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In the aftermath of electoral defeat, a Labour MP and former minister wrote:
“The new Conservative Government is showing itself the most ideological and reactionary right-wing government that Europe has seen in two decades … Its commitment to lower public spending and its ideology of laissez-faire will mean more poverty, more inequality, a meaner social sector and a worse environment.”
As things turned out, once in power the Conservatives preferred “pragmatism” to an ideology of laissez-faire, and the commitment to lower public spending displayed about the same level of commitment as Ming the Merciless did in his marriage vows to Dale Arden:
PRIEST: Do you, Ming the Merciless, Ruler of the Universe, take this Earthling, Dale Arden Lower Public Spending, to be your Empress of the hour?
MING: Of the hour, yes.
PRIEST: Do you promise to use her as you will?
MING: Certainly!
PRIEST: Not to blast her into space?
(Pointed silence from Ming)
PRIEST (hurriedly): ….Until such time as you grow weary of her?
MING: I do.
The election concerned was, of course, that of 2010 1990 1979 1970 and the writer was Anthony Crosland, MP. He concluded:
“Perhaps it did not need this lecture to demonstrate that our basic social democratic aims remain as urgent as they have ever been. If proof were needed, Mr Heath has provided it.”
– Anthony Crosland in A Social Democratic Britain, Fabian Tract 404, based on a lecture given in November 1970. (Price 3s / 15p.)
I do not entirely share Perry’s view that between Ruling Lizards Group A and Ruling Lizards Group B there is no difference worth a damn. By gum, though, when you think that Edward Heath was once seriously feared as a rampaging warrior of laissez faire, there is no difference worth much.
British politics is very boring compared to American politics just now, a fact reflected in the content of recent Samizdata postings. What is there to say about Britain now? They almost all agree, or pretend to agree. They are almost all mistaken. That about covers it. At least in the USA there is occasional debate about something resembling principles.
Perhaps principles are easier to observe from a distance, uncluttered by nearby clutter, rather as skyscrapers loom larger when viewed from a distance. But from where I sit, in Britain, part of the reason for this British political boringness is that Prime Minister Cameron has no apparent objective other than to remain Prime Minister Cameron. What he does at any given moment seems to be entirely the consequence of the various directions in which, and the varying force with which, he is being pulled, pushed, kicked, bribed or threatened. He himself never makes a decision, other than a decision about the combined effect upon him of these various forces.
I seem to recall reading, not long after the coalition government was formed, that Cameron may actually prefer coalition government to regular government. That way, interpreting and constantly rebalancing all those forces is his basic job.
But when those forces change, what Cameron does changes with them, and that can be slightly interesting. One such slightly interesting shift happened in the course of the recent cabinet reshuffle, in the form of the appointment of someone called Owen Paterson to be the government’s Environment Secretary. The interesting thing being that apparently Owen Paterson is not nearly as devoted to wind power as the Windies (so to speak) think that such a person ought to be. In general, Paterson lacks green enthusiasm, as Fraser Nelson explains.
Owen Paterson is far from a household name, but the significance of his appointment as Environment Secretary has not been lost on the green lobby groups. As far as they’re concerned, this is war. They are already denouncing him as a “prominent hater of wind turbines” and overall climate change sceptic.
Sounds like good news to me (rather as the news in this posting was), except actually what “climate change sceptics” are really sceptical about is not climate change but climate catastrophe.
So, why the change of public mood, and consequent slight Cameron shift? Well, part of it is that climate catastrophe scepticism is growing and growing. As I keep insisting, the key to all this is catastrophe. If the climate is just changing a bit, and if sea levels are about to rise a bit, then the obvious answer is for us to adapt, and let the market send us whatever signals it is inclined to. Only if climate catastrophe looms does it make any sense to shut down regular economics and switch the entire world over to emergency tyranny mode, of the sort that the people who set the climate catastrophe scam up in the first place yearn for. But more and more people now believe that there is no more reason now than at any other time in human history to expect climate catastrophe. In short, our side is (as it has been for several years now) winning the climate catastrophe argument (which is the bit of the argument that matters), big time.
The wider public, the sort of public (most of it) that is far more bothered about its fuel bills than by any arguments about longer term climate upheavals, is getting the news of this intellectual transformation not just in the form of an abatement of green propaganda, but also in more elusive ways, involving moral atmospherics.
Fraser Nelson again:
For more than a decade, environmental policy has been cursed with cross-party consensus because no one wanted to be seen to oppose so noble a cause.
It is precisely this air of green nobility that is now changing, as Cameron has surely noticed.
Thanks at first to the whistle blowing sceptics like Steve McIntyre, and then to the bloggers and journos who publicised such findings as McIntyre’s, like Andrew Montford, Christopher Booker and James Delingpole, and now to the big-time daily newspapers who have been joining in more recently with similar stories, “climate science” just doesn’t seem as noble as it used to. Frankly it is being presented as downright corrupt. These “scientists” don’t insist upon the truth of their opinions merely because they just do. They do this because this is how they now make their living. Their constant screeching about the venal motives of their opponents is pure projection, and is more and more being presented to the wider public as just that.
Meanwhile, on the back of the climate science scam, a new variety of green entrepreneur (one of them being David Cameron’s own father-in-law) has arisen. In the days of unchallenged green nobility, the people who thought along these lines both set up or participated in green businesses and sat on public bodies whose mission was to impose the very green schemes and regulations that these green businesses depended on for their profitability. Time was when this seemed okay. But not now. Suddenly, being the director of a wind farm company, and at the same time sitting on some government committee which does all it can to block other and more rational forms of energy doesn’t look quite as noble as once it did.
It’s not that the Windies have given up exerting any forces of their own. The point is that these people are now on the defensive. From the green point of view, the times they are a-changing, and when the times change, people like David Cameron change with them.
Background:
Andy and Tracey Ferrie were questioned by police for more than two days following the incident in Welby, near Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, early on Sunday. The couple, the victims of three previous break-ins, were confronted in their bedroom by several men who had smashed their way into their home.
Using a legally held shotgun, one pulled the trigger on the intruders, leaving two with minor wounds.
Yesterday it was announced the Crown Prosecution Service would not bring charges.
Response: The Guardian gets a cop to write an article called How to defend your home against burglars – the safe way. It says,
So what’s the right course of action when you come across a thief in your own home? It’s a question I don’t want to have to answer, so I’ve done all I can to prevent a burglar targeting our home in the first place. Follows these steps, and the chances are you will never have to deal with that question either.
The steps he suggests are not bad advice – I assume he thought, wrongly, that it was too obvious to need saying that you can always replace the letterbox in the door with a US style outside mailbox – but, um, what is the right course of action when you come across a thief in your own home?
“I don’t think there are any Liberal Democrats who have anything other than admiration for Ken and the way he works.”
– an ‘aide to Mr. Clegg‘. Can you think of anything more damning?
In honour of the elevation of Natalie Bennett to the leadership of the Green Party, allow me to repost Rob Johnston’s 2008 comparison of the manifesto of the Green Party, and the results it would have if enacted, with the equivalents for the British National Party: Vote Green, Go Blackshirt.
Natalie Bennett herself makes a comment in which she cites various motions passed by the Greens that were favourable to asylum seekers as evidence that the Greens reject racism. I am sure they do, but they have also loudly promoted the argument that, when it comes to profit-making corporations and other bodies not the Green Party, absence of conscious intent to harm is no defence if harm results.
No dynastic saga is complete without a scene where the young heir to the manor happens to stand next to one of the farm labourers, the bastard son of a housemaid, and the family resemblance shines through. The practical similarities between the vision of “the party of hope and radical change” after “years and years of politics as usual” and “the party that offers a real alternative to the failed old political parties” which wants you to “help us send out our message of hope” are not coincidental. Both have a vision of a future in which the selfish desires of the individual are subordinated to the needs of an idealised community.
I’m glad people are getting so much pleasure out of the Paralympics and I don’t wish to knock either the competitors or disabled people generally. But there’s a bubble of sanctimoniousness surrounding the event and its media coverage which definitely needed popping – and I salute Frankie Boyle for being fearless enough to do it. Brave outspoken souls like him are our final bulwark against the kind of cant and sanctimoniousness and sentimentality which first began to rot our national character in those grisly days after the death of Diana.
– James Delingpole
My favourite MP in Britain is Steven Baker, and he has a very interesting take on the Left. His attitude is not: “Wrong answers, you idiots!” It is: “Good question!” The question being, along the lines of: “What the hell is happening?!?!”, and Steve Baker’s answer being variations on the theme of Austrianism. Government-controlled money ruining us. Sort out the money, and take the financial bad news that will come with a return to monetary sanity. Then: progress! Tim Evans has a recent piece up at the Cobden Centre blog in which he adopts exactly this approach:
While such conclusions are wrong, they are at least borne of people starting to try and articulate the right question.
The comments on this are mostly full of scorn (most especially those from Paul Marks). Maybe good question, but bad answers, is their line.
Does it accomplish anything to try to insert Austrianism into mainstream British political debate in this way, on the back of a basically Leftist campaign of anti-capitalist scorn and outrage? My sense is: in Parliament, maybe. When trying to get a hearing on the BBC, definitely. Elsewhere, maybe not. I used to think this was a great tactic. Now, I’m genuinely unsure. Is it really possible to try to hijack someone else’s spiel like this? Well, the answer is: maybe it is possible. Like I say, I am genuinely unsure. Steve Baker and his Cobden centre supporters (I am one) have done lots of media spots, in which they have taken this line. Maybe the Cobden Centre narrative just awaits another bout of British financial turmoil to take centre stage in Britain.
Meanwhile, my eye was caught by a couple of passing remarks about similar arguments in the USA, both of which suggest that a similar tactic in the USA to that adopted by Steve Baker MP, over here, may already be working well, over there.
Exhibit one is from a piece about an economic model of the forthcoming Presidential election, which is almost entirely about the relative fortunes of Dems (very bad) and Repubs (very promising). But right at the end of the report there is this:
Bicker and Berry also did not factor in third party candidates, such as Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson, who Public Policy Polling, a Democratic-affiliated polling firm, has noted could significantly diminish Obama’s chances of winning New Mexico.
Note that. Here’s a libertarian taking votes from Obama. This must be another manifestation of that new and improved two-party system that Instapundit posted about recently.
And then this morning, I was struck by this comment, on this piece, which is about some Democrat supporting interlopers at the Republican convention, one of whom is a Ron Paul supporter. The commenter (comment number 8 by “stmarks” at 9.25pm on Aug 25 – forgive the comment-standard spelling and grammar) says, in among a lot of other stuff about conservatives and liberals, this about Ron Paul supporters:
… And I am convinced 90% of these Ronnies [Ron Paul worshipers] are ex-democrats who are too ashamed to admit so, but still hates GOP with a burning passion.
I freely admit that I may be reading far too much into two tiny snippets of comment. (I am posting this here in order to find out more about that.) But, what these snippets, snippets though they are, tell me is that Austrianist arguments (such as those of the Ron Paul camp most definitely are) are making headway in the USA, and are drawing people away from pro-government and anti-capitalist answers towards anti-government and pro-capitalist answers. Democrats, at least some Democrats, are morphing into Ron Paulites.
A generation of people who regard the Republicans as most emphatically part of the problem are staying anti-Republican, and accordingly pro-Democrat if that’s the only option they are offered. But if someone comes to them, as Ron Paul supporters did during the early stages of the Occupy Movement, saying: “You are right about the problem! The banks are indeed screwed! But let us tell you who screwed them and how to unscrew them. The government screwed the banks, and the way to unscrew the banks is to get the government out of the banking business” … well, that cuts some ice. “We believe this stuff because we believe it. We are only Republicans tactically, insofar as we can push them in our direction. To join us, you do not have to be a Republican.”
Learn more about the Paulist influence on the Republicans by looking at the comments on this recent posting by me here about the Tea Party.
So maybe Steve Baker’s approach is entirely right, and I am just being impatient.
LATER: See also this on the Tea Party, and of course: this on giving libertarianism a ‘left hook’.
LATER (via Guido): In Paul they trust ….
I’m at least a week late with this picture (illness blah blah), but it remains one of my favourite Olympics images, snapped by one of my favourite bloggers, Mick Hartley:
Suddenly I heard myself asking: Yes, why couldn’t those damn rioters have waited until the Olympics? Not really, but I did think it. (What I really think is that rioters shouldn’t. And before anyone says, it’s different if all you do is call yourselves a Riot and play noisy tunes.)
But to take my question seriously, I suppose rioters can tell when they’ll be allowed to run riot for a little while, and when they absolutely will not. Had they tried anything seriously wicked during the Olympics, they would have been crushed without mercy, the crushing egged on by the very people who, during and after the actual riots, were most sympathetic towards the rioters.
Interestingly, a little two-part BBC2 TV show about the riots was billed in the Radio Times to be shown just before the Olympics. But then it was postponed.
I am now recovering from an illness. While ill, the only thing I could manage to pay much attention to, other than the various pains in my head, was the Kevin Pietersen Affair, the contemplation of which, to an England cricket fan like me, is a not dissimilar experience to that of being ill.
Today at Lord’s, the sacred home of cricket, England are embarking on the third and final game in their five day test cricket series against South Africa, but without Kevin Pietersen. Pietersen scored a brilliant century in the previous game. But no, he is not injured. He has been dropped.
Pietersen sent out disloyal tweets about the England captain and coach, for which transgression he did apologise, but too late. You can read the details, in the unlikely event that you want to, in media reports like this one, where phrases like “underlying issues on trust and respect” appear.
Where my interest in all this (I could write about it for ever) and the interest of Samizdata readers (who would presumably prefer me to keep a lid on it) may overlap, or so I hope, is in the big picture background to all this. Which is, in a word: India.
From time to time, usually, as now, from a writer trying to use such circumstances as a metaphor, you read about planetary objects being subjected by much heavier objects in their vicinity to gravitational forces so severe that different parts of the smaller planetary object start to be pulled in different directions, perhaps so severely that the smaller object threatens to fly into pieces. This is what is now happening to cricket in England, under the influence of that much larger cricketing object, cricket in India. Cricket is now like a solar system, and the quite big planet that is England cricket is being yanked about by the gravitational forces being exerted upon it by the Sun. And that Sun is: India.
The background to the argument between Kevin Pietersen and the E(ngland and Wales) C(ricket) B(oard), the people who run the Engand cricket team, is that Kevin Pietersen desires to be both an England international cricketer, and also to maximise his income (and also enjoyment and ego-massage) from cricket by all other available means, while nevertheless contriving somehow not to drop dead from physical and mental exhaustion. In particular, Pietersen yearns to be both an England cricketer and a fully paid up (very well paid up indeed) player in the Indian Premier League, the Indian twenty overs tournament that takes place in April and May of each year.
The ECB treats the IPL as just another foreign cricket league, concerning which they need to care very little. It’s a nuisance to their arrangements, but no more. They do not – or such seems their attitude – need to contrive any “window” to allow England cricketers to neglect their early season England cricket in order to cash in from a meaningless foreign slogfest, and then allow them time off from England games, or preparations for England games, so that they can avoid becoming completely exhausted. They pay England players well, and that should be quite enough, is their attitude.
But for any cricketer good enough or lucky enough to get a contract to be part of it, the IPL can be the difference between an anxious transition, when the time comes, from professional sport to the rigours of real life, and being financially secure for life, especially if he does well in it and gets asked back several times. During the limited time when Pietersen was able to play in this year’s IPL (he had to leave before the tournament ended), he did very well, scoring another brilliant century, for the Deccan Chargers Delhi Daredevils.
The over-arching fact about cricket now is that the IPL is not just another tournament in a faraway country. It is the first great assertion in the cricket world – the cricket world – of the massive economic power of Indian cricket fandom. As I never tire of saying in my various cricket blog postings, there are more cricket fans in India than there are people in Europe. I remember when the millions of India were famous only for starving. Now, these same millions are striding towards twenty first century affluence. And they are taking cricket with them.
If India really, really wants to watch you play twenty twenty cricket for a month and a half, at a time when cricket in England is only getting started in weather that is often vile (despite anything the Met Office may have told cricket people about such months getting warmer), then if you are a cricketer, you really, really want to say yes. → Continue reading: Kevin Pietersen and the rise of India
Now that the likes of yours truly are back from holiday to a post-Olympic London, I have been reading about the number of people who noted how quiet London (outside the Games areas) has been. Tranquil streets, empty restaurants, that sort of thing. It appears that the authorities, such as Transport For London, did a “good” job, in a way, in putting the fear of God into the domestic populace. Janet Daley writes:
“What I had not anticipated was that the spectacularly effective campaign of advance warnings and threats to London’s travelling public would cause so much of its working population to abandon the capital. Thus the evacuation of traditionally depressive, harassed, exhausted Londoners made way for the arrival of a lot of rather sweet, smiley people who turned the city into a very jolly and, momentarily, carefree place.”
I am very pleased the event has gone off well. Not least because there were not (unless it has been kept secret) any major security problems at the Games. Lots of sportsmen and women had a grand old time, the capital looked pretty good to outsiders, etc.
The last two weeks does certainly prove that if certain organisations want to convince Londoners that they should get out, they will. Holding the Games in August also helped. And the terrible summer weather leading up to the Games also encouraged a lot of us to hit the airports and railway stations. I may have missed some of the buzz of Olympic London, but the lovely countryside and weather in Southwestern France more than compensated for it.
There is, of course, the matter of the cost of all this. To borrow from Frederic Bastiat, the French economics and legal writer, we can all see the benefits of shiny new stadiums, swimming pools and cycle tracks. That is seen. What is not seen are the things and services that will not be supplied or made due to the taxes and other charges imposed to make the Olympics happen. There are no photos of entrepreneurs whose business plans might be stillborn from such costs, for example. I doubt whether Lord Coe or other Olympic grandees gave much thought to the opportunity costs of such events, or cared. And the insights of Bastiat apply to other “eye-catching” projects: space flights, high speed rail, big aircraft carriers, etc.
Anyway, I am not going to rain on the parade of what appears to have been a successful event. But being the Adam Smith libertarian that I am, it would be remiss not to remind fans of big sporting jamborees that these things have a cost, and the costs will be borne by those quite different, sometimes, from the beneficiaries.
If you think £2m for a project without any policy implications is expensive, just imagine how expensive it would have been with policy implications.
– The IEA’s Kristian Niemitz on the Office for National Statistic’s venture in ‘happiness research’.
The investment strike is one the government would do well to bust, writes Michael Burke in the Guardian. When I read the headline I gave him the benefit of the doubt. The Guardian subs do not cope well with nuance. But the headline fairly represents the views of the man:
Since both the cause of the slump and the cause of the deficit are the same, the investment strike by firms, economically the remedy is very simple. Government policy should aim break that strike and release sufficient resources to fund an investment-led recovery.
I bet them fancy-pants government ministers are kicking themselves now they see how easy the solution is. You just redefine thousands of separate people and organisations not wishing to risk their money in the present economic climate as a ‘strike’. Then you break the strike.
Don’t knock Mr Burke’s logic – when the British government redefines pretty much any behaviour it does not like as ‘terrorism’ and then uses anti-terrorism powers to suppress it, the tactic seems to work just fine.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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