Young Writer on Liberty 2019 Winners

We're happy to announce the winners of our 2019 Young Writer on Liberty competition, and will be showcasing some of their work over the next week! The theme of this year's competition was 'Future Tech'. Entrants wrote three, 400-word articles on this theme, each focusing on how free market policy reforms can accelerate technological progress in innovative areas such as driverless cars, bionic prosthetics, and artificial intelligence.

It was another competitive year with lots of entries received and our judges had a hard time picking the winners. There were categories for the Under-18s and the 18-21s, with a winner and a runner-up in each.

The runner-up of the Under-18 category is Nim Etzioni, and the winner of the Under-18s is Prerak Goel. The runner-up of the 18-21 category is Alex Jones-Probert, and the category winner is Peter Wollweber.

Runners-up will have one of their entries showcased on the ASI blog tomorrow, and category winners will have all three of their pieces posted next week.

Category winners will also receive £150 prize money, whilst both winners and runners-up will receive boxes filled with liberty-related books.

Keep an eye on the blog to read their entries!

Trying things out - say voter ID - is very rarely a waste of time

A useful enough description of a market economy is that everyone gets to try out whatever it is that crosses their synapses then we observe what works and do more of it. Hopefully with the concomitant doing less of what doesn’t. Of course, to an orderly mind this appears ridiculous but experience tells us that this is the system which works better than any other. Not without its problems or faults of course, but still better.

Thus we should be extremely wary of anyone insisting that trying things out is a waste of time. Who knew that humans desired, in their billions, to send cat pictures to each other?

Voter ID trial at local elections is a waste of time, say campaigners

ID required in 10 districts, but Labour and Electoral Reform Society say scheme should be dropped

Hmm, well, maybe:

Voter impersonation comprised just 3% of all alleged electoral offences at last year’s council elections, campaigners have said, warning that an extended trial of compulsory voter ID at Thursday’s local polls is a counterproductive waste of time.

An analysis by the Electoral Reform Society (ERS) found that of 266 allegations investigated by police at the 2018 local and mayoral elections, eight involved claims of voter impersonation, which voter ID is intended to reduce.

Of the eight cases, no action was taken in seven, and one was resolved locally. In contrast, 140 of the allegations were about campaigning offences.

We’re perfectly willing to believe that’s true. That voter impersonation isn’t something to be worried about, it’s something that happens at such a small scale, low level, that it’s not even a rounding error. We’re also open to being persuaded by evidence that it’s not such.

So, err, why don’t we find out?

That is, instead of assertions from one side or another on this point, why don’t we collect the best empirical evidence we can and then discuss that? You know, as with science, set up a hypothesis, design tests hoping to invalidate, disprove, that assertion and then see whether the evidence does so?

You know, as with markets, trying stuff out and seeing what fails being what advances the civilisation. There’s also always that soupcon of a suspicion of those who don’t want to test their own assertions or hypotheses. After all, if voter impersonation really isn’t a problem at all then the current tests will show that once and for all and we can forget about it.

Why Hong Kong is wrong to ban vaping and heated tobacco

Hong Kong health authorities are planning to ban alternative smoking products, with the threat of harsh penalties (up to six months in jail) for those who violate the proposed law. International trends in tobacco control play a role in shaping our approach to smoking at home. As part of our global efforts to champion a liberal, harm reduction approach to smoking cessation we submitted evidence to the consultation, drawing on the UK’s world-leading approach in this area.

Banning vaping and heat-not-burn is, to put it bluntly, one of the worst public health policy ideas imaginable. The full submission can be found below (or here on page 171):

———

1 Introduction

1.1 This submission was written on behalf of the Adam Smith Institute by Daniel Pryor who works at the Institute as a research economist. The Adam Smith Institute is one of the world’s leading think tanks. Independent, non-profit and non-partisan, we work to promote free market, neoliberal ideas through research, publishing, media outreach, and education. The Institute is today at the forefront of making the case for free markets and a free society in the United Kingdom.

1.2 This submission will focus on the success of the United Kingdom’s tobacco harm reduction strategy, which (in contrast to Hong Kong’s proposed ban) incorporates a liberal approach to reduced-risk products such as e-cigarettes and heated tobacco. We will also argue in the submission that the Hong Kong Government’s stated justifications for the proposed ban are not in line with international evidence. A ban would damage Hong Kong’s international reputation as a standard bearer for evidence-based policy and good governance.

1.3 This submission will be structured as follows:

1.3.1 the United Kingdom’s liberal, harm-reduction approach to smoking cessation has successfully reduced smoking rates

1.3.2 banning e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products in Hong Kong will significantly harm public health

1.3.3 international evidence suggests that reduced-risk nicotine products are not a ‘gateway’ to cigarette smoking

2 The United Kingdom’s liberal, harm-reduction approach to smoking cessation has successfully reduced smoking rates

2.1 The basic premise of tobacco harm reduction is simple; make it as easy as possible for smokers to switch to nicotine products that cause them significantly less harm.

2.2 Since their emergence in the UK, successive governments have largely followed public health authorities in taking a broadly liberal, harm reduction approach to e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products. Our smoking rate is the second lowest in Europe, which is partially due to the rapid market penetration of e-cigarettes.

2.3 The February 2018 evidence review from Public Health England concluded that e-cigarettes are at least 95% safer than conventional cigarettes. Moreover, the latest data available shows that “of the 3.2 million adult e-cigarette users in the UK, more than half have completely stopped smoking. A further 770,000 have given up both smoking and vaping” (Dockrell, 2018). Public health bodies and advocates have repeatedly affirmed their positive impact on smoking cessation, and they are more than 10 times as popular as NHS Stop Smoking services (PHE, 2015).

2.4 There are now more ex-smokers who use e-cigarettes than current smokers (ASH, 2017). The best available evidence, reviewed by Public Health England in February 2018, suggests “an upper bound estimate of around 57,000 additional quitters annually resulting from e-cigarettes (lower bound around 22,000).”

2.5 A 2019 peer-reviewed, independent randomized control trial found that e-cigarettes are almost twice as effective at helping smokers give up tobacco than other alternatives such as nicotine patches or gum (Hajek et. al, 2019). In their February 2018 evidence update, Public Health England stated that “to date there have been no identified health risks of passive vaping to bystanders.”

2.6 Public Health England has also recently summarised the emerging evidence base for heated tobacco products by stating that they “may be considerably less harmful than tobacco cigarettes and more harmful than e-cigarettes.” The Committee on Toxicity of Chemicals in Food, Consumer Products and the Environment (COT) recently looked at two heat-not-burn products available in the UK and found that compared to conventional cigarettes “there were some HPHCs [harmful and potentially harmful compounds] where the reduction was approximately 50%, but the reduction in a number of other HPHCs was greater than 90%.”

2.7 Since 2014, several heat-not-burn products have been introduced in Japan: Philip Morris’ IQOS in 2014, followed Japan Tobacco’s Ploom Tech in March 2016 and British American Tobacco’s glo later that year. In one year, Heatsticks (the tobacco units used with IQOS) massively increased their market share in Japan from 2.2% to 10% (PMI, 2017). This is likely to have been partially driven by IQOS being featured on a popular Japanese TV entertainment show in April 2016, and the rise in use has been so great that Heatsticks now outsell Marlboro cigarettes (Tabuchi et. al, 2017). The displacement of smokers to heated tobacco in Japan is clearly reflected in significant declines in cigarette sales (Abrams et. al, 2017).

2.8 The draft bill claims that the “public may underestimate the harmful effects of these products”, but in the UK the opposite is true. PHE’s latest February 2018 summary of survey evidence on smokers’ knowledge of the relative risks of e-cigarettes is extremely alarming: “Only half of smokers believe that EC are less harmful than smoking and this decreases to one third among smokers who have never tried EC...In contrast to evidence to date, it appears that a majority of smokers and ex-smokers does not think that complete replacement of cigarettes with EC would lead to major health benefits...Where available, international data show similar misperceptions around nicotine and relative harmfulness of EC and smoking as in England. International data also support the trends of increased harm perception of EC with the exception of one survey in youth in the US.”

3 Banning e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products in Hong Kong will significantly harm public health

3.1 International evidence shows that allowing reduced-risk nicotine products as part of a tobacco control strategy can yield enormous public health gains.

3.2 The Adam Smith Institute's 2018 report “1 Million Years of Life: How harm reduction in tobacco policy can save lives” uses World Health Organisation estimates of additional life expectancy from quitting smoking at different ages and Public Health England estimates of e-cigarette relative risk to estimate that 1,036,640 years of life could be saved if young women vaped at the same rate as young men. While 8.9% of British young men vape, for British women it is just 2.6%. Women are however continuing to smoke with nearly 16% of women aged 16-24 smoking.

3.3 Previous estimates of positive public health impacts from increased e-cigarette adoption amongst smokers have come to varied conclusions but are all indicative of significant gains. For example, recent modelling of e-cigarette adoption’s potential effects on premature deaths and life years saved in the United States has yielded pessimistic estimates that “1.6 million premature deaths are averted with 20.8 million fewer life years lost” (Levy et. al, 2018).

3.3 Survey evidence suggests that the most common reason for UK smokers who have tried e-cigarettes no longer using them is that the product does not imitate smoking closely enough (ASH, 2017).

3.4 Evidently, different smokers have different preferences and the more variety of reduced-risk products on the market (including those that may imitate the experience of cigarettes more closely), the more likely it is that smokers will switch.

3.5 A robust harm reduction approach should ensure that heat-not-burn devices and hybrid products (such as those that pass e-cigarette vapour through tobacco for flavour purposes) are treated according to their relative risk profiles under the law.

4 International evidence suggests that reduced-risk nicotine products are not a ‘gateway’ to cigarette smoking

4.1 Contrary to media reports, the available international evidence shows that reduced-risk products do not attract young never-smokers to regular use at a significant level.

4.2 Young people who initiate e-cigarette use are likely to have taken up smoking anyway.

4.3 Public Health England’s February 2018 evidence review concluded that “despite some experimentation with these e-cigarettes among never smokers, e-cigarettes are attracting very few young people who have never smoked into regular use...The ‘common liability’ hypothesis seems a plausible explanation for the relationship between e-cigarettes and smoking implementation.”

4.4 Even if never-smokers were attracted to reduced-risk products on the margin, the public health costs of a ban (i.e. far more cigarette smokers) would far outweigh the marginal gains from preventing such uptake.

4.5 Youth uptake of heated tobacco devices is extremely unlikely to be significant, given the comparatively high price point of heat-not-burn devices (especially when compared to cigarette prices).

4.6 Appropriate enforcement of age restrictions on reduced-risk products and responsible marketing practices are the best policy approach from a public health perspective.

5 Conclusion

5.1 The Hong Kong Government’s proposed ban on reduced-risk products is contrary to international best practice on smoking cessation and harm reduction.

5.2 Such a ban would create large public health costs with no identifiable benefits.

5.3 Fears of a ‘gateway effect’ from reduced-risk products to cigarettes are unfounded.

5.4 Hong Kong policymakers should consult public health authorities in the United Kingdom on best practice in tobacco harm reduction policy.

28 March 2019

Bibliography

McNeill A, Brose LS, Calder R, Bauld L & Robson D (2018). “Evidence review of e-cigarettes and heated tobacco products 2018. A report commissioned by Public Health England.” London: Public Health England. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/684963/Evidence_review_of_e-cigarettes_and_heated_tobacco_products_2018.pdf

Martin Dockrell, "Clearing up some myths around e-cigarettes" (20 February 2018), Public health matters (PHE). Available at: https://publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk/2018/02/20/clearing-up-some-myths-around-e-cigarettes/

Public Health England, "E-cigarettes: an emerging public health consensus" (15 September 2015). Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/e-cigarettes-an-emerging-public-health-consensus

Action on Smoking and Health, "Use of e-cigarettes (vapourisers) among adults in Great Britain" (May 2017). Available at: http://ash.org.uk/download/use-of-e-cigarettes-among-adults-in-great-britain-2017/

Hajek P et. al, “A randomized trial of e-cigarettes versus nicotine-replacement therapy.” N Engl J Med 2019 Jan 30; [e-pub]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa1808779

COT, COC and COM, "Statement on the toxicological evaluation of novel heat not-burn tobacco products" (December 2017). Available at: https://cot.food.gov.uk/sites/default/files/heat_not_burn_tobacco_statement.pdf

PMI, Philip Morris International Inc. (PMI) Report 2017 Second-Quarter Results. Available at: https://www.google.com/url?q=http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item%3DUGFyZW50SUQ9Njc1NTk5fENoaWxkSUQ9MzgzNzUzfFR5cGU9MQ%3D%3D%26t%3D1&sa=D&ust=1528209502769000&usg=AFQjCNFojdIok45FMqLL8UIRKGNFWI8AsA

Tabuchi T, Gallus S, Shinozaki T, et. al, “Heat-not-burn tobacco product use in Japan: its prevalence, predictors and perceived symptoms from exposure to secondhand heat-not-burn tobacco aerosol” Tobacco Control. Published Online First: 16 December 2017. doi: 10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2017-053947

Abrams et. al, “Submission to Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee” (14 December 2017). Available at: https://www.fda.gov/downloads/AdvisoryCommittees/CommitteesMeetingMaterials/TobaccoProductsScientificAdvisoryCommittee/UCM593125.pdf

Daniel Pryor, “1 Million Years of Life: How harm reduction in tobacco policy can save lives” Adam Smith Institute (21 June 2018). Available at: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56eddde762cd9413e151ac92/t/5b2a58eaf950b7e84b9a4a20/1529501933343/1+Million+Lives+Paper+-+Daniel+Pryor.pdf

Levy DT, Borland R, Lindblom EN, et al “Potential deaths averted in USA by replacing cigarettes with e-cigarettes” Tobacco Control 2018; 27:18-25.

Simon Kuznets and his curve

Simon Kuznets was born on April 30th, 1901.  He received the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences (which everyone calls the Nobel Prize in Economics) in 1971 "for his empirically founded interpretation of economic growth which has led to new and deepened insight into the economic and social structure and process of development."

What he did was to bring the real world into economics by incorporating empirical data into its findings. He approached a priori and speculative conceptions with deep skepticism, preferring statistical methods of research instead, and in doing so, created quantitative economic history. He was the first, perhaps, of a strain of economists who regard the only valid data in economics as historical data.

He collected data from 14 countries in Europe, the U.S. and Japan over a 60-year period, and used it to determine how economic growth happened differently in different countries. He looked in detail at how growth involved a complete change in many aspects of production, employment, incomes, capital flows, and the make-up of the population. In doing so, he rejected the idea that there is a simple, universally applicable pattern of economic development.

He is most famous for the Kuznets Curve, an observation that when countries develop, income inequality follows an inverted U-shaped graph. It first increases as a shift takes place from agriculture to industry, then levels off and declines as society becomes wealthier.

There is another Kuznets Curve for environmental quality. As a poor country begins to develop, pollution increases because at that stage food on the table to avert starvation matters more than environmental quality. But as the country becomes richer, it can afford to attend to environmental matters and afford cleaner methods of production and measures to improve the quality of its air and its water.

There is a Kuznets Curve for population, in that modern hygiene and medicine lead to a population increase in poor countries as more people survive death in infancy. But as the country becomes richer, fertility declines because families no longer need children to contribute to the family budget or to support parents in old age. They can now afford education and pensions instead, so population levels off and declines.

The Kuznets Curve, founded in empirical, real-world data, is a powerful antidote to the doom-mongers who see only the upward slope of the graph and project it to disastrous heights that take no account of the way it levels off in practice and then declines.

But does this mean the NHS is efficient or inefficient?

Apparently the National Health Service provides fewer inpatient beds for young mental health patients than many other European countries:

Child mental health: UK provision 'worse than in much of eastern Europe'

That’s not actually what has been shown. Rather:

Britain has one of the lowest numbers of hospital beds in Europe for young people struggling with serious mental health problems, EU-funded research has found.

It is lagging far behind the level of provision in many much poorer countries in eastern Europe, such as Latvia, Estonia and Slovakia, according to a study of care for troubled under-18s across the EU.

Britain has 9.4 specialist inpatient beds per 100,000 young people for those who are suffering from conditions such as anxiety, depression, psychosis, self-harm and suicidal thoughts. That places it 18th in a league table of the 28 EU countries, researchers say.

Germany has the most, at 64 beds per 100,000 young people, and Sweden has the least, at just 1.2 beds. Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia have 39.5, 31.5 and 21 beds per 100,000 under-18s.

How well we deal with child mental health problems is determined by how well we deal with child mental health problems. Not by the resources we use to deal with them.

Inputs into a process are just that, inputs. It is the result, the output, which is what we want to have a measure of for this tells us the efficiency with which we are dealing with these problems.

Say, just as an example, that Britain uses 94,000 tonnes of steel to make a railway bridge that works and works just fine. Germany uses 640,000 tonnes of steel to make a similar railway bridge that works just as well. Who is doing better in the provision of railway bridges? Well, obviously, the UK. For we either have 546,000 tonnes of steel to do something else with or even, haven’t burnt more of the dead dinosaurs to produce the steel in the first place.

If we are solving child mental health problems as well as those with more inpatient beds then we’re doing better, not worse.

We are entirely open to the idea that we’re not so solving better. Equally that we are. The insistence is just that our measure should be that output, that result, not the resources devoted to inputs.

Consider that Swedish result of some one tenth of the NHS provision. Catty remarks about climate change activists aside, is Sweden doing better or worse?

In the absence of this proper measurement we’ll have to fall back on some sort of rule of thumb. Perhaps Polly Toynbee’s cry that we should be more like Sweden is the one to use here? Or, you know, we could go and measure what it is that actually matters?

Farewell to John Kenneth Galbraith

On April 29, 2006, John Kenneth Galbraith died at the age of 97. Canadian born, but a Harvard economist for a half century, he was the epitome of an educated leftwing intellectual. He was a prolific writer, read by a popular audience rather than by academic economists. His best-selling books included “American Capitalism (1952),” “The Affluent Society (1958),” and “The New Industrial State (1967).”

Like other liberal (in the US sense) intellectuals of his day, Galbraith disdained the free market because it allowed people to choose what they wanted, rather than what enlightened intellectuals thought was best for them. He argued that control of production had passed from consumers whose choices told corporations what to produce, to corporations, which now exercised control over consumers by advertising, marketing and salesmanship.

He described this as artificial affluence, and contrasted it with what he called a neglected public sector. Thus Americans, he said, were able to buy luxury items, while their public spaces were degraded and their children attended poorly-maintained schools. Other analysts, however, have put the poverty of American education down to other causes than any lack of funding.

Galbraith was lavish in his praise of the socialist countries he visited. His 1984 New Yorker article, for example, claimed that: “Partly, the Russian system succeeds because, in contrast with the Western industrial economies, it makes full use of its manpower.” This view was presumably based on an uncritical acceptance of the bogus statistics the Soviets published.

In his 1973 account of his experiences in “A China Passage,” Galbraith wrote that there was "no serious doubt that China is devising a highly effective economic system," "Dissidents are brought firmly into line in China, but, one suspects, with great politeness," he wrote. This was just after the peak of the Mao terror in which as many as 3 million may have been killed. He thought that Chinese industrial and agricultural output was expanding annually at a rate of 10 to 11 percent, again taking as fact the wildly implausible official statistics.

Paul Krugman, in many ways a latterday successor to Galbraith’s position as an all-purpose leftist intellectual, disparaged Galbraith as a “media personality” not taken seriously by fellow academics, an inclined to come out with over-simplistic answers to complex problems. Krugman was awarded a Nobel Prize in Economics, not for his partisan columns in the New York Times, but for earlier work on New Trade Theory and the New Economic Geography. Galbraith sold more books, but was never in the running for A Nobel Prize.

As Adam Smith pointed out, slavery simply isn't economic

The point here is one made by Deepak Lal. We can think of varied forms of economic growth, perhaps Malthusian say. Where, over time, there is no rise in the general living standard, just a rise in the number of people doing the living. Smithian growth, where the division and specialisation of labour create that growth through greater efficiency. And then Lal talks about Promethian growth, where we substitute other energy sources for human and animal muscle.

Which leads us to this:

Based on the amount of energy expended per average American for residential electricity, heating, cooking, and transportation, and for industry and commercial purposes, how many full-time “energy equivalent human servants/workers” would the average American’s energy use represent?

An interesting question. The answer?

Now putting the two parts of the analysis together, we can calculate that a typical American has the energy equivalent of “138.7 human energy servants (or domestic energy workers)” laboring for them 24 hours every day, during each of the 365 days of the year (10,350 constant watts of annual energy per American / 74.6 watts of energy per human). Over a full year, that would be the equivalent of 1,215,362 hours of work (24 hours per day X 365 days X 138.7 workers), which if divided by the annual number of hours for a single full-time worker working 40 hours per week for 52 weeks per year (2,080), would be 584.3 individual full-time workers. In that case, each American today has the energy equivalent of nearly 600 “human energy servants” providing around-the-clock energy services.

Which is an interesting number given how many people currently say we’ve just got to have society using less energy. The services of which of these 600 are we to lose? Or, even, which of us will have to become, physically, part of those 600 if we reduce that Promethian use of energy?

Venezuela Campaign: Shortages are a feature, not a bug of the system

Despite a near-total economic collapse and against expectations, the Chavista regime in Venezuela endures. How so? In a centrally planned economy, the ruling class can use goods in short supply as a political instrument of control. In Soviet times, party members could get access to special shops where they could buy goods unobtainable elsewhere. The same is true of Chavista Venezuela, where elites benefit from the profusion of shortages. This principle is ingrained in the Venezuelan system so deeply that even currency is subject to the same manipulation and control.

However, shortages only work as a political tool when goods remain available. When Chavista managers control a nationalised factory, they can sell goods at high prices on the black market and generate extra personal income. But this is only possible while factories remain in operation. Now most Venezuelan factories lie idle, shutting off a vital source of patronage for the regime. For example, in 2010 Hugo Chavez expropriated the steel company Sidetur and handed over control of its facilities to the military. At one facility, the Barquisimeto Steel Mill, production declined until reaching 7.5% of installed capacity in September 2015, at which point it closed. The company’s other six plants have also been shut and the workers sent home. While steel was in short supply the military managers could sell scarce stock for profit on the black market. Now the plants are shut they get nothing at all, a worrying concern for a regime that needs to keep its military onside.

The regime also uses petrol smuggling to channel money to its military supporters. Petrol is almost free in Venezuela, conservatively it may be as little as $0.01 per litre, although due to the ongoing devaluation of the Venezuelan bolivar it is probably much less. However, it is almost impossible to find petrol in Venezuela, there are great shortages of petrol and one often has to queue for days. One of the primary reasons for the shortages is that vast quantities of petrol are smuggled out of Venezuela to Colombia or the Caribbean, where petrol sells for 3,700 times more than in Venezuela. This smuggling is run by gangs either controlled by or in partnership with the military. The value of the fuel smuggling business is estimated at $18 billion per annum, and a good chunk of this ends up in the hands of Venezuelan military officers.

Food shortages have provided similar opportunities for elite control and corruption. Members of the population who acquiesced to regime control were given access to subsided food boxes through “Local Supply and Production Committees” (CLAP).  But the scheme itself was exploited corruptly by the Chavistas running it, as described by Alonso Israel Lira Sala, Mexico’s Deputy Attorney General, who investigated the corruption at the Mexican end. He said their approach was to “acquire low-quality products, export them to Venezuela at marked-up prices, resell them through the CLAP to the Venezuelan population at 112% more than the real cost”.

Moreover, once in Venezuela, some of this low quality corruptly acquired food is then smuggled by the distributors to neighbouring countries where it is sold at market prices, netting a hefty profit for the smugglers.  But as the funds available to the regime decline in tandem with the continuing collapse of the country’s oil industry, the ability of regime insiders to make much money from food shortages is also diminishing. Petrol smuggling is also decreasing due to the petrol shortages caused by the collapse of oil production and refineries as a result of inadequate investment and maintenance.

This leaves the regime with two means of paying off its military support base – asset sales and drug smuggling. Most realisable assets, such as gold reserves, have already been sold. Drug smuggling, on the other hand, is booming. A recent investigation estimated that 240 metric tons of cocaine were shipped through Venezuela to western markets in 2018, and detailed how the smuggling is run by the Venezuelan military. But is it raising enough money to enable Maduro to keep his regime running?

More information on the Venezuela Campaign can be found on their website. 

Charles de Gaulle retired with honour

It is not often that a country’s leading statesman chooses to retire gracefully without having been defeated in office, but it happened in France on April 28th, 1969. Charles de Gaulle had been propelled to office by the Algerian crisis of 1958. Postwar France had been weak and divided, with a succession of short-lived and unstable governments. In a French lesson in school, I once cheekily asked, “Qui est le premier ministre de la France cette semaine?”

When the Algerian generals staged a coup in 1958, it was clear the Fourth Republic in France could not last, and General de Gaulle was called from retirement to save his country again. He tried, in the Fifth Republic, to restore France’s honour by withdrawing from NATO and making France an independent nuclear power. He gave independence to France’s colonies, including Algeria. He twice vetoed UK accession into the European Economic Community, thinking the UK would be an American Trojan horse, although he favoured a Europe of nations, rather than a united Europe.

When left-wing revolutionary students seized the universities and the streets in 1968, and were joined by striking workers, de Gaulle flew to a French military base in Germany to secure the army’s support, and returned to call a general election, ringing Paris with armed force. The violence evaporated, the election went ahead, and the Gaullists won handsomely. De Gaulle had re-energized the French middle class against the leftist revolutionaries.

A year later he held a constitutional referendum that would have decentralized much of government. When it was defeated with 52.5 percent voting against it, he resigned office and retired to his home in Colombey-les-deux-eglises (which had only one church). He had held power for 11 years.

There have been similar instances of resignation. When Chile’s Augusto Pinochet asked a referendum to allow him to add 8 more years to the 16.5 years he’d already held in office, he resigned when it was defeated, with nearly 56 percent voting against it.

Usually, when a leader has held power for too long, and the people are restless for a new leader with new ideas, it precipitates a constitutional crisis. In rare cases where such a long-term leader holds an honest election, they can be defeated, but more often than not it takes a military coup, such as the one that finally deposed Robert Mugabwe of Zimbabwe.

There is a strong case for constitutional limits. After Franklin Delano Roosevelt had been elected four times, the US imposed the present two-term limit for its presidents. In the absence of binding term limits, which Vladimir Putin had amended after first circumventing them, there is a case for a constitutional referendum before extra years can be added. Making it as honest as the ones that retired de Gaulle and Pinochet is, however, more difficult to achieve.

How can Owen Jones tell us both these things in the same article?

For different people to grasp different parts of reality isn’t odd at all. None of us manages to understand it all - one of the reasons why planning doesn’t work as it assumes that impossible knowledge. But to manage to get two entirely contradictory ideas into the one piece of journalism is going some even for Owen Jones:

If only the Daily Express was right. That is not a sentence I ever expected to type. “Extinction Rebellion protests have WORKED as MPs succumb to calls for change”, bellowed the rightwing rag. Alas, the government has not capitulated to demands to declare a climate emergency, let alone to decarbonise the British economy by 2025. But Extinction Rebellion has retaught a lesson every generation must learn: that civil disobedience works. Amid the spluttering of obnoxious news presenters, it has forced the existential threat of climate change on to the airwaves and into newsprint.

So, until people superglued them to an electricity using public transport system, the DLR, no one had done anything about climate change. Gaia was just lying there being raped by capitalism. Then we’re told - and note again, this is in the very same article:

As Bill McKibben – one of the most prominent US environmentalists – tells me, the primary challenge now is not having the means but the will. “We have the tech we need,” he explains. “The work of engineers over the last decade in lowering the costs of solar and wind panels is quite remarkable. We can do what we need to do, or much of it.

We’ve just spent a decade doing the hard bit of working out the tech to beat climate change, that climate change that no one was paying attention to until last week’s supergluing?

Seriously, how can you believe both that we’ve directed humanity’s ingenuity to developing renewables and also insist that no one’s been paying attention to the problem?