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| Mark Blyth: Austerity' the history of a dangerous idea |
As Mark Blyth says, we have been here before - in the 1930s - and, for a sign that the comfortable assent of the middle classes to the disposition of power and advantage in our society is eroding, read the remarkable article a day or two ago in the Daily Telegraph, vigorous supporter of the sanity of the status quo, by its editor, Charles Moore (Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge) headed 'I'm starting to think that the Left might actually be right'. I applaud his sentiments, but there is no guarantee that when such a sense of grievance spreads it will normally express itself in such generosity and evenness of spirit. The 1930s, in those parts of Europe that felt aggrieved (and who now does not feel aggrieved?) saw a public conflation of the spirit and motives of the once respectable popular 'right' with the exercise of state power and direction of the 'left'. Localism is not always warm and cosy.
