Tag Archives: professor david runciman

John Marriott

When politics really does take a back seat

By John Marriott | Sat 28th March 2020 - 1:00 pm

Professor David Runciman, writing in the Guardian this week, may be right about a layer of politics being stripped away in this current crisis and, as he describes it, there being “a trade off between personal liberty and collective choice”. Speaking to his nation on the Edison phonograph at the start of World War One, Kaiser Wilhelm II ended his address with the words; “I recognise no parties any more, only Germans”.

Whether we like it or not, what we are now in the middle of is a war; but, as Mr Spock might have said to Captain James Kirk; “not as we know it”. Wilhelm was the head, despite the trappings of democracy, of a basically autocratic regime, which sought to shore up its power by enlisting patriotism, and it worked for a while as it did also in Tsarist Russia, Austria-Hungary and Ottoman Turkey.

I know that there are many people, who suspect the motives of many of those advocating obedience rather than debate; but these are extraordinary times for mankind. As Dr Liam Fox, not someone whose views I generally share, wrote last weekend, we, who have only been around as a species some 200,000 years, are facing an ‘enemy’ that has survived for millions.

Continue reading »
Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 32 Comments
Advert

Recent Comments

  • Paul Hunt
    Thank you for your comments, Mervyn. I remember Joan Bowskill and Pam Shields so very well. Pam Shields was our parliamentary candidate in 1970 when Pam Brown...
  • Mervyn Evans
    Re Pamela Brown I was chairman of Hastings Young Liberals and organiser for St Clements Ward in 1968/9 when Joan Bowskill won the Council Election.At a county ...
  • Roland
    >"This isn’t a failure of the FA’s ambition" It is; it is also a failure of government over several decades. Firstly, let us not forget it was the FA a...
  • Alex Macfie
    "…a small number of technology companies hold enormous power over markets and the people who depend on their platforms." and government policy, not properly o...
  • Nonconformistradical
    @Mark https://www.libdems.org.uk/conference#c351200 is stating that registration will be open in November...