iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

into the dynamics of private provision and outsourcing (which the diagnosis situates as core to the problem) is the only possible solution. You see the same gap in the quoted D Lawrence essay. If that's your argument you need to actually make it. Otherwise it's platitudes to the left with

Why is this? A key problem is state capacity. Post-industrial reforms, including Thatcher’s privatisation, turned a directive state, which got things done, into a regulatory state. This means that we rely on an army of consultants, lawyers and third-party providers to deliver anything, from schools to high speed rail. A related problem is planning, regulatory and legal constraints which increase the cost of projects and slow them down, which further increases cost (as capital and labour cost more the longer a project drags out).

110

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I really don't understand this paragraph in the article which overlaps with the content of the Hinden lecture. If the diagnosis is weakened state capacity, how is deregulation the answer? There's a missing leap in the unsaid concession that rebuilding state capacity is impossible and thus leaning

The second camp is closer to Burnham’s powerful ally the first secretary of state, Louise Haigh, her adviser Nick Williams, and Josh Simons, the former Makerfield MP. It includes thinktanks such as the newly founded Centre for British Progress and the Good Growth Foundation. For this more centrist camp, the problem with Thatcherism has less to do with privatisation than the erosion of state capacity that resulted from it. “We rely on an army of consultants, lawyers and third-party providers”, because Britain has “forgotten how to build”, wrote David Lawrence, the co-founder of the Centre for British Progress, in a recent essay. The answer to Britain’s economic problems, according to this school of thought, lies in winnowing down the vast apparatus of regulations, particularly planning policies, that protect large and established companies, prevent startups from emerging, and are holding back a potential abundance of new homes and power plants.

100

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

personally annoying yet seemingly perennial Economist articles, the personal trajectories of key actors, and exciting recent work from the IPPR. @renewaljournal.bsky.social @ippr.org @npjgarland.bsky.social

011

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

I hadn't seen the NLP PPB before. Something could definitely be written on their economic and administrative policies. 'Abundance' feels anachronistic but there's also the hegemony of the minimal state.

010

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

The report includes fascinating headings like 'establish new voting criteria', 'demolishing class war mythology', 'developing "weapons for moderation"', 'making the time to do it', 'leadership and humanity'

100

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

From what I understand the legal precedent is the appeal for www.supremecourt.uk/cases/uksc-2..., where there is a lot of deference to the Government. It reads like there is perhaps some wiggle on intended audience and intended impact on the audience.

110

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Proofs submitted for the forthcoming article. Here's some of the characters who feature in the article. I read them together because they all advocate politically for/using the same concept.

121

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

The mining strike and the Government's approach to intervention. 'It merely sets the framework in which tough managerial decisions appear realistic and common sense and inescapable.'

significant adversary and the greatest political danger for the Thatcherite strategy is that the pains of transition to the new social and economic order of the 1990s may catapult into office a radical
Labour administration pledged to interrupt, slow down, and transform the current restructuring. That is why the miners' strike assumes such importance. After a few more years, if the business logic of MacGregor is pursued, the miners will no longer be numerous or powerful enough to offer significant resistance.
The Thatcher government and its allies know this very well. The decision to appoint MacGregor was a decision to accelerate the contraction of the mining industry and eliminate the subsidies, and
to challenge the miners to contest the decision. The actual cost of keeping more pits open would not be enormous, but the political cost would be much higher. What the Government seeks is a symbolic
affirmation that the logic of restructuring the economy to make all sectors internationally competitive cannot be resisted by any group of workers. Nevertheless the Government treads carefully. It has avoided involving itself too closely in particular managerial decisions. It merely sets the framework in which tough managerial decisions appear realistic and common sense and inescapable.

000

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

The political difference between Howe and Lawson, early and later Thatcherism, between inflation or tax cuts as the priority of economic politics.

The political calculation is clear. Unemployment is not expected to fall very much, it might even rise slightly. This does not bother the Government. The unemployed are ignored. Lawson hardly referred to
them in his budget speech. But for those in work, still the majority, substantial reductions in direct or indirect taxes will be made available. Tax cuts do not automatically buy votes, but tax increases are almost always unpopular. The aim of making tax cuts the Government's central economic objective is to provide tangible evidence that the economy is improving, that it is being well managed, that Britain
at last really is on the right track.
Howe made the control of inflation the Government's chief objective. This opened him to the charge of being a doctrinaire monetarist, wedded to an intellectual theory of how the economy worked

which he was determined to apply regardless of the evidence that showed the policy was not working. Lawson's objective is more astute politically. He knows that no economic doctrine will ever be supported
or understood by the bulk of Conservative MPs, still less by Conservative newspaper proprietors and Conservative voters.
There has to be a clear political pay-off.
Tax cuts provide this. They are probably the single most effective way of boosting confidence in the Government's economic management. In his budget Lawson signalled that there is an electoral crock of gold lying at the end of the rainbow. Like other rainbow treasure, however, it will not be won without some pain, and may vanish before the searchers can find it. The central objective of the Government's economic policy in this parliament is to maintain financial stability and secure substantial tax cuts. But in order to achieve this, the financial stability on which the forecast of 2% growth rests must not be disturbed. Secondly the line on public expenditure must be held. Otherwise all the scope for tax cuts could disappear.
This at once gives new importance to the major conflicts taking place in the public sector. Conservative MPs now have an additional reason to support the Government in its bid to phase out subsidies to loss-making state industries, to impose rate-capping, and to find ways of reducing the social security, education, and health budgets. For the more state spending in these areas is held down, the greater the
scope for tax cuts.

100

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Interesting angle on the political significance of the Falklands war.

As a result despite the rise in unemployment and the collapse of manufacturing output and investment which brought the Government much temporary unpopularity the Government was still able to preserve its image as a Government which was planning for long term recovery and which would persevere with its policies whatever the short term costs.
By 1982 the Thatcher government had already established this image. The severity of the slump, although unanticipated by the Thatcher cabinet, was used very adroitly to ram home the basic Thatcherite
message: 'Things could not be allowed to go on as they were. Thirty years of neglect and misguided policies cannot be put right overnight. But the problems are too serious to be ignored any longer. Everyone
knows they have to be tackled.' The Falklands war did not create this message or the Government's reputation for toughness, but it did make many voters believe that the Thatcher government was serious about seeing its policies through. The political message of the Falklands war was that persistence and resolution paid.

210

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

'But the greatest danger to a durable social market consensus still rests in the Labour Party. Either the Labour Party must be brought to accept it, or the Labour Party must never govern again... No-one really expects the Labour Party to head down this road'

Yet perhaps the terms of this debate are misconceived. The Thatcher government has to be distinguished from the New Right, and Thatcherism as an ideology from Thatcherism as a set of policies and
decisions. It is after all inconceivable that the New Right could be completely successful in all their aims. No political force ever is. But success is not to be measured by the actual achievement of all objectives, but rather by the extent to which a significant proportion of both the objectives and the priorities and the means to achieve
them advanced by a particular group become endorsed and shared by other groups within the society. The progress of collectivist and socialist ideas in social policy and to a lesser extent in economic policy in this century is a striking example of this process, and the New Right constantly refer to it in their writings.
The real question to ask about Thatcherism, therefore, is how far is it creating this kind of broader consensus for its policies and objectives. This is perhaps the hardest question of all to answer about
contemporary British politics because the battle is joined at many separate points so that there is not one but many battles in
progress and assessments of the overall picture are constantly changing. Electoral contests and trends of electoral opinion,
the shifting fortunes of the political parties and the political leaders are only one barometer, although often the one paid most attention. Of critical importance also is what is happening to attitudes and
behaviour in schools, factories, offices, shops, hospitals and a host of other institutions. Our knowledge of these trends is often unreliable and very incomplete, but the real long term success or failure of
Thatcherism will be registered here.
At the public level of parties and elections it is clear that Thatcherism has had some success with the open conversion of the
leader of the SDP to the principles of the social market economy and his acceptance

of the need to strengthen state powers to police the social market economy against those who seek to disrupt its working. This
is a major step forward for the creation of a social market consensus, but it is qualified because the SDP partners in the Alliance, the Liberals, remain much more collectivist in their orientation, particularly as regards the size and purposes of public expenditure. But the greatest danger to a durable social market consensus still rests
in the Labour Party. Either the Labour Party must be brought to accept it, or the Labour Party must never govern again. In the first case this would mean the Labour Party abandoning Clause IV; accepting the
priority given to the control of inflation; renouncing protectionism whether in the form of tariffs, quotas or subsidies to shield any sector of the British economy from the need to be internationally competitive; and accepting a much smaller state sector, with lower taxation, selective rather than universal welfare provision, as well as the permanent weakening of trade union organisation and the institutions of popular sovereignty lessening their ability to intervene in the outcomes of free markets.
No-one really expects the Labour Party to head down this road, which means that if a social market consensus is to be established the Labour Party must cease to be a serious contender for government
office.

100

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

For my forthcoming article, I returned to this Andrew Gamble article from Marxism Today, June 1984, which has a lot of interesting passages on the politics of Thatcherism. banmarchive.org.uk/marxism-toda...

Cool header image for the article. Thatcher as a spider with the UK in her web

100

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

Really interesting article from @thomaseason.bsky.social and @arturnadiiev.bsky.social on the role of the Churchill myth in Ukraine's strategic communications towards UK and the British reception thereof. Really cool to see that they interviewed one of Zelenskyy’s speechwriters.

Zelenskyy repeatedly drew on the Churchill and WWII narratives to render Ukraine’s situation intelligible to a British audience by embedding it within familiar narratives. In his first address to the UK Parliament, he declared: ‘We do not want to lose what we have, what is ours – Ukraine. Just as you did not want to lose your island when the Nazis were preparing to start the battle for your great power, the Battle for Britain’ (Zelenskyy, 8 March 2022). Here, he grounded Ukraine’s experience in one of Britain’s most enduring national myths – the story of standing alone against tyranny. He positioned Ukraine’s defence of its sovereignty as a contemporary counterpart to Britain’s wartime resistance, allowing UK audiences to make sense of Ukraine’s struggle through a familiar narrative story of the Battle of Britain.
Narratives such as this were used throughout all of Zelenskyy’s speeches to make sense of Ukraine’s wartime experience for his UK audience. For example, in Zelenskyy’s last speech analysed for this research project, he stated:
80 years ago, Manchester survived the Christmas Blitz. This spring, the whole of Ukraine survived the Easter Blitz. 80 years ago, the Nazis razed Coventry. This year, the Ruscists created dozens of new Coventries in Ukraine. These are Bucha, Irpin, Borodyanka, Kharkiv, Mariupol. (Zelenskyy, 25 October 2024)
Here, he used the Blitz to help the UK audience understand Ukraine’s wartime experience, explaining the suffering Ukraine is going through at the hands of Russia as similar to the suffering the United Kingdom endured during the Blitz. During the interview, our participant revealed that he read a book about the Blitz and personal stories of experiencing it, and, relatedly, Zelenskyy read a book about Churchill. He identified parallels between the United Kingdom then and Ukraine now and used them to inform his work, making sense of Ukraine’s current experience for the UK audience.

151

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

Never seen essential criteria like this on a job before, and frankly I don't know if it is really justified from what they set out, but it's a theology job and I'm sure human resources will have had a field day figuring it out.

Person specification
A. Essential:
1. Hold a degree at doctoral level in either Islamic Studies or Islamic Sciences, or in
Christian Theology;
2. Have an established record in published scholarly research commensurate with the
stage of their career, suitable to be considered as potentially eligible for inclusion in
any research excellence exercise in which the University of Oxford engages;
3. Have a commitment to the religious tradition to which they belong, and be an active
participant in their worshipping community;*
4. Have an appropriate familiarity with the Scriptures of their religious tradition.*

* These particular requirements form an Occupational Requirement under the Equality Act 2010
(Part 16, Schedule 9, Part 1) arising from the need to fulfil the academic duties of the post, which
include engagement in Christian-Muslim dialogue and assistance with a vocational programme for
the formation of Christian ministers.

000

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

I certainly hope this is some form of technical error - I chased in January and was assured by an administrator that it was out for review - but this absolutely sucks and an editor should have reached out by now.

05 October 2025 - Revised Manuscript Submitted
05 October 2025 - With Journal Administrator
06 October 2025 - With Editor
21 March 2026 - Out for Review

000

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

The @politicalquarterly.bsky.social's editorial policies have likely changed somewhat since the late 1940s.

I sent it to The Political Quarterly, the joint editors being Leonard Woolf and William Robson (Professor of Public Administration at LSE). This proved to be a mistake. Robson rang me up and berated me for sending what appeared to be ‘a piece of liberal propaganda’ which a good solid Socialist periodical could not possibly publish. It was in vain that I argued that James Meade, who had given this negative tax proposal a run for its money in his recent writings, was a member of the Labour Party. The ‘piece of propaganda’ was firmly rejected and remained unpublished, never to see the light of day.

120

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 14/03/2026

Is there an account of what happened to the Sheffield Group? I was reading this yesterday and they mention an intention to publish annually. It's not as if these people disappeared.

The Social Economy and the Democratic State: A new policy agenda
Edited by Pete Alcock, Andrew Gamble, Ian Gough, Phil Lee, Alan Walker
'the Sheffield Group'
foreword by David Blunkett MP

120

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

I've written a new blog on what we mean by neoliberalism in historical scholarship, and some misrepresentations I want to engage with (I don't have any beef with this article in particular). benjaminjthomas.net/musings/neoliberalism-troup

At the end of 2025, Modern British History published Charles Troup’s article ‘Roads to Economization: Valuing Life, Limb, and Leisure in the Social Democratic State’, which was awarded the 2024 Duncan Tanner Essay Prize. The article, which is well worth the read, draws on the work of Elizabeth Popp Berman’s Thinking Like an Economist, to challenge the established history of neoliberalism in Britain, identifying practices and policies in British public administration commonly associated with neoliberalism as predating Thatcher’s governments from 1979 and Thatcherism.
Initially, I felt certain bemusement. At the beginning of 2025 I had published my own article, well worth the read, which draws on the work of Elizabeth Popp Berman’s Thinking Like an Economist to challenge the established history of neoliberalism in Britain, identifying practices and policies in British public administration commonly associated with neoliberalism as predating Thatcher’s governments from 1979 and Thatcherism.
The more I thought about the articles, the more I was struck by a contrast. While Troup positions their article as against neoliberalism as explanation, I tend to see my article is broadly compatible and instead a modification of the neoliberalism argument. In spite of ostensibly similar arguments, we arrive at very different conclusions. Comparing my article to Troup’s can help explore where I see an important distinction that might be worth sharing.

110

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

I think Will Davies is on the nose on this story

100

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

Etwas kleines - Thatcher und Joseph gründeten die Centre for Policy Studies, nicht die IEA. Aber das ist ein tolles Wortspiel.

Eine dieser Anekdoten bezieht sich noch auf die Zeit, bevor sie als einfache Abgeordnete für den Wahlkreis Finchley ins Unterhaus einzog. Thatcher hatte Chemie studiert und arbeitete nach ihrem Abschluss Anfang der 50er Jahre unter anderem in der Lebensmittelindustrie. In diesem Zusammenhang, so die Erzählung, soll sie mit ihrer Forschungsarbeit zur Entwicklung des Soft-Eis beigetragen haben. Auch wenn sich die Geschichte nicht zweifelsfrei bestätigen lässt, ist sie zu gut, um sie unerwähnt zu lassen, denn bekanntlich war Thatcher als Politikerin das Gegenteil von soft. Bereits 1976, als sie noch als Parteichefin der Conservative Party die Opposition anführte, verlieh ihr Radio Moskau nach einer geharnischten Rede nach allen Regeln der Kunst des Kalten Krieges den Spitznamen ›Eiserne Lady‹.

100

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 19/10/2025

Here's the names acknowledged in Hamilton's 'Foundations of Alignment' basically an EDS manifesto. Half become quite significant figures in politics and civil service (with Wikipedia pages and the lot) and the other half are a pain to track down, if even possible. [There is an EDS alumni network]

Nigel Ashford, Mark Hudson and Edward Locke - Federation of Conservative Students; Johan Bengt-Pahlsson - Fria Moderata Student Forbundt; Michel Claris and Patrick d'Humieres - Generation Sociale et Liberale; Michael Fisher - Fine Gael; Søren Høgehaven and Peter Stub Jorgensen - Danmarks Konservative Studerende; Jørn Johansen, Hans Kristian Lehmann and John Arthur Lunde - Norges Konservative Studenter Forbund; Rainer Taubert - Ring Christlich-Demokratischer Studenten

010

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 19/10/2025

Ashford was less of a diplomat and more ideological, involved with libertarian circles. He became an academic, contributing to noteworthy Layton-Henry volume, but then went into the American conservative networks, as a long-running Program Officer for the Institute for Humane Studies.

Image of Nigel Ashford w/ IHS badge from Wikipedia

110

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 19/10/2025

Hamilton works for the party for a time and then becomes a lobbyist in the UK and Brussels. His career seems to have gone dark after he and his partners (or at least his firm) were involved in the Priti Patel lobbying scandal (remember that?).

100

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 19/10/2025

The careers of EDS functionaries are interesting things. At the apex for centre-right student politics they could be the big step before national office or a dead end. Looking at EDS execs in this period is indicative. A number of these people went into national politics

European Democrat Students Executives in the 1970s - extract from Thuss and Bauer 'Students on the right way' (2012)

210

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 19/10/2025

Hamilton who is on the cover of the book, was a Chairman of the EDS and then Head of the Conservative International Office. Ashford was Hamilton's Secretary General 1976-78. This was the EDS’s great moment of Europeanisation but also the beginning of its end.

Scott Hamilton, from the cover of Conservatism, Christian Democracy and the dynamics of transformation: Traditions, cooperation and influence in North-West Europe, 1945-91 (2025)

100

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 12/10/2025

I wonder how much thought and discussion (from author and publisher) went into this copy and what word choices will be used for the next one.

... the Tories have arguably done more than simply reshape themselves: rather, they seem to have transformed themselves from a mainstream centre-right party into an ersatz radical right-wing populist outfit...

100

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 12/09/2025

I would imagine that this newspaper article was probably the first (and only?) to read Margaret Thatcher alongside Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul and Jusos.

010

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 11/09/2025

Really dispiriting reading this article about Reeves' comments about regulators to a venture capital and private equity summit. The implied subservience from regulators and government to business, and the finance behind it, is telling. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

The chancellor also said she had received positive feedback after deciding to “get rid of” the chair of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) Marcus Bokkerink in January. Former Amazon UK boss Doug Gurr was appointed in his place, on an interim basis.

That leadership shake-up, Reeves said, had led to a “massive step-change” that was welcomed by firms. “Previously businesses, all the time – especially in tech – had been raising concerns about the CMA. That has changed a lot.”

Reeves acknowledged there was more to do in the City, including with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). However, she threw her weight behind chief executive, Nikhil Rathi, who was approved for a second five-year term in April. “When I wrote to regulators and asked: ‘What can you do to drive growth?’ … Nikhil responded positively to that. And that’s why we reappointed him to carry on heading up FCA.”

000

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

Rogaly did respond in his next column, with some snarky comments clearly engaging with Wassell's response. What is interesting here is the engagement with social markets as not just the moment of Währungsreform but in the context of developments in subsequent decades.

100

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

The CPS responded with a Letter to the Editor later that week. It's fascinating to see the acceptance that West Germany had deviated from ordoliberalism but a doubling down on them. Here West Germans hadn't deviated from social markets because of the emergence of new challenges, their deviation from

100

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

An interesting response came from Joe Rogaly of the FT, who wrote a piece on how dated the focus on social markets was. This theory/history may have been relevant in the late 1940s when it was seen to kickstart the economic miracle, but it simply wasn't relevant in West Germany anymore where the

100

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

Check out this letter from Simon Webley of the CPS to the economic historian Bob Coats. Not only is the social market identified as the focus of the CPS, it mentions a seminar held with Sir Paul Chambers, who had been actively involved in the reforms.

Dear Mr Coats:

You may know of this Centre which has been set up by Sir Keith Joseph and Mrs Margaret Thatcher to do some basic thinking about longer term politics with particular reference to the social market economy.

One area of work we are developing is on inflation and the particular topic within this is to gather together information on how countries which have had to reform their monetary systems i.e. Germany after the war, went about it. Sir Paul Chambers discussed this with us the other day (he was responsible for a lot of the German change) and it was suggested that we ought to look at other countries' experience.

As an economic historian perhaps you may know of good sources of information or a person who may help us on this matter. Your assistance with this would be much appreciated.

Yours sincerely,
Simon Webley
Consultant Director of Studies

100

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

People may be vaguely familiar with the term 'social market economy' in relation to the early Centre for Policy Studies, whose first publication was 'Why Britain needs a Social Market Economy' or Andrew Gamble's work in the 1970s on 'social market doctrine'. socialistregister.com/index.php/sr...

The Free Economy and the Strong State: The Rise of the Social Market Economy (1979)

100

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

I'm chuffed that the edited volume 'Conservatism, Christian Democracy and the dynamics of transformation' is now out, including my chapter 'Britain's social market moment', which includes the most interesting finding from my PhD thesis, the transnational influence of West Germany on Thatcherism.

Conservatism, Christian Democracy and the dynamics of transformation: Traditions, cooperation and influence in North-West Europe, 1945-91
Edited by Gary Love and Christian Egander Skov

2135

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 25/08/2025

As a follow up and linked to my analogy of football support: if it is illegal to wear a shirt that can be read as bearing the name of a terrorist group, Tottenham Hotspur and many Spurs fans (and Tottenham residents), may be at risk of prosecution.

Image from the Tottenham Hotspur website of their N17 merchandise range. N17 here refers to the postal code for Tottenham. Incidentally, the list of proscribed terrorist organisation in the UK includes Revolutionary Organization 17 November which is referred to on the list as N17.

010

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

Spiked is likewise a range of companies but the figures on the accounts I've seen (for Spiked, Academy of Ideas, and Ideas Matter) are far smaller for revenue and expenditure, suggesting that speakers are generally not paid.

Expenditure by Ideas Matter, formerly Battle of Ideas

030

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

Television and Film Productions is profitable but opaque about its revenue streams, with almost all coming from 'rendering of services' - although opacity is common for company accounts. I do think it's noteworthy that a third of the income is listed as coming from overseas.

210

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

I had a look at the accounts (disclaimer, not an accountant). So the festival is nominally run by the company Art and Ideas Limited which makes a massive annual loss. However that company is a subsidiary of a bigger company Television and Film Productions Ltd who makes up for the losses.

110

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

A bit too quick with the press release

100

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

Instead of narratives of an inevitable slide to neoliberalism or the political right, I emphasise how the adoption of the language of social markets fits with internal discursive trends for modernisation, an ideological refresh and futurity.

In this context then, we can understand the EPP and its adoption of the concept of the social market economy as neither a deliberate shift to neoliberalism, nor a concerted move to the political right, nor any of the other rationalist accounts put forward in the institutionalist literature. Recall that the institutional histories centring on the EPP explain its position with reference to changes in the institutional form of the European Parliament, being pivot to build coalitions with liberals and conservatives, political distancing from socialism, the crisis of the welfare state and the influence of major politicians.

In function, those developments may have resulted from semantic change, but they are not explanations for them. Instead, we see that the programme and its language reflected the ideas and dynamics of the broader transnational European Christian democratic political network. Discursively, the adoption of social market language coincided with attempts by both the left and right of the network to rejuvenate Christian democracy amid cultural and political changes, a focus on the future, a return to Christianity, and the longstanding factions around liberalism and social Catholicism. Given the language of social markets had been adopted much more widely in West Germany than just among Christian democrats, the return to core Christian democratic concepts is worthy of note.

140

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

My argument suggests that existing literature on the EPP has focused too much on the EPP itself as a rational actor and insufficiently on the discursive production of the wider Christian democratic political network.

Scholarship on the EPP and transnational institutions of the centre-right and Christian democracy, their formation and ideas has developed significantly in recent years. This is in part due to the opening of archival holdings, but also due to research funding from the institutions themselves and active scholarship from current and former members. The institutions which have garnered the most interest in this literature are the EPP and the European Democrat Union, a centre-right organization that arose at a similar time. Both substantively and methodologically, these works respond to earlier scholarship on European integration that focused on the importance of particular individuals or national interests. Instead, the focus of this newer literature is on institutions as actors within international and supranational political spaces, as well as spaces themselves where politics play out. The institutions, and the supranational, international and transnational politics they relate to, become the core actors and subjects of a European history. Here, studies of Christian democracy and the centre-right reflect methodological trends in the study of contemporary European history.

How does the literature account for and narrate the formation of the EPP and its political programme in the 1970s? It is perhaps unsurprising that histories written from an institutionalist orientation account for change in their topics of study with references to institutions: their capacities and the demands on them. We can identify five strands of argument within the institutional approach: an account of capacity development; a response to the spectre of socialism; a unifying pressure from the political calculus of coalition building; an exogenous shock response to the crisis of the welfare state; and a high political account focusing on key actors.

In this article I argue that this weakness arises because the works approach the ideational history of the EPP through an institutional history of the EPP. I argue that this fails to situate this institution within an overarching system, transnational European Christian democracy. The EPP was not a direct successor to the EUCD; the two existed simultaneously for decades with different member lists. Rather, they are both manifestations of a wider web of links and ideological politics. Following Wolfram Kaiser, Brigitte Leucht and Michael Gehler, we can think of the EPP itself as existing within a broader transnational political network of European Christian democrats. Following Kaiser and Kiran Klaus Patel’s work on intergovernmental institutions, we can note that institutions alone are incomplete for capturing the vectors of co-operation, competition and transfer for organizations; one must also look at policies and ideas, both of which describe the social market economy. A focus on the ideas of Christianity and Europe among Christian democrats has proven a useful lens to approach their institutions. As I will demonstrate, approaching the 1978 EPP manifesto and its adoption of the language of the social market economy through this wider lens identifies different drivers for change in political language, arising from the dynamics inside the Christian democratic network, drivers that better account for the developments.

100

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 05/08/2025

Happy to share the publication of my new article, ‘Universalizing the social market economy c.1978: stepping away from institutions and towards discourse’ in European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... Thread⌄

While the social market economy has been claimed as a universal value at the European level, it originates from a particular West German discourse of Christian democratic politics and economics. This article explores a key moment in this move from the particular to the claimed universal, the adoption of the concept at the supranational level in the first Political Programme of the European People’s Party (EPP). It argues that the invocation of the concept is best understood contextualized in the discourse and political networks of European Christian democrats, and their pursuit of ideological renewal, rather than through the narrow institutional interests of the EPP.

293

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

My next article is in final proofs so I thought I'd tease it by sharing the vignette that the article opens on. Jean-Claude Juncker in Bottrop, 2018. I remember visiting my aunt and uncle for the holidays, running out of easy conversation topics, and watching this on the news.

010

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 29/07/2025

An example from British political history. More the name of a faction than a book, but overlapping.

100

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 29/07/2025

I think Conor Gearty's comments are a particularly good takeaway from the article.

Human rights advocates have plenty of specific policy demands. But is there more the UK could do to defend the system as a whole? For Gearty, Labour’s contortions reflect “the weakness that is at the core of Britain’s standing in the world, which voters can never be told about, because British voters continue to believe that this country is a world power”. The trouble, according to Gearty, is that these contortions only make the problem worse. “Britain has little credibility for three reasons,” he said. “One, it is seen as the child of America, with no independent engagement. Two, Britain is an imperial nation that has not yet addressed what imperialism meant; it still largely believes that it granted independence to grateful global south entities. And three, having left Europe, it has no strategic vision of anything.”

100

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

Looking forward to seeing what you do with it. It's in The Making of Conservative Party Policy and seems really well suited to discussion of party culture and publications. Ramsden introduces the term for 1959 and applies it in a passage about 1962 and 1963 although the citations are limited.

200

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 06/07/2025

Although I am no subject matter expert, the thesis lacks analysis and the conclusion is rather uncompelling and unsatisfying. The question: 'Does the pollen in the subdivisions of the families demonstrate characteristic differences?' can neither be answered with a simple yes nor with a no.

Die Frage: "Zeigen die Pollen in den Unterabtheilungen der Familien charakteristische Unterschiede", kann man weder mit einem einfachen Ja, noch mit einem Nein beantworten.

010

Benjamin Thomas @benjthomas.bsky.social · 06/07/2025

A really useful piece on what a progressive agenda within constraints might look like. The housing policy is especially strategic - moving beyond sloganeering to outline overlapping levels of intervention. This bit on public service delivery seems like one that should be read more widely.

On transportation, the campaign’s signature proposal was to make buses free, with the MTA being compensated for the lost revenue. In 2023, the city’s Independent Budget Office estimated that this would cost about $650 million per year. Some transit advocates are skeptical of this proposal, arguing that improving service is more important than reducing fares, and that scarce transit dollars would be better spent elsewhere. On the other hand, free buses are not just about reducing costs to riders—without the need to collect fares, buses would move faster. (To be sure, if more people start using buses for short trips, that could cut the other way.)

Whether or not free buses are the ideal transit policy, they have another important virtue: like a freeze in regulated rents, they would be an unambiguous promise made good on, a directly visible gain the administration could deliver relatively quickly. Legibility, simplicity, and universality are underrated virtues in policymaking. Other transportation policies might be better on paper. But it’s unlikely they would do as much to maintain support for the administration or build momentum for further reforms.

Ironically, the criticism directed at this proposal by the Cuomo campaign and others may have made it more effective in this respect. $650 million is a lot, but it’s not an enormous amount in the scale of the city’s budget. And if the result is a free public service that people had been told was impossible, that will ease the path toward other, perhaps more ambitious, improvements. The discovery that we can have nice things is a powerful force to get people to demand more.

Changes to the way the city’s streets are used should also be within the city’s power. More busways, less free parking, closing blocks with schools to cars during school hours—these are reforms that will provoke anger initially but, like congestion pricing, are likely to become much more popular once they are in place.

03215