Interview in House Magazine
By Geoffrey Lyons
In a 2015 article for Project Syndicate, historian Niall Ferguson accused Lord Robert Skidelsky of being “un-Keynesian” for refusing to admit that George Osborne’s austerity policies worked. Skidelsky’s position, Ferguson argued, wasn’t true to the great economist-statesman’s view that one ought to adjust their beliefs in the face of changing facts.
Ferguson must have known this was a critical hit. It’s not that Skidelsky has come to identify his views with those of “the Master” that makes “un-Keynesian” such a biting characterization, but rather that he is arguably the greatest living authority on the twentieth-century economist. Besides being a prolific writer and lecturer on economic issues, Skidelsky is perhaps best known for his acclaimed three-volume biography of Keynes, a project he laboured over for nearly three decades. Still, he didn’t take Ferguson’s remarks personally.
“Niall and I are quite good friends and actually go back a long way,” he says with a smile. “But we’ve sort of diverged on this. He doesn’t actually say in what respect I should have changed my mind, so it’s a nice throwaway line.”