Adam Tooze

Does it make you hostile to democracy?

I'm not sure that follows.

It makes you hostile to liberal versions of it or the version that American liberals have pushed.

It makes you hostile to the inhibiting norms of the rule of law, all those kind of things.

But of course, their idea is that once you get the citizenry down to the sort of people who should be allowed to vote,

then that group will solidly return their kind of politics.

It's illiberal.

One of the most shocking pieces of news in the last 24 hours is that the Americans have clearly been waging a campaign against French judges

presiding over the case that was going to prosecute Marine Le Pen for various types of corruption, corrupt practices.

And officials from the American embassy visited French judges.

And so they have a thing for judges.

They have a thing for the independence of the judiciary.

This is a problem.

But this is to do with the independence of the law, right?

So it's not democracy, it's the independence of the law.

It goes all the way back.

If you look at the constitutions of Australia as it becomes an independent commonwealth, which was a huge inspiration for racists in California and also conversations in South Africa, it literally says that we will decide who the people are.

with a view to excluding Asian migrants.

This Brechtian quip that the government should elect a new people is for those who have always been addicted to trying to defend white rule at the frontiers of power, this has always been a key explicitly formulated constitutional principle.

That was us.