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What’s next*?

Following Brian’s lead, I predict a legislative scorched earth as well as a financial one, when the UK parliament returns. It is not just that the present administration realises its days are numbered and will try to get more of The Project through, and to construct extra-parliamentary power structures as bunkers to occupy in opposition. All over Whitehall, departmental pet projects will be being dusted-off (e.g) and presented to weak ministers, the hope being to get them through before a new, critically-minded, Government takes office and crowds them out with plans of its own.

The question I have for Samizdata readers is this: what will the neo-puritans set out to regulate… suppress… ban next? Smoking is nearly fully suppressed. The work on alcohol has truly begun. Government intervention into our personal lives: what’s next?

* [This is an allusion, so I pray our editorial pantheon will let the contraction stand. I’m I am not about to write anyone an email like this one, however funny it might be. And I suspect they’d they would take my login away if I did]

28 comments to What’s next*?

  • guy herbert

    Here’s one to get you started. You are reading it. The wicked wicked anything-goes interwebby thing:

    Andy Burnham [Culture Minister]: In a lawless zone, we must protect the vulnerable

  • Ian B

    I don’t think there’s time for anything truly novel. It’ll be an intensification. Clampdown on net freedom. Ciggies pushed “under the counter” and pressure to stop supermarkets sellng them at all, probably licenses/registration of smokers. Drinking age raised to 21 and secret police wardens despatched to the pubs to bring prosecutions against landlords who let people get tipsy. Outright sales bans in “problem areas”. Serious escalation of the War On Chubby People with obligatory state “interventions” and enforced contracts (“lose weight or else”). Fascist physical exercise programmes introduced. On a personal note, problem some exemplary prosecutions of people who draw rude cartoons (you’ll all run a campaign to free me, won’t you friends? “Free The Gay Hobbit Porn One!” kind of thing, you know.)

    Slim possibility they’ll try for carbon rationing on our shiny new ID cards on the pretext of stabilising petrol supply due to the “shortage”, but I doubt they’ve time for that.

    Oh, and extension of detention without charge to 83 days, which Liberty will announce was a triumph for their campaign, as they bargained the government down from 84.

  • Ian B

    From the Andy Burnham horrific speech-

    Wherever possible, it should be voluntary, self-regulatory or co-regulatory, such as the successful way in which the advertising industry has operated for many years.

    That’s where the government appoints an agency that bans advertising of cheese and eggs, for the sake of the children, right Andy?

    His dismissal of the libertarian ethos of the net is just chilling, if depressingly inevitable.

  • Pa Annoyed

    Ian B,

    Yes agreed. Personally I think the most likely candidate is politically incorrect food, and has been for a while now, but when they realise time has run out for them, then yes, they might try to do it all at once…

    Don’t forget not recycling, free plastic bags, and the right to be offensive.

  • lucklucky

    I think will be Cars.

  • permanentexpat

    If you are a non-English former midden-dweller then I reckon the UK’s the place for you.
    “What’s next” means nothing to you. You’re in & can’t be chucked out by the idiots you, rightly, hold in utter contempt.

  • Paul

    They’re starting with fingerprinting at all airports and seaports from next year. Can this be resisted?

  • Pa Annoyed

    RAB,

    “Clingfilm?”

    Gummy bears.

    Assuming they’re not banned by the junk food edict, of course…

  • Ian B is right. There is a stunningly bizarre anti-porn law going through the motions.

    Food is a reasonable guess as well though. They’ll see it as a double whammy, nay a triple-whammy. They can drag in fat fellas, “food miles”, rising food prices and God knows what else.

    Ciggy-wigs are down though. Short of an outright ban (which would cause an insurrection) I don’t really see what they can do. Ditto, booze.

    More frankly bizarre (and very sinister) moves in edumaction and

  • Oh, I say the People’s Commissar for Culture on the telly-box. He of fecking around with the ‘net fame. He admitted he gets his son to load his iPod.

    They have so jumped the shark.

    OK, this is also possible and terrifying and I’ve just thought of it. The reversal of the assumption of innocence in rape-cases to raise conviction rates. And if that “works” which it will it will be used as a model for any other crimes that have historically been difficult to successfully prosecute.

    I no longer think they’d consider that one beyond the pale. Hell, they’re happy to lock folks up for 6 weeks without telling them what they’re accused of and are planning on allowing anonomous witnesses so why not?

  • I am supposed to travel to England a year from now…

  • Ray Rigby

    Harriet Harman & Fiona McTaggart will definitely go ahead with the criminalisation of paying for sex (sorry Max Mosley!) . No doubt preceeded by more carefully choreographed raids on “trafficing”, with TV cameras in attendance, regardless of how many prosecutions are ultimately made. Harperson probably sees it as something that wiil enhance her leadership bid.

  • Ian B

    As I was pottering in the garden yesterday, I was wondering if there’s any merit in trying to whip up a campaign to get the conservatives to promise to repeal any and all legislation passed by New Labour between now and the next general election. I know, I know, libertarians have no organised voice to get such a campaign rolling. But can we try to do something rather than just complaining futilely as the laws roll over us?

    It may be something that the Conservatives could do. Since everyone seems to agree that this government now has no authority left, that it is despised by the majority, and that if it had any decency it would go to the country, it wouldn’t be that radical for the Tories to say they will simply treat anything it does from here on in as illegitimate, and politically such a declaration could force Labour into an even worse corner, portraying them as desparate failures thrashing around to try and destroy as much as they can before being forced from office.

    There’s no great demand in the country for more smoker persecution, persecution of prostitutes or of fatties although in Daily Mail Land the alcohol panic is in full swing admittedly.

    I dunno. I just feel utter despair at sitting here doing nothing.

  • ResidentAlien

    Caffeine.

  • DocBud

    Ian B,

    I guess David Davis could be your contact man inside the Conservative Party.

  • Pa Annoyed

    “…it wouldn’t be that radical for the Tories to say they will simply treat anything it does from here on in as illegitimate…”

    Their first question, of course, would be to ask what is to stop Labour (or whoever) doing the same to them when it is their turn to be unpopular?

    Both parties rely for their own legitimacy on the legitimacy of the system. If there is any other basis than a general election for calling a democratic government still in the middle of its term “illegitimate”, they probably don’t want to hear about it.

  • Martin

    Davis, a libertarian? Hah!

  • RAB

    Frankly Pa
    I’d think it a right result if our two main parties got into the habit of cancelling each others legislation everytime they came to power.

    Repealing Laws, instead of nodding them through Parliament without even bothering to read them, is just what the doctor ordered.

  • Ian B

    Pa, I don’t think it’s that much of a threat to the entrenched system and interests. They could perhaps do a weaker version; “we will repeal all legislation against which we have voted during the remainder of this parliament”; that would avoid them getting snookered by Labour bringing in something populist and the Cons then being committed to repealing something “good”. Not that us lot would think anything they introduce is good, but the genpub might.

    It would be no different to saying “we will halt the ID card programme” but on a more general level. It would mean that anything stupid but plays-well-to-the-Daily-Mail-crowd could be opposed now, during this parliament with a simple “It’s not the right answer and it won’t do any good” argument, e.g. a Harperson criminalisation of escorts, then just summarily repealed in the new parliament without another argument, with a repeal bill covering all the opposed bills, rather than one at a time, with the line “we said we’d repeal all this guff, so we’re doing it”.

    They wouldn’t be delegitimising the system in general by doing so. No parliament is supposedly bound by its predecessors; this tactic would just be putting that into practice. “We didn’t want it, the country didn’t want it, so we’re undoing it.”

    Taking Harperson’s silliness, there are only two constituencies who care much about prostitution- feminist Guardianistas and Olde (Religious) Tories, and the second of those probably don’t really care that much, since no previous Tory administration has ever criminalised it. The first of those constituencies won’t vote Tory anyway whatever Dave says or does. The second will vote Tory regardless to get rid of Labour. It’s not a high risk strategy.

  • Pa Annoyed

    Sure, but wouldn’t it be better to say specifically what you’ll repeal, and on what basis, and simply add to the list as they come up?

    That sort of blanket policy gives the impression of lacking any real principles, a statement of “we’re against it just because you’re for it, we don’t know why.” And politicians don’t like to make long-term promises they’ll be held to. (While being quite keen on long-term promises that they won’t.)

    And I still think that they’ll be cautious about anything saying that a government democratically elected can be declared “illegitimate” for simply setting illiberal policies they don’t agree with. Yes, they can say they disagree, and yes they can say they’ll repeal them, but to start claiming that what they’re doing is illegitimate just because it’s currently unpopular will make fantastic ammunition when the Tories start doing unpopular and illiberal stuff themselves. Which they will, I assure you.

    Anyway, besides the certain appeal of populism to get into power, what makes you think they would believe in repealing some of this stuff?
    They’re Conservatives, of a modern political class in which most distinctions between them and the Socialists have become blurred, they’re not Libertarians. They have higher priorities, like their traditional approach to law and order, that liberty can be traded off against.

  • Ian B

    Can’t really argue with that, Pa. Was just an idea, y’know. Sigh.

  • Pa Annoyed

    Ian B,

    Cheer up! Internet activism is probably the most productive thing you could do, anyway. Politicians follow the public mood – it’s the public you need to be informing and influencing, the politicians come later. Letting people know there’s an alternative philosophy out there, and it doesn’t have to be that way, is more likely to work. Not very likely, I admit, but in a way it is like the revolution the printing press brought about, with the dissemination of new ideas that pamphlets allowed, that made much of it possible. Everybody always demands instant results nowadays, but Leviathan is a ponderous beast.

    I was just now catching up on Ezra Levant’s adventures in legal-land, and while he appears to be enjoying the fight in some ways, I think maybe the fight for freedom has a high cost on those who partake. Should you be wishing you could do something, or hoping you never have to? Anyway, perhaps those sorts of people are a better bet for supporting than a bunch of unreliable politicians. There are plenty of Libertarian-friendly campaigns about. Free association of individuals, and all that…

  • So many choices!

    1. art (anti-porn laws)
    2. Marriage to rich people (anti-prostitution)
    3. rationality (anti-religious intolerance, as a sop to intolerant Muslims)
    4. Cutlery (anti-knife crime)

  • Carbon Credit Cards. It will be the means to track EVERYTHING we do. Limitless scope for endless new QANGOs to formulate and monitor it.

  • All these comments and no one has said anything about Sharia? Or was that in the OP? I forget…

    Take it from me, who lives in an Asian country which prohibits and regulates a whole lot of shit – life goes on. In fact, looking at your nanny state, I laugh openly. HaHaHaHa. I remember cursing and swearing because Playboy, amongst other things, was prohibited in Malaysia. And here I am on an unfiltered office T1 connection. Well, well. Things have turned 180 degrees from my POV. Because they’ve /already/ done national ID here.

    No way can they do stuff to food in Malaysia. Regulation-wise, I mean – they would face civil war! I don’t see why you Brits want to whinge, anyway – you boil your veggies! [shudder]

  • Midwesterner

    With the bribery of plum posts in the EU bureaucracy, they will break all of the knobs and levers off of anything that could slow or stop the annexation process. The will probably do it under color of ‘treaty’.

    Perhaps the next government will be faced with the choice of either dissolving itself or calling a referendum.