I'm not surprised that the fall of Kabul has been a significant shock to the UK body politic. Since the Falklands War, military effectiveness has been central to a broadly conservative narrative of Britain as a post-imperial state which 'punches above its weight in the world'. /1 Blair gave this a liberal-interventionist twist, and Afghanistan played a key role in that. Compared with Iraq, Afghanistan could be presented as a broadly consensual and broadly successful intervention, at least as far as the UK press and public were concerned. /2

Forthcoming this autumn: UBI in Historical Perspective, co-edited with @DanielZamoraV and @pedroramospinto. Thanks to @pvpbrussels we have a wonderful photo from the first BIEN meeting on the cover: palgrave.com/gb/book/978303… We'll be launching it with @alybatt and @LHaagh at this year's BIEN Congress at 2pm on Friday (free registration here: cbin.scot/bien2021/). And we also have great chapters from @AntonJaegermm, @ma_sabate, @samuelmoyn, Liz Fouksman, Walter van Trier, and Andrew Sanchez

Reflecting again on the question David Runciman asked me on Friday ("How bad is this result, historically, for British liberals?"), I think the deep parallel is 1931. After thirty years of defending free trade against the populism of the Tory right, the dam finally burst. As Labour turned to the left and the Liberals struggled to recover from previous setbacks, disaffected voters concluded that Protection was worth a shot. Most economists knew that it wouldn't revive the depressed areas, but the siren song of economic nationalism was irresistible