Aditya Chakrabortty is right that we are experiencing the end of “the end of history” and we need to ditch the intellectual complacency that accompanied it (The Westminster panto is in full swing: but there are real dangers waiting in the wings, 9 November). It’s not just that we need new ideas. We have a political class that does not take ideas seriously. The Tories throw scare stories to the media, and Keir Starmer and his party just try to dodge the bullets, rather than putting forward a coherent set of ideas to address the chaos of the times.
For all its failings, the Corbyn project at least had John McDonnell’s economic advisory committee, with critical socialist economists such as Thomas Piketty and Mariana Mazzucato feeding into McDonnell’s attempt to develop a new economic strategy. Now, any intellectual energy in the Starmer government-in-waiting comes from Rachel Reeves’s “securonomics”, and even critical centrists like Stella Creasy and Neal Lawson are sidelined.
Maybe Starmer has more up his sleeve than he’s letting on, but as things stand we have a series of crises hitting us head-on, and a shadow cabinet that thinks yesterday’s reformism is sufficient to tackle today’s emergencies.
Nick Moss
London
