It’s really nothing special
Jonathan Freedland is right when he claims it’s time for Britain to end special relationship (8 December). The only problem is there probably never was one, apart from a marriage of convenience between Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt after the invasion of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese.
America has always pursued its own interests first and foremost. Tony Blair wilfully suppressed that knowledge to his cost – and ours, and of course that of the many thousands of casualties from all sides – when he ignored all the warning signs and supported George W Bush’s Iraq invasion. Theresa May is in desperate need of a strong trading partner as well as a military ally, given the cards she was dealt after the Brexit vote and her subsequent failed attempts at bluffing on a losing hand. The best she can hope for is to try to keep her special relationship with Donald Trump on the back burner, in the vain hope of his impeachment.
For the time being at least, Trump appears fireproof. Once his shadow has faded away though, the UK’s best hope is to negotiate a new and more adult relationship with the US and the EU, with no favours asked and none given.
Noel Bird
Boreen Point, Queensland, Australia
Question the assumptions
Dani Rodrik’s critique of neoliberalism (1 December) was rather weak. Although he brought out the important point that state interventions often have a great impact in setting up well-functioning markets, the article was curiously silent on the neoliberal policies foisted on many developing countries through “structural adjustment programs”. The opening up of developing economies and the withdrawal of the state’s role have left many countries, including my own, India, with unfathomable inequality.
Separating “the first-order principles” of economics, as Rodrik argues, from what appears as neoliberal creed need not be so difficult. All principles are based on underlying assumptions and we have to question these assumptions so as to not conflate the fundamentals of economics with one dominant school of thought. Political and historical contexts can help clarify why some assumptions look like first-order principles in a heavily contested discipline like economics.
Deepa Iyer
Cambridge, UK
• Dani Rodrik provides a necessary critique of neoliberalism’s addiction to the more-markets-and-less-government mantra. It is, however, disappointing that he both presumes no end to a capitalist economy and, worse, only highlights the traditional code words of mainstream economics as the starting point for alternative policies. It’s all very 20th-century and overly limited.
Meanwhile, Kate Raworth in her splendid book Doughnut Economics has detailed some new ways to think like a 21st-century economist by fundamentally reframing our understanding of what economics is. Raworth provides a new set of code words as the basis of a better economics. They include “growth agnosticism”, “socially embedded economy”, “distributive by design” and “regenerative by design”.
Rodrik is playing the old game, albeit a better version of the old game. Raworth is changing the game and providing inspiration for a new generation of economists, policymakers and campaigners.
Stewart Sweeney
Adelaide, South Australia
Worried about Germany
The pessimists in Philip Oltermann’s article on Angela Merkel’s coalition difficulties are right: the comparison of the present federal republic in Germany with the Weimar one is an apt and very worrying one (1 December). And not just for Germany.
Around the world liberal western democracies are in trouble, with unlikely party alliances being cobbled together with varying degrees of unmanageability. In all these countries tyranny waits in the wings if they can’t get it right and their parliamentary systems reach the point of collapse. We are closer to such a collapse than we think.
A major global economic downturn could do it – especially if that were coupled with a major new armed conflict. Alarmingly, both are real possibilities and our complacency is dangerous.
If we wake up one morning to see a senior uniformed military figure announcing on television that the constitution has been suspended and that martial law is in place, we will only have ourselves to blame.
It is now up to all of us to make sure our failing democracies are revived before it gets to that stage.
Terry Hewton
Adelaide, South Australia
Briefly
• As grandmother of a redhead I really enjoyed your 24 November What I’m really thinking. When he was little and people in the street commented on it he would smile and say: “Yes, and it’s curly”. But when a friend’s four-year-old was approached in the supermarket with “What lovely red hair, where did you get it?”, the child replied: “I don’t really know, but Mummy gets hers at the hairdresser.”
Jeanette Ward
Freshwater, NSW, Australia
• In view of his determination to meet force with force, it does seem rather apt that Egypt’s president Abdel Fatah al-Sisi is the mirror image of Isis (1 December).
Nicholas Houghton
Folkestone, UK
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