Thomas Piketty gives the IEA’s Ryan Bourne a lesson in debating

Channel 4 News invited Thomas Piketty on to their show to debate the efficacy of his work. For reasons best known to themselves, he was asked to debate not with another economist of good standing or his foremost UK critic, Chris Giles of the Financial Times, but instead with an apparent trainee from the ultra right-wing and wildly misnamed Institute for Economic Affairs.

Looking to all the world as if he had accidentally stepped out of his creche and into the studio, the IEA’s Ryan Bourne had prepared for the interview in much the same way as many 15 year olds prepare for their GCSE’s. He read some ‘Cliff Notes’ of other people’s criticisms of Piketty’s work and boy was he going to use them.

The result was as inevitable as it was unedifying.