The Consolations of Metals

This article was written by Anthony Lipmann. All views and opinions expressed are strictly his own.

Extraordinarily, Britain, as of the summer of 2026, acquired a Prime Minister with a degree in English Literature. Also, a runner and a supporter of Everton FC - two further endearing qualities to me, but perhaps not to all.

But how, you may ask, does the study of Emma or Wuthering Heights assist a PM to make good judgments about the war in Ukraine or the ‘triple lock’?

Some say that Burnham’s English degree confers ‘moral intelligence’, which possibly means the ‘nous’ to realise you are not a Messiah.

But would mathematics have been a better qualification? Indeed is there any specific degree that qualifies anyone to be a leader – or indeed metal trader – over any other. Mrs Thatcher was a chemist, Boris Johnson a classicist, Tony Blair a lawyer. In metals it is sometimes said that metallurgy would be useful – but not necessarily when it comes to trade. One famous member of the metals trade from the 1950s thought himself such a good lawyer that he kept suing his customers – a quality that did not encourage business.

Burnham’s degree appeals to me mostly because I did English too, but you would not want me programming an AI algorithm, any more than you would want a mathematician writing poetry.

The rather roundabout reason for this discussion is the worry that rather too many clinical judgments or political decisions appear to being made these days without taking into account the human element, for which Burnham’s degree might be an antidote. The bank-rolling of a political party with the purpose of moving your personal views to the top of the table is a possible example. Or more generally you might feel cautious as to whether two mathematicians, Delo and Harborne, had enough ‘moral intelligence’ to have the right to inflict their beliefs on those who happen not to have enough money to fund a personal political party.

In a macabre way, converting money distilled from the crypto zone into real-world currency requires an almost spiritual faith – not so much spirit made flesh, but higher maths made into coins. All those zeros and ones multiplied in the ether conferring the right to influence the national politics of 70 million Britons.

It is not merely a case of alternative philosophies – more a head-on car crash. The politics of ‘the one’ – rather than politics for ‘the many’.

The proliferation of leaders with messianic illusions is certainly troubling. The very wish to be a prime minister or president, as some have said, should be cause for instant disqualification. And yet is there any nation in history that has ever chosen a leader who was a true ‘servant of the people’? (The title of Volodymyr Zelensky’s TV show - and his party). Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand or Mark Carney of Canada perhaps?

A close reading of Emma, I agree, might not contribute directly to solving Britain’s economic problems but to have imbibed history, philosophy, novels, poetry, economics, must surely give the person who drinks these watering holes a wide range of reference – or you could say ‘bottom’. Mr Burnham does not merely have nice eyelashes.

The Polish writer, Ryszard Kapuściński (for many years Poland’s only foreign correspondent) was accustomed to travel with a copy of Heroditus’ ‘Histories’ in his pocket as a reminder that the conflict in the nations he encountered had taken place before. There was so much in Heroditus to teach him about the present. In his case, as a Pole, those parallels gave him hope that even the oppression of Soviet Communism might one day pass. In his book ‘Travels with Heroditus’ he noted that the democracy of Athens was a state full of citizens with multiple opinions, squabbling among itself (like our own), and yet still it was able to repel the invasion of the mighty Persian army. He is too careful to be certain of the answer as to why - but he wonders whether it could be because the Athenians knew what they were fighting for? Xerxes of Persia is defeated because his oppressed soldiers were about as loyal to the cause as a North Korean soldier on the Ukrainian frontline.

What a lifetime’s trading in metals teaches us (and I note that apart from Herbert Hoover who, with his wife, translated De Re Metallica from Latin into English there have been very few presidents or prime ministers with a metals background) is the role of uncertainty and the blessings of it. The uncertainty principle in physics - that you cannot simultaneously measure the exact position and momentum (speed or velocity) of a subatomic particle - is the same measure of uncertainty you could apply to the rightness of a decision - even if taken for the best of possible reasons. It is the same sort of uncertainty principle we apply to our metal trading.

So I do wish good luck to our new PM; as I also hope Everton FC wins its next match at the Hill Dickenson stadium and, as it happens, that I will complete the London Marathon for which I have entered in 2027 aged 70.

As we tended to say of our trading decisions – they were never right and they were never wrong. They were just decisions - and we tended to have to live with them.

We now wonder, uncertainly, if it taught us humility.

But it would be the height of arrogance to suggest this.