Let's be a property-owning democracy not a land of wage-slaves and renters

It's hard to find a better definition of what it means to be a Conservative than this:

We want a country which makes the fullest use of all its human and material resources to build a new prosperity. A country which uses that prosperity wisely and well, helping the elderly and those in need, providing new educational opportunity for our children, investing for the future as well as giving us a fuller life today. A country confident in itself, playing a full part in the world's affairs, accepting and meeting its responsibilities to others.

We want a society in which material advance goes hand in hand with the deeper values which go to make up the quality of life. A society which cares for its cities, towns and villages, its rivers, its coast, its countryside.

We want people to achieve the security and independence of personal ownership greater freedom of opportunity, greater freedom of choice, greater freedom from government regulation and interference. A responsible democracy based on honest government and respect for the law.

These values and the mission they encompass represent the timeless principles of Britain's Conservative Party. This particular version comes from the Party's manifesto for the 1970 General Election signed off by my old boss, Ted Heath but their origins go back to the origins of the modern party, to Robert Peel, Benjamin Disraeli, to the embracing of free trade and the extending of the franchise, to the idea - represented today by Robert Halfon and Tory Workers - that our over-riding purpose is to improve the condition of ordinary people. This is a soft, gentle, caring and polite party not one that speaks of 'traitors' or 'saboteurs', not one that runs campaigns to unseat good, hard-working MPs because you disagree with them on one particular issue.

I chose the 1970 Manifesto because it's the one that took us into the Common Market reminding us that our core values and purpose are not, and never have been, defined by the issue of Europe. Right now the issue seems so huge and important that it swamps everything but sooner than you think we will move on from it and have to, once again, look at how we make a better nation for British people. I hope we will do what we've done before and say loudly and clearly that we stand first and foremost for decency, good government, personal responsibility, trust, family and community. And at the heart of this, once again, we have to put the promise that Ted Heath made in 1970 and Margaret Thatcher made in 1979 - a promise that we will give ordinary people the chance for a real cash stake in Britain, that we'll be a property-owning democracy not a land of wage slaves and renters dependent on the state.

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The Scots drink because of Thatcher. Seriously.

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The Scottish health minister is perhaps the capo di tutti capi of nannying fussbuckets, a champion of extreme health fascism and user of any stray lie to justify his gross bigotry.

But this one takes the whole biscuit barrel:

Health Secretary Alex Neil has claimed that former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher is to blame for the drink culture in Scotland.

Apparently the Scots were frogmarched down to the offie by Maggie and made to buy Tennant's Super and Buckfast Tonic Wine. Before 1979 no Scot ever had a drink stronger than Irn Bru, of course.

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Socialism died in 1989 - now we must destroy its shadow

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Socialism died at the end of the 1980s. For sure, its corpse twitched and jerked for a few years but there's no doubt that it died. And that it won't be missed. Here's Dan Hodges reminding us:

She won. Hers was not a superficial victory, but a final settlement. In the 1980s the Left framed the battle with Thatcherism as a final reckoning. And they were right, it was. And it was Thatcher who emerged victorious.

In truth it wasn't just Margaret Thatcher or even her and Ronald Reagan. It was a catalogue of great men and women - Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, Helmut Kohl, even Gorbachev from the evil empire.

Socialism died. The trouble is so many didn't get the news. They didn't see how free enterprise, free trade, privatisation and free capital movement - that lovely neoliberalism - was making the world a better place. Wealthier, happier, more equal - all the things those socialists claimed for their failed creed. Except for the actually working bit.

It beggars belief that intelligent people continue to delude themselves that we can plan, organise and direct all the economy. That clever men can make better choices for you and me than we can make for ourselves. Eastern Europe - all those Poles, Slovaks, Romanians and Bulgars we fear will flock to England - is poor because of socialism. It really is that simple.

The next generation has to destroy the shadow of this dead creed. Or else we will watch as other places - places we once pitied as starving basket cases - start to catch us up. Watch as we squander the inheritance of our past success on a make believe economy - one where public spending, the modern equivalent of taking in each others washing, creeps ever higher and where the chimera of borrowing-driven consumption eats away at wealth and prosperity.

If we don't slay socialism's shadow, we will all be poorer. And for some that may mean the relative poverty socialists bleat about becoming real poverty. A poverty created by the vainglory and hubris of the socialist.

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Thanks Maggie (plus an old quote of mine)

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Others will write finer prose, there will be a great deal of it too, so I will stick to two things - a one word appreciation of all that Margaret Thatcher did for Britain and a recycled quote from something I wrote in 2009.

The one word - it should be on all our lips really - is thanks.

And the quote - written following one of the periodic occasions when a Labour councillor talked of celebrating Maggie's death:

It’s nearly 20 years since the great lady left office – 12 of which years having been under a Labour Government. For most of those involved in this spat, Maggie is but a memory – even if they were born before 1990 their memories are those of a small child or those transferred across the generation from parent to child. Yes the scars of deindustrialisation, the impact on places like Barnsley of pit closure continue to inform us about the politics of such places ...but the left should look forward – to how their ideas might influence the shape of tomorrow’s world not backwards to dreams of a place that’s gone and won’t come back.

I never considered myself a “Thatcherite” – altogether too whiggish, too Gladstonian for my tastes. But those ten years transformed my country – painfully for sure but changed nonetheless – and made it possible for the small battalions to climb back out of the place they were hiding. Championing those folk is the challenge for me – and it should be something both left and right can support. We do not need big institutions, grand national organisations – we need things local, people-sized, participatory and independent of big government.

So thanks Maggie. RIP.

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Faking offence, pointless apology and how Maggie continues to defeat the left

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As is often the case with these things we’ve got swept along in silliness as a result of some faux offence taken by eminent blogger, Tory Bear over some tasteless comments from a Barnsley Councillor, Tim Cheetham about Margaret Thatcher’s demise – comments cast still further out into the world by Ellie Gellard who has made the use of “snide” into a (rather unpleasant) tool of political campaigning.

There are however some real concerns here – firstly about fake offence, secondly about “apologising” and thirdly about Margaret Thatcher.

We undermine our criticism of those who leap to take advantage from being offended if we adopt the same position for political gain. I suppose Cllr Cheetham should know better but who am I to talk? And what we do in taking this faux offence is play the left’s game of victimhood. Was Tory Bear really so offended by the tasteless joke or did it just become a reason for having a go – for calling for apologies

Which brings us to apologies – I was always told that forgiveness only comes when the apology is meant. Again we see the use of apology – and calls for apology – as a political tool. Had Cllr Cheetham grovelled, squirmed and said “ever so, sorry Mr Bear” would he have meant it? Or would it have just been a necessary act in his mind? And since there is no evidence that the offence is sincere why should Tim and Ellie compound the dishonesty by apologising? And isn’t the likeliest person to be offended Margaret Thatcher?

And so to why the left should move on from Maggie-bashing. It’s nearly 20 years since the great lady left office – 12 of which years having been under a Labour Government. For most of those involved in this spat, Maggie is but a memory – even if they were born before 1990 there memories are those of a small child or those transferred across the generation from parent to child. Yes the scars of deindustrialisation, the impact on places like Barnsley of pit closure continue to inform us about the politics of such places (although when Labour gets just 26% in a by-election in Rossington – a classic pit village – it does seem the memory is fading). But the left should look forward – to how their ideas might influence the shape of tomorrow’s world not backwards to dreams of a place that’s gone and won’t come back.

I never considered myself a “Thatcherite” – altogether too whiggish, too Gladstonian for my tastes. But those ten years transformed my country – painfully for sure but changed nonetheless – and made it possible for the small battalions to climb back out of the place they were hiding. Championing those folk is the challenge for me – and it should be something both left and right can support. We do not need big institutions, grand national organisations – we need things local, people-sized, participatory and independent of big government.

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Why we needed Maggie.....starting with the Russian spy who owned the Labour Party

The broken society revisited (plus a little on big government)

Since Julian Dobson has smothered me with kind words and references to West Ham winning the world cup it would be churlish to return to the debate. However, I am nothing if not a churl!

It seems to me that we are – as we often do in these debates – tearing down carefully constructed straw men. There are a few things that should be said to develop the thesis on the ‘broken society’ and the significance of Government as a factor in this thesis. But first I should discuss what we mean by “broken society” – it is after all a loaded term.

I have a vacuum cleaner sat under my stairs. It is broken but can be repaired. Perhaps this is what we mean by “broken” in this context. I certainly hope we don’t mean “broken” in the manner of a broken glass – beyond the possibility of repair! To continue the vacuum cleaner metaphor, we have some parts of our society that are not working properly and those broken parts affect how well the whole operates – to the point maybe of threatening its viability.

I would also like to remember what one person said on the subject of society:

“I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand "I have a problem, it is the Government's job to cope with it!" or "I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!" "I am homeless, the Government must house me!" and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first.”

A great deal of rubbish has been said about what this means but, in the context of government, it defines a very important point in the debate. Government – whatever its intent – is not a neutral player, a benign agent. And my biggest worry is that the delivery of social and welfare services directly through the coercive agency of taxation affects incentives – society’s problems become somebody else’s problem – the surest way to vanish something as Douglas Adams observed.

Government squeezes out individual social initiative by giving people the incentive to disengage

The next element of Julian’s post relates to myth-making (hence the West Ham references). Now leaving aside the contribution of mythopoeia to human joy and understanding – I am concerned not to confuse longitudinal study with the creation of myth. My argument wasn’t that the late 1960s and early 1970s represented some sort of mythic shangri la of social condition but that, after a long period of social stability, certain indicators of social breakdown (crime, worklessness, etc.) began to increase dramatically at that point. I’m certainly not suggesting we return to a time when homosexuality was barely tolerated, when racism was so ingrained we hardly blinked at language that would get you fired today and where women in senior positions were so unusual as to be borderline weird!

However, the telling of stories is an integral aspect of how we understand the world in which we live – those stories provide empathy, understanding and appreciation to the dry, dusty facts & figures. But stories are dangerous since they can also use emotion to mislead and misdirect – the construction of socialism and fascism is founded on the preference for the qualitative over the quantitative in our search for understanding.

The problem with Government is that 30 years of relentless pressure (redoubled in the past ten years) on these social problems and challenges have resulted not in the end of poverty, the elimination of crime or the banishing of unemployment but in these problems becoming more intractable, a permanent feature of our society’s landscape. Despite directing one pound in every ten we earn to the relief of poverty throughout that period, there is no sign of poverty’s elimination.

The big government discussion isn’t about the aims – it is an observation that decades of bureaucratic initiative (if that isn’t an oxymoron) have failed. David Cameron quite rightly seeks an alternative – perhaps looking to that new age of mutuality and private initiative presaged in David Beito et al’s The Voluntary City.

I close with two quotes from the great Ronald Reagan:

“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.”

And

“I know in my heart that man is good.That what is right will always eventually triumph. And there's purpose and worth to each and every life.”

It is this sentiment that informs my thinking rather than a narrow, selfish perspective. Given the right incentives and the means people will respond to their neighbour’s suffering – but so long as governments proclaim a misplaced capability to solve the problems we will not grasp any incentive and respond.