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I do not think that George Walden, former Conservative MP and minister, cares much for David Cameron, according to this article that came out a few weeks ago. Excerpt:
The politics of sentiment increasingly dominate public discussion, and sentimentality tinged with cynicism was what Diana was about. The same is true of Cameron’s social politics. The cant of the new elites emerges with numbing shamelessness in his public declarations. Recently the one-time PR man for ruthlessly profitable trash TV made a heartfelt speech in which he said that money wasn’t everything, and that the quality of our culture mattered. In his more mawkish mode it is possible to discern in the Tory leader’s political pitch a faint echo of Diana’s Christ-like affectations. With her, it was a scrupulously choreographed contact with people sick with Aids. With Cameron, it is an ostentatious tolerance of the lower orders: suffer the hoodies and the hoodlums to come unto me.
Brrr… Walden might as well have called Cameron a patronising wanker. He must be glad the practice of duelling has been abolished.
Iain Dale, usually the most civil of commentators, is not impressed much by Walden, however:
Former Tory MP George Walden was one of Britain’s worst ever High Education Ministers. Since leaving Parliament he has earned a living writing pseudo-intellectual drivel about politics and culture. It’s usually unreadable. I attended a discussion evening with him and his wife a couple of years ago, organised by Living Marxism. He was insufferable and spent the whole evening putting down his wife. In the Independent on Sunday diary there is a piece on his book The New Elites in which he slags off David Cameron for “being a posh man pretending to be common”. Utter rubbish. But even if it were true, it’s better than a pub bore pretending to be an intellectual.
Aren’t Conservatives lovely?
Terrorism has always been cheap and easy, to be sure. The reason we do not have more has more to do with the tiny numbers of people it appeals to, and the sort of people it appeals to not generally being much good at practical organisation, than the competence of security forces. But modern governments and modern media appear to make terrorising the general population costless, workless and safe. Just hold a few meetings, send a few emails, and confess to plotting some extravagant crimes, and you are guaranteed to occupy the media for days.
Dhiren Barot, of north London, planned to use a radioactive “dirty bomb” in one of a series of attacks in the UK, Woolwich Crown Court heard.
Leave aside that ‘dirty bombs’ are not significantly more dangerous than ordinary bombs, but rely on superstitions about radioactive contamination – read further down the story:
The Crown could not dispute claims from the defence that no funding had been received for the projects, nor any vehicles or bomb-making materials acquired, [prosecuting counsel] said.
Barot had also faced 12 other charges: one of conspiracy to commit public nuisance, seven of making a record of information for terrorist purposes and four of possessing a record of information for terrorist purposes.
The judge ordered all these charges to lie on file following his guilty plea to conspiracy to murder.
The obesity crisis, epidemic, or whatever (is fatness contagious?) continues to keep the chattering classes busy. In the Daily Telegraph today, Andrew O’Hagan, of whom I was blissfully unaware until about a month ago when he sprung to the defence of Mel Gibson after he made his anti-Jewish rant, argues for stuff like taxing “junk food” and encouraging a whole cultural battle to get the moronic lower orders off their dietary habits. It is an article reeking of disdain for vast swathes of the UK population. Perhaps it is deserved. Many Britons are disgusting people, I suppose, but being the wild-eyed libertarian that I am, do not consider it my business to nag them into eating better by a mixture of state exhortation, punitive taxes and compulsory five-mile runs.
I am not entirely sure what to make of Mr O’Hagan, or indeed the decision of the right-leaning Telegraph to hire him. I thought his article on Gibson was a terrible piece, both patronising towards Jews, other groups, and offensive but perhaps a one-off lapse, one which might not be repeated. But pretty much everything he has written since seems to be entirely lacking in humour, grace or wit. I fear that paper is in one of its down-cycles. O’Hagan may perhaps fit in nicely into the modern Conservative Party.
For a related article on obesity, diet and the nanny state, read this by Jacob Sullum.
But not the usual suspects it appears. I just came across this story more less by accident.
David Bolais Jackson, 62, of Trent Road, Nelson, was arrested on Friday in the Lancaster area after leaving his Grange practice for the last time. Jackson was charged with being in possession of an explosive substance for an unlawful purpose. However, it is unclear who or what the intended target might have been.
Police found rocket launchers, chemicals, British National Party literature and a nuclear or biological suit at his home. The find came shortly after they had recovered 22 chemical components from the house of his alleged accomplice, Robert Cottage, a former BNP election candidate, who lives in Colne. The haul is thought to be the largest ever found at a house in this country.
Some BNP members stockpile the largest ever haul of explosives found at a house in the UK and this does not make the front page of the national media? Did I just somehow miss the articles about this in the Telegraph, Guardian and Times?
For what a political party is supposed to be, one should turn to Edmund Burke (the man who is often cited as the founder of modern Conservatism), who produced the classic defence of political party – defending it from the charge that is was simply a ‘faction’, a despised term in the 18th century and before, of people out for power.
Edmund Burke argued that a political party, as opposed to a faction, was a group of people allied around a set of principles – i.e. they were interested in how government acted, not just in who got power.
Burke’s argument was made more credible by the fact that the leader of his own party (the Rockingham Whigs) was the second Marquis of Rockingham.
Rockingham was well known to be uninterested in the financial benefits of political power or influence, his being one of the richest men in the land may have aided him in his disinterest, as may have the fact that his wealth came from his unsubsidized landed estates, and the Marquis was well known to be uninterested in power for its own sake (he would much rather give up office and return to running his estates or just watching horse racing, than commit any dishonourable act).
Rockingham was no weakling or fool (contrary to what is sometimes said, I hold him to have come to his principles before he met Burke rather than Burke having imposed principles upon him – they shared principles, neither imposed principles on the other), but it was clear that whatever led this man to politics (indeed to be the leader of a party and twice Prime Minister) it was neither financial advantage or lust for office or power.
Nor was it some vague ‘desire to serve’. Rockingham was loyal to the King – but he would not take office other than on his own principles. The Rockingham Whigs held that the power of the King should be limited, but they (or rather Rockingham and Burke and some others) held that government itself, whether from the King or Parliament, should be limited. That there should not be wars for trading advantage (as the older Pitt was alleged to have supported) and that taxes, government spending and regulations should be kept as limited as possible, and there should be no special projects for interests in the land whether those interests were rich or poor.
Rockingham was not good at writing or clever talk, indeed he had the strange English vice of never wishing to seem more intelligent than anyone he was talking to, and not pointing out an error in what someone was saying if he thought that doing so would undermine them or make them sad, but Burke was a good talking and writing and took up the task of explaining the principles of the Rockingham Whigs.
Sadly Burke was mistaken in thinking that all the Rockingham Whigs shared the same principles and this was to be seen after Rockingham died in 1782.
It is often said that the party broke up over the French Revolution. With most of the party following Charles James Fox, but some (such as the Duke of Portland and Earl Fitzwilliam, eventually coming to side with Burke on the Revolution), however the strain was clear years before the French Revolution.
Pitt the Younger proposed free trade (more or less) between Britain and Ireland whilst the Rockingham Whigs (led by Fox) opposed his bill. BUT Burke, and those who thought like him, opposed it on the grounds that it included a tax on Ireland, whereas Fox opposed it on the grounds that he did not wish to allow Irish goods free access into Britain.
More broadly, Burke (and those who thought like him) defined freedom as limited government (freedom from government), whereas Fox (and his followers) defined freedom as the rule of Parliament (a rule in the interests of ‘the people’ of course)… freedom as a ‘free government’.
Whilst the goal was to limit the power of the King, or rather of ‘the Crown’ as it was the interests around the throne, not George III himself that were the threat, there was common ground – but over time the basic difference in principles made itself felt. The French Revolution (in Burke’s eyes unlimited state power, in Fox’s eyes a new people’s government freeing itself from the King and ruling in the general interest) was just the great issue that made the clash of principles obvious.
So what is this all got to do with the modern British ‘Conservative’ party? → Continue reading: Why the British ‘Conservative’ party is not a political party at all
Just so you all know, and in case even Guy Herbert missed it, Joanna Lumley (who played the crazy blonde who lived on vodka in Ab Fab) has just said, on the Graham Norton show (BBC1 TV):
“Prepare my cell now, because I shall not have an ID card.”
She also took a swipe at surveillance cameras, and anti-smoking laws, and the fact that you cannot get within a mile of Number Ten to say boo. To quite enthusiastic applause. I would not imagine that this means very much, but it presumably means a little.
This morning, I went along to a business conference where the subject was on the issue of pensions (eyes suddenly glaze over, loses will to live, please when can I leave? Etc). One of the speakers was a certain Adair Turner, the man who, between 2003 and 2006, was chairman of the Pension Commission, a government-created body of the Great and the Good given the task of figuring out how to sort out Britain’s creaking pensions system – a big topic.
In his comments today, Turner spent a bit of time talking about what is known as ‘behavioural economics’ and how it shows that, far from being a utility-maximising creature, Man, often as not, behaves irrationally in ways that can be corrected with a spot of gentle paternalistic direction. In the case of pensions, many people simply do not save enough money to cover their old age, even if they know they should, so the argument goes. Other things, like paying off the credit card, or refurbishing a house, or paying for a new car, get in the way. As a result, Turner says we need to compel people – nicely of course – to sign up to pension schemes so that they do not become a burden on the future taxpayer. It is an approach that has in the past been dubbed ‘soft paternalism’ because it is borne out of the idea that economists and other supposedly clever people know better than we benighted citizens how we should arrange our affairs. It is not exactly out of the Ayn Rand handbook, is it?
I have several problems with this way of thinking. First off, if we are so lazy, short-sighted or plain thick to run things like our long-term savings, isn’t that rather corrosive of the idea of a nation of free citizens with the right to vote in elections? If a person is deemed incapable of saving for his dotage, should he be allowed to decide which careerist should get the keys to 10 Downing Street or the White House? Are we not endorsing a sort of elitist model of governance in new, supposedly scientific, garb? I think we are.
Soft paternalists also perhaps lose sight of why many people are so short-sighted in affairs such as planning for retirement. Over the past century, the Welfare State, and the associated rules and regulations over the private sector, have created a pensions saving system of horrendous complexity, way beyond what should be needed. Politicians have created this monster, so they should hardly then claim that even more intervention is needed to allay the public’s fears. Even the financially savviest citizen faces a forbidding task in trying to work out the best option for savings, even before they have grappled with the latest investment ideas, such as private equity, hedge funds, or whatnot. If one then realises that private savings and the incentives to save have been eroded by things like means-tested benefits and the Welfare State, it is perhaps not surprising at all that many modern Britons are supposedly incapable of thinking about these matters, let alone acting on the calls to save.
What I find depressing about the soft paternalist mindset is how little historical perspective it involves. 150 years ago, Britain was already well on the way to enjoying a vibrant and widening market for personal saving and investment through the existence of groups such as Friendly Societies (these were the precursors of the modern mutual insurance and life firms, and some of the names still carry old historical references, such as ‘National Mutual’ or ‘Friends Provident’). This web of saving vehicles, covering even poor industrial workers in Victorian Britain, was fatally weakened by the Fabian socialist thinkers and politicians before and after the First World War. ‘Liberal’ politician David Lloyd George, and many others, fashioned a welfare and pension system that eventually drove the old Friendly Societies out of the primary business of providing for old age and sickness, or at best, to the margins.
There is a positive and negative circle at work in this area. If you stifle the ability to acquire private savings, it means that you hamper also the accumulation of a deep and rich soil of self-reliance, responsibility and individual financial know-how.On the other hand, the more that people learn how to save for old age and see their parents doing this, the more confident they become, the less they fear independence and hence resist the easy charms of Big Government. The social and cultural consequences of Victorian mutualism and the subsequent decline have been well-documented by writers such as Ferdinand Mount, David Green of the Institute of Economic Affairs, and James Bartholomew.
So the next time you hear a policy wonk or newspaper writer chiding the feckless ordinary Briton for not saving enough, remember that Victorian statesmen like William E. Gladstone were so moved by the thrift and savings culture of industrial Britain that they became convinced that the humblest factory worker was entitled to run their own affairs. A bit of Gladstonian wisdom would not go amiss now. Soft-paternalism may sound nice and cuddly, but the long-term side effects are a steady weakening of positive financial habits.
There is nothing much these days, in the realm of public affairs, that excite me or provide any material degree of enthusiasm. Hence, I take my little nuggets of pleasure wherever I can find them. Occasionally, an exquisite irony will do.
Take the predictable storm over the comments of Jack Straw concerning the Islamic veil, the incidence of which is widepsread and growing on these shores. To my mind his observations are both fair and reasonable:
In his interview with the BBC’s Today programme, he said it is important in face-to-face meetings that both sides can see each other.
A plausible practical explanation. But what has much broader political impact is his belief that veils which cover the face are a “visible statement of separateness” that is “a barrier to social integration”.
Speaking for myself, I would go further. I find the veils (and particularly those black ‘tent-jobs’) rather sinister and creepy. That may not be the intention behind them but that is what they communicate to me and, while others may take a different view, I submit that not by any stretch of a sane mind could either Mr. Straw’s or my views be regarded as racist.
However, we do not live in sane times and, not a few nanoseconds after Mr. Straw’s words left his mouth, a whole troupe of the usual suspects were hopping up and down yodelling the ‘R’ word at the top of their lungs. Indeed, it took only a few hours Grievance Machine to get its gears in full spin:
The first sign of a racist reaction came in Liverpool on Friday when a man snatched a veil from a 49-year-old woman’s face after shouting racist abuse. Yesterday, protesters took to the streets of Mr Straw’s Blackburn constituency to vent their anger.
A ludicrous and hysterical response one might think, yet it is a response which has been nurtured, fostered and actively encouraged.
Seven years ago, and following on the recommendations of the Macpherson Report, the government instructed the police to adopt the recommendations into a formal set of guidelines which defined a ‘racist incident’ as:
“any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person.”
That interpreation is so wide as to amount to a form of administrative intimidation, designed to deter people from making the kind of remarks, even in private, which Mr. Straw has now made quite publicly. Surely the government of Western liberal democracy would insist on some degree of objectivity, no? Er, no:
In his Action Plan on the Report, the Home Secretary said that the Home Office would “ensure that the Inquiry’s simplified definition of a racist incident is universally adopted by the police, local government and other relevant agencies”.
And who was that Home Secretary? Yes, of course, it was the very same Mr. Jack Straw.
So here is some advice for you if you happen to be among the League of the Outraged: march yourself off to the nearest cop shop and report that you perceive Mr. Straw’s views as racist. The police are then obliged to record it as such. I doubt very much whether it would go any further than that but, who knows, word of it may just reach Mr. Straw.
If he not to be quite hoist by his own petard then, at least, his petard can be picked up and wielded like a wet fish to slap around his stupid head.
I have been keeping an eye on David Cameron’s videoblogging efforts since I was alerted to Webcameron by Thaddeus. It is providing an interesting depiction of the modern Conservative party. Take the entry where Cameron brags over the success of the recent Tory conference. He proudly declares
We had debates each day; should we ban advertising to children? Is it time to end cheap air travel? Are companies a force for good or not?
That Cameron thinks the first two questions are worth debating confirms he’s the statist grub most here labelled him long ago, but when the final ponderance was mooted, someone really should have jumped up and declared the affirmative answer beyond question, and if anyone wants to debate this further then here’s what they need to do to resign their membership of the party. Completely disregarding the outcome of this debate, I find it absolutely jaw-dropping that the Tories would hold a discussion over whether companies are a beneficial force in society. Unbelievable.
Muslims in Britain should start taking a good look at the auguries. Windsor, a town known for its genteel (and tourist infested) tearooms, has been playing host to low level riots and violence by enraged English youths for several nights now, sparked by Muslim thugs attacking a mother and daughter and by aggressive demands for a mosque to be built in the overwhelmingly non-Muslim town.
At the same time, Leader of the Common Jack Straw has been saying publicly that he would rather that Muslim women not wear veils as it is deeply divisive socially.
The Blackburn MP has come under fire after he said the veil could be seen as “a visible statement of separation and difference” […] Writing in yesterday’s Lancashire Telegraph, Mr Straw revealed he had asked Muslim women visiting his surgeries to remove their veils because he values “face-to-face” contact.
He is not calling for state imposed dress codes (which I would strongly oppose) but he is making a self-evident statement about Muslim non-assimilation. Quite rightly he has not made this a broader contention as I have yet to hear anyone voice concern over Hindu women wearing saris or Chinese women wearing cheong sams (I should think not!), because although some Chinese and Hindus choose not to assimilate (but of course many do), they are not calling for their cultures and beliefs to be legally off-limits from criticism or ridicule. It is only Muslim non-integration in the UK that is really a problem because of an apparently widespread Muslim unwillingness to reciprocate tolerance for tolerance.
The bigger point here is, of course, not that Jack Straw personally thinks it is unwise that Muslims make themselves so visibly separate from broader British society but that the Leader of the Commons should feel it appropriate to say something that was obviously going to upset a body of Muslim opinion in the UK. This was not an off-the-cuff remark and moreover, he has repeated it and elaborated on the point.
I would say that elements of the political class are starting to notice that increasing numbers of the fifty eight million non-Muslims in Britain are growing a great deal less tolerant of intrusive Muslim demands on their tolerance. There comes a time when people start to think enough is enough. In the end, democratic politicians stay in business by positioning themselves to be on the right side of that sort of ‘mass market’ issue and that is something Muslim ‘community leaders’ would do well to ponder when they do a little projecting into the future, assuming they actually want Muslims in Britain to have a future.
A Muslim police officer has been allowed to refuse to guard the Israeli embassy in London.
A spokesman for Scotland Yard said Sir Ian had ordered a rethink of the service’s policy to consider special dispensations on moral grounds
A ‘rethink’? When ordered to carry out his job and protect a location within the United Kingdom from unlawful attack, PC Alexander Omar Basha took the view that it would be immoral to protect that place (in other words, he refused to enforce British law regarding possible acts of violence because of who the potential target was). The only ‘rethink’ needed is why was he not fired on the spot? I wonder… has a Jewish policeman in the UK attached to the Diplomatic Protection Group ever refused to guard the embassy of a Muslim country in Britain?
So tell me, if a policeman who was a member of the BNP refused to protect an African embassy, do you think the Metropolitan Police would need even ten seconds for a ‘rethink’?
It is hard for us (as libertarians) to understand just how radical even freezing government spending in real terms is. The UK Independence Party policy on government spending is, by modern standards, very radical [pdf document].
The UK Independence Party will tomorrow (3rd October) announce a 33 per cent flat rate income tax for all, including National Insurance contributions, as part of a sweeping tax policy review. The review includes increasing the level that can be earned free of tax to £9,000, scrapping the loathed inheritance tax altogether and reducing Capital Gains to 33 per cent. Party Leader, Nigel Farage MEP, will throw a challenge to Tory Leader David Cameron by setting a clear tax cutting agenda that will attract many members of the Conservative Party.
[…]
UKIP Economic spokesman, John Whittaker MEP, said: “The country does not accept the argument that improvements in ‘front line’ public services require ever-increasing Government expenditure. Huge sums of money have been poured in but have not improved services proportionately to the amount taxpayers have paid and have a right to expect
The last time there was anything like this was 1976-1977 when, under IMF orders, the brakes were put on UK government spending. The situation by the time of the next General Election will be similar (vast government spending and an exploding (13.7% ‘broad money’ growth at the moment) money supply, or in ‘modern’ language an ‘expansive fiscal and monetary policy’, having undermined the economy) – so the UKIP is being farsighted. Clearly they think that economic breakdown can still be avoided (and in technical terms they are correct – although the culture may have decayed to such a point that avoiding collapse is not ‘practical politics’).
As for unifying the income tax and ‘national insurance’ systems – Australia and New Zealand did this long ago. National Insurance is a tax, it is not a ‘contribution’.
A flat rate income tax makes good administrative sense and getting rid of the top rates of income tax would indeed stimulate the economy and benefit everyone bar tax lawyers. Getting some poor people out of the tax system would not boost revenue – but it is a political price one has to pay for getting rid of the 40% rate. Of course I would like to see a lower overall rate than 33% – but one must remember that there would be no ‘national insurance’ tax anymore. Also, if the poor no longer paid income tax, there would be no excuse for Mr Brown’s wildly complex and expensive ‘tax credits’.
Getting rid of the inheritance tax is a logical move already done in Canada and other nations. Inheritance tax just encourages people to spend their capital (and then live off the state) – rather than invest for the long term in the hope that their children will see the benefit.
It is sad that the absurd Capital Gains Tax is to stay – cutting it is good, but it is a mad (and hard to administer) tax that causes great harm.
Converting the wildly complicated and open to fraud VAT into a sales tax is a good idea (and they are correct that this is not lawful under EU law). However, making the new sales tax a local tax would mean an end to the Council Tax (which would be popular) and one could get rid of all national government subsidies to local government as well (which would allow a reduction in the combined income and social security tax).
Overall a ‘good as far as it goes package’ – certainly vastly better than the increasingly ironically named ‘Conservatives’ whose shadow Chancellor said on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that it was “unlikely” that he would put UP taxes… but would consider it.
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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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