David Runciman on Blue Labour

As far as I can see there are two basic problems for Maurice Glasman, one related to what liberals never do and one to what they always do. The sin of omission is the inability of liberal politics to resist the depredations of international finance capitalism. This is the real passion that motivates Blue Labour: the sense that the country has been raped by bankers, and all on the watch of a Labour government....All they do is talk about individuals with their rights and responsibilities, their choices and freedoms, without noticing that individuals are like confetti in the face of the whirlwind power of money.....The other problem with liberals...is that liberals have a fatal weakness for abstraction....they prefer nice ideals to real people.

Conrad Black on Rupert Murdoch in the FT

Although his personality is generally quite agreeable, Mr Murdoch has no loyalty to anyone or anything except his company. He has difficulty keeping friendships; rarely keeps his word for long; is an exploiter of the discomfort of others; and has betrayed every political leader who ever helped him in any country, except Ronald Reagan and perhaps Tony Blair. All his instincts are downmarket; he is not only a tabloid sensationalist; he is a malicious myth-maker, an assassin of the dignity of others and of respected institutions, all in the guise of anti-elitism. He masquerades as a pillar of contemporary, enlightened populism in Britain and sensible conservatism in the US, though he has been assiduously kissing the undercarriage of the rulers of Beijing for years. His notions of public entertainment and civic values are enshrined in the cartoon television series The Simpsons: all public officials are crooks and the public is an ignorant lumpenproletariat. There is nothing illegal in this, and it has amusing aspects, but it is unbecoming someone who has been the subject of such widespread deference and official preferments.

Sir Martin Jacomb on Greece in the FT

The euro gave the peripheral countries a standard of living above their earning power and, at the same time, took away their ability to correct this by devaluation. It is the same process which led to the permanent impoverishment of southern Italy, when the lira became the national currency after Italy was united under the Risorgimento 150 years ago. At the turn of the 19th century Naples was the largest city in Italy and the region was relatively sophisticated. But its economy declined relative to the north. Although it had started to build railways in the 1830s, before any other part of Italy, the effort was soon discontinued. Moreover, railways were unable to reach the length of the country because Pope Gregory XVI forbade their construction in the Papal States. He called them “chemins d’enfer”. The economies of north and south thus became progressively divergent. Southern Italy’s economic decline continued but, with the introduction of the lira, it lost its ability to correct its uncompetitive position. Able and enterprising people moved to the north or emigrated, and the situation became permanent, as it remains today. This tragedy endures.