The Vulcan is generally pretty sound as well.

well, my cats and dog slept happily together in the dog's basket- and water will run uphill aided by a pipe and a pump, so as you say there's really nothing unusual about this.

Steve Baker is MP for Wycombe. He is an engineer, manager, businessman and skydiver.

You mean he has actually done something useful with his life? He must be ploughing a lonely furrow in British politics.

Appears to be a sensible man who has slipped into the party under cover of darkness!

Interestingly, with numbers so close, you have to hope that smart politicians who are conservative will engage in a little blackmail and armtwisting to encourage the party to take some hard decisions.

Nuke, - "smart politicians who are conservative"?

Is that Britain you are talking about? If there were smart politicians in the UK Conservative Party, they would never have chosen Empty-Suit Cameron as their leader. But Cameron was indeed chosen leader, which implies ....

There seems to be a whole lot of wishful thinking going on about Cameron in certain circles -- that there is a steel-spined small government libertarian inside all that green goo, just waiting to burst out.

As our worthy host pointed out a few posts back:
"Mr Cameron said he would increase government spending from £620bn this year to £645bn next year - rather than the £650bn proposed by [Labour] ministers."

Either Mr. Cameron was telling the truth before the election, in which case small-c conservatives in the UK are screwed.

Or Mr. Cameron was lying, in which case he has no mandate from the electorate to implement his hidden agenda. And conservatives are screwed again, since they can't rely on any promises from an unscrupulous man who would lie to get himself elected.

Alice, I take it you're not British?

Britain's Conservative Party has never been an ideologically small government party, so "small "c" conservatives" as you describe them don't exist in the UK. In the nineteenth century, the Liberals were to some degree a small government party (I think this is debatable, but it's the standard history so we'll run with it). Then they converted to socialism, and there hasn't been a small government party since.

By smart, I meant the man whom Perry was almost praising in the main article- and I was also being relative, as in , smart compared to the average conservative member. I don't know what the average is, but if Perry talks about water running uphill, then he must seem like an einstein, by comparison!

"Then they converted to socialism, and there hasn't been a small government party since."

That conversion to socialism was most obviously done in 1988 when the Liberals merged with the Social Democrats, but can be traced back further to the reforms of Lloyd George in the Asquith government.

Alice: the last "classical liberal" governments in Britain were arguably those of Gladstone and Palmerston in the mid nineteenth century. Britain has had Statist government after Statist government for well over a hundred years now at least.

If Steve Baker eventually finds himself in a serious Cabinet position, it will most likely be at a very unenviable time.

I know the MP in question, and he'll be a great addition to the House of Commons. I hope he gives the Blairistas in the Tory Party the vapours.

He also stands his round in the bar. A good guy.

Gosh - thanks Johnathan!

We'll just have to wait and see. It'll probably end up with cats living with up hill water!

For libertarians and semi libertarians in British politics (oddly enough more of them were Conservatives than Liberals even in the late 19th century) see "The British Political Tradition" (two volumes) by W.H. Greenleaf - specifically the "Libertarian Stand" section.

However, the above comments are mostly correct - both the Liberal party and the Conservative party have normally had national leaderships dominated by utter scumbags. And this has been true for a very long time.

British politics at a local level - a refusal (yet again) to even have a discussion about how we can save money (this is so at every meeting I attend), but a long discussion of ideas for spending yet more money (the taxpayers money).

That tells you all you need to know - and national politics is worse (a LOT worse) than local politics.

Cats and dogs living together - you are wrong Perry, that often happens.

But a Conservative M.P. that understands economics......

"But Mr Redwood does" - no he does not, I have met him.

Mr Baker is citeing Ludwig Von Mises and de Soto (and doing so in such a way that shows he has actually read them).

This is weird - I have no explination of how such a man got on the "Candidates list" (or whatever it is called now).

Normally such a man would never even get to the selection stage.

No chance for ordinary party members to choose anyone they like in Britain.

After all someone with "socially irresponsible" opinions might be selected.

Remember the national leadership can get rid of candidates as well.

I haven't voted Tory since 1992, but I would have voted for Steve Baker, if he were a candidate where I live.

Pat clearly does not get the cinematic reference

In case Pat and others don't get the reference, it was in Ghostbusters, as one of the signs of the End of the World.... Bill Murrey's character makes the outrageous claim, I think.

You can add the Tory MEP Syed Kammel to the list of free-market-friendly-and-economically-literate Tories (and perhaps also Daniel Hamman MEP, though I don't know him well enough to judge).