Sir David Hare:"We have a generation of leaders who don't have the faintest idea what they're doing" [View All]

[villager]

<snip>

"This feels like one of those moments when everything's changing, and changing because of the double blackmail of the banks. The first blackmail was when the banks said: 'We have destroyed the economy but you have to bail us out.' The second blackmail now is the banks saying: 'We have to continue in the same way we did before which destroyed the economy,' and we have such a weak government that they believe the City of London must be appeased."

Hare cites a recent speech by chancellor George Osborne. "Osborne said our economy is in wonderful shape because we are open to speculators. Since when has the criterion of a successful country, not to mention the economy, meant it's a pleasing place for the gnomes of Zürich? That is Osborne's sine qua non for this economy, but there's meant to be more to governing than pleasing the financial markets.

"In the 60s the Trotskyist idea was that banking would bring politics down, that people would lose all political control over their lives and the political system would fall apart." Perhaps, he muses, that is coming to pass. "We have a generation of leaders – Merkel, Sarkozy, Obama, Cameron – who don't seem to have the faintest idea of what they're doing. Politics is now nothing more than people saying hopeful things with their fingers crossed.

"One reason the riots happened is that powerless people were trying to assert control desperately. The riots were partly about high prices. Privatisation in the railways, gas, electricity and water has been a wholesale disaster creating an extra layer of profiteering and greed – and in so doing contributing to making things very expensive. Rioters were grabbing consumer goods because the cost of things is completely crazy. The usual symptom of a recession is that things get cheaper, but that hasn't happened this time."

<snip>

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/sep/03/david-hare-i-feel-insecure?CMP=twt_gu