Leading article: The power of ideas

As Keynes observed, the power of ideas — good ones and tragic, wrong-headed ones — is far greater than is commonly understood.

As Keynes observed, the power of ideas — good ones and tragic, wrong-headed ones — is far greater than is commonly understood. The Thatcher counter-revolution in the 1980s was made possible by intellectual bulldozing a decade earlier. It took Sir Keith Joseph and Centre for Policy Studies to clear the way for Britain’s economic regeneration. The blueprint for the social regeneration now underway was written by another think-tank, the Centre for Social Justice, whose ideas are now being implemented by Iain Duncan Smith. The schools revolution is a little different, having gestated mainly in the ideas laboratory that is Michael Gove’s head. But after that the great ideas dry up.

The right, in Britain, has fared dismally in the battle of ideas and it is being outgunned even with a Conservative prime minister.