Up the Down Escalator: Why the global pessimists are wrong by Charles Leadbeater, Penguin, £20.00, ISBN 0670913227 Reviewed by Michael Cross
Charles Leadbeater tells us that he works from his bedroom. He should get out more.
For all the “global” of the subtitle, Up the Down Escalator displays some curiously local preoccupations. The editorial policy of the tabloid Daily Mail and the organisation of Tony Blair’s policy-making team are of great significance to London think tanks, but possibly not to the fate of the planet. Leadbeater, a research associate at voguish London think tank Demos, presumably knows his market. He’s writing for Britain’s political classes about that British disease, political pessimism.…
