Eric Hobsbawm and Stuart Hall are special intellectuals. Within their respective fields each stands head and shoulders above his contemporaries. During the 1980s both were hugely influential in helping the left to rethink its political strategy. In their contributions here, they eloquently take up the charges that the Government is obsessed with presentation to the exclusion of content, that it has sold out to a right-wing agenda and given up on redistribution and social justice, or that it is run by control freaks.
All governments benefit from criticism.
Without it they become complacent and arrogant. This one has made mistakes and I don't doubt that it will make mistakes in the future. But to be taken seriously any critic needs to pass two tests. Since I work for the Government, I have to declare an interest. Yet I suspect that few readers will feel that Hall and Hobsbawm have passed either test, and that if they had been told five years ago that in its first period in office a Labour government would have devolved power to Scotland and Wales, begun investing an extra 40bn in health and education, introduced the biggest programme to cut unemployment in British history, and wholly marginalised the Conservatives, not to mention bringing peace to Northern Ireland, they could not have hoped for more.