it stands right now, there are about a billion people that go hungry every day. About half of those people, 500 million are in Africa. There are clearly issues around misallocation, around waste, but food in particular. I'm talking about energy, but food is another key resource. It seems to me is central to whether or not we're able to generate long-term economic growth. The fact that China has 1.3 billion people and has about sort of 7% arable land is an issue. The fact that there are so many people who are still going hungry is an issue. It cannot be the case that we sit here and think that there are enough resources to go around. There clearly are some areas, whether it's water, whether it's arable land, that do place constraints and there are binding constraints. Until technology catches up with where the needs are on the path of economic growth for many of these emerging countries, I still think that we are not at a place where we can talk about resources not being sustainable. Stephen Kinzer. I've come to believe that some about this problem is not just political or social or economic, but it really is psychological. I call my book Reset Middle East and Reset is a concept that I think can apply to all these different issues. Neurologists tell us that our brains are hardwired not to accept ideas and concepts that clash with what we already believe. Underlying all the challenges we've talked about today is this one. We have to open up our minds and be willing to understand that the world is changing at a dramatic rate now and the idea of resetting our approach to big global problems is vital if we want to deal with this new global environment. I couldn't agree more and I think particularly great countries like the UK, where we've got a great tradition, great ways of thinking about things, actually that's imprisoning us and we've got to get out of it. How do we face up to this world that Stephen's describing and that requires a much more open dialogue amongst all concerned? Our two difficult box is now closed for the day. Thank you to all my guests. Charles Clark is going to be giving the inaugural lecture on that series at the University of East Anglia on the 20th. Nigel Lawson's article Five, Myths and a Menace is in this month's Stand Point magazine. Dan Bissamoyo's How the West Was Lost and Stephen Kinser's Reset Middle East are both out now. Next week more controversy, Justice and Fairness, Eric Hobbsbaum, Michael Sandal, Nina Rain and Azam Alwash. But for now thank you and goodbye.

Producer: Katy Hickman.