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 The Metamorphosis of Clare Short Earlier, she was fairly good at condemning the crass protesters outside the various locations of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). Power, the Economist says, educates as well as corrupts. It holds that she has given up all she used to hold as a left wing firebrand. She is not only practising the opposite in office – for that happens fairly often – but also preaching it. And it is true that Clare Short is getting better. This week she has been on the media preaching the boon of free trade and eulogising the WTO. That organisation has got a large statist side to it so she still has a fair way to go, but the transformation has been surprising. I did not see the interview with Jon Snow on Channel 4 News but I am told by list member, Kevin McFarlane, that she put Snow right on a number of points. I did catch her on Newsnight where she was quite clear. And she was on Dimbleby on Sunday 17 December on ITV. At an IEA meeting with Lord Peter Bauer last year, he expressed despair as Clare was so very wrong headed. I wonder what he thinks of her progress so far?. The credit would seem to belong to New Labour on the one hand, and perhaps the advice she gets from the civil service on the other. On Dimbleby, she had an interview with the host, followed by questions from an audience that held her old outlook. Dimbleby said that it seemed almost impossible to get capitalism to favour the poor. Clare Short answered that globalisation could either work well or badly for the poor. There was more capital than ever and if the poor were not helped, things would get way worse. Poverty had been greatly reduced in China. But the world population was due to go up to nine billion so there was a need to develop faster to keep ahead. Dimbleby said that there was evidence of regression as in Sub-Saharan Africa s 46% of the population were living on less than a dollar a day in 1990 but now it was 48%. Clare Short responded that most of the poor were in south Asia rather than in Africa but she realised that things were dire in Africa. AIDS was a big problem there. Dimbleby then asked if she expected firms that were out to make profits to also help progress. She replied that Africa needed computers and that firms could supply this communications network to them whilst also making a profit. He cited Costa Rica where firms had pulled out of growing bananas. She replied that she was no expert in bananas but Costa Rica was not the poorest land in the world and they were doing relatively well. Why cannot people let investment move on to the poorer lands without opposition? It is wrong for people who are well off to complain about investment going into the poorer lands to bring them up to par. She could have added here that this is how the price system tends to work when left to itself and it tends to long run equality. But she is haply still steeped too much in politics to have noticed that. She went on to say that the WTO was only five years old and that it looked as if it would prevent a repeat of the protectionism that led to war in the 1930s. The WTO is rule-based and gives many underdeveloped countries a voice for the first time. Nations join it freely. If the rules of trade are not fair, and she felt they often were not, then they could be renegotiated. The protestors that are out to destroy the WTO strike her as attacking the only institution that gives the poor a chance. All seem to favour free trade but only for exports. They do not like imports. The Common Agriculture Policy will have to go if there is to be free trade. Here Dimbleby butted in to say that there had been hopes for 30 years that the CAP would be reformed and it had not happened yet. He pressed her for a particular date but she was not able to give one, merely saying that 2003 would see a meeting when things will most likely come to a head. The pressures for reform are far greater this time than they have been for the past 30 years. The CAP cannot extend to Poland and Hungary as it could not be afforded. So mighty change should follow the enlargement of the EU. Dimbleby then asked if the USA would ever change. Clare Short said that Clinton hadn’t been able to honour many of the agreements he had entered into owing to opposition at home. But the churches might get that nation to help the poor for they are very strong in the US. Dimbleby then said that if she turned out to be wrong about all this, it would be a nightmare and she agreed. Yes, it would be a catastrophe she said. She is won over to the ideals of the fools at the leadership of the WTO rather than to trade and the market itself. She holds great store by this silly institution rather than realising that by free trade itself there is a positive sum game. If anything, the WTO leaders are as backward as the stupid protesters with whom they share similar ideals. What Short imagines to be the coming catastrophe is far from clear. Advocates of a view usually do think that to imagine a catastrophe acts as an alternative spur to their project. It is a stick that complements the carrot in their advocacy. Those who advocated nuclear power had a similar need for an imaginary stick of oil running out in the 1950s and ‘60s as well as the realistic carrot of cheap electricity. But the melodrama of catastrophe is unadulterated tomfoolery. She faced an audience as ignorant as she herself had been ten years ago. One poor fellow could not comprehend the arithmetic of it all and said that if the poor are to get richer then, surely, the advanced lands had to get poorer. Clare Short said he was cynical, but she should have said that his arithmetic did not apply to a positive sum game which is the market trading relationship. Others said that firms only wanted to make profits and had no desire to benefit the poor. But instead of saying that the firms’ desires or motivation did not matter much, given the positive sum game of the market, she said that they were merely in despair and had nothing to offer. She then faced some crass opposition to cash crops, a long standing dogma amongst Guardian readers. Here she did a bit better by asking what was so wrong with the poor wanting to get some money for what they produced. Her questioner ranted out the claptrap about exporting coffee rather than using the land for self sufficiency, but she answered that she had visited the poor and knew they wanted cash. She should have said that only cash crops can give access to world markets, which are the sole solution to the famines that were common all over the world when we depended on the local harvest – but this is a fact she has yet to realise. She thinks that all the magic springs only from the WTO, though the plain fact is that the market mechanism is a boon to both sides. She still wants to shackle all lands with the health and education institutions that hamper the UK today. She has come a long way but is still an ignoramus. As Antony Flew would say, she is paid to know better.
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