Seasons Greetings

I confess – I’m stumped. I can manage a picture (the Christmas Tree in Brussel’s Grande Place, where I’ve recently attended the LSE’s excellent Brexit conference) but after that…

So we leave the EU, and Donald Trump is president. I suppose to look on the bright side, the EU debate may turn out, for the UK at any rate, to be a storm in a teacup, of more interest to ‘the international liberal elite’ (? how does one join this elite? is there a discount for retirees??) than the rest of the country. And in the States, the mid-terms are only a couple of years away (assuming Russia isn’t running the country by then).

But my Cassandra instincts tell me otherwise. Ten years of ‘austerity’ plus exit from the EU look to me like a return to the 1970s – with Southern Rail obligingly providing the industrial action. As for the US – how can so many supposed ‘Christians’ think backing out  of an international climate accord is a good idea?

Perhaps the UK will ‘muddle through’. I can recall the great economist Nicky Kaldor saying in 1980 (as the UK economy fell off a cliff) that we shouldn’t underestimate the resilience of the people and the companies at the micro level that made the macro economy work. Well, that resilience is certainly needed now.

And the US? – well, as I say, I’m stumped. Or should that be Trumped?