talks

In 2018, the good people behind the Edinburgh Festival kindly invited me to host a series of discussions under the title KILLING DEMOCRACY? My remit was: Further to explore the question of whether the current form of financialised capitalism is devouring democracy, reflecting on my work with the Democracy in Europe Movement (DiEM25). In a series of four events I tried to explore the ways in which the demos can be put back into our democracies.

The Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, Oxford University, kindly invited me to deliver the 2019 Taylor Lecture on 12th February 2019. In my book was addressed to my daughter regarding the economy I tried to offer her a simple, though not simplistic, account on how capitalism works and how it fails. Critics, correctly, pointed out that the book’s criticisms of capitalism (couched in parables borrowed from literature, theatre and science fiction) never really answered the pressing question: “But what’s the alternative?

On 17th October 2018, Valdis Dombrovskis, Vice President of the European Commission, addressed the Oxford Union in support of the motion that “the euro has never been stronger“. Today, Friday 16th November 2018, Steve Bannon is addressing the Oxford Union also.

Brian Eno correctly said that children play to discover how the world works and, once they grow up, art is the adult way of continuing to… play. But, then, he incorrectly surmised that art is not dangerous. True, in the good society art would not be dangerous. But, in our terrible societies the madmen in authority are terrified of good art. “When I hear the word culture I reach for my revolver”, opined Herman Goering. And how right he was! “The purpose of painting is not to decorate.

A culture war is underway in Europe – not between the ‘anywheres’ and the ‘nowheres’, but between those who use culture to divide – by class, by race, by nation – and those who use it to connect and include. This war is not based in Parliament – but on the street, in our homes, and across the web. If these conflicts present real dangers, they also present opportunities to reach people that have disconnected from traditional forms of politics – and to hear their voices in response.


We conclude the Tragedy & Hope lectures with the timely election of Donald Trump which eerily parallels the Goldwater era. The first half of the talk discusses the race and what Trump symbolizes, while the second half for subscribers closes out the final chapters of Dr. Quigley’s monumental tome.

Before 2008 we could all see that global trade imbalances were growing inexorably, creating a glut of savings in surplus countries that flowed into deficit countries, causing house price, stock exchange and debt bubbles whose bursting would never end well. What few could see, however, was that, behind the dominant narrative of unfettered competition and equilibrating market forces, a different reality was taking shape. Corporate power was succeeding in reducing price competition, usurping (and often replacing) market forces and controlling effective demand.