221x142mm, 250 pages, Hardback
ISBN: 978-1917045-10-0 Price: £25.00 Available November 2024 |
Avoiding the Coming Anarchy
A short book for optimists in dangerous times David Howell Twenty-five published columns covering five tumultuous years of growing challenges to order, freedom and good governance – and , in the views of many, with much worse to come. How will it all end – if it ever does? And where are the golden threads to recovery?
Written by one of the leading political thinkers in the UK's House of Lords, David Howell, former Chair of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, author of "The Edge of Now", "Old Links and New Ties", "Look Where We're Going." " David Howell lives and thinks on that special terrain where the past, the present and what is to come jostle and baffle for our attention.. I’ve never worked with anyone who does this better. There is stimulation in his every paragraph. How we need his wisdom today as we seek to protect and preserve our precious liberal democracy against its enemies and detractors. His words within these pages "...a much-needed breath of fresh air blowing through our stagnant political landscape. I am proud to have first published his ideas in TheArticle and delighted to see them now appear in book form. " There is little agreement just now about the state of the world – except that it in an extremely dangerous phase. From political leaders to thinktanks, from best-selling authors and media commentators to philosophers, the message is one of gloom, doom and apprehension at the prospect of social and political upheaval to come.
In this series of essays and commentaries, mostly published over the last five stormy years, David Howell picks out the areas where a more realistic but less negative picture can be discerned. The anarchy so often predicted, both international and within societies, and linked with the widespread loss of trust and respect, the shrivelling of deliberative discussion and compromise on which the democratic ‘bargain’ depends, and the loss of faith in liberal capitalism itself, may nonetheless have a positive side. When it comes to facing the feared chaos ahead, the forces holding our societies together may be stronger, if properly harnessed, than the forces tearing our societies, and our world apart. But for things to go this way, he explains, we have to first recognize that we are not just in troubled times but, thanks to the tiny silicon microchip, at a key point in human history affecting the very the pattern of human relationships and the evolution of human institutions. The reality, which too many people of influence, especially those involved in governance, have yet to understand fully, is that the microchip has reshaped the world in all aspects. We are at a moment of history comparable to the invention of the printing press, equal to the Enlightenment and even greater (and swifter) in impact than the steam age and the industrial revolution. Rising anarchy is not inevitable. |
About the Author
David Howell, Lord Howell of Guildford, was first elected as an MP in 1966. He was Margaret Thatcher’s first Secretary of State for Energy and later became Secretary of State for Transport. He was chair of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee from 1987 to 1997 and later first chair of the new International Affairs and Defence Committee in the Lords. From 2010 to 2012 he was Minister for the Commonwealth and is a former President of the Royal Commonwealth Society. He is the only Minister to have served in the Heath, Thatcher and Cameron Administrations. He is the author of six books and a Privy Counsellor since 1979. He holds the Japanese Grand Cordon of the Order of the Sacred Treasure from the Emperor of Japan. ‘ He is the host of the podcast Powerful Undercurrents. |
PREFACE
Part I CAN THE CENTRE HOLD?
The Need for a New Enlightenment
Can the Centre Hold? From Mandeville’s bees to Artificial Intelligence
But is it democracy; a new language of politics for a new generation?
Nine ideas which might just wreck the world;
The State ever bigger, ever weaker;
The new anarchy is digital, not ideological, and we could see it coming twenty years ago.
Disruption, disorder and progress;
Part II . REPOSITIONING
Asia, not Russia, and not Brexit, is Europe’s Biggest Challenge , and Ours.
Time to box clever with China
The neo-non-aligned nations: are they, and Japan, our friends in need ?
China and the Commonwealth: another foreign policy failure?
Putin’s Great game: Britain’s role and the Commonwealth.
The face of the Future - the Commonwealth Network
Why the Commonwealth is Back.
Part III ENERGY, THE ROOT OF IT ALL?
A brief history of the energy crisis: chaos, trial and much error
Who will pay for the great energy transition?
Commonsense on energy: technology not targets.
How not to go nuclear: Hinkley and Sizewell C.
Megawatts from Morocco: Why energy independence is an impossible (and unattainable) dream.
Sizewell: in nuclear power small is beautiful and it’s the DISeconomies of scale which threaten.
Nuclear Power in the UK: hopes, questions and dilemmas.
Part IV RESPONSIBLE CAPITALISM
New World Networks: How Britain can take back control.
UK Investment; the key to Keir Starmer’s ambitions.
Democratic Capitalism: A Tory Rescue Plan.
Conservative Renewal, and the Search for Common Ground
The Doom Loop and Ways of Escaping it.
Part V CONCLUDING NOTES AND DEFYING FAILURE
The Anarchy that need not come.
Picking up the golden thread , and the Pessimism that will be proved wrong.
.
Part I CAN THE CENTRE HOLD?
The Need for a New Enlightenment
Can the Centre Hold? From Mandeville’s bees to Artificial Intelligence
But is it democracy; a new language of politics for a new generation?
Nine ideas which might just wreck the world;
The State ever bigger, ever weaker;
The new anarchy is digital, not ideological, and we could see it coming twenty years ago.
Disruption, disorder and progress;
Part II . REPOSITIONING
Asia, not Russia, and not Brexit, is Europe’s Biggest Challenge , and Ours.
Time to box clever with China
The neo-non-aligned nations: are they, and Japan, our friends in need ?
China and the Commonwealth: another foreign policy failure?
Putin’s Great game: Britain’s role and the Commonwealth.
The face of the Future - the Commonwealth Network
Why the Commonwealth is Back.
Part III ENERGY, THE ROOT OF IT ALL?
A brief history of the energy crisis: chaos, trial and much error
Who will pay for the great energy transition?
Commonsense on energy: technology not targets.
How not to go nuclear: Hinkley and Sizewell C.
Megawatts from Morocco: Why energy independence is an impossible (and unattainable) dream.
Sizewell: in nuclear power small is beautiful and it’s the DISeconomies of scale which threaten.
Nuclear Power in the UK: hopes, questions and dilemmas.
Part IV RESPONSIBLE CAPITALISM
New World Networks: How Britain can take back control.
UK Investment; the key to Keir Starmer’s ambitions.
Democratic Capitalism: A Tory Rescue Plan.
Conservative Renewal, and the Search for Common Ground
The Doom Loop and Ways of Escaping it.
Part V CONCLUDING NOTES AND DEFYING FAILURE
The Anarchy that need not come.
Picking up the golden thread , and the Pessimism that will be proved wrong.
.
CONTENTS
Ch1: A Day of Reckoning § Ch2 Letter from Lima § Ch3 The Black Knights in Play § Ch4 Dr Voss Goes to Cairo § Ch 5 Guerrilla War in the Canal Zone § Ch6 Training the First Fedayeen § Ch7 Armed and Dangerous § Ch8 The Master Spinner: von Leers in Egypt § Ch9 Living the Cairo Life § Ch10 A Question of State Security § Ch11 Hunting the Big Beasts § Ch12 The Mold is Cast § Ch13 Echoes down a Cairo Street