England after the Great Recession Tracking the Political and Cultural Consequences of the Crisis P.W Preston England after the Great Recession Also by P W Preston: NATIONAL PASTS IN EUROPE AND EAST ASIA (Routledge, 2010) ARGUMENTS AND ACTIONS IN SOCIAL THEORY (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) SINGAPORE IN THE GLOBAL SYSTEM: RELATIONSHIP, STRUCTURE AND CHANGE (Routledge, 2007) RELOCATING ENGLAND: ENGLISHNESS IN THE NEW EUROPE (Manchester University Press, 2004) UNDERSTANDING MODERN JAPAN: A POLITICAL ECONOMY OF DEVELOPMENT, CULTURE AND GLOBAL POWER (Sage, 2000) England after the Great Recession Tracking the Political and Cultural Consequences of the Crisis P W Preston Professor of Political Sociology, University of Birmingham, UK Palgrave macmillan © P W Preston 2012 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2012 978-0-230-29087-7 All rights reserved No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 First published 2012 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010 Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries ISBN 978-1-349-33170-3 DOI 10.1057/9780230355675 ISBN 978-0-230-35567-5 (eBook) This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress Contents Preface vi Acknowledgements vii England: Place, Trajectory War and Memory: Shifting Recollection down the Generations 17 Changing Political Relationships: Europe and the USA in the Early 21st Century 55 Freedom from ‘Britain’: A Comment on Recent Elite-sponsored Political Cultural Identities 82 Cutting Scotland Loose: Soft Nationalism and Independence-in-Europe 91 The Other Side of the Coin: Reading the Politics of the 2008 Financial Tsunami 106 Downstream from the 2008–10 Crisis: Tracking the Economic and Political Effects 123 England: Available Images, Imagined Futures 156 Bibliography 201 Index 215 v Preface The 2008–10 financial crisis has overthrown the settled conventional wisdom embraced over the last thirty years in Washington and London, the era of neo-liberalism The crisis has had significant consequences for economic and political thinking in practical politics, pragmatic policy and abstract scholarly reflection The model is now discredited A period of confusion will follow: it will involve debates in respect of responsibility, debates in respect of policy lines and debates in respect of explanations A residual strand of neo-liberal thinking will be present, but other lines will emerge as debate is likely to broaden; not just ‘fixing the banks’ or ‘regulators’ or whatever, but a somewhat deeper discussion of the design and consequences of debt-fuelled liberal market consumerism The initial crisis of neo-liberalism passed yet the downstream consequences continue to unfold And within Britain, where both New Labour and Conservative parties embraced these ideas, the model is similarly discredited It might be expected that the British polity will reconfigure, with economic, social and political reform, but quite how is anybody’s guess In this text one aspect of these matters is pursued; that is, the implications of the debacle for received political identities, our sense of ourselves as members of an ordered collectivity and the ways in which we might plot a route to the future Given the disorder, received thinking cannot other than be in question – so what changes might be envisaged? vi Acknowledgements Over the years I have had the marvellous opportunity of living and working in a number of countries in Europe and East Asia Most of this text was written whilst I was based in Hong Kong Living and working in Hong Kong was a delight and I should like to offer my thanks for their congenial company to my colleagues and students at the Chinese University of Hong Kong As most of the pieces here were written whilst living and working overseas, they offer something of an outsider’s view of the politics of the United Kingdom; they were produced for various audiences, and save for three short pieces all have been revised for inclusion in this text vii England: Place, Trajectory The 2008–10 financial crisis marked the end of a thirty-year political/ intellectual period; it had been the era of corporate/financial world ascendency informed and legitimated by the doctrines of neo-liberalism but as events unfolded both the politics and the arguments disintegrated.1 The first phase of the crisis in 2008 engulfed the financial sectors of the United States and the United Kingdom These were the dual centres of the financial tsunami which ran around the global system in that year Following emergency state action it was thought that the crisis had been contained Nonetheless these events had multiple impacts: first, they outraged populations (who are funding taxpayer-led bail-outs); second, they inclined incumbent political elites to at least consider taking the opportunity afforded by crisis to re-balance the economic/political system in favour of the state (that is, in particular, to re-regulate the financial world); and third, they severely damaged the intellectual credibility of the neo-liberal package (no longer could any theorist point to the ideal of the self-regulating market place as the vehicle for maximizing human benefits) The second phase of the crisis came in 2010 The centre of gravity was mainland Europe where there was a tangled web of interrelated problems: the private sector debts of banks, the costs to various states of supporting domestic banks, ongoing problems of overlarge public expenditures (now compounded), and there were related problems with some eurozone economies where sovereign debt was called into question Thus a crisis of private debt modulated into a crisis of public debt and debates in respect of unsustainable debt shifted their focus from the private to the public sphere All this underscored the epochal nature of the crisis and the need for fresh thinking The first phase of the crisis, which culminated in the dramas of late 2008, has abated The finance industry came to the brink of collapse and England after the Great Recession has been rescued by state intervention buttressed by taxpayer bail-outs in turn secured by central bank sovereign debt issuance or ‘quantitative easing’ In other words, rescuing the banks was a government action and its success depends finally upon the political power/authority of the state The downstream consequences of these events continue to unfold: there have been further impacts within the financial sector (talk of regulatory reforms, lobby-group politics and further problems emerging in the guise of the European or phase two issues); there have been further impacts within the real economy (disturbed patterns of investment in manufacturing and property, anxieties about employment and continuing concerns about implications of crisis for pre-existing global macro imbalances2); and there have been further impacts within the political realm (incumbent parties punished by electorates,3 deeper political failings uncovered, relating both to personnel and systems,4 and more generally the ways in which economic failure has impacted the legitimacy of political systems) The second phase of the crisis, however, which unfolded in early 2010, continues to roll around the member states of the European Union There are numerous interlinked issues In regard to urgent problems, commentators5 have noted, first, sovereign debt, in particular in Portugal, Ireland, Greece and other Mediterranean countries (the so-called ‘PIIGS’), and then, second, national and trans-European banks carrying state and private-sector debts, some related to member states’ sovereign debts, some to involvement in the Anglo-American-style casino banking games and others incurred through funding participation in wild property bubbles In regard to putative solutions, commentators have noted member state confusion as to the ways in which states and Brussels should respond; raised doubts about key political leaders6 marked the contested drift towards fiscal conservatism; reported continuing debates about the extent of regulatory reform and administrative oversight; and in the later part of 2010 reported early data on the uneven economic and social impacts of fiscal retrenchment The central concerns of the text The downstream consequences of the 2008–10 debacle are running through the economy, society and politics of the United Kingdom This is entirely unsurprising, and specialists are attending to various issues arising.7 This text, however, is concerned with the broad political implications of the crisis It marked the end of a politicalintellectual period and so three broad areas of concern (or central Bibliography 209 Keillor, G (1974–present) A Prairie Home Companion (National Public Radio, USA) Kerr, C., Dunlop, J T., Harbison, F H and Myers, C A (1960) Industrialism and Industrial Man (Harmondsworth: Penguin) Kidd, C (2007) ‘Brown versus Salmond’, London Review of Books, 26 April Kidd, C (2008) ‘William Wallace, Unionist’ London Review of Books, 23 March King, S (2010) ‘Western Economies Are Still in Danger of Sinking Under an Ocean of Self Created Debt’, The Independent, 19 July King, S D (2010) Losing Control: The Emerging Threats to Western Prosperity (New Haven: Yale University Press) Kinks, The (1967) Waterloo Sunset (song: Ray Davies) Kinzer, S (2006) Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq (New York: Times Books) Knowlton, J and Cates, T (translators and editors) (1993) Forever in the Shadow of Hitler? 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Woman in Berlin (Anonymous) 42–3 abstract general ideologies 163 accuracy, of memory 29 Ackroyd, Peter 169 acquiescence 180 active remembering and forgetting 28–9 Afghanistan 57, 59–60, 62, 64, 114–15 agent-centred thinking 94 agents 187, 189 Alibhai-Brown, Yasmin 181 alienation 168 allied scheme of history 19 alternative vote 146–7 ambiguity, of lessons of history 47 An Academic Skating on Thin Ice (Worsley) 45 Anglo-British, official England 183–5 anomie 168 anxiety 67–8, 83–7 arts, land and place in 170 Asian financial crisis 108–9, 113, 133 asymmetrical justice 32 audit of war 62 auratic sites/objects 165 Austerity Britain: 1945–51 (Kynaston) 43–4 authentic, and kitsch 172–3 authenticity 171 autonomy, as fiction available agent resources 3, 11 available lessons 3, 11 ballot 143–4 banality, elite memory 29 banking system, reforms 134–5 bargains 159 beauty, of land and place 169–70 benefits, claimed for neo-liberalism bloc system, effects of ending 63 bloc-time linkages 57–8 bonus culture 112, 132 Bourdieu, Pierre, Sketch for a Self-Analysis 46 Bretton Woods system 5–6, 133 BRIC countries 113 Brideshead Revisited (Waugh) 169 Britain and British-ness 184 domestic pressure 118–19 electoral system 117 external pressure 119 need for reform 126 parliament 117–18, 137–8 political consequences of crisis 135 political-cultural project 88–9 political opportunity 118–19 post-war trajectory 75–7 power 118 problem of identity 89 re-affirmation 98 see also United Kingdom British elite anxieties 83–7 attitude to EU 12 change of identity 77 effects of crisis 134–5, 136 and the Enlightenment 174 power 137–8 pressures on 82 relations with Europe and the US 94 British Empire 75–6, 88, 162 Brown, Gordon 125 bubble economy 112 Bush, George W administration 55, 62, 63 cascades 107–8, 109–12 casino banking 112, 123, 132 casual, informal violence 24 215 216 Index casual, organized violence 24 challenges to Europe, political-cultural identity 65–7 change 95, 158, 159, 190 change needed option 3–4 changing trajectories, United Kingdom 9–13 China 113–14 Christendom 65 citizenship, loss of sense of 27 civilization 20 class rebellions 179–80 cliché, elite memory 29 club government 186–7 cold war 21, 57–9, 66, 74, 160 collective memory 11, 17, 30–3, 161 see also memory; official memory Colley, Linda 183 Colls, Robert 169, 170–2 colour revolutions 144–5 commentary, economic and political 71–2 commercial England 173–81 Commonwealth 77 community 171 community membership, conceptualizing and organizing Comprehensive Spending Review 2010 135 Conservative Party 86–7, 101 constituencies 142 contagion 108–12 contingency British political-cultural project 88–9 EU–US links 56–7 ideas of nation and nationalism 65 of political arrangements 98–9 state/empire system 73 in wars 30–1 cores, and peripheries 182 corruption, in EU 69 country, idea of 96–7 crony capitalism 108–9 cultural identity, political 10 cultural trauma 27 current system logics 3, 11 Darling, Alistair 125 Davies, Norman 39, 42 deaths and injuries 24–5 deaths, in wars 22–3 debt pile, legitimation of 132 dehumanization 32 democracy 86, 116, 138–41 Democratic Collectivism 163, 187 democratic control, of EU 69 Democratic Republicanism 163–4, 187 dependency theory 187–8 deregulation 112 designers and architects, value of rural life 171–2 development trajectories, divergent 58 devolution 86 difference, managing 182 disenchantment, with EU 68 displacements 24–5 diversity, political-cultural 85 domestic pressure, Britain 118–19 domestic reform 192 domestic reform and international rebalancing domestic terrorism, European experience of 61 dual parasitism Durkheim, Emile 168 East Asia 23, 133 Eastern Europe, post-war recovery 75 economic activity, as within social systems economic commentary 71 economic recovery 73 efficient markets hypothesis 7, 111 elections, loss of interest 68–9 electoral reform 86 electoral registers 142 electoral systems 138–40 alternative vote 146–7 announcement of results 145 ballot 143–4 constituencies 142 Index count 145 electoral registers 142 eligible participants 143 franchise rules 141 frequency of elections 142 ground rules 141–2 liberal-competitive 141–6 manipulation 116–17, 141–6 means of dissolution 143 and parliament 145–6 perception of campaigns 144–5 reform 135–6 voting systems 142 elision, of memory 29 elite forgetting 28–9 elite ideology 161 elite remembering 29 elites demands upon 161, 162 managing change 158 and masses 65–7 post-war Britain 77 response to change 159 see also British elite empire, end of 21 enchantment, of land and place 168–9 enemies, constructing 59–61 England Anglo-British, official 183–5 commercial 173–81 going forwards 185 invoking land and place 167–72 multi-cultural 181–3 place/trajectory 192–3 possible futures see possible futures radical 176–81 rural 166–73 versions of 165–6 England-as-garden 171 England-as-wasteland 171 English/British enlightenment 174 Englishness 10 Enlightenment 65–6, 174 Europe accommodating catastrophe 27–8 American interlude 58 beginning of modern world 20 challenges to, 1989–91 to 2008–10 see challenges to Europe 217 changing power patterns 114 as contested idea 46–7 discourses of 65–6 divisions over war on terror 63 general crisis 20 impact of post-cold war period 67–72 links with US 56–7 as opportunity for imagined Scottish community 96 political-cultural identity 19 post-war problems 75 post-war success 72–5 recovery 56 responses to 9/11 60–1 separate polity 59–61 structural changes 94 as undemocratic 70 as unloved Union 68–70 wars 20–1 European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) 74 European Constitution 70 European Economic Community (EEC) 74 European Free Trade Association (EFTA) 77 European history of Europe 19–20 European Parliament 69 European political integration 86 European Union anxiety over 67–8 attitude of British elite 12 British accommodation to 89 British membership 77 British opposition 77 concerns of 11–12 developing idea of 63–4 as elite project 66–7 engaging with 192 identity 67 as problem for the British elite 84–5 problems within 67 SNP reactions to change 92 as unsure 71–2 Europeanization 89 everyday complex change 95 everyday life 164 218 Index exchange rates 58 exotic financial products 132 expediency 175 external pressure, Britain 119 Fanon, Frantz 46 financial crisis 2008–10 British elite 134–5, 136 East Asia 133 effects on population 10 impact of second phase 71–2 issues for Britain 147 macro-explanations 133 as opportunity 147–8 overview 1–2 political consequences 12 political consequences for Britain 135 public reaction 136–7 surprise of 68 financial crisis, 2008 phase analogies drawn 107–8 cascades and contagion 109–12 debates 110–13 domestic political effects 114–19 dual origins 106, 119–20, 123 effects in the UK 9–13, 115–16 effects in the US 114–15 institutional economists’ response 111 inter and intra-regional impacts 113–14 macro-systemic effects 113 neo-liberal response 111 overview 106 political economists’ response 112 political effects 124 as political opportunity 118–19 questions raised 107 spill-over from 113 financial crisis, 2010 phase economic effects 124 effects in the UK 124–32 institutional diagnoses 127–30 macro-systemic effects 128–9 neo-liberal responses 126 overview 123 political economists’ responses 130–1 political effects 9, 124 financial sector, power 112, 131–2 Financial Services Authority 125–6 framing, political analysis 92 franchise rules 141 fraud 111, 126 free world, rhetoric of 58 future, possible routes to 187, 190–2 future scenarios 12 G7, to G20 113 Gaia 169 gender relations 27 general crisis in Britain 160 consequences of war 23–7 dead, injured, displaced and damaged 24–5 in Europe 20 scale and costs of 21–3 trauma 25–7 global effects, financial crisis, 2008 phase 113 global power relationships, shifts in 55 global system 55, 160–1, 187 global trading system, post-war 58 global war on terror 57, 60–1, 62 globalization 6, 59 government, remoteness of great tradition ideas 161, 165 Great War 20 Greene, Graham 46 Grossman, Vassily 39–40 Harvie, Christopher 176 Hawksmoor (Ackroyd) 169 Heath, Edward 77 hegemony 4–9, 59–61 Heller, Agnes 164 High Imperialism 66 Hillary, Richard 36 hindsight 30–1 history 31–2, 47 human rights, universal hyphens, use of 181–2 idea of a country 96–7 idea of a nation 96 Index identities 33, 47, 82, 88 identity British problem of 89 debates 82 European Union 67 malleable 181 personal 87 political-cultural 10, 65–7, 83, 87–8 ideological-cum-policy orientations 187 ideologies 163, 184 ideology, and knowledge 189 Imperial Japan, rise of 23 independence 97, 99–102 individual responsibility individuality, and particularity 164 industrialization 168 injuries and deaths 24 institutional economists 111, 127–8 institutional failure institutional structures, corruption, damage and change 26–7 intellectual failure international context 11–12 international rebalancing and domestic reform international terrorism 62 inward migration 181 Iraq invasion 57, 61–4, 83–4 Judt, Tony 31, 45, 74 Junge, Traudl 41–2 justice 32, 60 Kaletsky, Anatole 128–9, 133 Keynes, John Maynard 107 kitsch, and authentic 172–3 knowledge ideological commitments 189 maximization 5, Kynaston, David 43–4 Labour Party 177–8 land and place 167–72 landscape, creation and maintenance 172–3 Lee Kwan Yew 37–8 219 legitimacy 68, 88, 118–19, 148 legitimation 8, 107, 132, 159 Lehman Brothers 129, 132 lessons, available from history 47 liberal-competitive election systems 141–6 Liberal-Conservative coalition, political/legislative reform 10 liberal globalization linkages, UK-international 187–9 Lisbon Treaty 70 Littell, Jonathan 39 little tradition 164 livelihood, conceptualizing and organizing locale 87 London, as key commercial centre 176 London bombings, 2005 84 long, drawn-out complex change 95 long-term trends 128 Lovelock, James 169 Macmillan, Harold 75, 76, 77 macro-historical trajectory 159–60 macro-systemic effects, financial crisis, 2008 phase 113 making enemies 59–61 market democracies Marquand, David 138, 163, 186–7 Marx, Karl 168 masses, and elites 65–7 means of dissolution 143 media, role of 144–5 memoirs 17, 33–4 1954–56 – defeats inflicted upon the residual empire aspirations 45–6 December 1941– defeats in the empire territories 36–8 June 1941–February 1943 – invasion of the USSR 39–41 May 1945 – defeats inflicted on Germany 41–3 May 1945–51 – shaping contemporary Europe 43–5 May/June 1940 – defeats inflicted 34–6 220 Index memory 17, 29, 45, 87 denial of memory 29 evasion of memory 29 falsity, elite memory 29 historical memory, suppression 45 indifference to memory 29 neglect of memory 29 refusal of memory 29 remembering and forgetting, elite 28–9 scholarliness, of memory 29 stylization of elite memory 29 subjectivity, of memory 29 suppression, of memory 29 see also collective memory; official memory Middle East, intervention in 76 migrants 85–6, 181 misremembering war 30–3 mixed adaptive economy 129 modern world, European beginnings 20 modernity 73, 140 modernization theory 59 moral hazard 111 moral value 5, multi-cultural England 181–3 multi-polarity, of global system 56 myth 167 Nairn, Tom 174, 176, 192 nation, idea of 96 national economy 188 national identities 33, 47 national past 11, 17, 164–5 contemporary 165–6 contextualizing 185–90 disaggregating 162–6, 185 domestic terms 186–7 international terms 186 key themes 165 routine experiences 162–3 National Trust 169–70 nationalism 65, 87–8 nationalists 93 NATO 58 Nemirovsky, Irene 36 neo-liberalism claimed benefits of criticism of intellectual basis 6–8 damaged credibility effects of collapse 136 failure of system 7–8 futility 160 hegemony 4–9 response to 2008 crisis 111 UK embrace of 10 networks of power 12 new economics 129 New Labour, role anxieties 85–6 nostalgia 161–2, 165, 169 novel financial instruments 110, 111, 112 Obama, Barack 64 official ideologies 184 official memory 18–19 see also collective memory; memory oil shocks 6, 58 oligarchy 4, 10–11, 116, 138, 180 soft 12, 118, 145 opportunism 60, 119 optimism, American 58 ordinary living 164 ordinary political thinking 165 over-enthusiasm 111, 126 parliament 117–18, 137–8, 145–6, 148, 189–90 particularity, and individuality 164 past 17, 191 Paulson, Henry 129 peripheries, and cores 182 personal identity 87 philanthropy 171 philosophy of expediency 175 place/people 167–8 place/trajectory 192–3 policy-making 159 politics political activity, levels of 66–7 political analysis, framing 92 political change 95 political commentary 71–2 political-cultural diversity 85 political-cultural identity 10, 19, 65–7, 83, 87–8 political economists 106, 112 Index political failure political freedom, maximization 5, political impact, financial crisis, 2010 phase political integration 86 political power, of financial sector 112 political recovery 73 political self, loss of sense of 27 political system, legitimacy 118–19 political thinking, ordinary 165 political trauma 26 politics, radical England 180 polity, trajectory of 162–3 Pollard, Sydney 174–5 poodle option Popper, Karl 116, 139–40 Porter, Roy 173, 175 possible futures 4, 156, 158 post-cold war, change 160 post-war recovery 74 post-war settlement, arguments against 107 post-war success, Europe 72–5 post-war system 57 poverty 171 power Britain 118 British elite 137–8 distribution 65 financial sector 131–2 networks of 12 shifts in Europe 114 structures of 187 power relationships, shifts in 55 power shift 107 pragmatism 86, 101, 119 principle, and reform 118–19 problems, political and economic production and technology, memory of war 30–1 projects, structures and agents 187 public scrutiny, of EU 68–9 quiet European option racism 32, 181 radical England 176–81 221 rapid complex change 95 re-regulation 129–30 rebalancing 56–7, 134, 192 referenda 68–9 reform, domestic 192 reforms, banking system 134–5 regional contagion 108 regionalization 59 regulation 111, 125–6 regulatory capture 111 regulatory failure 126–8 regulatory incapacity 111 regulatory mis-design 111 regulatory purchase 111 regulatory under-design 111 remembered war 165 responsibility, individual revenge, following 9/11 60 revolutions, British elite opposition 174 rhetoric, of free world 58 Richey, Paul 35–6 routine experiences 162–3 rural England 166–73 science, commerce and progress/ happiness 174–5 Scotland 96, 99–100 Scottish Enlightenment 174 Scottish independence 99–102 Scottish National Party (SNP) 92, 96 Scottish nationalism contemporary 96–7 contemporary debates 92–9 context of debate 92–4 double context 93 elite reactions to 91 in EU context 94, 97–8 as prospective 97–8 traits of debate 92 Scruton, Roger 166–7, 169 Sebald, W G 44–5 Second World War 19 see also memoirs self-identity 33 self-understanding 46 September 11, 2001 57, 60 Sereny, Gitta 40–1 shadow banking system 110, 132 222 Index social construction 17, 82, 88 social disruption 26 social failure social science, framing of political analysis 93 social systems, as context of economic activity social trauma 26 soft nationalism 96–7 soft oligarchy 12, 118, 145 solidarity, post 9/11 61 sovereignty 66, 97 Soviet bloc 57 spill-over, from financial crisis, 2008 phase 113, 114–19 Stangl, Franz 40–1 state/empire system 21, 73–4 statehood 97 status quo ante 3–4, 190–2 strategic groups 176 structural changes 66, 94, 95–7 structural pressures, in global system 55 structure-centred thinking 94 structures, agents and projects 187 structures of power 187 sub-prime mortgages 109–10 subaltern acquiescence 179 Suez 76, 77 Suite Francaise (Nemirovsky) 36 survival strategies 23–4 survivors, continuing problems 26 tasks, of study of history 47 technical financial mechanisms 112 technology and production, memory of war 30–1 terrorism 61–3 The Kindly Ones (Littell) 39 The Quiet American (Greene) 46 The Wretched of the Earth (Fanon) 46 Thompson, E P 175, 176–7 three worlds 20 Tory Nationalism 163, 187 toxic financial products 132 tradition 161, 165 tradition ideas 161, 164 trajectory 159–60, 162–3, 192–3 Treblinka 40–1 triumphalism, of neo-liberalism Trocki, Karl 175 truth concern for 19 5, unhappy accident 111, 126 unionists 93 United Kingdom changed economic position 114 diversity 82–3 effects of financial crisis 9–13 elite ideology 161 financial crisis, 2008 phase 115–19 global positioning 10 macro-historical trajectory 159–60 perceptions of financial system 148 response to change, 1989 156–7 and the US 188 see also Britain United States changed economic position 114 concerns of 11 engagement with 190–1 financial crisis, 2008 phase 114–15 foreign policy style 64 links with Europe 56–7 post 9/11 discourse 61 as superpower 74 and UK 188 universal human rights unreliability, elite memory 29 Until the Final Hour: Hitler’s Last Secretary (Junge) 41–2 USSR, as military great power 74 victims, of war 31–2 Vietnam War 6, 58 violence of wars 21, 24 voting systems 142 war audit 62 casual informal violence 24 casual organized violence 24 collective understanding 18 consequences of 23–7 cultural impact 32–3 damage from warfare 25 deaths and injuries 24–5 Index deaths in wars 22–3 misremembering 30–3 in national identity 47 public debate 17–18 remembered 165 war commentary, tasks of 28 war of choice 62 war on terror 57, 60–1, 62 wars accommodating catastrophe costs of 74 deaths 22–3 Europe 20–1 27–8 223 problems of survivors 26 wars of collapse 21–2 Washington Consensus 6, 109, 133 Waugh, Evelyn 169 wealth 5, 180 West Lothian Question 101 Whig Imperialism 163, 187 Whitehall/Westminster model 186–7 World War II 19 see also memoirs Worsley, Peter 45 Wright, Patrick 164, 165 ... ECONOMY OF DEVELOPMENT, CULTURE AND GLOBAL POWER (Sage, 2000) England after the Great Recession Tracking the Political and Cultural Consequences of the Crisis P W Preston Professor of Political. .. onset of the Great War signalled the start of a general crisis – a process of systemic collapse in both core and peripheral territories – and the upshot of the crisis was the eclipse of the European... both the politics and the arguments disintegrated.1 The first phase of the crisis in 2008 engulfed the financial sectors of the United States and the United Kingdom These were the dual centres of