Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.

Ernest Benn 

Sir Ernest John Pickstone Benn, 2nd Baronet (25 June 1875 – 17 January 1954) was a British publisher, writer and political publicist. His father, John Benn, was a politician, who had been made a baronet in 1914. He was an uncle of the Labour politician Tony Benn. Benn was born in Oxted, Surrey. As a civil servant in the Ministry of Munitions and Reconstruction during the First World War he came to believe in the benefits of state intervention in the economy. In the mid-1920s, however, he changed his mind and adopted « the principles of undiluted laissez-faire« .