Tariq Ali, the Johnny Depp of international comment, sails out in this little barque, gaily fitted out by the New Left Review, to assault the top-heavy galleon Washington Consensus, as she labours leaking through the South Seas and the Spanish Main … On the jacket, above three pirate ships anchored off Wall Street and bundles of dollars going up in flames, a smiling Fidel Castro, surmounted by a halo, looks out flanked by Evo Morales and Hugo Chávez.
At least you know what you are in for. In his preface Tariq Ali refers to Michael Oakeshott’s opinion that politics is ‘a conversation, not an argument’. No, it is — they are? — an argument, and the tone of this one is that of an Oxford Union debate on an off night, all point-scoring and demagoguery. It is all bad knockabout stuff.
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