Hot right now
I hope you are a little—but not too— embarrassed by the cheap highbrow clickbait that is your world’s top 50 thinkers 2019 list (August/September), which I of course turned to straight away. When I was editor of the Philosophers’ Magazine we compiled a few similar lists ourselves, and they were pretty much the only articles published during my 13-year tenure that excited interest beyond our tiny readership.
The main win, though, was not more readers, but that for once philosophy was in the newspapers and discussed on the Today programme. Your list similarly put a spotlight on thinkers who are often ignored as individuals and maligned as a class.
If we do value intellectual rigour, however, it would have been more honest to have a list of 50 important contemporary thinkers without any pretence of having picked the top ones. You probably thought of that, but realised it was not sufficiently sexy. Maybe next time you could compromise with 50 thinkers who are hot right now!
Julian Baggini, philosopher and journalist
Demand a retrial
In declaring human rights litigation an illegitimate trespass into the political sphere, Jonathan Sumption (“The Duel,” August/ September) overestimates the ability of elected bodies both to defend minority rights and to hold to account the numberless agencies, codes and regulations by which we are now governed.
Happily, independent courts are well equipped for both tasks. Parliament acknowledged that fact, and its own limitations, when it enacted the Human Rights Act.
The HRA neither requires our courts to follow slavishly the European Court of Human Rights nor allows Acts of Parliament to be overruled. Since 2000, judges have made restrained but effective use of the HRA to prevent unnecessary incursions by executive bodies into the personal freedoms respected by all civilised nations.
David Anderson QC, House of Lords
I side with Jonathan Sumption. The Strasbourg court is international. Its job is to apply principles in 47 countries with different histories, legal systems and customs.
But it does this when considering the facts of a case from one country. The effect, as Lord Hoffmann said in his celebrated lecture “The Universality of Human Rights” (2009), is that the court “has been unable to resist the temptation to aggrandise its jurisdiction and to impose uniform rules” on the member states of the Council of Europe.
The “margin of appreciation” principle, intended to give some latitude to individual states’ circumstances, is of limited and uncertain application. The court is an international legislator on human rights issues, which arise in almost all areas of modern life. Yet there is no democratic control over its laws.
Richard Aikens, Former Lord Justice of Appeal and former Vice-President of the Consultative Council of European Judges
How to intervene
Steve Bloomfield rightly suggests that we need to consider the future of liberal interventionism (“The Blair Doctrine,” August/ September). One important issue is the problem of means. In Kosovo and Libya, the goals were important but the means—air strikes— were not appropriate.
The military are trained and equipped for war with other states. They know how to defeat enemies. But stopping genocide or massive violations of human rights is very different.
It might be necessary to use force but in a very different, novel way that is more like policing than war fighting. The aim is to reduce violence rather than win and to protect civilians rather than crush enemies. Moreover, force needs to be used alongside other political, economic, social and legal tools— tools that multilateral organisations like the EU and the UN are still only beginning to develop.
Mary Kaldor, professor of global governance, LSE
Tweet of the month
“Great read”
@Nigella_Lawson, food writer and cook, on Dan Hancox’s “The battle over bread”
Conservative quandaries
Tim Montgomerie is not the only acute observer of British politics to argue that the Conservative Party has become a caricature of Thatcherism (“The future of conservatism,” August/September). Nor, however, is he the only thinking Tory whose prescriptions don’t quite fit his diagnosis.
His agenda—a mixture of blue-collar and “faith, flag and family” conservatism with communitarianism—is largely cultural. But many of the problems he describes—such as gutted local services—are material. They cannot be solved without redistributing resources on a massive scale.
True, Boris Johnson has started splashing the cash, but to make any real difference he’ll have to keep splashing it long after any election. If he’s talking about tax cuts, too, then where, as Tories have traditionally asked their Labour opponents, is the money going to come from?
Tim Bale, professor of politics, Queen Mary University of London
Mandarin musical chairs
Sue Cameron’s lively account of mandarin musical chairs in No 10 (“Opinions,” Aug/Sept) has transpired to be both too sensationalist and too sanguine. The brutal decapitations were political not official. Instead, the prime minister and his advisors have sought to force the civil service into their model of governing-as-campaigning. No 10 is now campaign-central for both Brexit and a looming snap election. This creates a “with us or against us” spirit that makes it far harder to provide advice that is honest, impartial—and sometimes unwelcome.
Calum Miller, Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford University
Fixing the roof
Tom Clark claims that we have had “nine unremittingly cash-strapped years for public services” (“Opinions,” Aug/Sept). Austerity was certainly a difficult political decision for the Cameron and May governments, but it was an economic necessity. Given that in 2015/16, the government spent more on interest on the national debt than it spent on education or transport, austerity was, and still is, essential, so the UK can move towards a government which lives within its means.
Emma Revell, Institute of Economic Affairs Sense of adventure
Reading Cal Flyn’s column (“Sleeping under the stars,” August/September), I was pleased to see a mention of my book Microadventures. The idea is, as she says, to dash out for a quick burst of nature when time allows, rekindling that childlike spirit of exploration.
Of course, a microadventure is not only an option if you live in the lush green Orkney archipelago where the article is set. I have “bivvied” on hills overlooking Glasgow, Hong Kong and Naples. Landing in Texas, I collected my rental car and within 30 minutes was reclining on a river bank, listening to bird song and brewing coffee on a small fire. The night I spent kipping beside the famous Hollywood sign, squeezed in during a visit to LA, was one of the most magical of my life.
Alastair Humphreys, adventurer
Remember Scotland
I read with interest the article by David Allen Green on the lack of transparency in the justice system (“Justice behind a blindfold,” August/September). But it neglects to discuss whether the legal systems in England and Scotland are the same, while mentioning “real-world implications for the rule of law in the UK” (emphasis mine).
It would have been really useful for us residents in Scotland to know what the situation is here and, if the problem is the same, to have had this stated.
Eva Deregowska, Aberdeen
Rude awakenings
I enjoyed the historical reflections on new leaders (“The Way We Were,” August/September), but spare a thought for those on their way out for whom the experience is swift and pitiless.
Having resigned as PM—at an audience with the queen conducted from his hospital bed— Macmillan was told by his doctor to get some rest. Later that morning Douglas-Home visited the Palace.
The transfer of power was under way as Macmillan lay sleeping. Suddenly the ex-prime minister was awoken by a strange noise: “Who’s that? What is this?” Macmillan called out, whereupon a man emerged from under his bed. “I’m the electrician from the Post Office,” came the reply. “And I’m taking away your secret scrambler telephone.”
“When I heard that,” Macmillan noted in his memoirs, “I knew I was (politically at least) dead.”
Matthew Bailey runs the Twitter account @alecemerges, about the leadership of Alec Douglas-Home
Plan for failure
Will Self produces a shrewd diagnosis of the architectural forces reshaping our cities and towns (“Rise and fall of the high-density madmen,” August/September).
Brutalist mutations were at least the product of big, if utterly untested, urban ideas. Current consumerist architecture produces far too many small ideas, urban entertainments typified by the roll-out of instant “creative quarters.”
Missing from Self ’s remarks is that Britain’s planning system has been progressively emaciated over the last 30 years. The features of many major urban developments often seem like three-dimensional extrusions of business models and algorithms.
Jay Merrick, architecture critic
Please forgive us
Surprisingly clumsy of Prospect to have a Grauniad opening sentence (“All things necessary,” July). The distinguished theologian’s name is of course not James Allison but James Alison.
Tim Waterstone, London
The rigmarole about Karl Marx wanting to dedicate Das Kapital to Charles Darwin has spread like a rampant weed since it was invented in Moscow in 1931, but I was surprised to see it flourishing in the pages of Prospect, carefully transplanted by Lucy Winkett from the latest book by Karen Armstrong.
Jonathan Rée, Oxford
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