Since its founding in 1843, the editorial stance of The Economist has been developed to further its founding purpose to "take part in a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress". First published by Scottish economist James Wilson to muster support for abolishing the British Corn Laws (1815–1846), a system of import tariffs, the weekly has made free trade a touchstone of their editorial stance.
In 2009, The Economist website featured this note about its editorial stance: "What, besides free trade and free markets, does The Economist believe in? 'It is to the Radicals that The Economist still likes to think of itself as belonging. The extreme centre is the paper's historical position.' That is as true today as when former Economist editor Geoffrey Crowther said it in 1955. The Economist considers itself the enemy of privilege, pomposity and predictability. It has backed conservatives such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. It has supported the Americans in Vietnam. But it has also endorsed Harold Wilson and Bill Clinton, and espoused a variety of liberal causes: opposing capital punishment from its earliest days, while favoring penal reform and decolonization, as well as—most recently—gun control and gay marriage."
Early years In its early years under James Wilson the newspaper took a strong laissez-faire stance, opposing the provision of aid to the Irish during the Great Famine, proposing instead that self-sufficiency, anti-protectionism and free trade, not food aid, were the key to ending the famine, as well as opposing government regulation such as the Railway Regulation Act 1844 and the Factories Act 1847.
19th-century social reforms In the 19th century the editorial stance of The Economist drifted away from supporting laissez-faire policies. In January 1883, for example, one editorial noted:
In September 1883, another editorial noted:
This change in editorial stance reflected a similar change in British politics itself, which had set aside the notion of laissez-faire as a practical philosophy some 50 years beforehand.
United Kingdom's entry into the Common Market The editorial stance of The Economist on the UK's entry into the Common Market, like the stance of the New Statesman, gradually developed over time. Although it consistently took the position of a cooperative approach to Europe rather than an integrative approach, its initial opposition to European institutions gradually changed to acceptance over time. Once this change occurred, the weekly's supported a decentralized and cooperative model for European institutions, and democratic accountability.
In part, The Economists own editorial stance was a simple reflection of attitudes within the UK in general, and of its two major political parties through the middle to late 20th century (Conservative and Labour), resisting what it saw as surrender of sovereignty to a supranational institution for as long as possible, and attempting to preserve the UK's self-image of a world power.
Initially, in the years immediately after World War II, contributors to the paper dismissed and rejected proposals for European institutions such as the European Coal and Steel Community, the European Defence Community, the European Economic Community, and European Atomic Energy Community. Up to the late 1950s, the paper was pro-American.
However, in the period from 1957 to the 1980s, the paper's editorial opinion articles gradually came to accept the idea of the UK as a member in the various European communities. Medrano divides this period, and the transition of the newspaper's editorial stance, into three periods, which he labels "Denial", "Grudging Acceptance", and "Embrace". The New Statesman went through all three of these phases as well, although unlike The Economist, the New Statesman had not completed the third phase at the point of the UK's entry into the Common Market in the 1970s. The Economist had, and was supportive of UK membership during the initial negotiations for entry in the 1960s.
However, the newspaper, whilst supportive of entry, did not conceal its continued editorial dislike of European institutions and pro-American stance. It optimistically predicted that the UK's entry would be able to rectify what it saw as a drift away from the United States by Europe. This is exemplified by a July 1962 editorial:
The veto of the UK's entry, by Charles de Gaulle, in 1963 provoked an outraged response from The Economist, which in its editorials predicted the unravelling of European institutions. It also recommended an idea that it had supported in earlier years, that of an Atlantic Community, both economic and military.
Soon after the veto, The Economists stance on the status of the UK as a dominant world power began to change. One milestone in this is an editorial published in May 1963:
In subsequent years, The Economist continued to support the idea of UK membership in the common market, and began to suggest that it was an economic necessity. It published weekly evaluations of the cost of both entry and of the European institutions, argued that membership of the EC was not incompatible with the Commonwealth of Nations, and discussed industrial and technological advantages that could be obtained as a result of membership. One change, however, was that it no longer pursued the idea of radically transforming the Community from within once the UK was a member, but rather suggested that the UK accept the Community as it already was.
Its reaction to de Gaulle's second veto of UK membership, in 1967, thus differed from its reaction in 1964. Rather than responding with anger and outrage as it had done before, its reaction was introspective and resigned. The paper no longer argued defiantly on the basis of the UK as a world power, but rather portrayed the UK as too small to stand alone, and thus encouraged resolve and perseverance with entry negotiations. This is exemplified by an October 1967 article:
The newspaper took to minimalizing the economic importance of the Commonwealth in its editorials, calling into question the interpretation of statistical data by those who had an emotional investment in the self-image of the UK as one-time head of an Empire:
It pointed to the Civil Service as one of the ways in which parliamentary sovereignty, something that the opponents of entry argued would be eroded by membership, had already been eroded. Whilst it no longer advocated radical transformation from within, it observed that the UK would have a significant voice within the Eureopean Community, by virtue of its size. Medrano equates the paper's change in editorial stance, immediately before and after the UK's final success in gaining membership, to a "religious conversion". It made economic arguments for membership, on the grounds of growing globalization of markets, political arguments based upon the idea of holding the government of West Germany (which was, at the time, the SPD with its then policy of Ostpolitik) in check, and emotional arguments that played on the British antipathy towards the French by presenting its own federalist view of European communities as an anti-French alternative to the French government's proposals of intergovernmental union.
Anglo-American relations Whilst, as observed, The Economists editorial stance was pro-American when it came to postwar international alliances, it was not always so. One particular editorial, that was at the head of a nadir in Anglo-American relations in World War II, was "Noble Negatives". It was published in the 1944-12-30 edition of the newspaper, and is believed to be the work of Owen Fleming. The so-called "noble negatives" were two cornerstones of U.S. foreign policy: non-intervention with the object of non-involvement.
"Noble Negatives" appeared at the height of mutual criticisms between the UK and the U.S., and provoked wide discussion and comment in the news media of both. It was ostensibly a reply to the "outburst of criticism and abuse" that the U.S. had directed against the UK in previous weeks (that had been, in part, triggered by the Carlo Sforza affair). Its outspoken views on both U.S. foreign policy and sectors of U.S. public opinion were widely quoted, and in the view of Thomson, Meyer, and Briggs, writing in 1945, did much to "clear the air" between the two allies.
The editorial questioned whether the price that the UK had paid for collaboration with the U.S. during the war was not "too high for what we are likely to get". It characterized U.S. public opinion of the UK as "Britain is stealing a march on the poor repressed American exporter, Britain has no intention of fighting the Japanese, [and] Britain is not really fighting in Europe. Britain is imperialist, reactionary, selfish, exclusive, restrictive."
It reflected on this attitude by noting that "All is painfully familiar, the only novelty in the recent epidemic is the evidence that [the] American government itself—or at least part of it—is more anxious to provide ammunition for the miscontents than to correct their wild misstatements." The editorial called for a change in U.K. policy towards the U.S., saying, "Let an end be put to the policy of appeasement which, at Mr. Churchill's personal bidding, has been followed with all the humiliations and abasements", and concluded by saying that:
The result was a media sensation on both sides of the Atlantic. The Daily Telegraph had a headline article "British Frankness Has Good Effect in U.S." The Daily Herald headlined with "So the British Have Dared to Hit Back". Other headline articles were "Anglo-American Back Chat" (in the New York Herald Tribune) "Cross Talk" (in the Daily Mail), and "U.S. Comment on British Touchiness" (in the Manchester Guardian).
The Foreign Office agreed with the editorial, although secret reports from British security services in New York warned that in fact there was worse to come, with support for isolationism and nationalism growing in the U.S., a crumbling of pro-British factions, and an increase in anti-British views in official U.S. government circles. Both President Roosevelt and the Secretary of State Stettinius were besieged by U.S. press calling for an official reaction to the editorial.
Stettinius himself wrote that, "Unfortunately, other British papers had followed the Economists lead. Even the London Times [had] demanded that America 'put its cards on the table'." His view on the editorial, which he expressed in a memorandum to Roosevelt, was that "the British were undergoing a strain in adjusting to a secondary role after having always accepted a leading one".
Cold fusion In 1989, The Economist editorialized that the cold fusion "affair" was "exactly what science should be about."Michael Brooks, "13 Things That Don't Make Sense" (), p. 67 (New York:Doubleday, 2008), citing J. (Jerrold) K. Footlick, "Truth and Consequences: how colleges and universities meet public crises" (), p. 51 (Phoenix:Oryx Press, 1997). Science journalist Michael Brooks wrote:
Bosnian War The Economist summarily dismissed Brendan Simms's book, Unfinest Hour, on the Bosnian War for having no more than "the force of an inkpot thrown from a schooldesk" and for its criticism of government ministers for their "flaws of logic [and] failures of clairvoyance". Simms himself observed in response that The Economists own attempts at clairvoyance had "backfired spectacularly". He pointed to the weekly's editorials through July 1991 and 1992, which predicted that European Community foreign policy would deal with the situation well and that there would not be all-out war in Bosnia.