Niall Ferguson: evaluation

Transcript context

…How does Welsh pessimism fit into this picture? Well, I’m a student of Welsh pessimism because I spend quite a bit of time in Wales. When I’m in the UK, I have a place here. I’ve come to realize, after nearly two decades of living and working in the United States, that the differences between the Celtic periphery countries — Scotland, Wales, and Ireland — are really small differences, as in narcissism of small differences. We’re all fundamentally very alike and really should just be united under a new name, Not England. I don’t mind which Not England I’m in — it’s essentially the same. South Wales is like the West of Scotland. It was a center of the Industrial Revolution: coal mines, dilapidated steelworks. The pubs feel the same. The conversations are similar, and there isn’t this preoccupation with embarrassment and class, which are the things that make England slightly unbearable after a while. I like coming to Wales, but Wales is Scotland lite. They are undoubtedly less morose, although they certainly like to drown their sorrows. I think of Wales — although this will annoy any Welsh people listening — as Scotland lite. It’s the diet version. It’s the same, but it’s just not so strong. That’s perhaps why I enjoy being here. There are times when I go back to Scotland and a kind of claustrophobic feeling seizes me. The other good thing about the Welsh is that they don’t take their nationalism too seriously. Nobody really thinks they’ll ever be an independent Wales. Not really. Not seriously. Whereas, unfortunately, a significant proportion of my countrymen in Scotland seem to believe that there could be a People’s Republic of Scotland, a terrible idea in my view. Now, I don’t actually read you as such a pessimist, but if you just were to ask yourself, at the intellectual level, who has made the most convincing, persuasive case for British pessimism, is it James Fitzjames Stephen? Is it John Gray? Is it Coleridge? Who is it?…

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