Over the past two years there has been a huge realignment in terms of who's hot in the UK think tank world. Many of the hip-and-trendy Third Way thinkers from the late 90s have bowed or fizzled out. So who are Britain's most influential wonks at the moment?
I'm told that some officials at Britain's Treasury have started the Matthew Elliott game, consisting of a dart board with Elliott's face on its front. As chief executive of the Taxpayers' Alliance, he's often critical of Gordon Brown's department. In creating a grassroots movement for lower and flatter taxes, he's become a heavyweight political force to be reckoned with and his Bumper Book of Government Waste is a challenging guide for future reform. Newspapers love him.
Nicholas Boles (pcitured) is part of the Notting Hill Set of Conservatives surrounding Tory leader David Cameron. The think tank he founded, Policy Exchange, very much sets the ethos of the Cameron leadership, and publications from Boles's organisation are very likely to be adopted by Cameron as Tory policy. A future Cabinet minister.
Jack Thurston is a Senior Research Associate at the Foreign Policy Centre and a Transatlantic Fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. He's hot because of his work on the Common Agricultural Policy and he is one of the most listened to figures in Whitehall on agricultural issues. We especially like him because of a rumour that his masters thesis was on Richard Cobden.
Tim Montgomerie (pictured) runs ConservativeHome and is key figure at the Centre for Social Justice. Hundreds of Parliamentarians read ConservativeHome every morning - its articles are avidly discussed over toasted teacakes in the Palace of Westminster.
The bow-tie wearing Madsen Pirie was father of privatisation in the 80s. John Major's official biographer wrote that Pirie was one of only two intellects Major respected. Pirie, the godfather of the think tank world, is still slogging away - the Adam Smith Institute, which he co-directs, has had a couple of significant recent successes: getting nuclear back on the government's agenda and introducing Flat Tax into the British debate. Has a good working relationship with Tory shadow chancellor George Osborne.
Andrew Haldenby is the respectable and polite boss of Reform, the public services campaign group. Haldenby was previously important in the No Euro campaign and at the Centre for Policy Studies. He also, apparently, DJ's at London clubs at the weekend. Reform does the hard grafting for journalists wanting to know exactly what's wrong with Britain's public services.
Open Europe's director Neil O'Brien is the man people turn to about Europe's economic competitiveness (or lack thereof). He talks about Europe in a sensible way, but the Treasury hates him for pointing out the failure of the government's EU presidency. A master at getting media coverage.
Ones to watch for next year: John Butters from Civitas and Corin Taylor from Reform.
The GI's Conyers Davis (right) met up yesterday in California with Milton Friedman, Nobel Prizewinner in Economics and the elder statesman of free-marketeers the world over.
Bill Easterly from the Washington DC-based Center for Global Development and New York University gave a speech recently at the Asian Development Bank criticising the top-down approach so embedded in development thinking:
Seventeen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, there is only one major area of the world in which central planning is still seen as a way to achieve prosperity - countries that receive foreign aid. Behind the Aid Wall that divides poor countries from rich, the aid community is awash in plans, strategies, and frameworks to meet the very real needs of the world's poor. These exercises only make sense in a central planning mentality in which the answer to the tragedies of poverty is a large bureaucratic apparatus to dictate quantities of different development goods and services by administrative fiat. The planning mindset is in turn linked to previously discredited theories, such as that poverty is due to a "poverty trap," which can only be alleviated by a large inflow of aid from rich country to poor country governments to fill a "financing gap" for poor countries. The aid inflow is of course administered by this same planning apparatus.
This is bad news for the world's poor, as historically poverty has never been ended by central planners. It is only ended by "searchers", both economic and political, who explore solutions by trial and error, have a way to get feedback on the ones that work, and then expand the ones that work, all of this in an unplanned, spontaneous way. Examples of searchers are firms in private markets and democratically accountable politicians...
The current aid system is not working partly because the rich countries don't care enough about making aid work for the poor, and are willing to settle for grand utopian Plans that don't work. It is partly because nobody is actually held accountable for making THIS intervention work in THIS place at THIS time. My suggestions here could be ludicrously misguided; they should be subject to skeptical examination and ex-post evaluation just like everything else... It is strange that aid agencies talk so much these days about "good governance" in the aid recipient countries without worrying about "good governance" of their own aid projects.
"In terms of natural resources, Africa is the world's richest continent. It has 50 percent of the world's gold, most of the world's diamonds and chromium, 90 percent of the cobalt, 40 percent of the world's potential hydroelectric power, 65 percent of the manganese, millions of acres of untilled farmland as well as other natural resources."
- Walter Williams, Professor of Economics at George Mason University, in More Liberty Means Less Government
Talking about the attempt by Lakshmi Mittal to take over rival steel company Arcelor:
An Arcelor executive said yesterday: "We will be recommending to shareholders not to accept the offer. There is a fundamental difference in culture and vision. We have a strongly European culture which the staff of Arcelor is very keen to conserve and the board considers a strength.""We believe in sustainable development, health and safety, staff representation on the board, citizenship and good corporate governance and we saw on Friday a strong show of support from...
The French government? Mais non:
...the Luxembourg government.
The French government is taking a different line:
However, there are indications that Arcelor's strategy could backfire. One French government source said it would be unlikely to block a takeover by Mittal. "I know it makes a good story for British papers, but the French government is not being protectionist."
Actually, as that gleeful quote illustrates, that makes a pretty good story for the British papers too. French government favours globalisation. That's a story.
Could it be that the French government would actually like to do something about the poor state of the French labour market and, not knowing what else to do to achieve this, is quite glad to let Lakshmi Mittal do this for them?
Sir John Cowperthwaite was the main figure responsible for Hong Kong's economic transformation, lifting millions of people out of poverty. While scholars like Milton Friedman and F. A. Hayek put an intellectual case for the free markets, it was Cowperthwaite who provided the textbook example showing laissez-faire policies leading to swift economic development. His practical example provided confidence to the Thatcher and Reagan governments, and was a key influence in China's post-Mao economic liberalisation.
Cowperthwaite read classics at St Andrews and Christ's College, Cambridge. While waiting to be called up by the Cameronians (Scottish Rifles), he went back to St Andrews to study economics. This Scottish education imbibed him with the ideas of the Enlightenment, especially the work of Adam Smith, who had been born nearby in Kirkcaldy. He was a liberal in the 19th century sense, believing that countries should open up to trade unilaterally. In 1941, he joined the Colonial Administrative Service in Hong Kong. When it fell to the Japanese, he was seconded to Sierra Leone as a district officer, before returning in 1946 to help the colony's economic recovery. "Upon arrival," the Far Eastern Economic Review put it, "he found it recovering quite nicely without him." He quickly worked his way up the ranks and was made Financial Secretary in 1961, in charge of its economic policy for a decade.
When he became Financial Secretary, the average Hong Kong resident earned about a quarter of someone living in Britain. By the early 90s, average incomes were higher than Britain's. Cowperthwaite made Hong Kong the most economically free economy in the world and pursued free trade, refusing to make its citizens buy expensive locally-produced goods if they could import cheaper products from elsewhere. Income tax was never more than a flat rate of fifteen percent. The colony's lack of natural resources, apart from a harbour, and the fact that it was a food importer, made its success all the more interesting. Cowperthwaite's policies soon soon attracted the attention of economists like Milton Friedman, whose television series Free to Choose featured Hong Kong's economic progress in some detail.
Asked what is the key thing poor countries should do, Cowperthwaite once remarked: "They should abolish the Office of National Statistics". In Hong Kong, he refused to collect all but the most superficial statistics, believing that statistics were dangerous: they would led the state to to fiddle about remedying perceived ills, simultaneously hindering the ability of the market economy to work. This caused consternation in Whitehall: a delegation of civil servants were sent to Hong Kong to find out why employment statistics were not being collected; Cowperthwaite literally sent them home on the next plane back.
Cowperthwaite's frugality with taxpayers' money extended to himself. He was offered funds from the Hong Kong Executive to do a much needed upgrade to his official residence, but refused pointing out that since others in Hong Kong did not receive that sort of benefit, he did not see why he should.
Cowperthwaite's hands off approach, and rejection of the in vogue economic theory, meant he was in daily battle against Whitehall and Westminster. The British government insisted on higher income tax in Singapore; when they told Hong Kong to do the same, Cowperthwaite refused. He was an opponent of giving special benefits to business: when a group of businessmen asked him to provide funds for tunnel across Hong Kong harbour, he argued that if it made economic sense, the private sector would come in and pay for it. It was built privately. His economic instincts were revealed in his first speech as Financial Secretary: "In the long run, the aggregate of decisions of individual businessmen, exercising individual judgment in a free economy, even if often mistaken, is less likely to do harm than the centralised decisions of a government, and certainly the harm is likely to be counteracted faster."
His ability to pursue policies which, at the time, were deeply unfashionable, was helped by having supportive Hong Kong Governors, Sir Robert Black and Sir David Trench, who both had free market sympathies. Moreover, Cowperthwaite was formidable at arguing his case: as Dennis Healey recalled: "I always retired hurt from my encounters with the redoubtable Financial Secretary."
From 1972 to 1981, Cowperthwaite was an advisor to Jardine Flemming & Co in Hong Kong. He retired to St Andrews with his wife Sheila and was an active member of the Royal & Ancient. For many years, he spent six months of the year with his wife traveling the world visiting friends and relatives. He was an old school civil servant and, much to the frustration of economists, resisted requests to write an autobiography about his time in Hong Kong, believing that his duty was to serve, not to reveal the minutiae of government business.
- John James Cowperthwaite KBE OBE CMG, Financial Secretary of Hong Kong, born 25 April 1915; died 21 January 2006.
UK taxpayers are contributing increasingly towards the Department for International Development. Their contributions should be protected to ensure their support is wisely spent. The government's Gershon review of DFID's spending highlighted £422m of efficiency gains that DFID should make, while the James review highlighted £809m that should be redirected or saved. Both reviews highlight a sizable amount of DFID's budget that is being misspent.
In Kenya, it is increasingly clear that UK taxpayers are getting poor value for the development aid they are sending. As the Guardian reported yesterday, Kenya's anti-corruption tsar went AWOL, eventually found hiding in an Oxford college. "It didn't take a genius, after all, to guess that when the official responsible for policing an African government's finances flees, something is seriously amiss," says the Guardian. The paper continues:
The contents of a 36-page dossier compiled in exile are being drip-fed to a transfixed audience. His dossier accuses a clutch of key ministers, including the finance minister, of setting up bogus contracts designed to steal hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds. The scandal stretches to the top, for, despite being briefed by Githongo, President Mwai Kibaki took no action. All those named protest their innocence. But if the claims are true - and few whistleblowers come with more credibility than Githongo - Kenya's three-year-old government has not so much broken with the sleazy practices of Daniel arap Moi's administration as raised them to new levels of sophistication.
Hilary Benn recently announced £55m in new aid for Kenya. This is remarkable given the levels of corruption that have been pointed to by Sir Edward Clay, until recently the Kenyan High Commissioner, who pointed to the "massive looting" of public funds in Kenya. Last year, the Sunday Times reported that for in the previous three years, nearly a fifth of the Kenyan government's budget was lost to corruption.
DFID top-down approach to development aid in Kenya is stuck in the past. It is a waste of UK taxpayers' contributions and it is a slap in the face for ordinary Kenya citizens who find that aid, meant for them, is being siphoned off by politicians. Unfortunately, Hilary Benn has effectively turned a blind eye. This is a tragedy.
At the World Economic Forum last week, U2 lead singer Bono announced that he has persuaded companies like Gap, Armani and American Express to produce products under a a new brand, called Red. A share of the proceeds from Red products will be donated to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Amex, for example, will produce a Red credit card giving 1% of what's spent on the card to the endeavour.
Red is a way of helping people contribute private money to what is an important development initiative. Yet some ideological opponents to business have attacked the initiative. War on Want says: "Cynical marketing ploys aren't the answer. The problem with schemes like this is that they miss the point."
Eliminating malaria, TB and AIDS are some of the most pressing of humanity's problems, and the Global Fund seems a good vehicle for addressing them. The Red brand may well be good marketing, but at the end of the day, if it helps the important work of fighting communicable diseases, that's a good thing.
When the word "consultant" is mentioned, what do you think of? Is it the highly-paid doctor who mainly takes private work and disappears off to the golf club three times a week? Or is it the well-dressed hot-shot who spends a couple of weeks in your office, types a not-very-useful report full of buzz-words, and leaves with a huge cheque?
There's a stereotype that goes with the word, and so perhaps it's unhelpful that DFID uses "consultants" to talk about bringing in expertise to help development. International Development Secretary Hilary Benn says that "Dfid's spending on consultants, as a proportion of our total aid programme, has halved since 1997 to just 5%". It's not something he should be proud of. If we are going to make serious strides in improving governance and institutions in developing countries, there is a good case for needing to spend a lot more on consultants: lawyers out in the field helping to formalise property rights, for example.
Employing consultants enables DFID to be more flexible than if it employed everyone in-house, letting it quickly bring in new expertise when priorities change. Free from the responsibilities of employing people directly, the use of consultants probably actually saves the taxpayer a considerable amount of cash.
One of the hidden secrets of the free-market blogosphere are the Centre for the New Europe's blogs. CNE, which is a Brussels-based think tank, runs four of them, covering the environment, health, intellectual property and competition policy. Well worth checking out.
One of the claims about migration is that countries receiving immigrants are economically damaged. People argue for tougher limits of immigration in the name of protecting jobs. The empirical evidence, however, suggests that economies as a whole benefit from immigration. The Freedom Institute - Europe's feistiest think tank - reports new figures from Ireland's Central Statistics Office. In the third quarter of 2005:
approximately 25% of the 40,000 immigrants who joined the labour force found work in the construction industry. Interestingly, the same release reports a 30,000 increase in employment in that sector in the 12 months to the end of Q3. That means that an extra 20,000 Irish people found work in construction, despite the influx of 10,000 "displacing" immigrants into the industry.
So not only is construction employing more immigrants, it is also employing more Irish people too.
Sir John Cowperthwaite, the man responsible for Hong Kong's economic miracle and the lifting of a whole country out of poverty, has died aged 90. Educated at the Merchiston Castle School, the University of St Andrews and then Christ's College Cambridge, he entered the Colonial Administrative Service in Hong Kong and spent three years in Sierra Leone (1942-45). For a decade from 1961, he was Financial Secretary to Hong Kong before becoming an adviser to Jardin Fleming & Co. He retired to St Andrews and enjoyed playing golf at the Royal & Ancient Golf Club.
The significance of Cowperthwaite cannot be underestimated. As Milton Friedman has explained:
The colonial office in Britain happened to send John Cowperthwaite to Hong Kong to serve as its financial secretary. Cowperthwaite was a Scotsman and very much a disciple of Adam Smith. At the time, while Britain was moving to a socialist and welfare state, Cowperthwaite insisted that Hong Kong practice laissez-faire. He refused to impose any tariffs. He insisted on keeping taxes down.
I first visited Hong Kong in 1955, shortly after the initial inflow of refugees. It was a miserable place for most of its inhabitants. The temporary dwellings that the government had thrown up to house the refugees were one-room cells in a multistory building that was open in the front: one family, one room. The fact that people would accept such miserable living quarters testified to the intensity of their desire to leave Red China.
I met Cowperthwaite in 1963 on my next visit to Hong Kong. I remember asking him about the paucity of statistics. He answered, "If I let them compute those statistics, they'll want to use them for planning." How wise!
Nonetheless, there are some statistics, and in 1960, the earliest date for which I have been able to get them, the average per capita income in Hong Kong was 28 percent of that in Great Britain; by 1996, it had risen to 137 percent of that in Britain. In short, from 1960 to 1996, Hong Kong's per capita income rose from about one-quarter of Britain’s to more than a third larger than Britain's. It's easy to state these figures. It is more difficult to realize their significance. Compare Britain - the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, the nineteenth-century economic superpower on whose empire the sun never set - with Hong Kong, a spit of land, overcrowded, with no resources except for a great harbor. Yet within four decades the residents of this spit of overcrowded land had achieved a level of income one-third higher than that enjoyed by the residents of its former mother country.
Sir John was a supportive friend of the Globalisation Institute. We will miss him.
As you may be aware, Richard Cobden is our chief intellectual hero. Mark Holland has very kindly sent in some photos of a stone memorial to Cobden he visited in Midhurst (West Sussex, England), near where the great reformer lived. The memorial says:
Free trade. Peace. Goodwill among nations
Richard Cobden 1804-1865
Nearby, at Heyshott Church, where Cobden and his family worshipped, is a plaque on the back of pew:
Mark also sent in a leaflet he picked up on his visit published by the Midhurst Society which informs us that:
In Britain we remember him [Cobden] for his success in getting the unjust Corn Laws repealed; this reduced the price of bread. His belief that free trade would bring international co-operation and peace influenced public life for 100 years, and his passionate diplomacy steered Europe into a 'common market' long before the European Union. A true internationalist, he has inspired successive generations of politicians and economists.
Goh Chok Tong is the Former Prime Minister of Singapore, and is now Senior Minister, and he made a speech at a conference in Kolkata last Friday, urging India in particular to maintain the globalisation momentum. India, he said, has enough atma biswas (meaning self-confidence) to do this. India must, Goh said, press on with its reforms.
"To realise its full potential, India needs to press on with and even accelerate the pace of reforms" he said and welcomed some of the latest measures of the UPA government to simplify procedures for foreign investors. In a globally integrated economy, the former Prime Minister of Singapore maintained, 'a globalised mindset' is essential.
Arguing that the old mindset opposed to competition on the plea of foreign economic colonisation and the theory of protectionism would only breed complacency and inefficiency. He said "competition drives economic growth; you lose some but you win more," and urged the Indian government to remove impediments to healthy competition.
That only a few lose from trade but that most gain is an idea of immense importance.
If the idea of the mutually beneficial nature of trade is rejected, and if instead it is assumed that trade can only be a contest to get the biggest slice of a cake which is fixed in total size, then trade becomes a battle, and so do trade negotiations. Whatever the other guy wants must be bad for you! The foreigners are all out to trick us! And we must trick them in self-defence! And if you believe that the world is inevitably an arena of conflict, it inevitably becomes one.
But embrace the idea of trade making the total amount of wealth to be shared greater, and both trade and trade negotiations become, at least potentially, cooperative exercises for mutual gain.
Goh Chok Tong is quite right to include this deceptively simple idea in his speech, for it has profound and profoundly beneficial implications. It is a safe bet that this is not the first time he has given it an airing, and that it will not be the last.
The annual World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, is better known for its gathering of wealthy nations' fat cats and its counter-culture of mostly white middle-class protestors against free markets, ostensibly for the good of the world's poor.
This time a major marketing push by India's goverment and businesses will aim to demostrate that india has arrived on the international scene, not only as the world's second largest population, but as a thriving economic and cultural power.
The figures tell a story. Economic growth is expected to be 8% in 2006, at a time when Japan would consider 1% a major success. There are now 91 businesses in India with turnover in excess of $1 billion, stock market capitalisation is in the $500 billion range, and there are reportedly over 200 million people learning English in India.
It's worth contrasting this image with the pessimistic predictions of the late 1960s and early 1970s. India was headed for "inevitable" mass famine. Its population would drop as disease and chronic malnutrition raised the death rate. Corruption was seen as "endemic" and the combination of bureaucracy, protectionism, and a willingness to support the pirating of foreign trade marks were major obstacles to inward investment.
The latest edition of Developments, the magazine from the UK's Department for International Development, contains an article on Linux (admittedly a rather pedestrian one) and a cover-mounted CD containing Linux and other open source software. The department's Imfundo programme, which looks at how IT can be used in developing countries for education, is a strong supporter of Linux and other source software like OpenOffice, a free alternative to Microsoft Office.
So is DFID right by being supportive of Linux in developing countries? Well, yes. Getting to where everyone in Africa can own a personal computer is an important objective. We need the African economy to generate the wealth to enable people to buy computers. But we in the developed world are (perhaps unwittingly) going part way, too, by continuing down the path of cheaper computing. Not only does open source software cut costs, it also enables a very beneficial technology transfer to developing countries. The effect on Africa will be to increase standards of living and boost economic growth.
Last week Hilary Benn gave a speech criticising the anti-business positions of campaigns like Make Poverty History. So how did Make Poverty History respond? It stuck its fingers in its ears and sent an e-mail out moaning about how "multinational corporations that trade around the world cause harm to communities, damage the environment and violate the rights of working people". The e-mail also advertised its new campaign against business.
Here at the GI we are sometimes critical of particular industries, when they lobby for special favours and corporate welfare. But I fear while that our skepticism of business relates to a very small handful of cases, their skepticism is overarching. The simple truth is that Africa is not poor because of too much inward investment, but because of too little. During the 90s, 81% of US foreign investment went to Canada, Western Europe and Japan. While everyone wants to do business with the rising stars of the global economy, like India and China, relatively few want to do business with Africa.
The World Bank has been doing good work highlighting business opportunities in Africa, trying to increase investment and improve quality of life. Make Poverty History's new campaign against business is disappointing. All it will achieve is to discourage business from investing in Africa. If it has any success, it will be a tragedy for Africa's poor.
Hilary Benn, the UK's International Development Secretary, used a speech yesterday evening to attack the anti-capitalism embedded in some of the left-wing NGOs. He said:
The Make Poverty History and other campaigns last year focused on more and better aid, debt relief and international obstacles to trade - on education, on HIV/AIDS - all absolutely critical and where we have made considerable progress.
But I do feel that many of these campaigns say little explicitly about the creation of more and better jobs for poor people. I think there is little real debate about growth.
Amongst some there is even hostility to the idea of international integration into the global economy. Some argue that globalisation is a race to the bottom. And amongst others there is a mistrust of the private sector.
I say that because it reflects the meetings I have.
This is not in the interests of poor people.
This view is bipartisan: Benn's speech echoes the words of David Cameron who last year said:
There is a danger that the anti-globalisation lobbies are teaching a whole new generation the wrong lessons.
Regrettably, even some of the most laudable campaigns against poverty in the developing world fail to understand the vital thread that links open markets, free trade, property rights, the rule of law, economic development and social progress. The latest poster from Christian Aid is deeply depressing. It reads: 'Aids, droughts, tsunamis. Can we add free trade to that list?'
Clearly, we still have our work cut out.
"Warriors and despots are generally bad economists and they instinctively carry their ideas of force and violence into the civil politics of their governments. Free trade is a principle which recognises the paramount importance of individual action."
In the run-up to the G8 summit last year, I was on the BBC World Service debating against someone from the National Farmers' Union. For the first time in my life, I found myself arguing against a trade union representative from the left. I was, of course, arguing for the need to think about poor countries: she was arguing for the interests of agribusiness in rich countries.
A tactical mistake that many free-marketeers have made is to allow globalisation to be painted as right-wing and pro-corporate. The effect has been to give the critics of globalisation too much ground.
Let's face it: there's nothing intrinsically right-wing about supporting globalisation. After all, in the 19th century, the main British free traders, Cobden and Bright, were Liberals and their friend Frederic Bastiat sat on the left in the French national assembly. The newspaper of the free traders was The Guardian. Moreover, a liberal immigration policy, which surely goes hand-in-hand with trade and capital liberalisation, is hardly a right-wing policy. As lower-case-L liberals, we at the GI oppose the right on some issues and oppose the left on other issues. On a left-right political spectrum, the most appropriate place to put us would be the extreme centre.
We need to expand the support for globalisation more widely than just on the right: it needs a "left hook". Perry de Havilland describes giving something a "left hook" (a term he created) as follows:
Let us take the fact that as the airline industries across the world are said to be in dire troubles, various interventionist governments are pouring tax monies into flag carriers to prop them up. This is not really the sort of issue to greatly exercise people on the traditional 'left', who view economic intervention as perfectly normal or the 'right', who view 'helping' companies as perfectly normal, provided they are big companies. However, this issue can indeed be made to resonate with the 'left' by framing it precisely in the terms that fit their traditions of thought:"Yet again the boardroom is using its corrupting influence with politicians to screw the common man and take our tax money to reward poor management by the board and bale out some fat cat shareholders. It is hard to say who is worse, the incompetent directors who did not plan for unforeseen problems, the greedy shareholders or the money-for-the-boys politicians doling out our tax money."
What have we just done? We have just made a seemingly "anti-business" argument designed to fit within the meta-contextual world view of the left. We have also just made an argument in favour of laissez-faire.
It's not only protesters that are a threat to globalisation. Vested interests come in all shapes and sizes. Often the most formidable opposition comes from corporate interests. We should be willing to criticise multinational companies when they lobby against free trade, engage in rent-seeking, and damage trade negotiations with their demands.
To win the debate, we need to combine a support for markets with an opposition of vested interests. If that makes people accuse us of being left-wing, so much the better.