THE godfather of neoconservatism, Irving Kristol, has died in Washington of lung cancer aged 89, perhaps bringing to a close an era in which radical right-wing thinkers dominated American political debate.

Kristol started his political life as a Trotskyite but drifted to the right as he grew angered by the left’s softness on communism and the rise of the counterculture and the anti-Vietnam war movement.