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Our discussion with Adam Tooze about his book Shutdown continues.

In this second part: is more dislocation necessary for politics to be reborn? Do global issues require global solutions – or do we need a return to national democratic politics first? And is the Covid crisis a preview of what's in store for us with climate change, and climate change policies?

This is followed by the After Party, where Phil, George and Alex discuss some of the broader themes emerging from the interview.

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Paul Brewer

Tooze makes an important point in this series about the difficulty of decisions for actual policy-makers. There are real human costs to policies, and the dislocations created by radical changes can be severe. Imagine if Syriza had Grexited. We would not know the cost of remaining in the EuroZone, which is demonstrably not worse than the cure. But what forces might have come to the forefront of public antagonism towards that policy? Meanwhile, in another conversation Tooze played out a thought-experiment of Bernie winning the nomination and the election (as he would have done). That plausibly sounded like a much darker timeline than the one we are in, given what we know of what followed a Biden victory.

Henry

One of the most engaged interviews of Tooze I‘ve heard, his respect for your own work and prowess really shone through. Pretty cool.