David Owen

In London, they are breaking the mould.

Shirley Williams, Roy Jenkins, David Owen and Bill Rogers are leaving the Labour Party to form a Council for Social Democracy, whatever that may be.

And Rupert Murdoch is buying The Times.

The Times, they are a-changing indeed.

We have welcomed Booker Prize winners such as Howard Jacobson and Ben Oakry.

A couple of peers, we've had Lord David Owen and Lord Simon Hart.

With this episode, we're adding to our illustrious collection of university professors.

Ronald Hutton is Professor of History at Bristol University, but we've caught him on a visit to his publishers to talk about his new book, A History of Love and War.

You know, it's sort of baked into the Lib Dems and Lib Dems for, I don't know whether it's even prior to Paddy Ashdown, it was a strong, well, Lib Dems didn't exist really, did they? You know, before the sort of David, the two Davids.

David Steele and David Owen, yeah.

I mean, I think, I mean, I've heard David Owen be opposed to it so i don't so but let's say from the point the lib dems of the lib dems a single leader they've been they've been in favor of electoral fall but the other thing i want to say actually about the labour party and this is this is um throwing a bit of shade against my own party is the the first manifesto where we got labour mps elected in 1906 when the party was led by kia Hardy, the only thing that hasn't been implemented from that manifesto is electoral reform of the House of Commons.

Exactly.

The only thing.

But I think most, if you look at most, um ...

David Owen, you know, former Labor foreign secretary, founder of the SDP, et cetera, he's, he's got a whole thesis about politics and madness and that, you know, most people who strive and succeed in, in politics have got-

Something a bit long.

Something a bit wrong.

Because they felt important, they made themselves the top priority, not other people.

In 2009, David Owen, the former foreign secretary and a doctor by training, co-wrote a paper describing what he called hubris syndrome, a personality change brought on by holding power, which he suspected fades once the power goes, unless you're Tony Blair.

When looking at people becoming detached from reality as they become more powerful and wealthy, the study everyone typically reaches for at this point is the Stanford Prison Experiment.

In August 1971, Philip Zimbardo randomly split 24 male students into guards and prisoners in a mock jail at Stanford, planned to run it for a fortnight, and called it off after six days because the guards had become so abusive.

Mr. Jiskardestan had learned the term from the illness of Allah, as a very kind person, Mr. Bernard, you know.

Lord David Owen, then British Foreign Secretary, writes that after leaving office, the French Foreign Minister told him that the French were indeed aware of the Shah's diagnosis.

President Carter involved himself in unsteady game of musical allies and facilitated the toppling of the already unstable monarch in favor of political Islam.

This was all achieved under the banner of democracy, human rights, and the Iranian people's right to self-determination.