Recordar Arthur Seldon (6)

The Economist:

"The ideas of economists and political philosophers...are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back." So wrote John Maynard Keynes, the economic architect of the welfare state and the Great Society, and he should have known. But it was Arthur Seldon who took Keynes's words to heart, and paid him back in kind. Mr Seldon marshalled the academic scribblers of his own era to lead the intellectual fight-back against Keynesianism, distilling from free-market economic doctrines ideas that fuelled both the frenzy of Thatcherism and its afterburn, Tony Blair.###

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His distance from party politics made him a natural source of wisdom when the next generation of intellectuals came along, in the early 1990s, to try to end the hegemony of Conservatism. Copying Mr Seldon's formula, they started think-tanks such as Demos to create a new intellectual climate that would eventually contribute to Mr Blair's landslide election victory in 1997. Not only had Mr Seldon changed the way that politicians went about their business, establishing the "battle of ideas" as equal in importance to party politics. Through his tireless campaigning he had also ensured that New Labour would only be taken seriously if it became, essentially, a free-market party as well.