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The mediocrity of circumstances Samuel Brittan Financial Times 23/02/07 The Scottish thinker, Adam Smith, was not the founder of economics, but he was the founder of the mainstream English language tradition in the subject. As he has been safely dead for over two centuries, current polemicists are free to argue over his legacy. For instance, Alan Greenspan, the distinguished former Federal Reserve Board chairman, on a visit to Scotland claimed Smith for the free market tradition. About the same time Gordon Brown, British chancellor of the exchequer, claimed him for social democracy. He was supported in his view by a study by Iain McLean, professor of politics at Oxford*. This gave rise to a spirited discussion among participants of many different persuasions when it was launched last year at the (John) Smith Institute. The bulk of Professor McLean's book is a readable and informative account of Smith's work without the nit-picking so common among academic historians. But when asked to comment on his conclusion, I am afraid that I had to look in the dictionary for the meaning of "anachronism". Neither the social democrat nor the ultra-right label fits. Indeed, I find it difficult to imagine Smith adhering to any of today's political parties. The best clue is to be found in his reference to "that insidious and crafty animal, vulgarly called a statesman or politician" - one can just hear him saying this in a broad Scots accent. For a present day moral it is better to look at the closing passage of The Wealth of Nations. This relates neither to the division of labour nor to the benefits of competitive markets for which Smith is best known, but an admonition to Great Britain "to accommodate her future views and designs to the real mediocrity of her circumstances". This passage was clearly a response to the American war of independence, which had begun just before Smith's book went to press in 1775-76 and was a warning against trying to hold on to the American colonies by force. But it is of broader application and was retained by Smith in subsequent editions. I was forcibly reminded of his conclusion when I bumped into a British cabinet minister, whom I thought should have known better, who backed Tony Blair's insistence on embarking post haste on a successor nuclear weapon to Trident by saying that it was necessary to safeguard British influence in the world. I want to avoid wishful thinking heroics about Britain setting an example to the world, where it has 1 per cent of the population and 3 per cent of gross national product. But at least it can avoid setting a bad one. As Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said in an interview with the Financial Times published on February 20: "When you see here in the UK the programme for modernising Trident, which basically gets the UK far into the 21st century with a nuclear deterrent, it is difficult then for us to turn around and tell everybody else that nuclear deterrents are really no good for you". Moreover, how much does it really matter that one middle-sized power should have a marginally greater influence, assuming only for the sake of argument that this is the effect of a UK deterrent? I went through all this in the debates on Britain joining the euro and the proposed European Union constitution, both of which the British prime minister favoured. Naturally if you are working in the Foreign Office or advising the cabinet on international affairs, you would think this could be only for the good. But a detached historian might see the picture as far more mixed. How likely is it that the UK would issue a credible nuclear threat without the US on which the UK deterrent is, in any case, dependent? The more likely situation is one in which America's allies would try to exert a restraining influence. Would this influence be enhanced by a British - or, for that matter, French - deterrent? Would a British prime minister or French president threaten to bomb Washington? Many defence experts agree that the decision whether or how to replace Trident can be postponed for at least five years. A statement urging this course was issued last Monday by a range of non-governmental organisations and endorsed not only by the usual actors and actresses but by some distinguished retired generals and Sir Menzies Campbell, the normally cautious Liberal Democrat party leader. The only reason I can think of for rushing the decision is Mr Blair's obsessive desire to make this a part of his famous legacy. The specific part of the legacy on which Mr Brown has concentrated, such as the relief of hunger, poverty and disease in the developing world, are all to the good, so long as they take the form of direct help to families and villages rather than government to government aid. But how are these objectives furthered by a post-Trident nuclear weapon? If anything, the effect is the other way. * Adam Smith: Radical and Egalitarian, Edinburgh University Press 2006
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