When I heard that Niall Ferguson had said that JM Keynes advocated reckless economic policies because he was gay and childless, and hence had no concern for the future, I wrote: ‘If true, this represents Ferguson’s degeneration from historian to shock jock’.
The reports were true, but I was wrong. There has been no degeneration. Ferguson has always been this crass and crassly inaccurate.
Donald Markwell, Warden of Rhodes House until last year, pointed me to his John Maynard Keynes and International Relations for the gruesome details. Markwell had to devote time and space to the ugly task of dissecting an attack on Keynes by Ferguson in a 1995 edition of the Spectator. He damned Keynes for saying in his Economic Consequences of the Peace that the Carthaginian terms imposed by the allies on Germany at Versailles would wreck the economy and could push Germans over the edge again. (‘Who can say how much is endurable, or in what direction men will seek at last to escape from their misfortunes?’)
That Keynes was right and reparations led to Germany’s great post-war inflation was not a point Ferguson could concede.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in