Robert Skidelsky
Keynes’ biographer Lord Robert Skidelsky is to address this year’s Northern Ireland Economic Conference. agendaNi profiles the professor of political economy.
Lord Skidelsky is Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick and is perhaps better known as Keynes’ biographer. His three-volume biography of the economist John Maynard Keynes received numerous awards.
The financial sector crash brought Keynes back to life. In the 1970s, Keynesian policy became somewhat obsolete. He was seen as the great economist of the Great Depression of the 1930s but he had little to offer the modern world. The move in thinking was towards efficient markets and monetarist thinking. “But, Keynes, it turns out, is having the last giggle. We’re living the second Age of Keynes”, observed Paul Krugman reviewing Skidelsky’s latest book, Keynes: The Return of the Master, published in September 2009.
Although Keynes’ thinking is less prominent with the rush towards fiscal austerity, it is still relevant. Writing in the Financial Times in June this year, Skidelsky reminds us of the Keynesian viewpoint that in a slump, governments should increase, not reduce, their deficits to make up for the deficit in private spending. “Any attempt by government to increase its saving [in other words, to balance its budget] would only worsen the slump”, Keynes’ biographer reminds us. This was called the “paradox of thrift” by Keynes.
Markets and governments
Skidelsky says that the current stampede to thrift shows that the re-emergence of Keynes’ thinking in the wake of the financial collapse in 2008 was only skin- deep. The “new” classical economic thinking that succeeded Keynesian economics was to minimise the role of government and let markets do their work.
This view of the world has been undone by the present crisis which was generated by the market system itself, and not some external shock. However, where we are at present with the move towards fiscal austerity is not a rush back to a post- Keynesian view of the world but a view of the world which puts the “confidence in markets” as the main driving force for economic policy.
The argument put forward is that deficits do harm by destroying business confidence. Skidelsky sees this approach raises a fundamental question: Who governs? The markets or government? He sees no clear answer yet but this issue will define the political landscape for the foreseeable future.
Difficult start
Robert Skidelsky was born in 1939 in Manchuria, an area of north east Asia now split between Russia and China. In 1941 he and his parents were interned by the Japanese. He was educated in Britain becoming a research fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. In 1967 he published his first book, Politicians and the Slump, Labour Government 1929-31, based on his D.Phil dissertation. In 1978 he was appointed professor of international studies at Warwick University, becoming professor of political economy in 1990.
The first volume of his biography of Keynes, Hopes Betrayed, 1883-1920, was published in 1983. The second volume, The Economist as Saviour, 1920- 1937, (1992) won the Wolfson Prize for History. The third volume, Fighting for Britain, 1937-1946, (2000) won the Duff Cooper Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography, the Lionel Gelber Prize for International Relations and the Arthur Ross Council on Foreign Relations Prize for International Relations.
In the 1980s, he began to take a more active interest in politics. He was a founder member of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and remained in the party till its dissolution in 1992. In 1991, he became Chairman of the Social Market Foundation, and the same year was made a life peer. Initially, he took the SDP whip but subsequently joined the Conservatives. He was made Chief Opposition Spokesman in the Lords, first for culture, then for Treasury affairs (1997- 1999), but he was sacked by the then Conservative party leader William Hague for publicly opposing NATO’s bombing during the Kosovo War. In 2001, he left the Conservative Party for the cross- benches.
