Samizdata

The country needs a Conservative government with a strong majority in order to tackle the enormous challenges it faces, says The Sunday Telegraph

Well then what a pity that none of the main parties are actually offering a ‘conservative’ option to vote for.

Despite the parties’ attempts to capture the all-important middle ground, the differences between them are clear. Labour believes that only the state can solve the country’s economic and social problems. The Conservatives, by contrast, believe that the growth of the central state is the cause of the problem, not its solution, and want to call upon the invigorating power of citizens and communities.

And this, gentle reader, is why the current editorial of the Sunday Telegraph is fit for nothing more than lining the bottom of a bird cage.

Cameron has made it abundantly clear over the last few years that he, just like Labour and the Lib Dems, sees the state as the centre around which civil society must rotate, regardless of selective rhetoric to the contrary. Ignore the dissembling phraseology and just stay focused on the numbers.

And what do the numbers say? They say that risible balderdash like “the invigorating power of citizens and communities” is just code for Tory directed statism, which differs in verbiage and style, but not substance, from Labour directed statism. The litmus test to see if there is truly any difference is very simple to administer:

Will the state’s net take of the nation’s wealth be smaller or larger at the end of David Cameron’s first (and hopefully last) term in office? Will it be less by even so much as a single penny?

Well lets see what Dave has to say on that subject…

Mr Cameron said he would increase government spending from £620bn this year to £645bn next year – rather than the £650bn proposed by ministers

Oh I just never tire of linking to that article, filled as it is with radiant doublespeak but oh so revealing numbers, the empty Tory verbiage of classical liberalism varnished over the numbers of Keynesian statism: that truly epic insincerity that has become Cameron’s trade mark and which the mainstream media simply accept uncritically.

Strange how much “the invigorating power of citizens and communities” of “Big Society” looks like costing even more that the “Big State” we have today, eh?

The economy in Britain and much of the world is in dire straits and it would not be an exaggeration to say we have entered a period of history that far from being a ‘crisis of capitalism’, historians looking back may well call it the ‘crisis of regulatory statism’.

And that is what makes the current UK elections… and indeed the recent US election… so utterly uninteresting.

Political parties on both sides of the imaginary left/right divide are in near total agreement that question at hand is not “how do we change the state of affairs that got us into our current predicament” but rather “how do we manage this crisis best in order to preserve the status quo”. The one thing that everyone in politics agrees on is Britain’s vast regulatory welfare state is an immovable given. This is literally beyond debate and exists at the meta-contextual level …all that is actually up for discussion is how best to preserve it.

Commentary in the mainstream media accepts as axiomatic that the parties represent the struggle between laissez faire and regulation, between capital and labour, between right (whatever that means) and left (whatever that means).

Indeed the parties themselves employ the same rhetorical markers to differentiate their products as they have always done: the so-called ‘conservatives’ speak of “prudence” and “responsibility” and “living within our means”… Labour and the LibDems speak in terms of “fairness” and “equality”… and these terms are simply accepted at face value and repeated by most of the media as if the choices on offer were between chalk and cheese, and as all the parties benefit from this differentiation, this linguistic legerdemain is unchallenged and uncontroversial.

Yet the choices on offer are in truth more akin to that between Coke or Pepsi… the ‘sacred rite of democratic empowerment’ actually comes down to being given the option of selecting rapist A, B or C and then being told not to complain when you get raped because, after all, you got to vote.

And so we see the media portraying David Cameron as Thatcher the Milk Snatcher reborn… a dangerous welfare wrecker when he states that he intends to, and I quote from a Daily Telegraph article last year:

Mr Cameron said he would increase government spending from £620bn this year to £645bn next year – rather than the £650bn proposed by ministers. He warned voters not to expect an incoming Tory administration to slash public spending and cut taxes, saying: “That’s not what they should be thinking. They should be thinking this would be a responsible government that would make government live within its means, that would relieve some of the debt burden being piled up on our children.”

So the Tory party, those slash-and-burn laissez faire wildmen, wanted to take £25 billion more out of the productive economy in taxes so that the state can spend it… at a time when the economy is actually contracting… and somehow that will relieve rather than increase the burden on “our children”. Yup, clearly an ardent capitalist is our Old Dave… it must be so because the media reports him saying he is all for markets largely without comment.

But the core truth here is that if by some dark miracle Brown’s Labour wins, we will have a vast regulatory welfare state. If the even more spendthrift LibDems win, we will have a vast regulatory welfare state. However if Cameron’s Tories win, we will have… a vast regulatory welfare state… oh, and fox hunting will be permitted again.

And yet the idea that there are meaningful differences between any of these gits is a given even though all they are really discussing is how their different approaches to rearranging the same elements can preserve the very state that got us where we are now. Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic comes to mind.

Nigel Farage of UKIP at least talks of sacking two million public sector workers and having a bonfire of the QUANGOs… making him the only half way visible politician making any truly radical statements at all. Sadly Farage also seems to think “quantitative easing”… i.e. just running the printing presses in order to re-inflate the very credit bubble that has been the trigger for much of the current woes, is just fine and dandy, so I do question his grasp of economics, not to mention causality… but by the standards of current discourse he is Ludwig Von Mises reborn and perhaps in time Pearson can smack some sense into him on that score.

But UKIP will not be running the next parliament and so it does not matter which of the three plonkers you vote for because in effect the same person will still be in 10 Downing Street: and that would be the ring-wraith-like presence of Tony Blair of course… or Tory Blair if you like… the name and party hardly matters because that grin remains like some demonic Cheshire Cat in the sky over Westminster.

What did you say your name was again?

And so Dave Cameron stands up and says “Only conservatives offer real change” and the media report this more or less at face value.

We have a vast regulatory welfare state under Labour. We will still have a vast regulatory welfare state under Cameron… no? Well how many million state employees will Cameron fire in his first term in office? What number did he put on it? Anyone? Has he said he will have a massacre of the QUANGOs? He has loudly promised more green regulation and sticking it to the financial sector but where exactly will he de-regulate? Yet the media just repeats Cameron’s claim to represent anything other than more of the same as if it is a self evident truth. Yet “Big Society” looks a lot awful like the same old “Big State” we have right now.

Are you unable to resist the urge to vote? Well someone is actually calling for two million less state employees over five years. Dave “I represent change” Cameron? Don’t make me laugh.

The Prime Minister has announced the date of the UK general election between the Party of Big Government Regulatory Statism and, er, the Other Party of Big Government Regulatory Statism.

Of course the media and quite a few bloggers will spend the time between now and then obsessing over the 3% margin in the purview of the state which differentiates them as if they were comparing chalk and cheese, whereas in fact they are arguing which is preferable for the terminally ill patient: pneumonic plague or bubonic plague.

But nevertheless we will see an endless stream of Tories harrumphing that Dave Cameron’s brand of regulatory statism is in fact both the Small Government Society Friendly Ideal, The Saviour of the National Health Service, Market Friendly, Eco-Regulation Friendly and indeed all things to all people.

And as a result, I urge people who feel the overwhelming urge to vote for anyone to put their X down for Britain’s only conservative party… and of course that means do not even consider voting Tory, unless a more inept version of Tony Blair (i.e. Tory Blair) is actually what you want.

But please be clear on one thing: if you fear not voting Tory will give Labour more time to wreck the country, that is simply not the choice on offer…nothing meaningful will change in Britain as long as the two main parties are essentially as one on the size and scope of the state, which at the moment they most certainly are…

…and if you vote to endorse that fact just because you (quite rightly) loath Gordon Brown, you are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

This is splendid almost beyond words.

Now go make your own!

Hat tip to John Farrier