This book contains a selection of my articles and papers on political economy and British politics. They have appeared over the last forty years and illustrate some of the main themes of my writing in this field. The companion volume to this one, The Western Ideology, covers political ideas and ideologies. The themes covered in the two books at times overlap but they are intended to be self-standing. The essays in this book range from my essay on ‘The free economy and the strong state’, first published in 1979, to ‘After Brexit’ and ‘The Anglo–American world view’, which were both first published in 2019.

Any selection of essays for a book such as this faces a dilemma. Is it better to concentrate in depth on one or two themes, or is it more important to cast the net more broadly, choosing pieces that are representative of work done in different periods and addressing many different topics? I have for the most part selected pieces which had some impact at the time, but there are a few which have been forgotten and are rarely cited. All of them I hope stand alone as contributions to particular debates and themes in political economy and British politics.

Like all academic work these essays belong to particular times and contexts, and there are things in them which I would express differently today. But I hope they are still of some interest. I have mostly left the texts as they were, only correcting obvious anachronisms, and explaining certain references which were familiar enough at the time, but which will now be obscure to most people, for example the activities of the Clegg Commission in 1979. I have also removed some passages discussing scenarios which have since been overtaken by events. This Introduction is followed by brief notes on the themes of each essay. At the end of the book is an epilogue which reflects on the contexts in which the original essays were written and on what has changed since then. Some of my judgements and analyses have lasted quite well, others not so much.