The good professor sings Chicago and thinks it’s time to question a broadcasting dynasty.
Please, nobody mention the Dimblebys. I used to be a fan. The melodious Richard on the monarchy, and the balanced, reasonable voice of David on Question Time. Now, David has put his communication skills to telling the wonderful story of how free-market thinking came to dominate politics. However, I am not at all happy with him giving Hayek all the glory for this achievement.
It may be true that Hayek’s work received a significant boost from being published in condensed form by Reader’s Digest, which led Keith Joseph, the so-called ‘Mad Monk’, to read him. Joseph was regarded as an intellectual, which raises the question of why he was reading Reader’s Digest in the first place. Of course, Joseph famously introduced Hayek to Thatcher who devoured its anti-socialism with gusto and then sold it to Reagan, my all-time heartthrob.
However, this overlooks all the remarkable economists who were also advocating for the benefits of the free market from a much more scientific perspective. After all, Hayek didn’t even utilise mathematical models. His approach was more about handwaving than anything else, even if it was generally good handwaving, aside from his completely misguided support for a basic income from the state. Fortunately, Thatcher disregarded that.
The real intellectual powerhouse at that time was the University of Chicago, where I was fortunate enough to visit in 1976 through a research fellowship. I had the rare opportunity to hear firsthand the great insights of dashing Milton Friedman and witness him defeat Saul Bellow in hand-to-hand combat, which led to the toppling of the Keynes statue. This was the epicentre of serious economic thinking that fuelled the Thatcher-Reagan revolution. Naturally, it drew from the seminal works of 19th and 18th-century thinkers: Adam Smith’s invisible hand, William Stanley Jevons’s concept of marginal utility, and Léon Walras’s development of the general equilibrium model.
Ultimately, Hayek was more of a showman than anything else, despite resembling a grey civil servant, albeit a handsome one. I was part of a team of scientific economists working with Thatcher and her advisers to develop real policy proposals. I even met Thatcher and helped her escape from a toilet that she had inadvertently locked herself in.
I must, though, give some credit to the great and also dreamingly good-looking Sir Antony Fisher, the battery farming magnate and founder of the esteemed Institute of Economic Affairs, arguably the most influential think tank ever with its promotion of a small state, free markets and privatisation. They also, of course, made Liz Truss, the deeply misunderstood economic genius.
After all those great people who sacrificed themselves in the service of promoting free markets, it is very cruel that a man like Trump should be bringing our great international trading system to its knees. ‘Liberation day’ really, what could he be thinking of, which brings me back to my disgruntlement with the Dimblebys. Thomas, my wonderful husband, and Robina, our clairvoyant, have adopted a llama whom they hope will supply them enough wool for a guerrilla crochet project in support of Palestine. They’ve named him Dimbleby, and he stinks; like his namesake, he has a lot of neck.
