Nigel Doggett on repairing democracy
“Finding Opportunity in the 21st Century” by Fiona Hill published by Mariner Books
This fascinating memoir has fresh relevance for the second Trump term, Putin’s repressive and dangerous regime and the war in Ukraine. Hill tells the remarkable tale of a career that has taken her from “ the coal house to the White House’. Born into a working-class family in Durham mining town Bishop Auckland, she has progressed through the University of St Andrews, Moscow, Harvard and the Brookings Institute on to US National Security Council and the 2020 Trump Impeachment trial.
She ascribes her success to both luck and connections (including her Labour MP and the Durham Miners” Association, who gave her funding) that have since been eroded, as well as her own persistence and talent. She was repeatedly in the right place at the right time to witness key milestones: the Gorbachev era in the USSR, Putin’s first term and Trump’s chaotic and misogynist White House – shocking but now sadly familiar.
The underlying theme lies in the title, taken from her father’s career advice. She highlights striking parallels between the 1980s deindustrialisation of North East England, the decimation of the US “rust belt” and economic chaos in post-Soviet Russia (all consequences of neoliberalism), by Thatcher, Reagan and Yeltsin, egged on by western consultants. Both Putin and Trump are products of this, despite marked character differences: Putin, the wily and persistent chess player and Trump, the disruptor with a limited attention span (evident again in Trump’s second term as Putin runs rings around him). For more on Putin, see her 2012 book Mr Putin: Operator in the Kremlin.
While she is a policy specialist, not a politician, her account is woven with class awareness, and she celebrates her roots and accent. (Since 2023, she has been Chancellor of Durham University and, latterly, a Labour defence review advisor). Her understanding of the fertile ground for right-wing populism is backed by deep personal experience and an understanding that barriers and inequalities are maintained across spatial, gender, and racial as well as class lines. Accordingly, her guiding principles are “no more forgotten places” and “people”. Widening access to education and employment is vital to democracy. These proposals find echoes in the Labour government’s priorities, but risk being undermined by its failure to address poverty and inequality in its first year. Her warning – “democracy is not self-repairing” – is sadly relevant across today’s world.