Niall Ferguson: 'The left love being provoked by me ... they think I'm a reactionary imperialist scumbag'
The controversial historian on how political debate in England is trapped in the 80s, why Americans love him – and his refusal to forgive people who cross him
The first thing everyone always says about Niall Ferguson is that he's far too glamorous to be an academic. So the surprise, when we meet, is his miserable little office – a bleak sliver of the London School of Economics, surely nowhere near sumptuous enough for the dashing professor. Lined with rows of empty bookshelves, it looks semi-vacated – but that's because it sort of is. "I'll be out of here in July," Ferguson says quickly, with the air of a man for whom July cannot come soon enough. "This has been great fun, but . . . well, you know . . ."
The historian has been living back in the UK for almost a year, the first time since leaving for the US in 2002, where he now teaches at Harvard. From the outside, it's looked like quite a successful stay; his Channel 4 series, Civilization, was broadly well-received, and the accompanying book is another dollop of vintage Ferguson history, devoted to the superiority of western civilisation. While here he's also been advising Michael Gove on the history curriculum in secondary schools, and now that the Tories, of whom he approves, are back in charge of the country, he must have found the political climate more to his tastes. But when I ask him for the single biggest change he's observed since leaving Britain, he replies with a kind of theatrical despair,
"I think the situation in British universities has gone from being parlous to being catastrophic. When you look at where British universities are going, and where Harvard's going, you'd have to really love other things about England to take the hit."
And he doesn't? "Well, I mean, what can I say?" he shrugs with a hollow little laugh. "There are lots of things I love about this country." But he couldn't sound less convincing, so I invite him to name some and he comes up with Radio 3 and the weather. "What else do I love about England? Hmm, there must be other things." He casts his mind about. "Well, the British private schools are really good. But they're the only institutions left in Britain that are really world class." And bam! There he is, not five minutes in, saying the sort of thing that drives liberal Britain mad.
The Glaswegian-born academic and presenter, 46, has been sending the left into fits of rage ever since he published Empire in 2003 – an elaborate cost-benefit analysis of the British empire, which concluded that it had, on the whole, been a good thing. The character of Irwin in Alan Bennett's play, The History Boys – a pushy, contrarian teacher who becomes a TV historian – is modelled on Ferguson, and ideological sparring matches with his leftwing critics, one of whom branded his work "startlingly obscene", have become something of a national sport. Rather than get into yet another one with him, I'm more interested to find out what he thinks about the things that are often said about him, so I ask if it's true that he loves provoking the left.
"No, they love being provoked by me! Honestly, it makes them feel so much better about their lives to think that I'm a reactionary; it's a substitute for thought. 'Imperialist scumbag' and all that. Oh dear, we're back in a 1980s student union debate." But didn't Ferguson himself admit that his conversion to Thatcherism while a student at Oxford in the 80s was motivated chiefly by delight in taunting student union lefties?
"Well, of course, yes, it was partly that," he concedes. "But that was the 80s, and I was young. I'm not a punk Tory any more, we have come a long way since then, it's now 2011. I don't really care about those people any more. The debate that I'm interested in having is with seriously smart people about how we design institutions in the 21st century that will genuinely address problems of poverty and educational underachievement. Now that's an interesting debate to have, but very few people in this country are interested in having it."
Warming to his theme, he cites one reviewer of Civilization who clearly hadn't even read the book before attacking it. "You know what?" he says crossly. "There's a lot of intellectual shoddiness in this country. My interest in my work now is not to wind up British lefties; I couldn't care less about them, not really. I couldn't care less about how they feel. So the problem is not that I like to wind them up. It's that they like to be wound up by an imaginary rightwing historian who satisfies all their emotional needs."
Let's say then, I suggest, that he's absolutely right; that the left has got itself into a tizz and accused him of all sorts of views he does not actually hold. He is forever insisting he is not rightwing – so could he offer some examples of his thinking which would demonstrate that he isn't?
"Ask me not are you rightwing, but ask me are you a committed believer in individual freedom, the values of the enlightenment? Then, yeah, if being rightwing means believing Adam Smith was right, both in the Wealth of Nations and the Theory of Moral Sentiments, then I'm rightwing. If being rightwing is thinking that Karl Marx's doctrine was a catastrophe for humanity, then I'm rightwing. If you think that it's rightwing to say that the welfare state has trapped 10-20% of the population of western Europe in a dependency culture, an abyss of social failure, then I'm rightwing."
He sounds as if he could quite easily be a member of David Cameron's cabinet. "I'm very sympathetic to both David Cameron and George Osborne," he agrees. "But we have to redefine this debate, this argument. I'm just constantly amazed by how far people remain trapped in the labelling of the 80s. In the 80s I was a Thatcherite, and we won on both issues, the economy and the cold war, and for a lot of people that must have hurt a lot because those arguments were very bitter, but the outcome was just clear. So when people call me rightwing I get a little pissed off, because it's so anachronistic; it assumes there is some kind of choice."
It doesn't sound as if being back in Britain has been a satisfactory experience at all. "Not very," he agrees. "No."
Ferguson's politics don't appear to rest on semantic definitions of rightwing, so much as a refusal to recognise the validity – or even possibility – of any alternative way of looking at the world. Such certainty presumably explains the other thing everyone always says about him – that he has an almost superhuman absence of self-doubt. But when I ask if this is true, he says: "Of course not! One of the things that really amazes me is how many people would rather discuss style than substance – that I'm too arrogant, too self-assured. But what the media want from a public intellectual is someone who is absolutely certain in his views. When you are on Newsnight or Question Time, they want combative polarisation; they want a strong case, strongly put. And I do that – I can do that – because a certain intellectual discipline is involved. But as a teacher, my strategy is to encourage questioning. I'm the least authoritarian professor you'll ever meet."
It feels as if we're straying away from the point of what people mean by his absence of self-doubt. "Well, let me think," he says, and falls quiet.
"In terms," he offers eventually, "of the small percentage of my life that I devote to things other than my work – which is small, which makes this hard to answer – well, who wouldn't be consumed by doubt in a divorce? It's the most appalling and harrowing experience to find your marriage breaking up, and to decide what to do is extremely difficult. And as a father you ask yourself over and over again, have I got this right?"
Last year it emerged that his marriage had broken down, after Ferguson became involved with the Somali-born Dutch activist, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. He had been married since 1994 to the media executive Sue Douglas, but it wasn't perhaps the most astonishing marital breakdown, given that Douglas and their three children had remained in Oxfordshire when Ferguson moved to the US, and he used to fly home to see his family every few weeks.
"I thought I could reconcile the different aspirations of the adults in the family by commuting. Did it work? Of course not. It's – it's a sure way of straining, if not wrecking, a relationship. No, in terms of that side of my life it's one long agony of self-doubt. I don't like talking about it. My youngest is 11 and nothing worries me more than the impact this has had on him."
I wasn't expecting him to bring up his divorce, let alone with such humility. His usual smooth charm is perfectly winning, but the moment he allows for real vulnerability he becomes infinitely more likable. Only seconds later, though, he is already marshalling arguments to defend his choices.
"We don't know if having me around more would actually have been better for them. It's not certain, cos having me around is not that great. I have more energy than most people, which makes me exhausting to be with. I'm never content with the available 24 hours, I'm at times somewhat irascible. Put it this way, if I had stayed in England I would have been 80% of the time in the study."
Ferguson has produced 16 books and five TV series in the last 16 years, and sounds unmistakably proud of his workaholism, so I guess that he thinks work-life balance is basically for losers. "I think work-life balance is a phrase invented at business schools to make workaholics feel they're doing something about their problem," he agrees scornfully. "The truth is, there is no balance. You can't strike a balance. You can't write a book like Civilization on three hours a day. We should recognise the trade-offs more honestly, and say look, there is a trade-off; when you get married and have children, it is fundamentally damaging to at least one career. That's the truth. And somebody's got to take that hit."
But he wouldn't take it himself? "No! Nor did I ever say I would. That's the harsh reality. I would have been miserable as fucking sin," he says, banging the table, "if I had said, 'Oh, that's OK, I'll just be a junior lecturer for the rest of my life.' I'd have been so bad at that, my children would all have been in therapy by now."
He hadn't been prepared to find his private life splashed all over the papers, though, in particular by the Daily Mail. I'm not quite sure why he was so surprised, though, for he used to write for the Mail, so had presumably noticed what the paper printed.
"No, I never read their shitty coverage of people's private lives," he says. "I don't care about the sex lives of celebrities, so I was a little unprepared for having my private life all over the country. So yeah, I was naive, yeah." He doesn't regret writing for the paper in the past – "Because you have to stoop to conquer," – but will never write for it again. "That's because I'm a vendetta person. Yes, absolutely. Implacable."
All of a sudden he has turned weirdly cold. When I ask if he ever forgets a slight, the question is meant to be a joke, but he replies in the same sinister monotone. "Never. I'm completely unforgiving. Implacable. Reconciliation under these circumstances will never happen." He seriously remembers every single thing everyone ever says or writes about him?
"Yes." He stares at me menacingly, and repeats very slowly: "I'm just a very implacable person. Nobody should ever imagine that they can do that kind of thing to me with impunity. Life is long, and revenge is a dish that tastes best cold. I'm very unforgiving."
Is he making a threat? I'm almost tempted to laugh, because suddenly this debonair academic is coming over all cartoon baddie. You're obviously, I begin to say, very frustrated with the criticisms – "No," he interrupts, "I'll tell you what it is. I find being interviewed really difficult, because it involves talking about myself, and in my tension I get very vehement, so I come across as if I really care, but actually I'm just experiencing the anxiety of being interviewed. Excessive vehemence is probably my greatest weakness. And you know what? The English hate that about me."
The tone suddenly lightens again. "The great thing is, the Americans love it. And that's another reason to have moved and not come back. All the things that the English held against me – excessive vehemence, works his ass off, all that stuff – the Americans think that's great! You know the play, The History Boys? I remember realising that my American friends thought Irwin was the hero of that play! I said why? They said, 'Well, he got the kids into a great college, didn't he?'
"So can you blame me for wanting to be based there? I don't have to put up with any of the crap I have to put up with here. I'm not whingeing, I know the score – 'Cocky pushy Scotsman, too clever by half', all that stuff." By now he is almost talking to himself, and this time the glimpse of wounded vulnerability doesn't seem to be intentional.
"You know, I sucked that up a lot at Oxford and Cambridge over the years, and then the more times I went to the States to give papers, the more I thought, 'Hmm, that doesn't seem to be happening here. Hey, people like me'. And who wants to stick around to be sneered at when you can actually be appreciated?"
It obviously hurts a lot, though, I say. "Oh God," he says briskly, "only if you've got a thin skin – and I've got a very thick one. I grew up in Glasgow, and 'fucking cunt' is a compliment there."
I don't think he is thick-skinned at all. Like most of the people I know who've found America's embrace a refuge from disputes and disappointments here at home, I think he carries a sadness and heightened sensitivity that all the hard man posturing he affects so wonderfully cannot quite disguise. I don't think his parting shot sounds very thick-skinned at all.
"Do I go home and think, 'Ooh someone said something insulting about me in the paper'? No. I just think: 'Get the bastard when the opportunity arises.' Never underestimate the irate Professor Ferguson."
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