Sir Roger Scruton may not be the Prime Minister’s favourite author. Apparently Keir Starmer prefers Victoria Hislop. But as he prepares to travel to Washington next week, the PM could scarcely spend his time more wisely than burying his nose in The Uses of Pessimism – and the Dangers of False Hope, one of Scruton’s most powerful works.
‘Hope untempered by the evidence of history is a dangerous asset,’ says Scruton. ‘And one that threatens not only those who embrace it, but all those within range of their illusions.’ That is the correct, pessimistic, cast of mind with which to approach not just the war in Ukraine, and America’s ongoing commitment to Europe, but to international affairs overall.
Donald Trump’s presidency is the harbinger of many things – a vibeshift in our culture, a dismantling of bureaucratic and therapeutic government, a commitment to what the Silicon Valley entrepreneur Alex Karp calls a ‘Technological Republic’. But it also marks a return to a bleaker, starker, more pitiless world landscape.
The ideal of a rules-based international order, where multilateral institutions restrain states pursuing their self-interest, has proved to be a false hope. Instead of a world operating according to the dreams of Antonio Guterres or Ursula von der Leyen, we are back to a world closer to that of Thucydides in which the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. It’s not a new world order but a based world outlook.
As a politician, I indulged in as many false hopes as anyone. I hoped regime change in Afghanistan and Iraq might see democracy spread across the Middle East.
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