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Regular readers will be familiar with my theory that Britain’s current system of government is ‘soft fascism’. The Labour Party conference has been providing lots more support for the idea.
There on the front of the podium for every speech, in stark red letters, is the slogan for the event, “Strength to change Britain.” Four words, capturing the key fascist notions of power, forward movement, and national identity. Because it is a slogan, we know that an offer is being made to us; but the content of the offer is naked power, not what will be done with it. It is not for us to evaluate whether the change will be for the better. Impressive concision.
Then there was Gordon Brown’s speech. Do read the whole thing. Plenty of people have noticed how authoritarian it was in tone and content. But one vague, putatively educational, promise struck me as an epitome. It sounds like a promise, but think about it and it can only be interpreted as a threat.
My message, our message, is and must be: if you try hard, we will help you make the most of your talents.
The important questions are begged. “Try hard’ at what? Who decides what counts as trying hard? The state, that’s who. Officially approved activity will be supported, but anything else is on conditional sufferance. Your choices are a privilege granted by the state, and how you exercise them will be watched.
“The right for company boards to make their own decisions, but obligations to the rest of society too,” may come as a surprise to those who believed there were independent institutions in civil society and taking one’s own decisions was a consequence of free will, not a politically determined option. If it does, you haven’t been paying attention for the last 10 years.
“[A] Britain of mutual obligation” does not mean a Britain of mutual exchange. The voluntary mutuality of the co-operative movement is far behind us. ‘Mutual’ is a decoration, used to mean, if anything ‘universal’. The emphasis is on obligation. Ob ligare. Brown’s bondage. A country the opposite of free.
Ask for this great Deliverer now, and find him
Eyeless in Gaza, at the mill with slaves,
Himself in bonds under Philistian yoke
His supreme blogness, Glenn Reynolds, likes to put up posts about disaster preparedness and pretty much anything that encourages people to figure out for themselves how to deal with emergencies, protect themselves from danger and protect their loved ones or indeed strangers out of simple human generosity. Being a broadly libertarian character, Reynolds defends the use of firearms in self defence but there is much more to it than that, including knowing about first aid, dealing with sudden loss of electric power, drinking water, and so on (I would be interested to know how many commenters here have studied first aid or rescuing people in difficult situations, like from drowning).
Glenn has a round-up of links here which is pretty good. I could not help notice the contrast between Reynolds’ very American can-do attitude with the sort of pathetic, rule-obsessed attitude demonstrated by so-called police officers who failed to act, at least with great urgency, to prevent the drowning of a young lad.
When I hear people talk about the erosion of civil society under the impact of officialdom, it is tragedies like this recent story that demonstrate what I mean.
The decision of the British government to rescue Northern Rock, the mortgage lender, with billions of pounds of taxpayer’s money, represents a terrible long-term blunder, in my view. It may also put the UK afoul of EU law, for those that care about such matters. Of course one feels very sorry for the people who have savings with NR and I suppose many of them are mightily relieved at the turn of events. I am sure I would be relieved if I were in their position.
But hard cases make bad law, and bad policy. Consider what has happened: a company gets itself into a pickle because its funding policies are up-ended by a sudden rise in short-term interbank borrowing costs; fears grow that the firm cannot make good all its commitments and a bank run occurs. Before the days when financial institutions of a certain size were considered too large to be allowed to fail, the collapse, however tragic, of Northern Rock would have been seen as a necessary if very nasty reminder that capitalism has its risks.
Banks and other institutions that lend money must not lend to people without being sure of the latter’s credit worthiness. But that caution has been thrown to the winds in recent years: in the US and Britain, for example, borrowing covenants have been relaxed, and pretty much any sentient lifeform has been able to get a mortgage. Some financial institutions are to blame for their plight although in mitigation, the price signals that are the essential feature of markets have been distorted by a long stretch of cheap money. The ultimate culprits, as I said the other day, are the central banks and their historically low interest rates. With so much cheap liquidity, the sort of returns investors made on safe investments were peanuts and so they took greater risks for often only a slightly higher reward. We are now moving to a position where risk is more realistically priced. The Northern Rock bailout undermines that move.
The rescue of Northern Rock also shows that the supposed success by Margaret Thatcher and even John Major in rolling back socialism is itself an exaggeration. It proves that if a company is big enough, it can call on the public purse. Northern Rock, based in Labour Party heartland of the north-east, has been effectively nationalised by the government, and inevitably, the clamour will grow for more and arguably more deserving groups of people to be bailed out. I can think, for example, of the hundreds of thousands of people who face retirement without a decent pension because Gordon Brown, when he was Chancellor, helped to shaft private sector pensions by changes to how equity dividends are taxed. They are arguably far more deserving of some form of recompense.
Of course, if the Tories had any moral or political backbone – and they most certainly do not – they would have denounced this state of affairs, rather than take the easy way out of playing to the gallery by supporting the tax-funded bailout of Northern Rock. Back in the mid-1990s, when Barings went down due to dodgy trades in the derivatives market, the collapse was seen as a harsh but necessary lesson about the realities of risk. For a while, Barings served as a useful warning, far more useful than any group of regulations. With the rescue of Northern Rock, careless financiers will now regard the state as an easy touch.
When the Labour party came into office in 1997, government was already vast. Mr Major, the Conservative Prime Minister, had allowed government Welfare State spending to greatly increase, “we have spent more money than Labour promised to spend” was his boast, and the tide of European Union required regulations was in full flood.
Since 1997. after an initial lull, government Welfare State spending has continued to increase at a tremendous rate, taxes have greatly increased (and become vastly more complicated ) and most of the few limitations (the so-called “opt outs”) that Mr Major put on the flood of EU required regulations have been removed. There were also “little” things under the Labour government – like the looting of the private pension funds via a tax increase first considered by the ‘conservative’ government headed by Mr Major, the re-nationalization of the railways (most British people do not seem to know that “Network Rail” is 100% government owned) and the selling off of most of the nation’s gold reserves for fire sale prices.
Mr Brown.the current Prime Minister, has been in charge of the Labour government’s economic policies over the last ten years and his policy has been to have vastly more government spending, much higher and greatly more complex taxes, and more power for the EU, and so on. And so Mr Brown has been called a ‘Thatcherite’ by this week’s issue of The Economist. Now if you have read the above paragraphs you will understand why I find this… odd.
However, I suppose one could make a case.
After all, between 1979 and 1982 both taxes and government spending vastly increased in the United Kingdom (that was one reason why the world recession was worse here than in other lands – although the BBC broadcast about ‘cuts’ every day of this period of out-of-control government growth. Also in 1986 Mrs Thatcher agreed to the EU ‘Single Market’ which the EU used to require the tide of regulations that has flooded us since then.
However, Mrs Thatcher moved Chancellor Howe and replaced him with Chancellor Lawson. Nigel Lawson, for all his lack of understanding of monetary policy (he greatly expanded the money supply in the late 1980s as part of a scheme to rig the exchange rate between the British Pound and the German Mark, thus creating a boom-bust), at least believed in reducing, and making less complicated, taxes and controlling government spending. The fiscal policy of Mr Lawson, supported by Mrs Thatcher, of lower and less complicated taxes and controlling government spending is the exact opposite of the economic policy Mr Brown has followed. Although Mr Brown, via the “independent Bank of England” controlled by its government appointed board, has, like Mr Lawson before him, vastly increased the money supply in recent years – in spite of his claim not to want to create “boom and bust” (perhaps Mr Brown shares the demented notion, spread by the media and the “education system”, that boom-bust under Mr Lawson was caused by tax cuts).
So either Mr Lawson and Mrs Thatcher were ‘Thatcherites’ or Mr Brown is – Mr Brown and Mrs Thatcher can not both be Thatcherites.
There is also the point that Mrs Thatcher returned to private enterprise many state owned companies – whereas the Labour government has, as I pointed out above, re-nationalized the railways – network rail. Mrs Thatcher also regretted the flood of EU required regulations, feeling that she had been tricked, whereas there is no such regret from the current government. There are also other things, such as the PC policies of the present government (“diversity” and so on), but The Economist may have covered itself here by saying that Labour had “humanized “Thatcherism” by adding “social liberalism” to it – I suppose all this politically correct stuff could be what they mean by “social liberalism”.
However, there was also another part to The Economist article – this was the implication that “Thatcherism” was too free market and, therefore, bad. It was claimed that those Conservatives who wish to return to the principles of limited government and national independence that Mrs Thatcher believed in are fools – who did not understand that the lady won three landslide election victories for quite different reasons.
“Thatcherism”, we were told by The Economist, is understood by the British people to mean wicked “greed” and other such (the vast salary increases for certain people connected with central and local government under Mr Brown, and the vast increases in income for top people in certain politically connected companies and “charities” is somehow not “greed” – perhaps because of their PC “social liberalism”). So the Conservatives would be mad to return to it. The fact that millions of Conservative voters simply stayed at home, and have continued to stay at home, after Mr Major abandoned the principles of Mrs Thatcher was not even mentioned. This is more than a minor oversight.
So, according to The Economist, Mr Brown is a “Thatcherite” (although with a bit of PC “social liberalism” on top), but it would be very silly and wrong for the Conservatives to return to “Thatcherism”.
All very odd.
Iain Dale has an article in the Telegraph called Gordon Brown is out to destroy the Tories, which makes for interesting reading.
Not surprisingly I have a somewhat different take on what the implications of Gordon Brown’s “ruthless” political tactics would be, should he be successful and finally make the Tory’s collapse once and for all.
Of course Labour want to destroy the Tory party… as it is now ideologically indistinguishable from Labour under the dismal Cameron, they are clearly fighting for the same centre-left statist voters as neither side cares about conservatives.
As a consequence voters who are actual conservatives ideologically have only one genuinely conservative party to vote for and that is not the preposterous Blue-Green caring-sharing hug-a-hoodie tax-and-spend Tory party, it is UKIP. Thus is Gordon Brown well and truly “destroys” the Tory party, it might actually finally force the rump of suicidally loyal Tories to look elsewhere for their psephological fix on election day.
In fact if Brown manages to destroy the Tory party, he will be doing actual conservatives a great service (though in truth it will be ‘Dave’ Cameron and all those who voted for him to be leader who actually destroyed the party, not Brown).
London is the most expensive place to eat out in the world, even more pricey than Tokyo (a city I really want to visit). Not very surprising, I guess. The sheer financial vibrancy of London fuels this, although it may lose some oomph if the problems in the global markets lead to some job cuts in the investment banking industry.
The key thing I have learned is to be bloody careful about the wine. I find that even in a pricey restaurant, you can get away without paying a fortune so long as you go very easy on the booze. But as soon as you buy anything other than the cheapest plonk in the list, you might as well call in the receivers and sell the house. For this reason I rarely eat out in expensive places, unless it is a special occasion, or eat at my magnificent Tandoori restaurant in deepest Pimlico, which is right next door to my flat. Now that’s luxury for you.
Recommendation: try this place out for a special night out. Great staff.
Cartoonist and commentator Hugh MacLeod says it all about the organization with “an assured income of £3.5 billion a year” of forced funding:
On ‘Any Questions’ (BBC Radio 4) this week, whenever David Cameron’s name or policies were mentioned there were hoots of contempt from the audience. This was not a Labour or Liberal Democrat audience as the show was being broadcast from Stamford, one of the most conservative towns in England.
Also the panel treated Mr Cameron with contempt – not just the socialist and the Liberal Democrat (Greg Dyke ex-Director General of the BBC) but the two conservatives – the conservative (not Conservative party) ex-editor of the Sun newspaper and R. Johnson (sister of Boris Johnson).
At least it seems no one is fooled by ‘Dave’ any more.
By the way it was also funny to hear the “culture clash” between the socialist (Tariq Ali the student radical from the 1960’s) and the good people of Stamford.
He wanted to talk about revolution and the Iraq war – and they asked questions about people putting their shoes on train seats and about what was the members of the panel favourite song to sing in the bath.
Mr Ali clearly hates the English – especially when they are being Hobbit-like (perhaps he suspects they are just playing). As a serious future dictator he refused to reply to the silly questions of the Hobbits and got upset and snobbish. I was so upset for Tariq that I laughed and laughed.
I wonder if Mr Ali suspects that at least some of the people in the audience were not unfamiliar with serious things, indeed violent things. After all there are a lot of ex military people in Stamford – and not wildly far from the town are the Fens.
For a little while I actually felt optimistic.
This is the paragraph from the Times (of London) today about Gordon Brown’s plan to ‘shake up’ (whatever that means) UK politics:
Gordon Brown wants to use opposition MPs and citizens’ juries in his government to produce fresh ideas and energy
The idea of co-opting opposition MPs – in order to neuter them and implicate them in government decisions – is the classic move of undermining the sharp and necessary disagreements that are a healthy part of parliamentary democracy. As for the citizens’ juries bit, I doubt Gordo has in mind the canton system of local referenda that the Swiss use (if only). After all, Brown is not keen on a “citizen’s jury” when it comes to the recent EU constitution, sorry, I meant treaty, is he?
And it is only Monday.
Now it might seem odd that someone on record as being as hostile to the EU as me might hope that Gordon Brown gets his way and just bounces Britain into adopting the resurrected EU treaty against what is quite obviously the wishes of the majority of politically active people in Britain.
But that is what I want. I want the EU to get its way and for there to be a dramatic shift in power from London to Brussels, with commensurate huge diminution in democratic control of the political process in this country. I regard the fact Gordan Brown can look the nation in the eye and utter such a naked lie that the current offering is not, to quote the Chancellor of Germany, “the new constitutional document is the same as the old constitutional document: the only difference is that it doesn’t have European Constitution as its title”, with pure delight.
In short I want Gordon Brown to strip away the myth of the democratic accountability. I want the system that has been so seriously damaged over the last ten years to be broken in such a visible way that even the most purblind self-deluding fool can see just what sort of country they really live in. Let all sixty million people on this island hear the stream of pork pies issuing from the gob of the man in 10 Downing Street, with the entire apparatus of power standing behind him nodding.
Although very worthy folks like the UKIP will argue passionately for a referendum, knowing that their position will almost certain win (which is of course why it will not be allowed to happen), in truth the long term position of a fringe party like UKIP will be vastly improved if the ‘nightmare scenario’ does indeed come to pass. To actually break the current political monoculture will require far more really pissed off people than currently exist in Big Bruvvah anaesthetised Britain.
The system needs to break and millions of people need to be confronted with their political irrelevance before anything really… interesting… can happen.
So good luck Gordan, I wish you great success in screwing over your subject people and locking in the centrist regulatory Big State at the more remote European level. More and faster in fact.
Why is this scum called animal rights activists?
A notorious extremist group says it has tampered with more than 250 items containing the antiseptic, which is mainly used to treat children suffering from cuts and grazes, as part of a long-running campaign against an animal testing laboratory.
The group, calling itself the Animal Rights Militia, said it targeted Savlon in a “clear and uncompromising” manner because it believes its Swiss manufacturer, Novartis, to be a client of the research centre Huntingdon Life Sciences.
And it warned its campaign would continue unless the pharmaceutical firm ends its links with HLS.
The Telegraph article seems to serve as a platform for their statement and agenda instead of a report that these criminals have been arrested and appropriately dealt with.
This glorious article in the BBC website appeared today. I’d love to know whether the person who wrote this has a sense of irony. There is just a hint that he might:
Britons are “addicted” to cheap flights and confused about the climate impact of flying, according to research.
Well, at least the writer had the good grace to put addicted inside scare quotes.
Britons want to fly for a cheap fare. The horror.
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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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