Forget Orwell and boots stamping on your face, welcome to Cuddly Fascism

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever. George Orwell



Such a familiar image of oppression, yet the truth about big government is that it's not a boot but a huge, suppressing comfort blanket of good intention. Welcome to 21st century cuddly fascism.

The idea of national service is a popular subject for the florid gentleman leaning on one end of the (currently closed) pub bar. These days the fellow is probably too young (the youngest men who did national service are now 81) to have done national service but you'll know the line of argument - "would do them good, toughen them up, give them discipline, get a sense of national pride". In academic terms the words look like this:

Societal ownership itself underpins resilience. Awareness of the need for security creates a more robust society, and that in itself provides a level of protection as it reduces the returns on attack. Public engagement in defence creates a level of mass participation, which itself leads to resilience. This rests on the integration of the armed forces within the community, and in particular on direct evidence of their contribution to security. A lack of mature public engagement creates a lack of national resilience.

This sounds to me a bit like a sort of schoolboy understanding of Sparta: resilient, tough, focus on nation, sacrifice, honour. These martial values are seen as central to a strong, effective and prepared society, things to be valued above those bourgeois virtues associated with an open liberal society.

Although I am a conservative and, as we all should be, respectful of the contribution, commitment and, when it matters, sacrifice of our armed services, I take the view that having a less prominent military is a good thing (would that we could do likewise with the increasingly militarised police). A sign of a peaceful country engaged positively with the world. I do not think it in our long term interest to be seen, in the manner of the USA or China, waving our military might about - we do more good internationally with foreign aid, the regular diplomatic service and endeavours to open up trade than with big ships and shiny planes.

The report those words above come from doesn't propose reintroducing national service but rather says that we have "...a near-universal and almost impermeable consensus against even discussing national service." The suggestion here is that because other places (Germany, Denmark, Estonia, France) have debates about the purpose of their existing conscription systems, we should be doing likewise despite having abolished our system 60 years ago.

Proposals like this are part of a slow drift away from an open liberal society towards what I call "cuddly fascism". This is best typified right now by those who justify the use of surveillance systems similar to that in China but we might also add enthusiasm for business licencing, public space protection orders (PSPOs), ASBOs and the revisiting of old demons through calls for bans on alcohol, tobacco and foods deemed "unhealthy".

At the heart of all this - other than military and state-directed technology like surveillance and tracking systems - is a distrust of innovation. There is no objective reason to believe that an app-based, cash-free taxi system such as Uber is less safe than traditional licence-based taxi systems yet the political power of existing taxi businesses has meant, almost everywhere, a direct attack on Uber and Lyft's innovation by local licencing authorities. This local protectionism is commonplace among people who would consider themselves centrist and moderate - the shopkeeper who argues that another competing shop shouldn't open on 'his' high street, the hairdresser who campaigns for occupational licensing knowing it will limit market entry, the doctors trade union that limits how many doctors get trained again protecting their market interest.

This dislike of innovation extends to proposals to tax it - the widespread calls for an "Amazon Tax" to save the high street is a fine example. The proposal is quite simple, lobbyists for high street retailers want a tax on Internet sellers that is then spent on traditional shops and high streets (in some unspecified manner). This tax will be paid by customers of online retailers and is a tax on their convenience, choice and embracing of innovation (just as taxi licensing strictures are de facto a tax on consumers of innovations like Uber). Of course, the initial tax - assuming the government is illiberal enough to introduce one - will not be high enough and each budget cycle will see the lobbyists out in force calling for a higher rate "to save our dying high streets".

If you go to Keighley Market (and you should because it is a good place), you'll see that Bradford Council's Markets Service has put up a permanent sign explaining (erroneously) that buying with independent traders means supporting a real family's life rather than a CEO's new boat. Now, while I'm all in favour of independent shops and businesses (remember those big businesses you are told to hate started out this way), it is simply untrue to suggest that the profits of the market trader selling you a t-shirt are different from the profits of the big chain store or on-line retailer and that the wages of the mum serving at the checkout or the dad measuring your waist are somehow not going to help their families. We are, however, bombarded almost daily with stories of the evils of big busineses - from allegedly dodging taxes though to accusations of price gouging or (often at the same time) undercutting the small shop.

This attack on business and on the people who run businesses is a persistent theme in this centrist cuddly fascism. People who own businesses are not to be trusted, the businessman or woman is presented as cynical, exploitative and immoral in popular drama and fiction - I'm sure there are sympathetic portrayals of business people but they are swamped by an mudslide of devious traders, sinister bankers, ruthless managers and exploitative owners. So, taking our lead from Which or Martin Lewis or Esther Rantzen, we call for limits, restrictions, rules, registrations, regulations and reporting requirements that will stop the bad stuff. What we don't realise, of course, is that 99.99% or more of transactions are entirely open, transparent and mutually beneficial - we get fantastic consumer value from the ideas and innovation of business people, they get profit.

And we know who is the big winner with all this innovation for profits because they gave William Nordhaus a Nobel Prize in Economics for working out the return to entrepreneurship:

We conclude that only a minuscule fraction of the social returns from technological advances over the 1948-2001 period was captured by producers, indicating that most of the benefits of technological change are passed on to consumers rather than captured by producers.

Those returns in value are about 2% meaning that, while Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Larry Page are spectacularly rich, nearly all of the value from their innovations has gone to us consumers using Bill's operating system, Larry's search engine and Jeff's on-line market to improve our lives. Yet cuddly fascism tells us that somehow even that tiny part of the wealth generated accrued to the entrepreneur should be taken from them through punative taxation. Or worse, through the Supply Chain Fallacy, claiming that somehow, as Deidre McCloskey put it, "...if a scientist got a National Foundation Fellowship when she was a graduate student, then all her subsequent works can be attributed to the government."

Of course this, like giving kids purpose though national service, saving the high street and standing up for our traditional cabbies, is all cuddly and easy to justify. Just as we support draconian controls on outside drinking because we have insufficient support for the problem drinker and ridiculous clamp downs on playing music in stationery cars by young people when they've nowhere else to gather and listen. It's all tidier isn't it! We hand police the power to turn almost anything into an arrestable offence (check out the regulations on ASBOs and PSPOs if you don't believe me). Then we get surprised when, infused with the spirit of Judge Dredd, the police simply invent their own rules.

But we've nothing to hide, have we? Nothing to fear? Such is the standard response until, that is, the police turn up on your dorstep threatening arrest because you filmed a traffic warden or an error in identification brings the threat of prosecution or enforcement. Or someone overhears you expressing a robust view that eavesdropper considers 'offensive' - welcome to 'hate' crime enforcement, to people getting sacked for old Facebook posts and to police sternly telling a local councillor that, yes, 'hate' crime is as concerning as burglary or the street grooming of young people for sexual exploitation.

Britain is now one of the world's most spied on places - of the world's top ten most surveilled cities, eight are in China but sitting there at number six (one place, interestingly, ahead of Wuhan) is London. Not that this proliferation of spying seems to work, at least judging by London's rash of gang-related knife crime. The problem, however, with intrusive government not working is that the first response to failure isn't to try something different but to double down - more cameras, higher taxes, new police powers, additional enforcement officers, extra regulations and plenty of bans. We have convinced ourselves that social control works, that people want this social control and that it is what Henry Potter was on about in 'It's a Wonderful Life' when he bemoaned George Bailey offering people hope - "a discontented, lazy rabble instead of a thrifty, working class". The cuddly fascists want a compliant, thrifty working class - resilience they call it.

Potter's outlook - that the working class should know their place and what's good for them - is commonplace now among planners and policy-makers in government (and much less so among businesspeople who, surprisingly, see ordinary people bettering themselves as a good thing). Indeed, one of the features of our cuddly fascism is the cultifying of national institutions - police, army, courts and, above all, the health system. These institutions are, we're told, noble in an ancient, pre-liberty way, filled with selfless people acting for the public good and driven by a mystical 'public service ethos'. The grubby ways of business are not for such people and the institutions they profit from are beyond reproach. And, of course, are protected from reproach by social control and regulation.

The NHS is the finest example of how we have turned a national institution into a sort of new religion - "Our NHS" is filled with saints and angels. Don't get me wrong here, what I said earlier about the armed services applies to those providing a health service, like most people I'm appreciative of their dedication, skill and knowledge. What I don't see is that these people are any more dedicated, skilled or knowledgeable than those in other health systems that aren't centralised, single-payer models of provision. Yet the need to protect our health system has been a major element in health planning - even before the need to manage NHS capacity during a pandemic that led to the recent lockdown. And a common theme in this urge to protect has been the targeting of lifestyle choices, most commonly around drinking, smoking and eating the wrong food.

Our centrist cuddly fascists have adopted modern public health - "think how much it will cost the NHS" - as a justification for stopping businesses from opening, taxes on food deemed "unhealthy", tighter licencing, for price interventions, bans and a puritanican dislike of any pleasurable activity that lacks some greater purpose. Local councils have 'play strategies' for children ("play is important to child mental health") rather than just allowing those children to just play. Even worse, on a different shelf to the play strategy is a bigger book filled with all the reasons why children shouldn't do this, or that or the other: don't kick a ball here, don't climb, don't run, don't slide, don't swing. Keep off the grass, keep out of the water, keep on the path. Above all, our cuddly fascists believe, children should be learning and developing from play - so much for just larking about.

I started with the idea that young people should be forced to carry guns and march up and down - for their own good and to benefit a thing called national resilience. It seems to me that this idea comes from the same place - I've called it cuddly fascism - as a lot of other things that governments do. From trying to use planning controls to improve health and in doing so stopping a new business starting, through regulations and taxes designed to halt innovative ways of providing consumer value, to outright attacks, bans and controls on people's personal choices. All overseen by a benign, 'Brave New World' of surveillance and self-enforced social control - some like former Cameron advisor Claire Foges even want a cuddly digital ID card ("so convenient, so safe").

I fear that we will be the worse for all this extension of government into our lives but hope that, somehow, the instinct for betterment, innovation and creative destruction isn't stopped by a government more interested in resilience, order and enforced good behaviour than in allowing freedom to do what it does best, make everyone's lives better.

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