Chris Patten supports Will Hutton

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

In this highly significant review,Chris Patten, EU commissioner for
external relations, praises Will Hutton with faint criticism, and does
everything to promote sales of the book.

Note the tone of friendly badinage from a former chairman of the British
Conservative Party, who, like Will Hutton, very much wants Britain to join
the Euro.

Note that he studiously deals with the dispute with the US in terms of
cultural identity issues while nuancing the differences. The fact that
Hutton's book is a programme to fight the US for economic leadership of the
world on no account must be mentioned, precisely because that is what the
book is.

So Patten amiably suggests that it is good fodder for friendly arguments
over drinks

 but ends

> you can rest assured that quite a bit of it is true.


It is now possible to see some of the bits that are true, that Patten
studiously avoids criticising.

Chris Burford

>>>>

>


Friends across the water

In The World We're In, Will Hutton reveals that the US right is a threat to
the UK. It's not that simple, argues Chris Patten

Chris Patten Guardian

Saturday May 18, 2002

The World We're In Will Hutton 320pp, Little, Brown, £17.99

Will Hutton's latest book, The World We're In , is only about the world
we're in on the author's terms. Funny old world. Turn to the index. No
mention of China, India, Latin America, Africa or Islam. Will this be the
only book on international affairs published in 2002 that makes no mention
of the Islamic states? So what is going on here, for geography to be so
surprisingly attenuated?

Hutton's answer is clear. There is a simple template for analysing and
comprehending the years ahead. "The relationship between [the US and
Europe] is the fulcrum on which the world order turns," he writes. Having
only recently returned from Shanghai and a trip through Jiangsu province,
where the pace and quantity of economic and social change is stunning, I
have my doubts about the Hutton thesis. Of course, the transatlantic
relationship is important, and where America and Europe work together,
economically and politically, the whole world usually benefits. However, my
hunch is that the relationship between China (over one-fifth of humanity)
and the US will be the most important geostrategic relationship of the
coming decades.

What is more, I suspect that this approach may in any event be an
old-fashioned way of preparing for the future. We are all about to have our
way of looking at the world turned upside down by a superb book by the
American historian and former member of the National Security Council,
Philip Bobbitt. The Shield of Achilles , which comes out in Britain next
month, traces the history of states from the old feudal order (destroyed by
guns) to the dynastic order (ended by the development of railways). Now,
Bobbitt argues, we live in market states mutated by information technology
and will have to survive in an environment poised dangerously somewhere
between long-term global violence and catastrophe. It makes Hutton's
polemic seem comfortingly time-warped.

Polemic it is - and no argumentative household should be without a copy.
But you don't have to be very suspicious to work out that there may be a
second agenda beneath the denunciation of American conservatism and the
praise for the European economic and social model.

Hutton's previous bestseller, The State We're In, written during the "last
gasp" days of the Conservative government, proposed a radical social
democratic agenda for the Blair-Brown New Labour party, marrying "economic
disciplines with genuine social progress". So what happened? Hutton does
not "seriously" doubt the Blair government's good intentions, including its
commitment to be an active member of the European Union. "The problem is
that it is attempting to achieve [its aims] while respecting the canons of
American conservatism; for that is the route, it thinks, to re-legitimising
the centre-left while building a new coalition with the centre." Like
others, Hutton concludes that the third way "is a delusion", and that the
public realm - the sinews of the state and community goods - deserves
defending and enhancing for what it is, not merely as an adjunct to
capitalist enterprise.

So there is about this book more than a hint of the jilted guru: what does
social democracy's Prince Charming think he's doing, sleeping around with
all these Texan conservatives? I can see how disappointing this promiscuity
must be to Labour intellectuals, new party and old.

Hutton argues that his root-and-branch critique of American conservatism
and its effects on the world does not mean that he is anti-American. "The
US remains a remarkable country. Its noble traditions of democracy, its
vitality and its commitment to the acquisition of education continue to
inspire. But all this is now obscured by rampant inequality and an
increasingly feral capitalism, together with an overblown conservative
rhetoric that prevents self-knowledge and intelligent self-criticism." All
guns blazing, Hutton takes after all the obvious targets from Enron to
Boeing, from Rush Limbaugh to Robert Nozick. Few are left standing. Even
American democracy is filled full of lead.

Hutton is obviously right to argue that there are clear differences between
the American and European social and economic models. While I prefer, on
balance, our European way of ordering our lives, the American way is not
nearly as flawed as Hutton suggests, and the European way is not so perfect.

Maybe American economic success is exaggerated, and we should pay more heed
to Paul Krugman's indictment of supply-siders, Laffer-curvers, monetarists
and economic conservatives. But did not most of us benefit from the booming
1990s, during the second half of which about 40% of world growth was
generated in the US?

Inequality in America is at levels that would be totally unacceptable in
Europe. As many have pointed out, some of the social statistics in
Washington DC must look very familiar to the World Bank, which has its
headquarters there, from its operations alleviating poverty in the
developing world. Yet ask yourself this question. If Colin Powell's
Jamaican parents had headed east for Britain rather than west for America,
is it conceivable that he would have become in our own land chief of the
defence staff and foreign secretary? The answer helps to explain why so
many of the world's poor wish to emigrate to the US, which has a pretty
enviable record in making them welcome.

But how should Europe rise to the challenge represented by American
conservatism that Hutton deplores?

First, as he properly asserts, "political ideas matter", which is one
reason why the right in the US is on a roll. You may not like what American
conservatives believe, but they do have a clear philosophy with simple
messages that correspond to many voters' notions of reality. With the
recent electoral success of xenophobic, populist extremism in Europe
(hardly a proud moment for European democracy), we should have been
reminded of the dangers of political contests that appear to be about
nothing but gaining power. When you divorce democratic politics from ideas
and principles, when political leaders consult focus groups to discover
what they should think and how they should express whatever their thoughts
should be, you create a vacuum that is easily and rapidly filled by
demagogues with brutally simple solutions to their society's problems.

We require in Europe bold political ideas that will enable us to make more
credible and accountable the institutions that we have created to manage
shared sovereignty, and that will also address our own problems of social
exclusion and alienation. This is essential if we are to revitalise our own
democracy, and to demonstrate to other countries that our continent's
version of democracy is not mean-spirited and illiberal.

Second, Hutton draws attention to the struggle in the US between the
unilateralists and the multilateralists. To turn round a remark of the
former US secretary of state, James Baker, we have a dog in this fight. It
matters to us hugely that America should remain predominantly multilateralist.

But when other counsels prevail, it is important that Europe does not stand
around on the touchline whingeing. We have to take seriously our own
responsibilities of international leadership, as we are doing at the moment
over the issue of climate change. We need to be in a position to take an
equally clear lead on trade (opening markets for the poor), on development
assistance, and on security. We may never be able to close the
military-technology gap with the US, but unless we are prepared to do
rather more to invest in our security, that gap will grow to the point
where it becomes destabilising.

Finally, Will Hutton argues passionately that Britain has to choose to side
with Europe, not America, and that does not mean turning our back on
transatlantic links and relationships. But a European choice for Britain is
about more than joining the euro zone and taking the eurosceptics head on.

In an excellent passage, with which I totally agree, Hutton argues for the
importance of a public anchor in our lives - from publicly owned television
to parks and museums to transport and universities. Whom do we have to
blame for the rusting of this public anchor in Britain? Can we really pin
the blame on Ronald Reagan or the Chicago school? Most of the culpability
lies closer to home. How many of those who run the BBC still believe in
public service broadcasting? Who is responsible for the chronic and
shocking underinvestment in public transport and universities under British
governments of both right and left? It is not American conservatives who
are too powerful in Britain, it is Her Majesty's Treasury.

Anyway, in order to give a bit of zip to your rows in the pub or over the
dinner table's Chilean cabernet sauvignon, buy Hutton's latest book. If you
take it at a brisk canter, you may well enjoy it, and you can rest assured
that quite a bit of it is true.

Chris Patten is EU commissioner for external relations and a former
chairman of the Conservative party.