John Gray on 'The Spectre of Populism'

Transcript of A Point of View, BBC Radio 4, Friday 24 February 2017:

When a respected European academic told me only a few years ago that at least another century would have to pass before the European Union became the transnational state it was meant to be I couldn't help smiling. 

Like many supporters of the European project he looked forward to a time when nation states would be replaced by a Europe-wide federal government. He recognised that this might take some time. Conceding that it could require a hundred years or more, he seemed to think, showed an admirable sense of reality.

To me, the idea that the rest of the world would stop and wait while the EU moved slowly towards full political union was comically unreal. What would China and India be doing during this majestic process. More to the point, how would Europe's voters feel as they watched this project unfold, decade after decade, generation after generation, for another hundred years? The notion that they'd stand by humbly as their rulers pursued a vision most of them never shared it seemed to me delusional. 

Today I think it's an attitude of the kind the academic displayed - a mix of high-minded idealism, intellectual arrogance and childish naivety - that has fuelled the advance of the movements that are being lazily lumped together as "populism". 

Few terms are more often tossed around in politics these days than this buzz word, lifted from what was once mistakenly called "political science", and none is more misleading. 

John Gray on 'The Follies of Experts'

Transcript of A Point of View, BBC Radio 4, Friday 17 February 2017:

"People of moderate means put their faith in bankers and economists. People with serious money consult astrologers".

That was the view of a very wealthy man, no longer living, who I knew some years ago. He had little time for expert opinion on markets or the economy. He didn't ignore the prognostications of central bankers and other authorities. He knew the affected share prices, at least in the short term, but he regarded the forecast of economists as not much more than exercises in fortune-telling dressed up as science. For him a frank reliance on superstition was better on the pretence of knowledge where none was available.

It was a view with which I had some sympathy, and it's become more plausible with the passage of time. 

What's so striking about the social sciences isn't that they failed to predict the largest events of the past decades, it's that most of the practitioners of these disciplines didn't regard these events as being even possible.