YouSaid · the spoken record

Edward Luce

lines on the record: 57
first: 2017-06-21
most recent: 2017-06-21
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“In the west we have more talent, but we have way more wasted talent than we used to have. There's a lot more idle humans than there used to be, and don't look at the unemployment rate. You know this. Look at the labour force participation rate.”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, we shouldn't. And if you look at the world from a global perspective, There's never been a period where more people have been lifted out of poverty faster than today. And we should remember it's because of Pax Americana. It's because of the public goods supplied over the last 70, 80 years that China is in a position and India to lift people out of poverty on this scale, to cut child mortality, illiteracy, under whatever it is, maternal deaths. So globally, this is an immensely positive moment and more brain power is being plugged into the system exponentially over time.”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Therefore grew. And I think the retreat of Western liberalism is a model that delivers the goods to its people. That's the ultimate measure. It's a kind of economic determinist one that I would apply.”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Democracy in the last 15, 20 years has actually been receding worldwide, including in Europe, Poland and Hungary are, as one question are identified, wobbling. But there are 25 fewer democracies today than there were in 2000. And I think the retreat of Western liberalism isn't just that we're having our problems at home and having to relearn some of the lessons of what liberal democracy actually means. But I think because our models are not performing well for the broad-based electorates that Votem our governments every few years. I know you want a quick answer. It was an Atlantic recession. China kept growing. India kept growing. And the relative attractiveness of the Chinese model”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In a way, yes, he is. He is trying to push to the extent that he can for ecclesiastical law on divorce, on contraception, on rhythm methods and all that kind of stuff. Although I'm not an orangeman, I'm not a Catholic and I'm tiptoeing through a minefield already, so I don't want to get too detailed in my commentary on Catholic law. I'm going to get something wrong.”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot of it, a lot of it. I think the last great foreign policy president, the United States had, was Bush Sr. I think he was a brilliant president who wound down the Cold War with extraordinary finesse and skill. He did not go and dance on the Berlin Wall. He did not go and beat his breast and claim credit for it. Can you imagine a president doing that today? I think the Cold War kept America honest, as it were, and enabled this bipartisan support for America's, as I say, unnatural global role of being the Hercules that sustains the liberal international order. So I think the Cold War played a hugely important role. And it's going to be very hard to reinvent it, nor should we wish to.”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“because they are getting better off from a much lower base. And Hispanics do too. Yes. They, I think, quite rationally see their children as being better off than they are. They're coming from a much lower base. They tend to be younger, average age two, which affects that outlook. So I think it's as simple as that.”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So he was talking about overconsumption and deficit spending, I think partly, right? I don't really agree with that. I don't agree with that at all. I think when people talk about the massive American debt, when we look at what 75% of GDP, look at the publicly held debt, I don't think by historic standards that's remotely alarming. I think, in fact, we should have had more stimulus and had more counter-cyclical fiscal policy in the last decade than we have had. And I think the German answer, and here's where I would criticize the German Sadomanitarist approach, has actually been very, very damaging to Europe, particularly to the Club Med group of European countries. So I'm not sure I agree with Neil Ferguson, but he changes his argument about once a year. So I'll either catch up with him or he'll catch up with me.”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Russia turning from a bane of Western democracy to being something quite hopeful. I think that's definitely a positive thing that's potentially going on now.”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Perhaps pretty good. I mean, if you look anywhere around the world, cities tend to vote for the internationalist option and Putin was so complacent, rightly so, about his last presidential campaign in 2012. He allowed more than half of Moscow to vote to vote against him. And of course, Istanbul, Erdogan strongly rejected Erdogan's recent referendum on strengthening his powers. So Alexei Navalny, the leader currently of opposition to Putin, is doing something that Corbyn managed to achieve last Thursday. He's getting young people out. And being quite bold and protesting on quite some scale across Russia, and you ought to draw hope from that kind of courage from millennials. We're used to thinking of millennials as slightly different. So I wouldn't rule out...”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“with Europe. But one thing I would say is your system is not designed to be parliamentary. Your system works better when each party is a coalition between different interests. And the fact that each is becoming more and more monochromatic, more and more disciplined and parliamentary is disastrous for this system. This system doesn't work like that.”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How does a multi party system in Europe affect the retreat or advancement of liberalism versus the basically two-party system we have here in the US? So until last Thursday, the assumption was the British two-party system is disintegrating into a European model where we're just going to have permanent coalition governments. But last Thursday was the peak two-party moment in almost 40 years. The Conservative Party got a higher share of the vote, its higher share of the vote since 1983 when Thatcher had her second big landslide, and the Labour Party had its highest share of the vote since 1983. Sorry, it had its highest share of the vote since 1997 when Blair came in. So this is a two-party peak. The smaller parties have temporarily been pushed away. The United States, you know, you don't have two parties. You have many parties under two umbrellas, and you're a continent. So it's very hard to analogize the US with”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Deeply disruptive mark in the pejorative sense of disruptive mark on American democracy and on the reputation of American democracy and American leadership around the world. And as I've said before on Brexit, we're about to sign up as the same option to a world where foreigners decide our regulations, our trade deals, and our product standards, and all, except we don't have a say over it. If that's rational, go figure.”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so that would be your history will look back on this as a liberal moment scenario, that this is a very violent sort of counter reaction to the growing internationalization of law, to the increasingly widened field of stuff that's off limits to democratic decision-making, which of course includes trade, regulation, international. If you're in Europe, it includes all these things. And if this is simply a correction where we reject Davos, we reject the sort of elites run the world and decide all the big economic stuff, and we just stick with identity politics, then this could be a liberal moment. I think it's a very good question. I suspect, though, you don't just have these little connipions that then fade away. There are consequences to these connipions. I fear that Trumpism is going to, even if he lost in 2020, is going to leave a”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In Britain have been turning out at lower rates in most democracies than other age groups, have grown up with this cynicism and they feel it's normal. Now Tyler would say that's healthy because they're not actually angry. They're just apathetic. And if you've got a choice between anger and apathy, let's go for apathy. But I think it's highly corrosive of liberal democracy.”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there is a cynicism about politics, which incidentally manifested itself in France last Sunday. Round two, the Macron En Marche landslide was 49% turnout, which is a historic low for France. We'll see this coming Sunday, whether that goes up. I think there is a deep cynicism about politics, and I understand, and about experts and establishment politics. I think there's a deep cynicism about it, which is really quite understandable if you look at what the experts have brought us. They brought us the Iraq war, the experts very much missold, how that would fare. They bought us 2008. The experts were the last to see it coming. And I think millennials who until last Thursday,”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“populist left wing movement's mushrooming everywhere. So I would consider this isn't just a right wing populist moment, although that's been the principal manifestation of populism. And I agree with your identification of that.”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and I think it's a very good question, and I think it's an often overlooked one. Look, I think the left, if you're a Democrat looking at a candidate for 2020, there is essentially a debate going on in the party between a sort of Macron wing and a Corbenista wing. And these are the two sort of left responses we're seeing in Europe. Left illiberalism and anti-Americanism to which European left illiberalism is very closely aligned is very serious, very real. M ⁇ nchon might have lost, but he got almost a fifth of the vote, as you mentioned. And I think that the further away we get from 2008, which is very much associated with the new left, the third way left of Blair and Gordon Brown and others, the further away we get from that, the more we're going to see”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“After having really craved to join the EU, to be European, to be Western, extraordinarily moving towards Putinism or some form of Putinism. And I think America's absence is really important. So I'm not particularly optimistic on that score because I think America is going to continue to be absent on these questions. And I think we underestimate the degree to which America has been an exceptional power and that this 70 years since 1945 has been what Bob Kagan calls an unnatural period in human history. And it's been a success broadly of an era of no mass wars and moving towards democracy because there's been a hegemon consciously pushing in that direction. That's a role America is no longer playing. I hope it plays it again. But until it does, I fear you're going to see Poland and Hungary moving further in the direction they've”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a really good question. Look, I think if we'd had this situation with Hungary 20 years ago or even 15 years ago, America's involvement in Europe under the radar, behind the scenes, in chevying Europe to take steps it needs to take, would have been far earlier and far more effective. Today, we are”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a career ending, to give an honest answer to that. You'd hate me for giving a dishonest one, so I'm not going to answer.”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can I argue, can I prove to you America has changed more? I don't know. I mean, I think in 2002, if somebody had told you that gay marriage would be legal, that marijuana, recreationally would be legal in X number of states, and that you'd have a black president asking something I didn't agree with for transgender bathroom rights in an election year, you would have probably scoffed at any such change being possible. I'm not saying all that change was positive, but I certainly think marriage equality is. And the speed with which that happened is remarkable.”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“food is certainly better but I argue with that reflects something I'd argue the food is better here too and I wouldn't dare argue with you about food so I don't know I think that's a pretty subjective line and the UK has changed a lot that's that's right I think”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ability to reinvent itself, even though there is a complacent class. And I accept your thesis. It is the ability to keep changing. And there is that protean quality to America, which might have slowed, but it's still way more in evidence here than in places that never had it.”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say do other things than journalism. Don't start out being a journalist. I would say the same for politics too. Not that I have any credibility on that subject. I'd say do other stuff, acquire real skills and experience in completely unrelated fields.”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The thing is about speechwriters, there's no such thing as a generic speechwriter, that you are speechwriter to A or B. And if Larry's A, you need to know Larry very well. I don't think being a speechwriter to Steve Newton would be any help to being a speechwriter to Larry Summers. You've got to know the individual you're writing speeches for. Larry's robust personality might be, you learn more from writing speeches for him in three months than you do in one year as a student. It's an extraordinary, intensive learning process.”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think India's diversity is a great stabilizing strength. The fact that it's got, I think, 18 official languages, although they do add to that, the fact that it has got every religion under the sun, the fact that as EP Thompson famously said, there's not a thought that's being thought in East or West that is not active in some Indian mind. India's sheer pluralism is very stabilizing if you take a sort of 30,000 foot view. If you're in the midst of it, you think it's anarchy but the more altitude you get on this, the more stabilizing it is. It is a country that lets off steam regularly and that and that's why I'm concerned that Modi doesn't celebrate that side of India and I think it's an important, immensely valuable quality to India that gives it a huge advantage over China.”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“he faces re-election two years from now and the possibility of losing a majority he will he's a master bar none of whipping up Hindu sentiment and to override caste divisions that's always the key is how can you unite Hindus beyond what divides them because in India you don't you don't cast your vote you vote your caste”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, you know, Modi is a, I think of him as a Jekylln Hyde figure. The Jekyll figure, the good part is that he is He's a fanatic. He believes what he believes and he's therefore not in politics for business. He's not in it for corruption or personal enrichment. And he doesn't tolerate people around him who are. And that's an extraordinarily refreshing and important change from the Congress government that he booted out three years ago. So the Jekyll is not actually a sort of classic laissez-faire liberal. It's a China model of development. He's a project executor. He believes in infrastructure that's built and on time and that works. And God knows India needs that. So if Modi, if Jekyll Modi succeeds, it will be a positive liberal event because more people will be lifted out of poverty, fewer people will be illiterate, and women, as you say, will be prime beneficiaries of this. But remember he's also Dr. Hyde. This guy is a fascist. And if things go wrong and Jekyll can't deliver,”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The most vicious youth wing, the Bajrang Dal, and VHP and other very hard right part of the Hindutva movement, a lot more leeway legally to harass minorities and changing of the curriculum to rewrite it to make India Hindu and Hindu India and completely downplay the extraordinary important Muslim contribution to what is a syncretic culture and a riot of faiths and interactions and a glory of pluralism.”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It would be hard to argue that it is. Narendra Modi has been doing a lot of things under the radar in terms of chipping away at the Indian secular Neruvian secular. of India and making it harder for minorities, Muslims, Christians and others to express themselves freely in terms of allowing far-right groups associated with the Sang Parivar, which is the sort of broad name given to the Hindutva movement, of which the BJP is a branch, the RSS is really the parent, allowing groups the really”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“39, right? I think he's underrated because he's been forgotten. I mean, I think he was one of the most brilliant poets. I think we should judge him on his poetry and forgive the fact that he wanted to get the hell out of Dodge in 1939 because he wasn't. His contemporaries questioned way was crossing the Atlantic at that particular moment. But his poetry is brilliant and eternal. And I'd say he's been forgotten.”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is you're throwing names at me who are all really highly rated. So I have to, okay, I can't say he's underrated. He's a very, very good actor. But can I pass on that one?”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because I think his movies were a lot more formulaic. His later movies were a lot more formulaic. It was a formula that worked, but his genius sort of faded much earlier than I'm struggling here because he's a brilliant movie maker. Sorry. I'm really struggling. But I thought I should say somebody's overrated.”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot of people who don't know much about Lenin sort of worship him as the best beetle, and he's the best beetle because he died youngest. I think Lenin was a bit of a jerk, frankly, although he was a great lyricist. But I don't really, have you listened to I Am the Walrus recently? Does it make any sense to you?”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, I see. Sorry, others who've done this have got it. You know, I think he's rated pretty well, highly. He deserves to be rated highly. But you're really going to Space Odyssey 2001.”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ethically, legally, societally and internationally, very complex decisions that you cannot decide by plebiscite, and I don't care whether you can do it online and make it easier. It makes no difference. These are questions where you need to be able to delegate authority to your representatives, who you can fire at the next opportunity to develop the skills as full-time political representatives to make these judgments. And if you don't like those judgments, you throw them out. But I don't think the answer is either what you might be implying, because you could go one of two ways, plebisciti, you know, Robespierre kind of democracy on the one hand. Or Singapore, you know, basically non-democracy and a rule of experts on the other. I don't see anything better than representative democracy.”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you were to ask me one of my favorite liberal thinkers, It would be Edmund Burke. And Edmund Burke, who is normally thought of as a conservative thinker, but I see no contradiction. I'm not using liberalism in the American sense of liberalism. developed the idea during the time of the French Revolution of the superiority of representative democracy. Remember, we had Jacobins saying, no, we need instant electric democracy and nothing in between the people and the decisions. You are describing decisions here. Very complex. Sure.”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That would be a high risk to call such a referendum, and it might well be the case the British people get really annoyed at being asked twice and the pro-Brexit margin goes up. But I think people should be given a chance to think about, to cool off and think about what's at stake here because all the evidence shows that there was a really poor debate leading up to last summer's Brexit. And the electorate, you know, as famously Googled EU on a scale never seen before the following day, what is the EU?”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If we're going to take back our sovereignty, Parliament should have a say. Enemies of the people. The three judges' faces were put on the front of not just tabloids, but what we call broadsheets in Britain, supposedly more serious newspapers, enemies of the people. And the kind of demagoguery that has gone on for anybody who's raised that debate has chilled the whole ability to have a rational discussion about what the trade-offs are here. So granted, if there were a second referendum and the remainers lost it,”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't necessarily think it trumps. I think the two actually go together. But could I just sort of briefly say on the Brexit argument, here is an example of illiberalism. When people say, look, could we have a second referendum, as three judges said, well, they didn't quite say that, as three judges suggested that parliament should have a say in. After all, Britain is based on the sovereignty of parliament.”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“More successful neighbors, the Irish have done twice, which is twice lost a referendum on Europe, on Maastricht, and on Lisbon, and twice said, okay, so now we're going to ask you again, having thought about it. And it was a bit like round one of the French election and round two. There's a cooling off period. Second round that turned out shoots up, and the Irish having thought about it, but we need a second referendum in Britain. You cannot determine a country's future like this with 52% of the vote.”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So Trump working out for the better, I would say, is the system showing that it works. The Madisonian system showing that it works. Now, I wouldn't wish impeachment on anybody, but the system has to hold Trump to account. I believe there are good signs in the last few weeks and months of the system doing that, the appointment of Mullah, the courts blocking the Muslim ban again repeatedly. The media is doing a pretty good job of ferreting out stuff. And Congress, well, we'll see. We'll see. But it's sort of limbering up perhaps to do a good job. So I think the American system proving it works might be a net plus over time. Brexit, by far the best outcome, is that the British do what our wise and now by now”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The proposition of whether their democracies are better equipped to cope with this will be put to the test. I do think, though, that there are some things they know that we don't. I mean, Denmark, for example, has an employer government program where everybody can train at anything they like for two weeks a year. And most Danish employees avail of that. And they train in stuff. And so the labour market turnover in Denmark is way higher than it is in the rest of Europe because people don't feel wedded to one skill. They feel much more confident in a gig economy to move around and be more flexible and change jobs. So there are, you know, I don't want to generalize too grossly about which democracies are doing badly, which are doing well. What's important is what unites us. And that is a pretty profound existential challenge to how we do business, if you like.”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hold. And I think we're going to see that tested. So I don't necessarily disagree with the premise of that. I think France and Germany are going to be subjected to a lot of harsh winds as they already are, but they'll get harsher as China grows and others grow.”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It may be a probable hypothesis, and hence my pessimism about the future of liberal democracy on the continent. So I would accept that France has probably going to go through some restructuring that is going to cause a lot of political gnashing of teeth. And Macron's program is a sort of soft Thatcherism. Maybe you could call it Blairism. I don't know what you call it. But Macron's, you know, the rubber's going to hit the road quite soon. He's got a majority of Homage has a majority in the French Assembly and a lot of these people have never served in politics before. That was part of the appeal. But it's a very thin, it's a wide but thin coalition that has been assembled by a very skillful young man, and I now really do feel old because, you know, he's at least a decade younger than me, by promising all things to all people, very clever politics, not necessarily a good program for governing. France has a politics of anti-politics, of people who don't vote and of people who protest by bringing politics to all.”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“how they treat their middle classes we confuse ourselves in the US and Britain as to what skilled means. We think if you've got a college degree, you're skilled. I know lots of skilled people who don't have college degrees and I know lots of people with college degrees including myself who are unskilled and I think that there is a better understanding, particularly in the Nordic, Denmark and Germany of the need to accommodate a diversity of aspirations and aptitudes in the labor force and they invest in things that we consider just to be low skill stepping stones to either something better or to failure. And so we've got a lot more failures I think and they're a lot more frustrated.”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that that created a poison in our politics that is missing in Germany and in France. But I would most of all focus on something that a former French Prime Minister, Leonel Jospin, said, which is we want a market economy, not a market society. And I think that we have in the United States and to a large extent Britain, I think we have commodified public life and we have commodified society to a degree that you just don't see in places like Germany. And I think we should have things to learn from parts of continental Europe, including”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is a really good question. I mean, I think part of it is that the middle classes have fared worse. There are fewer supports for the middle classes in Britain and the United States than there are elsewhere. So the level of frustration, I think, is higher. It's a remarkable fact that there are more prime-aged males in work in France than there are in the United States. In France, of all places. So there's a male element to this too. I think that the cynicism generated by the Iraq war, the US-led but British supported Iraq war in 2003, the fact that France and Germany very much stood apart from it, and I think correctly, and that's a decision that sort of matures like a good wine, it looks better and better over time.”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That to me is too low. So I dispute that sort of premise of your question, but there was a second half to your question, which is.”
2017-06-21 · Conversations with Tyler · Edward Luce on The Retreat of Western Liberalism (Live) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source