Episode 307: UK and world politics: how do we adapt to dying party systems? With special guest Lord Jonathan Sumption
In this episode, Dominic Bowen and Jonathan Sumption discuss the fragility of democratic institutions, the strain on the rule of law, and how electoral systems — particularly First-past-the-post — shape political incentives, polarisation, and ultimately public trust. They unpack why so many citizens feel increasingly disconnected from their leaders, and what this means for the future of liberal democracies.
Find out more about how constitutional norms erode not with dramatic collapse, but through incremental shifts in political behaviour, rhetoric, and executive overreach — and why institutional resilience depends as much on culture and restraint as on legal frameworks.
The conversation also addresses the rise of populism, the backlash against globalization, protectionism, and the geopolitical consequences of Russia’s refusal to accept the post–Cold War settlement. They consider the economic and social drivers behind public anger, and the tensions between identity, sovereignty, and prosperity.
Finally, they explore whether existing political systems can adapt, what realistic reforms might look like, and how leaders — and voters — can help rebuild legitimacy, accountability, and trust.
Lord Jonathan Sumption, OBE, is one of the most distinguished legal and intellectual figures in Britain. A former Justice of the UK Supreme Court, he joined the bench in 2012 after an exceptional career at the Bar, becoming one of only a handful of barristers since the 19th century to be appointed directly to the highest court. Before entering the law, he studied history at Magdalen College, Oxford, later serving as a Fellow in History and publishing his first major work on medieval pilgrimage. Over the following decades, he built a great practice in commercial, public, EU, and constitutional law, taking Silk in 1986 and serving in various judicial and advisory roles, including as a Judicial Appointments Commissioner.
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Dominic Bowen is the host of The International Risk Podcast and Europe’s leading expert on international risk and crisis management. As Head of Strategic Advisory and Partner at one of Europe’s leading risk management consulting firms, Dominic advises CEOs, boards, and senior executives across the continent on how to prepare for uncertainty and act with intent. He has spent decades working in war zones, advising multinational companies, and supporting Europe’s business leaders. Dominic is the go-to business advisor for leaders navigating risk, crisis, and strategy; trusted for his clarity, calmness under pressure, and ability to turn volatility into competitive advantage. Dominic equips today’s business leaders with the insight and confidence to lead through disruption and deliver sustained strategic advantage.
Transcript
00:00: Lord Sumption: The first-past-the-post system, which we use in general elections, makes it extremely difficult for a third party to break in. And that has meant that essentially a lot of political debate has occurred within the two major parties. They’ve never until quite recently really been seriously challenged by outsiders.
00:20: Dominic: This episode of the International Risk Podcast is brought to you by Conducttr. They’re an ISO 27001 certified Crisis simulation plateform, who lets you rehearse real crises in a safe, virtual environment. It has realistic emails, social media, internal chats, company systems and many other features. And Conducttr really helps crises teams practice how they actually work under pressure, not how they wish they’d worked. Go to Conducttr.com to learn more about this software.
00:50: Elisa: Welcome back to the international risk podcast, where we discuss the latest world news, and significant events that impact businesses and organisations worldwide.
01:00: Dominic Bowen: For centuries, the United Kingdom has been defined by the endurance of this two-party system between the Labour Party and the Conservatives. And it’s really helped shape governments, institutions and possibly even the country’s political imagination. But today we’re seeing a surge in populist movements. We’re seeing more fractured voting patterns and a widening gap between electoral preferences and even parliamentary representation. I’m Dominic Bowen and I’m host of the International Risk podcast. To help us understand what’s really at stake today, politically, constitutionally, and maybe even historically, I’m joined by Lord Jonathan Sumption. Now he served as the justice of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom from 2012 to 2018, and he’s still regarded as one of Britain’s most distinguished barristers. He’s worked across commercial, public, and constitutional law. And he’s also an accomplished historian, known for his deep, multi-volume work on the one Hundred Year’s War and for his sharp analysis of British constitutional life. In our conversation with Lord Sumption today, we really hope to explore the origins of the two-party system, from the Whigs and the Tories of the 17th century to the Labour-Conservative dominance of today. We’ll also discuss where the UK is drifting and where it’s being pushed and the political future of the countries as it stands today. Jonathan, welcome to the International Risk Podcast.
02:14: Jonathan Sumption: I’m glad to be here. Thank you.
02:16: Dominic Bowen: And whereabouts in the world do we find you today?
02:18: Jonathan Sumption: London, that’s where I live.
02:20: Dominic Bowen: London. Fantastic. That’s a beautiful part of the world. I always enjoy excuses to head over to London. Well, for the topic today, I’d love to hear your perspective, both as a historian, but also as a legal scholar. You know, how far do today’s political tensions and the challenges we see echoing through Parliament echo the original divides between the Tories and the Whigs back in the 17th century? Are we witnessing a repeat, or is this just a new struggle?
02:45: Jonathan Sumption: It’s a relatively new struggle. In its present form, it really dates from the beginning of the 20th century. Party affiliations were extremely loose in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. They were labels, but they didn’t have a very clearly defined ideology behind them. A big change comes with mass democracy, which really begins certainly with male universal suffrage at the end of the 19th century, and women got the vote on the same terms as men in 1928. That made a big difference because it meant, first of all, that parties had to appeal to a very wide electorate, they needed to have a defined position and they needed to appeal to people beyond their own committed base. So that’s really when the current party system starts. The Liberal Party, which had been one of the dominant parties in the 19th century, imploded in the nineteen twentys, leaving Labour and the Conservatives, each of whom took some of the ideological clothes of the departed Liberal Party.
03:47: Dominic Bowen: Thanks very much for explaining that. And I wonder, the UK, as far as I’m aware, didn’t deliberately invent political parties, as you said. They emerged more organically. And I wonder, with the British constitution as we have it today, ah does it work with such a rigid modern party competition or are there needs to review it?
04:05: Jonathan Sumption: It’s not particularly rigid. What is true is that the first-past-the-post system, which we use in general elections, makes it extremely difficult for a third party to break in. And that has meant that essentially a lot of political debate has occurred within the two major parties. They’ve never until quite recently really been seriously challenged by outsiders.
04:26: Dominic: And so noting that the first-past-the-post system that you talk about provides a level of stability, which I think most of us regard as a good thing, but of course there’s now much more multipolarity in our society and there’s much more disagreement and there’s new parties emerging and some more on the fringes and more extreme elements. Is this a positive thing or is this creating a level of distortion that leads to chaos?
04:49: Jonathan Sumption: I think it’s both positive and negative. The first-past-the-post system magnifies swings at elections. It therefore ensures that a party can have an absolute majority in the House of Commons without necessarily having one in the electorate at large. That has been a tremendous force for stability. And it has really explained the relatively high quality of British governments over the years of both parties. Clearly, losing that would be a big loss. It would mean more coalitions. It would mean less predictable government positions. It would mean more frequent changes of government. None of those are intrinsically good things. But the problem is that the first-past-the-post system is fine within limits, but sometimes those limits are exceeded and you get absolutely grotesque results. In the last British general election in July of last year, the present Labour government, got one of the largest majorities ever on only 34% of the vote. Most strikingly, the Liberal Democrats got 72 MPs with 14% of the vote. The Reform UK party got 15% of the vote, more than the Liberal Democrats, but only four seats. Now, I think that when the result becomes quite as grotesque as that, you really have to rethink the advantages of stability. Because if stability is bought at the expense of a system which doesn’t even remotely reflect the will of the electorate, I think you’re in serious trouble.
06:17: Dominic Bowen: No, you have to agree. And some of those statistics that you just presented are very concerning. I know, of course, we heard Hillary Clinton present not quite as stark statistics as that, but of course, Hillary Clinton won more votes so more popular votes than Donald Trump during the first Trump presidency, but of course, due to the system we have in America.
06:36: Jonathan Sumption: That’s due to a peculiarity of the American system, namely the Electoral College.
06:41: Dominic Bowen: Yeah. I mean, we’re seeing these populist movements, of course, like the Trump presidency, but also in France. We have Le Pen’s party ah in the UK. You mentioned the Reform Party. We’ve also got the Greens and the SNP. And each of these groups channels a different grievance or a different topic that they’re really, really trying to push through society. Do you think these movements represent a healthy form of pluralism or is it leading towards some sort of political or societal dysfunction?
07:08: Jonathan Sumption: Well, we don’t yet know how this is going to turn out. But the phenomenon that you describe is present in very many Western democracies, including some of the oldest Western democracies, Britain, the United States, and France. What has happened in all of these countries is a collapse of the centre. And the issues that have caused the collapse of the centre differ from one country to the next. But they all have some things in common. In particular, a general dissatisfaction with representative government. It’s a very complicated phenomenon, and I’m certainly not going to suggest that there’s a simple explanation. But one of the more significant factors is that democracy has always depended on considerable amounts of economic good fortune. And on the whole, it has had it. Democracy really begins in most countries in the second half of the 19th century. And since then, what we have seen is a progressive expansion, particularly in Europe and North America, where the whole idea of democracy as a practical proposition really originated, until recently. Currently, what is happening is that the kind of jobs that people did and which lent dignity and self-respect to their lives are, on the whole being done cheaper and just as well in low-wage countries like India and China. The wages in those countries are rising, but they are still a long way below American and European levels. What this has meant is that Western economies have become increasingly dependent on industries that are very much at the technological edge, but employ relatively small numbers of extremely highly qualified people. In the United States, whose economy has done extremely well over the last few years, those successes have been heavily concentrated in the tech area. And the tech area employs comparatively small numbers of extremely intelligent and able people. In Britain, the same phenomenon happens, not so much on the tech side, but on financial services. Financial services are a classic example of an industry which contributes a phenomenal proportion, about 15% to the British gross national product, but it employs relatively small numbers of what you can loosely call “elite people”. That leaves out in the cold very large numbers of people who were once the social and economic background of our societies. It arouses immense resentment and it leads people to want to lash out. I mean, there are many sophisticated explanations of the rise of Trump in the United States. I think that perhaps the most important one is a relatively unsophisticated one. People who feel that the system is doing them no good want to lash out and smash things up. And Donald Trump has never had much of a coherent program, but smashing things up is clearly the essence of it. When we talk about populism, what we mean is not a coherent program of policies, though that may exist. What we really mean is somebody who blames the establishment is inclined to regard politics as a stitch-up by elites. And that’s exactly these are exactly the kind of conditions in which that kind of idea can thrive.
10:14: Dominic Bowen: It’s very, very interesting. And we’ve had a few guests come on the International Risk Podcast and talk about that collapse of the political centre. And I’m glad you raised that. And I mean, where we’re seeing in so many countries, this combination of economic stagnation, rising inequality, institutional distrust, and you know this erosion of consensus around reasonable centrist points. You know, it’s not surprising that we see voters look for alternatives and radical parties, both on the left and right, take advantage of this. And I think Europe and North America, we’ve really seen this decline of the traditional centre-left and centre-right. That makes me think about how that’s tied to Russia and Russia’s influence, which I think is closely tied to these dynamics. The use of hybrid warfare across Europe, these disinformation campaigns that haven’t created these societal divisions, but certainly has exacerbated and manipulated and given them extra space to grieve and to voice. As someone who’s studied international relations, one of the things that we often do is look at the past, but really try to look at history and draw parallels from history in order to understand potential futures that could occur. And it makes me think about Russia and Russia’s refusal to accept an independent, west-leaning or pro-European Ukraine in its former imperial space. You obviously have written extensively about the Hundred Year War and you know how that, from what I understand, started with this challenge of the sovereign king in England and the vassals in France. When you look at the conflicts of today, you know, and if we use Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as an example, do you see parallels from centuries ago in the work that you do?
11:44: Jonathan Sumption: Not many. But I think each century creates its own problems and its own solutions. All that one can really say is that the appetites and ambitions of mankind have not greatly changed over the centuries. What has changed is their administrative and technical capacity to give effect to them. One of the misfortunes of mankind is that its technical capacities have increased a great deal faster than its moral sensibilities. I don’t think that Russia is much of an influence on what is happening at the moment in North American and European democracies. Russia has never been a democracy at any time. Russia is a country with a relatively small and not particularly successful economy. There was a time in between the wars when Russia was seen as the great white light of the future because it was… perceived, not entirely accurately, that the ah despotic government of Stalin had used its enormous internal power to achieve a very rapid degree of industrialization and to improve the standard of living of its people. That was the perception in many Western countries. I don’t think people think that now. I don’t think anybody regards Russia as a model to be followed in our internal affairs. China is a much more significant influence because although China comes from a culture far more remote from European culture than Russia is, China is undoubtedly an example of a country which has achieved a phenomenal economic and social resurrection on the basis of a highly despotic system of government. And I think that just as people in the 1920s and 30s were inclined to say, “what’s the use of democracy when autocracy can achieve so much in Russia?” They’re now saying, “what’s the good of democracy when autocracy can achieve so much in China?” Of course, China has some unique advantages. It starts from a very low level of wages, so that it’s in a position to undercut just about any other economy in the world. And it’s extremely rich in every imaginable form of natural resources. There are very few countries, not even the United States, that can match it in that respect. And China is undoubtedly a challenge. it it is Its competition is very difficult to meet because it’s technologically highly competent. But clearly, people’s perception that the current system is going badly doesn’t need to be much more sophisticated than that. They’re not going to analyze why it’s going badly, and they’re not very good at analyzing, therefore, what one might do to make it work better. And what they are aware of is that a single elite has been in power with one or other of the various party labels for a very long time and hasn’t achieved very much. And that, they think, has justified them in voting for parties that plan to smash the system up. That’s what reform does in England. It’s what Trump has done in the States.
14:33: Dominic Bowen: Yeah, definitely. And you talked about China. And I think that’s really interesting in case studies. I mean, England and France had long rivalries back from the 1300s onwards, but they were also deeply integrated. And there was many complexities, but they still had their structural rivalries. And I wonder when we look at China and the US today, they’ve got the same structural rivalries, not the same structural rivalries, but they have structural rivalries. They’ve got such closely integrated supply chains, the tech states, the reliance on each other in China is really the world’s logistical powerhouse, whereas the world really relies on US tech, and then the US dollar is the underlying currency of global trade. Do you see similar relationships, and does that potentially give us a roadmap for a way out where you can have countries that are such strategic rivalries that can eventually achieve a level of peace?
15:19: Jonathan Sumption: Well, it’s always been said that people whose economies are closely integrated are unlikely to go to war. The historical experience does not really support that view. The economies of Europe were highly integrated in the 50 years that came before the First World War broke out in 1914. It was widely said then that the integration of European economies would make it impossible for them to go to war, but they did. And on the whole, countries, particularly if they have alliances, are able to withstand a considerable amount of commercial, technical, and trade disruption.
15:55: Dominic Bowen: When we talk about that disruption, I know where France attacked not just England on the battlefield, but France was well known for attacking. I think it was the wool trade and the channel shipping, not just on the battlefields. There were naval battles as well about securing the channel and trade routes just as more just as much as they were on the land. I see today that we’ve got sanctions, we have export controls, we’re taking significant de-risking activities, you know and I see that quite similar as the raiding that occurred in Flanders and the closing of ports.
16:24: Jonathan Sumption: It’s totally different. A much better historical parallel, if you’re looking for one, is the economic warfare at the time of the revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars at the end of the 18th and early 19th centuries. Napoleon, at a time when he controlled a very large amount of Europe and was allied to most of the countries that he didn’t directly control, sought to achieve a total blockade of English trade, a total exclusion of English trade from the European continent. It didn’t work, partly because England was able to find other markets and partly because all attempts at blockades, sanctions, and so on are leaky. There are ways around them. So I think that trade wars are very rarely effective. That’s what history suggests. I think you don’t need to go back to the Middle Ages to establish that.
17:14: Dominic Bowen: So economic statecraft as warfare, if I understand you correctly, is something you see as not working. And yet we continue to pursue that with, I think, what the ninth or 10th round of sanctions on Russia, continued embargoes on Venezuela and Iran and North Korea. So what’s the alternative?
17:28: Jonathan Sumption: There is no example in history of which I am aware in which economic measures have brought a country to its knees, or even induced it to make really significant changes in its geopolitical stance. I can’t think of a single example. There are many examples of attempts to do it, but they’ve all failed. I mean, clearly, you can inflict a good deal of hardship. In both world wars, the British organized blockade of Germany, imposed a considerable amount of hardship on Germany, particularly after they made the mistake of breaking with the Soviet Union from which most of their raw materials had previously been derived. But did it achieve a dramatic political change? I think not. It made life more difficult. It made it necessary to work harder to circumvent it.
18:12: Dominic Bowen: And I understand today that you’re working on the French wars of religion, if our research is correct. And that was another period where there was a political authority that was, you know, really tied to absolute moral claims. You know, we see that today, there’s a lot of moral and ideological language, especially coming out of North America, about democracy, sovereignty, and faith. Based on your study of the 16th century, what sort of cautions would you be offering today’s moral leaders or today’s modern leaders about confusing politics and morals and ethics and faith?
18:40: Jonathan Sumption: I find the early history of Europe extremely interesting, but I’ve never believed that it has that many lessons for our own day. Clearly, there are some parallels. Europe in the 16th century was ideologically divided on religious lines, and those divisions, as they hardened, broke out into wars. Now, the parallel, obviously, is with the Cold War, in which Europe and large parts of the world were divided along ideological lines, which led to not actual war, but a good deal of latent hostility and threats of war. So there is that degree of parallel. It’s also fair to say that the 16th century as the last period, in which Europeans massacred each other on a large scale for purely religious reasons, ah possibly until the modern day, when the rise of Islam has led to some appalling terrorist events in Europe and in the United States, but particularly in Europe. So, history ah does repeat itself, but because human motivation doesn’t change a great deal, but one should be careful not to treat that as a tool of prediction.
19:44: Dominic Bowen: That makes a lot of sense. And I will just remind our listeners that if they like to watch our podcast, they can do so on YouTube. So the International Wist podcast is also available on YouTube. So you can search for the International Risk podcast and find all of our content then. Jonathan, earlier on you were talking about the rise and the collapse of the centre, and I think parties like the Reform UK are really deploying narratives around this, about betrayal, about anti-elitism, and about taking back control. Does this lead to some sort of a constitutional stress or political stress, or is this something that’s just part of a healthy evolution over time?
20:20: Jonathan Sumption: Well, I don’t think it’s particularly healthy, simply because Reform UK, like the extreme parties in France, for example, and like the Republican Party in the United States, they are much clearer and more coherent on what they don’t want than what they do. And there is therefore a hugely negative air to pretty well the whole of reform uk’s program. That’s why it’s not a a particularly constructive or or helpful advent on the english political scene. But you know they have a great deal of electoral power because they have reached a level of critical mass, which means that the first-past-the-post system, which has hitherto worked against them, may now be working very much in their favor. In the last local authority elections, major counties like Kent were taken over by reform on a quite small proportion of the vote, about 70% of the council seats in Kent on 37% of the vote. Now, that’s a sign that they may have reached the stage where the first-past-the-post system works in their favour and against one of the principal incumbents, namely the Conservative Party. Because of Brexit, the Conservative Party has lost support at both ends of the political spectrum. The metropolitan liberal wing, who’re supporters of staying in the European Union, have deserted it for other parties that are less hostile to Europe, while the hard nationalist anti-European wing have decided that they’d rather vote for the real thing. And the real thing is Mr Farage. He is the authentic voice of anti-Europeanism, whereas it was a policy that was reluctantly thrust upon the major parties.
21:58: Dominic: So what happens, Jonathan, when these parties take back control, if they take back control, parties like Nigel Farage’s, if they throw out the ruling elite, what happens to the political system in the UK?
22:07: Jonathan: That’s a very interesting and ultimately unanswerable question. The auguries are not good, judging by the number of councils that Reform UK has tried to take over. It looks at the moment as if the most likely consequence of a Reform UK win in the next general election would be a complete fragmentation of the governing party, Reform UK. Like many new parties, like many parties that are basically upstart rebels against the existing system, Reform UK is a coalition of people who many of them have very little in common, except a resentment of the current situation. And I think they will fall out with each other even faster than parties generally do. With what results, I don’t know. I think a more likely outcome, in fact, is that they won’t win a majority at the general election, but may well become kingmakers and in the sense that it becomes impossible for another party to govern without their support. And whether that produces a crisis depends on whether Mr Farage has the statesman-like qualities that are necessary to use that power sensibly. I doubt it.
23:11: Dominic Bowen: Yeah, that’s a big if and perhaps a concerning one. I mean, the UK’s political stability has been long respected by many countries. Of course, countries like Australia have copied large parts of the yeah UK political system and the constitution to build its, you know, Westminster system. So I wonder what the implications are if Britain, a country or the UK that’s been looked up to by so many countries for so long, if there are implications, if the UK does enter a prolonged period of unstable multi-party coalition governments.
23:40: Jonathan Sumption: Multi-party coalitions don’t have to be unstable. And other countries live with coalitions all the time. It really depends on the ideological position of the parties and the qualities of their leaders. What I think is clear is that the only way out of a potential crisis for the United Kingdom is to adopt some form of proportional representation. That would undoubtedly lead to more parties and smaller parties. Well, it would lead to one of two things. Either there will be a multiplicity of parties competing for power who will have to form coalitions in order to get it, or else the existing parties will have to become much broader tents. Both of those, I think, would be desirable consequences. Because one of the problems at the moment is that the proportion of the spectrum of opinion in the electorate, which is actually represented by a political party, is quite small. So when you’ve got a situation where most voters have to ask themselves which party they would least like to vote for, you are obviously in trouble. One advantage under either of the two scenarios which I have sketched out is that between them, the political parties would represent a higher proportion of the spectrum of opinion in the electorate at large. And that would, I think, contribute to correcting some of the polarization and instability which first-past-the-post system is now bringing to our own system.
24:58: Dominic Bowen: And if we change tracks a little bit, but to an area that I know you’re also ah really quite an expert on, and that’s that the courts are increasingly being asked to resolve essentially what are political questions, not just in the UK, but in many countries around the world. And I think this potentially hollows out democratic responsibility. And in an age where there’s so many climate risks, pandemics, migration, terrorism and populism, this relationship between governments and the nation’s court is even more important than perhaps being more politicised than ever before. Is there something that you think we need to understand about this trend?
25:29: Jonathan Sumption: I think it’s extremely important. In Britain, the tide of what people commonly call judicial activism is retreating in a number of important legal decisions by our Supreme Court, mostly since I retired from it. The court has said that in public law cases, which require a view to be taken on a question of policy, the courts must take their cue from the elected branches of the state and not make up their own policies. I think that’s a profoundly healthy approach, although it has had its critics. The country in which this has been most extreme and still is, is the United States. The liberal period of the Supreme Court’s history from the 1950s until really the last two decades, but saw the decision by judges, Supreme Court judges mainly, of major issues of social policy, major moral issues by judges. The classic example being abortion. What this meant was that eventually the Republicans adopted a policy of appointing judges who would reverse Roe and Wade and the decisions on abortion. And as we know, they’ve now succeeded in doing that. And the problem about this is that if you decide things judicially on which the public has strong views and polarized views, what you are actually doing is taking a major political issue out of the hands of the public and conferring it on a very small and unrepresentative group of people. And that profoundly affects its legitimacy. It’s a very striking fact that in Europe, from the 60s onwards, every single country, almost all of them had previously criminalized abortion, except in very narrowly defined circumstances. But since the 60s, every country other than Malta has adopted a system of clinically supervised right of abortion. Now, the result of that has been that although there are certainly opponents of abortion in most European countries, it is broadly speaking uncontroversial across Europe, even in Catholic countries. Now, what has happened in the States is the polar opposite of that, precisely because abortion was declared to be a constitutional right by a judicial decision based, as it seems to me, on very unsatisfactory reasoning. I mean, I should make it clear. I support the idea of a clinically supervised system of abortion. I think it’s important that women should have that right. But it’s the way in which it was done in the United States has meant that it has never been regarded as a legitimate position in American society. It was decided in a way that I think most people felt was not legitimate, even if they were in favor of a right of abortion in principle. A contrast to Europe, because Europe invariably adopted a right of abortion by parliamentary statutes. The result has been very different. I think there’s a lesson here.
28:15: Dominic Bowen: No, thanks very much for exploring that with us. And I wonder when you look around the world, when you’re speaking with people, when you’re having dinner parties, what are the international risks that concern you that come up in discussions that you find most interesting today?
28:27: Jonathan Sumption: Well, obviously, the two main risks are the risks that growing protectionism will undermine the prosperity of, in particular, the West. And the other risk is the geopolitical risk of war, arising from the unwillingness of Russia to accept the disintegration of its European empire in the early 1990s. Those are major systemic risks, and in neither case is it clear how that’s going to be resolved. One of the problems that we have is that although it is perfectly clear that protectionism is a great wealth destroyer, European and American states may be left with no choice but to adopt a protectionist attitude simply because China does not need to buy anything from the West. But is at the same time supplying a very large proportion of the needs of the West. And, you know, that is a situation which is economically unsustainable in the long run. We can’t have a system in which… Industries are wiped out by low-cost competition without any intervention by the various states. So, you know, unless China adopts some radically changed policies, for example, by allowing its currency to appreciate to a level which would compensate for the rise in its rising proportion of world trade, what we’re going to find is that for the protection of their own people, other countries are going to have to resort to protection. Globalism has become a dirty word, but it produced a very considerable amount of prosperity across the world, which is going to be destroyed.
30:00: Dominic Bowen: It’s very interesting. I find certainly for my generation growing up and studying at universities, I remember had so many topics, so many subjects where the central topic was the benefits of globalization. How do we capitalize more on globalization? And to see that reverse is, I think, quite shocking for many people.
30:16: Jonathan Sumption: What lies behind both the rise of Trump in the United States and support for Brexit in the United Kingdom, a rejection of globalism, a rejection of the offshoring of a lot of traditional manual labor to places which do it just as well and much more cheaply.
30:32: Dominic Bowen: Yeah. No, no. I mean, that makes sense. And you understand the argument and you understand the people that are suffering.
30:38: Jonathan Sumption: I mean, I understand that people have a sense of collective identity, which is extremely important to them, more important usually than economic analysis. And they will react in ways that are quite possibly against their own interests and certainly against the interests of the world at large.
30:55: Dominic Bowen: What’s It’s quite interesting. Your response then could almost be applicable to the growing protectionism or towards Russia’s continued expansionist impressions and interests.
31;03: Jonathan Sumption: Yes, well, indeed.
31:05: Dominic Bowen: Very, very concerning. But look, thank you very much for coming on the podcast today. I really enjoyed our conversation, Jonathan.
31:10: Jonathan Sumption: We’ve been talking about some important and interesting things. I don’t claim to have the solution to them. Perhaps one of next guest will have an idea.
31:18: Dominic Bowen: Haha! We keep trying. Well that was a great conversation with Lord Jonathan Sumption. I really appreciated hearing his thoughts on politics, on history, and of course, international risk. Today’s episode was produced and coordinated by Melanie Meimoun, and the multimedia is edited by Stephen Penney. I’m Dominic Bowen, your host. Thanks very much for listening. We’ll speak in the next couple of days.
31:36: Dominic: Thanks for joining us on the International Risk Podcast. This episode was sponsored by Conducttr, the crisis exercise platform that turns crisis plans into lived experiences. With tailored scenarios, decision logs, and realistic social media and news feeds. Conducttr helps organisations learn from their mistakes in a simulation, not during the real crisis. Have a look at the Conducttr website to learn more about their services and products.
32:02: Elisa Garbil: Thank you for listening to this episode of the International Risk Podcast. For more episodes and articles, visit theinternationalriskpodcast.com, follow us on LinkedIn, Bluesky, and Instagram for the latest updates, and to ask your questions to our host, Dominic Bowen. See you next time!