Letter: Strikingly informative — but oh so depressing

It’s no easy matter to tear a single page of the FT from its newsprint moorings. However I feel compelled to do so only because the opinion page of Wednesday’s paper — with pieces by Janan Ganesh, Martin Wolf, and Laurence Boone — was so strikingly informative, and depressing. “Don’t blame neoliberalism for the rise of the hard right.” “Industrial policy is a tricky business.” “Europe must prepare for five years of radical change.”

Yikes. And the blue-ink “pull quotes” were even more of a downer. “Populism is not a howl against laissez-faire. And it shouldn’t have taken recent events to bring that home.” “This is a world in which the international trading order may reach breaking point quite quickly.” “We will not do with 35 member states what we currently struggle to do with 27.”

Fortunately, my other daily news read — The Irish Times — brought the good news that Taylor Swift is a direct descendant of a family from Derry.

Conn Nugent
Washington, DC, US