Liberalism didn't just make "the west", liberalism made a better world.

The pursuit of the common good has little place in liberalism, for liberalism is principally concerned with the maximisation of individual freedom. Liberals have always tended to underestimate how the freedom of the rich and powerful can undermine the freedom of the poor and powerless. But it is only now that this reality is becoming so blatant, prevalent and, in the eyes of many, inevitable and even legitimate.

This argument, that the pursuit of individual liberty somehow runs counter to the common good, has been a companion to liberalism since its first days on the street of Paris, the salons on Philadelphia and the lecture halls of Edinburgh. It say that in some way people being free runs counter to the common good, that the existence of the rich necessarily requires the presense of the poor, and that liberalism is about the application of power over others not the exercise of choice.

The quotation above comes from Nick Timothy, erstwhile advisor to Theresa May and renewed advocate of anti-liberal, social conservatism. Timothy joins a growing crowd, on both left and right, that has drifted (in some cases fled screaming) away from the consensus that people being free to exercise choice is a good thing so long as that choice doesn't harm others. And the prop that such people have reached for to hold up their argument is this idea of the 'common good', that we can in some alchemical way divine this thing and make it real. But who decides what that common good might be? How do we ascertain the general will? And how do we respond when a minority refuse to accept the definition - can it still be called common or general?

The worst take on the 'common good' is that which is implicit when Timothy talks about diversity - "...the more diverse a society becomes, the less trust and reciprocity there is, and less willingness to pay taxes to fund universal public services and welfare systems." We read from this that the common good is, in some way, a homogeneity, the sameness of people, and that a functioning society is only possible where diversity is minimised.

The mistake that Timothy (and many others) lies in the corruption of liberalism in American usage rather than our traditional understanding of liberal. If liberal means, as it mostly does in the USA, 'progressive, left-wing, identity politics', then Timothy and others' objection to the idea is justified. So much of this 'liberal' assault on institutions does not reflect a love of liberty but rather a view that the power of government should be used to enforce a majority view onto a minority so as to protect group rather than individual interests. This is not liberalism.

Talking, however, about the common good or the general will, especially in language that seems to exclude difference and diversity, does not seem to me to be championing western values but rather to see the common good as oppositional to religious freedom, antithetical to sexual choice, and opposed to the idea of open markets. A common good doesn't come about from the limiting of liberty or by a policy of reducing diversity. If the general will becomes about killing market freedom because the distribution of the riches it makes isn't even then we should begin to worry that this will, this common good, doesn't serve the people but instead satisfies compliance and adherence to rules defined by our betters. We are supposed to make more sacrifices for this common good - pay higher taxes, accept limits to our liberty - because it will be better for the nation.

Timothy and others set nations as greater than the sum of their parts, semi-mythical entities rather than temporary arrangements in the churn of human history. Rather than it being a shared place with a shared history (however contested), nation becomes a thing itself symbolised by flags, hymns and rituals not an association between free people to largely mutual benefit. We cannot know the common good, Rousseau was wrong about there being a general will, and those who lay claim to knowing the will of the people - even in a newspaper article - open up the doors to a less free, more controlled and less pleasant world.

Liberalism, for all that it is misused to justify oppression by the left, is the thing that made the world we have today. Not just "the west" but all of it. Moreover liberalism is the thing that will make our world even better - free speech, free assembly, free exchange, these are the most important things for us to champion. Limiting any of these for fear of diversity or because your religion is dying out does not serve the common good. The common good is served by remembering the mutual benefit that comes from our selfish interests - as one of liberalism's founders, Adam Smith, put it: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages".

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Free market liberalism has never been popular - maybe it should be?

There's a sort of mythology about economic liberalism - for people on both left and right in politics it is the enemy, the thing that undermines workers rights, throws people on the scrap heap as their job migrates to Romania or India, the destroyer of community and the temptress of migration. We see the shock and fear of liberal ideas in the economic sphere in the attacks on the Institute of Economic Affairs, Adam Smith Institute, the Koch brothers and the Cato Institute.

Part of the myth is that nobody could possibly believe in free market liberalism without, in some way, being the paid shill of powerful corporate influences. This myth is, usually in the next breath, accompanied by the entirely contradictory argument that free market liberals are swivel-eyed, rigid ideologues so wedded to their dogma they can't see the real world. It's not helped by the (entirely admirable) preference of these organisations for keeping their donors names private.

The reality is that, however much left and right might hate free market liberalism, it has never (at least in the UK and USA) been an idea with either broad popular support or even a political party with a hope of governing that espouses these ideas. Other than in the Netherlands, no developed nation has a successful and powerful liberal party (for Canadians and Australians I mean a party that actually believes in free market liberalism not a party with that name).

Indeed, since the beginnings of free market liberalism - Adam Smith, David Riccardo, J S Mill - the ideas have always had to fight for political space. First from the resistance of slave owners, corn barons and owners of mercantilist monopolies, then from intellectual elites who disliked the idea that thick spoken blokes with brummie accents and rough hands were the equal of grand university types. Free market liberalism was attacked by trade unionists, by aristocrats, by lawyers and by the mandarins of everywhere's bureaucracy. Laws were passed, riots were fomented, strikes were called and farmers were protected - all to try and kill free market liberalism.

Through history there have been leaders who have pushed for free market ideas - Peel, Gladstone, Coolidge, Reagan and Thatcher - even Blair or Clinton. But each of them have had to work with parties and supporters who did not share the mission preferring the statist blandishments of what Deirdre McCloskey calls The Clerisy. Those supporters weren't just socialists, communists and fascists but include an abundance of capitalists - the sort of business leaders for who mercantilism, protectionism and licencing is an opportunity to carve out monopoly in the same way their predecessors did with salt, shrimps and corn. Free market liberalism isn't capitalism, it just suits many capitalists to pretend that their cosy little love-in with government is, in some way connected to liberty, choice and the betterment of everyone.

Despite all this free market liberalism - hidebound, tied up, limited, constrained and condemned as it is - has carried on doing what it does best: making everyone wealthier, healthier and happier. No political party dare promote the idea - it's a vote loser every time they fear - and putting limits on "unfettered free markets" is ever popular with the folk who think (wrongly near every time) that doing this will be in their economic interests.

In the end, the reason why Kohl and Chirac, Blair and Major, Clinton and Bush - most sane world leaders of the last fifty years - have ended up promoting a liberal world economic order is because they were persuaded by the evidence. More free markets, more liberal economic policies, open trade, easier movement round the globe - these things really do work, they really do make near everyone wealthier, healthier and happier. Free market liberalism persists because, when the counting is done and evidence is gathered, the most successful places are more open, property rights are upheld and most people with something to sell don't need permission from the government to find someone willing to buy. It's just a shame that nearly all these rich successful places are dominated by a politics that completely denies - from right and left - this essential truth.

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A less authoritarian Tory Party would have fewer authoritarian policies. Why doesn't it?

There appears to be something of a splurge of thinking in the Conservative Party. I'm keen on this especially given we're also in government making it much harder to leading figures to burst into thoughtful song - the dour, dull business of government 'twas ever a drag on ideas. The thinking seems to revolve around three themes: being altogether jollier, escaping the legacy of Thatcherism, and making a 21st century case for capitalism.

Now this all sound like a slightly updated version of Reaganism (for the record, the USA's best post-war president and a man whose ideas still resonate in their defence of freedom, community and a sunnier life) but underneath is covers over the gaping chasm in the UK's Conservative Party. This isn't a matter of policy nuance but something much more fundamental, a sort of cavaliers and roundheads divide between those wanting a stern parental grip on society and those who think a load more freedom is a great idea.

It's true to say that Conservatives have a sort of on/off love affair with liberalism - David Cameron famously described himself as a 'liberal conservative', a tag that raised the ire of the more autocratically-inclined in the party despite Cameron repeatedly demonstrating his illiberalism. Elsewhere - in what is probably the mainstream of the party - support for illiberal ideas like ID cards, stricter licensing laws, minimum pricing for alcohol, chasing immigrants about with slightly racist posters, and wanting controls on the Internet in the vain hope they will stop teenaged boys looking at pornography.

So when Ruth Davidson, probably the most shining champion of Cameron's liberal conservatism says:

“We look a bit joyless, to be fair. A bit authoritarian, sometimes”.

I have two conflicting reactions. The first is positive, fist-pumping agreement - we really need to stop nannying and fussing over the public as if they're unable to make any decisions at all without the gentle guiding (big stick wielding) hand to the paternal state. So well said, Ruth, well said.

The second reaction is that Ruth is a raging hypocrite - after all:

“Support for alcohol minimum pricing represents a major policy shift for the Scottish Conservatives. It follows my commitment as leader to undertake a widespread review of policy.

“I am delighted that we have managed to secure two major concessions which will reassure the retail industry following productive negotiations with the Health Secretary.”

Here's a policy that is harmful and stupid in equal measure, is the epitome of joyless authoritarianism and Ruth Davidson walked her Scottish Tories into voting for it.

If the future for the Party lies in being more fun, less fussy and more libertarian (a view that seems to have its champion more in Liz Truss than Ruth Davidson) then we need to put an end to things like minimum pricing, sugar taxes, aggressive benefit sanctions, ever expanding demands for ID, and stupid immigration policies that prevent businesses getting the skilled labour they need to compete in the global race David Cameron was always banging on about. Above all we should start treating the British public as adult friends and neighbours who we want to help get along, support when they're in trouble and care for when upset or ill. What we're getting instead is rampant fussbucketry that seems to view people as slightly retarded eleven-year-olds who can only survive under the benign, authoritarian gaze of a nanny state.

Ruth Davidson is right, the Conservative Party needs to be less authoritarian. To to this we should start by not proposing authoritarian policies. It might just help!

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One Hundred Years of Socialist Evil

There. I've said it. This doesn't mean that socialists are evil just that they have been seduced by the Marxist nonsense of what Deirdre McCloskey called 'this secular religion'.

Why is it evil? Because from its outset it has desired the forced transformation of man through the action of authority. There is only one socialist truth and this is owned by those who lead the people - there is no democracy here, no recognition or respect for freedom, or for the fabulous idea that we have individual identity and agency. And this - as we approach the 100th Anniversary of socialism's most extensive trial - is what it means:

"Hang (hang without fail, so the people see) no fewer than one hundred known kulaks, rich men, bloodsuckers," Lenin ordered in 1918. "Publish their names. Take from them all the grain. Designate hostages. Do it in such a way so that for hundreds of versts around people will see, tremble, know, shout: They are strangling, strangling to death the bloodsucker kulaks." (The term "kulak" referred to peasants well-off enough to hire workers.) "It is necessary secretly—and urgently—to prepare the terror," he ordered shortly thereafter.

And this is not an accidental correlation between an evil man and a noble ideology, it is the direct consequence of the hatred that drives socialism. Hatred of individual success. Hatred of enterprise. Hatred of initiative. Hatred of liberalism. Hatred of free thought. Hatred of independence. As another evil man inspired by socialism said - "everything within the state, nothing without the state". You, me, all of us, are but pawns in the state's direction. A control that brooks no opposition.

If you are tempted by socialism examine your conscience. Look at the 100 years since that fateful November day in Moscow and ask whether the experiment has run its course. Look around and consider that the people living under liberal capitalism are healthier, wealthier and happier than those who languish under socialism. I know you care about justice. You want rights protected and enforced. You dislike profiteering and rent-seeking. And you feel too many people still fall through the cracks of our rich society into some form of poverty. But socialism is not the answer to these problems - it is a siren voice tempting you onto the rocks of social collapse, authoritarianism and decline. Tie your self to the mast and sail on into calmer seas where people are free, enterprising, independent, innovative and caring. Reject the evil doctrine of socialism.

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Ten common lies about about free markets, capitalism and liberal society

Every day - in the papers, on the telly and all over social media - a bunch of people tell a pack of lies about free markets, capitalism and the liberal enlightenment that made us all rich, is still helping make the poor less poor and the rich happier. The Clerisy, as Deirdre McCloskey calls them, having got themselves secure, often tax-funded positions spend their time sneering at the things that made their comfortable lives possible. Hipsterish, right-on web-design consultants and the like go on about the evils of capitalism while plying their lucrative businesses in that capitalist world.

This makes me angry. It's not the hypocrisy, we've all a tendency that way. It's not the smugness, annoying though it often is. And it's not that, as my Dad was wont to say, "they can afford to be socialists". No, it's the lies. Here are ten of them.

The First Lie - Free markets are a bad thing.

Please explain which part of the word 'free' is a bad thing? If you don't like free markets, what you want is markets that aren't free. Markets where only some privileged people can trade. Markets where someone else (usually the government) sets the price. Markets where their effectiveness is determined not by the actions of those in the market but by who is most effective at lobbying - for which read bribing, corrupting - government. If you fetter free markets (which given you always go on about the free market being "unfettered" is what you want) what you create are winners and losers, privileged and unprivileged, rather than having a system where people seek co-operation and mutual benefit. Freedom is a good thing. Free markets are a good thing. So stop lying about this and undermining the liberty of your neighbour.

The Second Lie - Capitalism is exploitative

We hear this all the time. Whether it's about the planet, the workers or some vague and general exploitation. Well it ain't so. Capitalism is a simple concept where things are owned by the people who stump up the resources for those things to be there. Not just cash but ideas, innovation, skills and enthusiasm. No-one's being exploited here and capitalism delivers returns to investors - in doing so it helps make those innovations succeed and those free markets make us all richer.

The Third Lie - We are rich through exploiting other humans

Quite the reverse. The thing that the liberal enlightenment did was demonstrate that the best way to get rich is to help make other folks' lives better. That was Adam Smith's great insight, not the 'invisible hand' but rather the realisation that personal self-interest operating in a free system leads to social betterment. When people point, quite rightly, to the horrors of colonialism and imperialism they are wrong to see in them the reason for our wealth. Some people made money screwing over Africans and Indians but this money was - even at the height of Lord Clive's egregious pillage of India - marginal to England's wealth and economic growth.

The Fourth Lie - Government creates wealth

We need government to protect the liberal society that allows free markets and capitalism to work. The ancient - and it is ancient - system of contracts, laws and administration that protects property was turned (mostly but not always) away from protecting the landed and towards supporting that free society and its mundane trading transactions. But government doesn't create wealth - we had hundreds of years of contract law, the Magna Carta and all that jazz without seeing the transformation wrought by capitalism and free markets. And we had plenty of government inventions during that time - from gunpowder to haute cuisine - without those inventions making the mass of people rich.

The Fifth Lie - Capitalism kills people

All the time you're talking about 'capitalism's death toll' without ever pointing to the bit when liberal society, free markets and capitalism killed these people. Indeed quite the opposite. All the advances in medicine, sanitation and safety made possible by being richer - that's the fruit of capitalism even if we choose to organise these things through government. Since the millennium a billion people have been lifted out of extreme poverty because of those free markets, free trade and capitalism. Capitalism saves lives.

The Sixth Lie - Capitalists are greedy

Again quite the opposite is true. Capitalism expects that, instead of swimming backstroke in his gold pile, Scrooge McDuck invests his cash. Some of this is invested in boring old working capital and some in high risk, exciting, sexy, hipster innovation. You and I prefer the safe stuff because we've not much to spare let alone risk but Scrooge McDuck can take bigger risks because losing a bit is less of a big deal. Those filthy rich plutocrats (the anonymous pinstriped banker ones are the worst) you rile against are stumping up the investment needed to deliver economic growth, health, wealth and happiness. Moreover they're putting off having something now (spending all that gold) to take a risk hoping that they'll get a bigger return in the future. Because of this all those exciting, innovative businesses happen. This is not greed.

The Seventh Lie - Small businesses aren't capitalists

Now this lie is more inferred that explicit. Bad capitalism is about faceless, distant businesses not our friend's web design business or the trendy coffee shop where you meet to discuss revolution and the evils of free markets. Sorry to disappoint but you're all capitalists and it's in all your interests for that capitalist system to operate as openly and freely as possible.

The Eighth Lie - Trade is something permitted by government

This lie sits behind all the talk of trade deals and the nonsense about a 'global race' so loved by politicians and pundits. Trade is quite simply the process of exchange in a free market (or even in a not-so-free market). We want government to back up our exchange by protecting property rights, preventing theft and ensuring we can enforce a contract. But we don't want the government to say who can and cannot trade or when and where they can trade. Trade is more often prevented by government than enabled. If we want more growth, more riches, the way to go is less prevention and more enablement.

The Ninth Lie - The rich are rich because others are poor

Free markets prevent this from happening. It used to be so before we woke up and realised that posh folk owning all the land and getting peasants to scrat in it wasn't the best way to a wealthy, healthy and successful society. We used to have a system - called it feudalism, oikocracy, whatever - that meant some folk were rich because others were poor. It had lasted from the first cities in the middle east through to the Dutch Republic. Then some places realised (partly government, partly people thinking about a better world) that the way to get rich was to try and make everybody better off. And it worked. We call this system liberal capitalism.

The Tenth Lie - Free marketeers don't care

How often to you say this? Every time something fails, most usually some or other government administrative system. This because of capitalism, we're told. Free markets did this. Because they don't care. If they cared nothing would ever fail. No-one would be poor. This is the biggest of these lies. Free marketers do care. That's why we're capitalists. We want everyone to be healthier, wealthier and happier. And because free markets work people in Britain are vastly healthier, wealthier and happier than our forebears.


By all means disagree. Feel free to stick with your faith that there is some sort of Utopia, some system - True Socialism maybe - that will give even more social benefit, wealth, health and happiness than free markets, capitalism and our liberal society. But stop lying about free markets, capitalism and that liberal society. Stop fibbing that it's anything other than the more successful, more effective and long-lasting means of bettering the lives of ordinary people.

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Burning art - the latest Progressive initiative

I'm one of those people whose response to art is to say 'I know what I like' so don't take what follows as a piece of art criticism.

The painting in question is called 'Open Casket' and is by an artist called Dana Schutz. Here's one review:

The painting is based on a photograph of African American Emmett Till, laid in a coffin. The 14 year old young man was brutally murdered in 1955 for flirting with a white woman, his face horrifically disfigured in process. Earlier this year, it came out that the accuser, Carolyn Bryant, had lied and made the story up. The painting in question is a marvel to look at and currently on view at the Whitney Biennial. Schutz layers and builds paint in such a way that it appears economical even though she’s literally built a swollen lip out of paint.

So far, so good - and ever so right on. The problem is that Dana Schutz is white and, therefore, “It’s not acceptable for a white person to transmute Black suffering into profit and fun,”. As a result the author of that line has decided to go beyond mere criticism and to call for the painting's destruction:

UK-born, Berlin-based artist Hannah Black has launched a campaign demanding the Biennial curators Christopher Y. Lew and Mia Locks remove Dana Schutz’s painting Open Casket from the show, and calling for its destruction.

In a long and angst-ridden letter Ms Black explains that the terrible imagery in the painting - 'black pain' she calls it - might, in the event of the painting's sale, result in profit. Meaning that white people will have gained from the exploitation of that pain. And, moreover, that the artist should know better than to continue to use such expropriation. Dozens of fellow artists have lined up behind Ms Black in saying that the Whitney Gallery should remove and destroy the painting - though Ms Black has only allowed black artists to sign the letter.

It seems to me that, whatever the merits of the painting (and everyone, even Ms Black, seem to think is is powerful and well-executed) the idea that we destroy art because we don't like its message, its image or its artist simply takes these Progressive voices into the same world as the book burners of 1930s Germany or the Catholic Church's Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

Ms Black and others may see their cause as righteous but then so did those who, back in 1989, tried to ban Robert Mapplethorpe's "The Perfect Moment" exhibition because it featured explicit gay sex. Or a thousand other examples of censorship by the state and other authorities - on grounds of taste, religion and the ethnicity of the artist.

It's fair to say that our Progressives are a bit mixed up over this:

Prior to that conversation, if you’d asked me if I thought it was a good idea for white artists to refrain from rendering certain racially charged subjects, I would have responded with a rant about how all this debate would lead only to white artists depicting black subjects less frequently. I’m not sure that position would have been wrong, but I’d now add the caveat that some subjects might be worth leaving alone. I write this knowing this road has “slippery slope” written all over it. After all, I’ve now written about this painting. Am I now profiting off black suffering too? I don’t think so, but then again it’s in my interest to think that.

Confusing eh? For my part I suspect that the politicised hypersensitivity of the black artists seeking the painting's destruction serves the cause of art badly and the idea of liberty not at all. Such actions merely reinforce the idea that offence and sensitivity must be policed, the very same idea that led to literature, music and art being suppressed by public censorship for its portrayal of women, gay men and sexual liberty. This is why - despite the arts world describing itself as such - I have called the protagonists here Progressives rather than liberals. Suggesting it is liberal to want a painting destroyed simply because the artist is white is the very opposite of of artistic freedom. Indeed it is little different to the idea, from another bunch of modernist illiberals, of degenerate art.

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Why should I believe the left are protecting a liberal society they don't believe in?

I'm probably not alone in being slightly taken aback by the extent to which the election of Donald Trump as US President has brought forth agitation and protest, not just in the USA but elsewhere across the world. I've also been struck by the manner in which events such as Trump's election, the UK's vote to leave the EU, and a reinvigorated cultural right in universities have resulted in the radicalising of people who we previously characterised as 'soft left'.

It remains to be seen whether this radicalisation persists in the way that similar forces in the 1960s did in response to civil rights and the Vietnam war - Jeremy Corbyn's generation. What strikes me, however, about the current situation is the extent to which a youthful centre left has taken to the streets in response to their failure at the established game of democracy. Above all else this is the lesson we should take from Brexit and Trump - the established left has little to offer the public beyond that tired, familiar 'we know better' rhetoric wedded to a desire to close down debate, cut off argument and, using the left's word, demonise other opinions.

Yet the left remains astonishingly unaware of it's problems or of the extent to which it is trapped. Here's Nick Cohen presenting that unawareness as a considered position:

Compulsive liars shouldn’t frighten you. They can harm no one, if no one listens to them. Compulsive believers, on the other hand: they should terrify you. Believers are the liars’ enablers. Their votes give the demagogue his power. Their trust turns the charlatan into the president. Their credulity ensures that the propaganda of half-calculating and half-mad fanatics has the power to change the world.

How you see the believers determines how you fight them and seek to protect liberal society from its enemies.

To understand what we mean by unawareness, we should ask two things: who are the liars and what we mean by liberal society. And when we've done this we will realise that it isn't the false bogeyman of a new fascism but the lies of the left about liberalism that are the problem. First though let's agree with Cohen about Trump and Brexit not being about Fascism:

The temptation to think it a new totalitarianism is too strong for many to resist. Despite readers reaching for Hannah Arendt and George Orwell, strictly speaking, the comparison with fascism and communism isn’t true. When I floated it with the great historian of Nazism, Sir Richard Evans, he almost sighed. It’s not just that there aren’t the death camps and torture chambers, he said. The street violence that brought fascists to power in Italy and Germany and the communists to power in Russia is absent today.

Dwell on that final sentence for a minute. And then consider what this might mean:

Fires that were deliberately set, one outside the campus Amazon outlet; Molotov cocktails that caused generator-powered spotlights to catch fire; commercial-grade fireworks thrown at police officers; barricades pushed into windows and skirmishes within the crowd were among the evening’s violent acts.

The masked agitators came to campus eastbound on Bancroft Way, and fire damage and other destruction to the Stiles Hall construction site, where a new residence hall is planned, was reported. The group entered campus and immediately began throwing rocks at officers. In an effort to avoid injuries to innocent members of the surrounding crowd who might have been caught in the middle, police officers exercised restraint and did not respond with force.

An organised group using street violence to secure a political end (in this case preventing someone from speaking). And we saw plenty more of this violence following the election of Donald Trump and after his inauguration. Is this not something akin to "street violence" that brought fascists and communists to power in Europe? And what about giving yourself permission to punch anyone who you and your friends decide is a Nazi?

The problem for the left is that it is at best targeting a pretty small group or, and this is more concerning, seeking to define anyone who challenges its definition of liberal society as 'alt-right', Fascist or Nazi. As Nick Cohen discovered from a peek at history there are no National Socialist marches, there aren't Fascist gangs forcing opponents to drink cod liver oil and there isn't a rising new politics that seeks to destroy that liberal society. The new fascism or whatever you want to call it is something summoned from the left's mind, they are fighting an illusion.

That lie of a new fascism brings us back to the first of our two questions: who are the liars? Nick Cohen is clear about this - Donald Trump, Brexit campaigners, conservative columnists and business leaders. The alt-right. But is he right? Or rather are there not a whole load of other liars out there? Liars like the ones who predicted inevitable economic doom following a vote to leave the EU. And the liars who continue to promote a thing called socialism despite it repeatedly cause suffering, sorrow and even death.

"The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth."

You want to know what Trump's biggest lie is? It's the lie that he can bring those jobs back, can by stamping and shouting do what Canute showed couldn't be done, turn back the tide of the world. But when the newly radicalised centre left agree that Trump's protectionism is a lie, they compound it with another lie. The left pretends that somehow globalisation had no role in the steelworker losing his job, the textile worker losing her job, or the miners looking at reserves of energy untapped because of decisions made in Washington, Rome, London or Paris.

Instead the left talks about inequality when what the listener wants is a job. The left talks of rights when what those hearing this cant desire is a better roof over their head and clean water. And the left points at wealthy business people crying another lie: that somehow their lack of a job and their crappy house is down to those business people. "Vote for us and we'll sort it" the left said all those years and delivered nothing. So what remains for the voter: carrying on electing wealthy left wing politicians - Elizabeth Warren, Ed Miliband, Francois Hollande, Yanis Varoufakis, Hillary Clinton - and getting no change or buying a different lie from someone like Trump or Le Pen?

What makes all this worse is that the left then tell people who want a better job, a nicer house, a happier future for their children that it's about defending something called the liberal society. But what exactly is this liberal society we're defending? Is it getting people arrested for saying stuff on Twitter? Is it privileging group characteristics and in doing so creating a sort of equalities tops trumps? Or maybe it's telling folk that black people can't be racists and women can't be violent?

A liberal society isn't one that smashes and bullies to stop Milo Yiannopoulos speaking. A liberal society is one that listens politely to Milo, tells him he's a preening dickhead and then moves on, smiling. A liberal society doesn't stop people going to an event by blocking the streets, it's one that argues and engages with folk we disagree with. A liberal society is one that rejects the bullying of the mob even if it does get John Wilkes into parliament.

My two questions perhaps aren't answered in full but it does seem that the left should consider whether it has a beam in its eye that results in that frightening degree of unawareness. Yes Trump and the alt-right are liars but so is the radical left. Now, as the soft left makes common cause with the anti-democrats of street anarchy and communism, we see that the left as a whole is tearing down the principles of liberal society because it fears an illusory monster will do that if they don't.

The left's biggest lie is that they now own the word liberal, that their state-directed dystopia is that liberal society we should defend. For me a liberal society is one that doesn't make ill smokers stand in the street because you don't like them. A liberal society is one that does tax people to change their behaviour. A liberal society is one that thinks politeness is important but doesn't lock people up for being rude, dumb or offensive. A liberal society is one that values enterprise and encourages it in everyone. A liberal society is a place where people can speak freely, do business, succeed and fail without that society's opprobrium. And a liberal society is, above all, one that doesn't place one set of people - experts, aristocrats or celebrities - above others.

We do not live in a liberal society. The left do not and never have believed in a liberal society. Why the hell should I believe that their marching to defend that liberal society against Trump, Brexit and other demons is anything other than a big, fat stinking lie?

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Why we need faith in The Market

Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”

But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” John 20: 24-29

This is the dilemma of faith. You will, I'm sure recall when Arthur Dent is introduced to the babel fish in Douglas Adam's 'Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy':

The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.

"Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that something so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.

"The argument goes something like this: 'I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith, I am nothing.'

'But, says Man, the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'

'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and vanishes in a puff of logic.

'Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

And, as many have observed, faith does matter because it represents the unprovable premises on which we build our arguments. We are right to, as St Thomas did, doubt but if we only accept that which is before our eyes, what we can see, feel, taste or hear, then we deny things that are really important - love, honesty, creativity, hope.

Here, in a critique of something called 'neoliberalism' (the existence of which I doubt but that's another story) we see the denial of the transcendent, refusing to accept something exists because it is abstract, incorporeal:

The market, which is essentially a useful tool (and like all tools limited) has been converted into a false god The Market. Markets make poor gods for many reasons, but primarily because they don’t exist. A market is a space, not a thing; it is a vacuum; it is a space within which human beings trade stuff. Trading stuff is also useful preparation for doing other stuff, like making, healing, building, growing and creating. The market does not do any of those things - people do - but the market helps people by because people can use trade to get the useful things they need from others. Markets can help people be productive, but they are not productive in themselves.

So The Market exists because people want to exchange. The accumulation of all those exchanges, however conducted, is The Market. And the benefit we get from this exchange - trade as the writer rightly calls it - is that we can focus on the things we're best at, on what David Riccardo called comparative advantage. Here's Don Boudreaux:

...the only economic reason for trade is that each of us produces some goods or services at costs lower than the costs that our trading partners would incur to produce those same goods or services. That is, each of us has a comparative advantage in supplying the goods or services that we sell to others, and a comparative disadvantage in supplying each of the many goods and services that we buy from others.

So The Market does exist (whether or not you use capitals) even though we can't take your hand and plunge it into the spear wound so as to prove its existence. Even where, as with some very important things like health and housing, the state has tried to control (or even abolish) the market, The Market still exists. The best examples here are criminal markets. We have for all sorts of 'good' reasons made some products illegal yet there still exists a market for those products - this is the dilemma of public health's approach to smoking. We are nearing the point, may even have reached it, where further increases in the price of tobacco only act to increase the illegal part of the market - with all the risks associated with criminal markets (we see these with the market in illegal drugs, for example).

The question that our writer poses (although mostly fails to answer) isn't whether or not markets exist or even whether they are a good thing. Rather the question is whether we should 'worship' those markets. Since there is, so far as I'm aware, no actual ritual worship of The Market, I have to assume that this is meant metaphorically and refers to the viewpoint that The Market is the most efficient way to allocate scarce resources. But is the belief that the market, under most circumstances, is the fairest means to allocate resources an act of 'worship'? It may be faith just as a belief in the efficacy of democracy, government or the 'rule of law' is an act of faith but it is not worship.

The debate that prompted the comment about markets began with a simple question: if it wasn't the liberal belief in markets that led to the fastest decline in absolute poverty the world has ever seen then what was it? Inevitably this discussion became one about the UK rather than the world and, as these things do, resulted in the assurance that inequality and poverty are essentially the same, and that government is the primary agent of poverty reduction (more specifically that taxation is essential to poverty reduction).

As a conservative I am not a market fundamentalist but I do not believe that, in the long run, taking money forcefully off one set of folk to give it to another set of folk represents any sort of solution to poverty. I'm also a pragmatist and this means that, given the evidence, open markets deserve our support as they are better able to meet human needs than planned systems managed by government. This doesn't preclude regulation or even direct government provision, it merely recognises that we have to balance the social benefits of such actions against the disbenefits of interfering with the market.

We live in a world largely created by the action of markets, by that specialisation that is central to Adam Smith's ideas and to the concept of comparative advantage. The Market is not an end in itself worthy of worship but rather, for all its abstract nature, a means by which we make for a better world. Without our faith in the efficacy of markets there would be no specialisation, no free exchange and less innovation. Believe!

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Are you a real liberal? Welcome to the dark side.

To all you despondent liberals, Labour centrists, Tory modernisers, remainers, social justice warriors, social justice worriers, and everyone out there fretful about Brexit, depressed by Donald Trump, and scared of the alt-right, here is my festive message: get off the ground, you wusses. Put down your gingerbread lattes, and put up your dukes.                                       

So starts Matthew d'Ancona's  festive call to arms for what he - or at least the Guardian sub-editor - terms 'liberals'. Here, in a simple list is the Guardian's record of the good. If you are not in that list then you're on the side of evil.

If you think the vote to leave the EU was brilliant, liberating and something to be celebrated then you're in the same camp as people who believe there's a secret Muslim plan to attack the West by flooding us with refugees.

Or you might be someone who supports free speech believing a modicum of offence is a small price to pay for the power that comes with being able to speak our minds without being locked up. You're now on the same side of the line as people who think violent public abuse of minorities is acceptable in a decent society.             

Perhaps you're one of those innocent folk who think that individual humans have a right to choose. These 'liberals' have you right there with Fascists who want to ban public acts of faith, religious dress and introduce some sort of Test & Corporation Act to ensure we comply with a largely mythical 'Judeo-Christian' basis for our law or culture.

Maybe you think equality is a damn good thing. Something that should be protected in law. But that this doesn't expend to quotas of women, LGBT, ethnicity or disablement. Or to allowing self-appointed guardians of 'equal rights' to police our language or no platform those who offend against their narrow, excluding and divisive definition of diversity. Welcome to the dark side.

If you think our public debate is, in its original soviet sense, politically correct then watch out. Your belief that you should be allowed to say what you think, feel or know is true regardless of whether it offends the received and acceptable wisdom of the great and good - this is the target. Argument will be closed down, insults will be thrown and plain speaking condemned as the 'liberals' shut off debate and any challenge to their worldview.

Speaking personally, I think immigration is mostly a good thing, support open international trade, dislike regulation aimed at industrial protection and want a world where free individuals can engage in free exchange without the interference of the state. I dislike Donald Trump, think Nigel Farage is a twit and consider fascism to be just another statist abhorrence. I hate proposals from all sides in parliament to muzzle the press, snoop on our lives and - in the name of security or fighting terrorism - create a surveillance state Stalin would have killed to create.

But I also think gender quotas to be against the interests of women. That our approach to equalities defines people by their membership of a group rather than by their individuality. And that high taxes on income are a moral offence. Oh, and government in all its forms is too big, does too much that is dumb and fails on the things - such as health and care - that it claims are central to its purpose. I believe that it is no business of government to regulate how much sugar, salt, booze, fat or beef I consume, that the smoking ban in pubs was a bad idea, and that advertising is a force for good in a consumerist world.

I think you can believe what you damn well like - from the earth being flat through to the Queen being a lizard - but that you can't impose your beliefs on me or have them go unchallenged. So, yes, I'm happy to listen to sceptical arguments about climate change, to let people say that maybe we shouldn't get quite so knickered up about a marginal change in world temperatures. And I think that trying to silence or sideline these voices is quite simply the worst way to conduct any sort of debate about a massively important area of policy.

I could go on further. How our planning policies are a joke. Why the NHS is unsustainable without major and substantial change. How the idea of anti-social behaviour allows us to criminalise behaviour that is simply annoying. And that choice in education matters just as much as choice anywhere else - we don't have it and should get it. Vouchers would be a start.

You get my point? I'm properly right wing. The worse nightmare of the 'liberal'. Why? Because, unlike them, I actually am a liberal. I really do believe in liberty, choice, freedom and personal responsibility. If you think likewise then don't make the mistake a previous generation of liberals made. Don't make common cause with the anti-freedom centre left. Don't allow them to force you into their camp, to go along with their soft authoritarianism, just because you don't want to be in the same space as Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and the "alt-right" racists.

Stand your ground and make the case for a free country. Again and again until they're bored with you telling them that they - the fake liberals - are as much the problem as the Trumps and Farages of this world, quite literally a force of reaction to those 'liberals' and their controlling, authoritarian world-view.

Welcome to the dark side.

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Dear Liberal Democrats, please rebrand as the European Party. Please.

It's a long while since the Liberal Democrats were in any recognisable way either liberal or democratic. This makes the idea - mooted by Richard Dawkins - that they become the European Party a sensible one:

Writing to the Guardian, the 74-year-old, said: “Following its victory in the Richmond by election, I write to suggest that the Liberal Democratic party should change its name to The European Party.

“We of the forgotten 48% are surely more numerous today, now that Brexit’s rudderless fiasco is becoming as obvious as the shameless lies earlier told by its advocates.”

The reason why this is a great idea isn't that the 48% will flock to its banner but rather that this leaves the way clear for a genuinely liberal and democratic party in Britain. Right now Farron's Euro-fanatics, by hogging these words, are preventing a genuinely liberal, free market and internationalist message from being heard.

Indeed the Liberal Democrat Party's obsession with Europe has, even in those moments when there were glimpses of actual liberalism, meant that the cause of big government has sat at the heart of its policies and programmes. It's clear that today's Liberal Democrats are more comfortable with the eco-fascist Green Party, complete with crashing the economy and living in mud huts while scraping a living from a vegetable patch.

Here in Bradford, our liberal democrats prefer to patronise regular folk in the cause of public health - vaping one month, fizzy drinks the next - rather than admit to the idea of choice, responsibility and agency.

So get on with it Mr Farron (who's pretty much a communist) and rebrand your Party so we can set up one that argues for free markets, free speech, free trade and free enterprise.

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Quote of the day: on neo-reaction

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A very telling point from someone who is, in essence, a liberal (in the real sense not the perverted US sense):

Liberalism isn’t actually an automatic emotional default for most people on this planet, so being a scold is in the longer run a losing strategy. I believe many current “democratic mainstream” thinkers genuinely do not understand how boring and unconvincing they are, as they live in bubbles filled with others of a similar bent. And while neo-reaction does not get exactly right the nature of “the golden goose” in modern America, that is a question which modern progressivism rather aggressively avoids in its attempt to view the wealthy as an essentially inexhaustible ATM.

The rest of the article is very interesting - do go and read.

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On 'right wing fundamentalism'...

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It is commonplace to describe religious fundamentalism as 'conservative' or 'right-wing'. In one respect this is simply laziness, a sort of sloppy thought-process from left inclined folk who assume that, because they don't like what those religious folk are saying, they are 'right wing'. Here - and I'm not having a dig at Jonathan who is a sincere liberal, at least in the modern, leftist meaning of the term - is a good example:

#Christianity, like #Judaism and #Islam, alas has it's right-wing religious nutters pic.twitter.com/RD4hGq6ZfF
— Jonathan Fryer (@jonathanfryer) July 24, 2014

However, this got me to thinking about whether there's a world where liberal fundamentals are considered to be the views of 'nutters'. We could argue that this was - and still is in China - the official line under communist regimes. But, it then struck me that we already live in a world where those who hold to the fundamentals of liberalism - all those things that start with the qualifier, "free" - are often considered to be slightly loopy.

As a society we have a hit and miss adherence to those things we had in our Bill of Rights and that the Americans' put in theirs - free speech, free assembly, free choice and so forth are more honoured in the breach than considered fundamental. And we allow for our legislators and our courts to limit and restrict these freedoms, these fundamentals of a liberal society.

I am reminded about the debate Bradford Council held under the helpful heading of 'Islamaphobia'. The motion put forward by Respect was a very lengthy exposition of  'islamaphobia' as a concept so as to provide a justification for new restrictions to those liberal fundamentals in the interests of a thing called 'community cohesion'. The Conservative Group, in respecting those liberal fundamentals, put down an amendment that replaced the lengthy motion with this:

"Bradford Council affirms its belief in free speech"

The amendment was defeated as Labour, Respect and Lib Dems voted against - preferring instead to support an amendment that sought to deny rights to speech where the subject was religion.

Our defending free speech was seen as 'unhelpful' rather than an assertion of principle. And we see this everywhere - in the enthusiasm for press regulation (by that mythical thing called an 'independent body'), in the locking up of people for being grossly offensive on social media and in the banning of protest and agitation. Oh and we see it in the banning of drinking outside and smoking inside.

Yet when people agitate in support of these fundamentals, especially people arguing for free speech and personal choice, terms like 'libertarian nutter' and 'right wing troll' pop up like mushrooms in a fairy ring. We say we support free speech but then join in the fray when some semi-celebrity screams about needing controls on social media. We sign petitions in favour of gagging the press because Stephen Fry doesn't want the newspapers to be nasty to his friends. And then, having done this, we call for the heads of essentially harmless Christians because they don't want to bake a cake for a gay wedding.

Another bunch of us want to stop people doing things we don't like, especially when we can claim they're bad for people's health and, worse still, cost the NHS money! So fast food shops are banned near schools, sugar taxes are proposed, smoking is forbidden almost everywhere and drinking outside is stopped. Yet we'll then proclaim our support for a 'free society' when we really means a 'free-to-do-what-we-allow-you-to-do society' which isn't the same thing at all.

I'm guessing that holding to the fundamentals of a religious faith in an essentially secular world is pretty hard work. But, if our faith is in those liberal principles written down in those bills of rights, it is just as hard. Defending free speech is easy when we agree with the speaker but a whole lot harder when that speaker is saying something unpleasant, offensive or disturbing. Speaking up for personal free choice is easy when its about the convenience of modern living but when some person makes a choice to abuse themselves it's much harder to stand by those principles.

If 'right wing' is the right term to apply to those who hold to the fundamentals of a given religious belief, it should also apply to every fundamentalist - including those strange people who are utterly consistent in defending liberal principles like free speech and free choice. And who set out their philosophy as:

"Don't hit people and don't take their stuff."  

If believing this makes you a right wing nut-job then count me in!

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On the need for liberalism...

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Jeremy Browne is a Liberal Democrat MP. He has written this in The Spectator and I agree with him:

An unambiguous liberalism best captures the spirit of our era – freedom and opportunity. Free people, free speech, free markets, free thinking. It is egalitarian, internationalist and healthily subversive. A new generation – both economically and socially liberal – is looking for inspiration.

The problem for Jeremy is that most of his party don't agree with him - they agree with tepid, smiling sort-of-socialists like Tim Farron. Indeed - as James Delingpole observed in the same publication - there is a gap in the market for a classical liberal party.

All the other terrain on the political map has already been fully occupied. Classical liberalism has not — and it’s about time it was. It’s the only political philosophy which acts genuinely in the interests of the ‘many, not the few’. 

On the face of it (and given the public debate between Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage over the EU) is seems odd that two writers identify the same need for a genuinely liberal political party but one finds the answer in the Liberal Democrats and the other in UKIP.

The problem for James and Jeremy is that neither of the two parties in question are interested in being that real liberal party. UKIP are becoming a very different and essentially socially reactionary party, unconvinced by free trade, tempted by protectionism and distrusting of anything foreign. The libertarian moment for UKIP has passed as Nigel Farage realises that his audience are nationalist and conservative not liberal and internationalist.

For Jeremy the problem is just as stark. The rump of the Liberal Democrats will reject any more moves towards economic liberalism preferring instead to paint a smiling face on big government social democracy.  The Liberal Democrats here in Bradford oppose free schools, support rent controls and are enthusiasts for the nanny state - I cannot see them embracing Jeremy's four freedoms.

I wrote not long back about searching for that real liberalism where I asked for a party with an international focus, a preference for the local over the national and markets over planning. Above all I want a party that prioritises personal choice rather than social prescription. The market doesn't offer such a party in the UK.

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Searching for a new liberal party....

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I'm a Tory so I guess it's none of my business but it worries me a little that there is no genuinely liberal voice in UK politics. Perhaps the collapse of the party that colonised liberalism with a sort of tepid social democracy presents an opportunity to rediscover a genuinely liberal voice in British politics.

First here's the always on the money Graeme Archer on the subject of yesterday's Liberal Democrat annihilation:

Take away every elected Tory, and Toryism would continue, and sooner or later find a way to be represented in parliament again. Ditto Labour. But take away every elected Lib Dem, and what are you left with? The vacant contradiction at the heart of the "LibDem" construct: neither properly liberal, nor effectively social democrat. Just nothing.

Yet liberalism is a real thing - the Dutch show this with not one but two liberal parties (as I understand it one is quite crunchy and classical liberal whereas the other is more cuddly and lentil-eating). The problem is that the Liberal Democrats simply aren't liberal - indeed their political position was for me summed up by their leader on Bradford Council when she said - indeed says repeatedly - 'we're not liberal, we're liberal democrats'.

Now while Graeme suggests that all the real liberals were absorbed into the Conservative Party (certainly the economic liberal were but there's a strong case to be made for all the inheritors of Gladstonian liberalism to be in my party - even down to the nannying fussbuckets since Gladstone was certainly one of those) this means that whiggish tendencies have to fight their corner with proper conservatives of one sort or another.

Meanwhile the Liberal Democrats are doing a lot of soul-searching. Some of this is pretty unedifying - I watched some activist laying into Danny Alexander during the BBC's Euro elections programming. It wasn't about policy but an extended moan about going into coalition and how it didn't work out. But elsewhere the debate is more real with 'social liberals' like Tim Farron in one camp and economic liberals like David Laws in the other. For the former their policy prescriptions are almost indistinguishable - a penchant for localism aside - from those of the Labour Party whereas the Conservatives would welcome Laws or Jeremy Browne with open arms.

What is lacking here is a real liberal challenge to current economic orthodoxies or setting out policies that actually sit with the views of the private sector, middle class, metropolitan population. These policies could have the following components:

1. An international focus. For the Liberal Democrats at the moment this is done through blind adherence to the European 'project' despite all its manifest illiberalism, protectionism and preference for dirigisme over economic freedom. Rejecting this model means rejecting the EU and arguing for a unilateral approach to free trade - looking beyond a stagnating and inward-looking Europe to emerging nations and the old 'anglosphere'.

2. A preference for local over national. Partly from its base in local government and partly out of conviction, the Liberal Democrats have always supported the idea of 'localism'. But for this to work, you have to accept inconsistencies - the 'postcode lottery' beloved of the media. In return you get more accountability, a drive to improve, and more creativity in the design and delivery of government services.

3. Emphasising markets rather than planning. This isn't saying 'no planning' but it is expressing a belief that markets are, ceteris paribus, better at allocating scarce resources than planners. Such an emphasis might lead to new solutions to the challenges of pensions and caring for the elderly - getting away from the tax and provide approach to look at insurance systems for example.

4. Prioritising personal choice over social prescription. Bits of the social liberal agenda fit in well here - support for same sex marriage and more open immigration, for example. But this must be joined by wider personal choice issues and by rejecting the nanny state approach to public health. Plus, of course, things like free schools and home education.

The four broad principles provide the basis for a different agenda - one that is prepared to explore currency choice, drugs liberalisation and devolved city government. It would be very distinct from the dominant centre-right, conservative approach that focuses on getting the right governance and the right people in charge - making the state model work rather than reforming it through devolution, markets or a combination of the two.

Perhaps after it has searched its soul the Liberal Democrat Party will emerge renewed and ready to embrace a genuinely liberal policy agenda but somehow I doubt this. Rather we will see the Liberal Democrats squirm about trying to triangulate a slightly more left-wing agenda in a last ditch attempt to survive. And because the Party's last few redoubts - Sutton, Eastleigh, Colchester, Orkney & Shetland - will hold out along with a smattering of hard-working councillors across the country, the Party will believe it has the means to rise again. Meaning that my hope for a real liberal party would be dashed!

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Postliberalism - rediscovering the "F-word" in Blue Labour and Red Tory

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It’s always tricky to use the ‘F’ word when writing about political thinking. It has become so cursed by its association with genocide, racism and war that the thinking that lies underneath is ignored. It seems to me that, unless we act with care, we will tiptoe towards those ideas again:

There is a distinct combination of ideas here – of market-friendly social democracy and a greater respect for “flag, faith and family” social conservatism – that has a natural majority in most rich countries, one that was squandered by the left in the 1980s. (Though the first Blair government had some echoes of it.)

Groups such as Maurice Glasman’s “Blue Labour” and Philip Blond’s “Red Toryism” have tried to turn their parties in a post-liberal direction, with limited success. But the interest in those two movements is in itself a sign that there may be a new intellectual consensus emerging to rebalance politics after the reign of the two liberalisms.

Here we see new language – “post-liberalism”, the two liberalisms – used to replace the older language of past rejections of the enlightenment revelation that we are free individuals. Whether than tones of Hobbes’ Leviathan with its appeal to god and the monarch as the embodiment of statehood or to a 20th century critique:

It is opposed to classical Liberalism, which arose from the necessity of reacting against absolutism, and which brought its historical purpose to an end when the State was transformed into the conscience and will of the people. Liberalism denied the State in the interests of the particular individual.

Today we see in those anti-liberal “Blue Labour” and “Red Tory” ideas another assault on the idea of individual sovereignty. And the attendant policies echo those past ideas – not just “flag, faith and family” (a slogan that the creator of the “F word” would have loved) but the rebirth of protectionism, the corporate state and an obsession with grand projects. For draining the Pontine Marshes read instead HS2, the Severn Barrage or ‘Boris Island’ – great schemes that only the powerful state under inspired leadership can deliver.

At the core of this new philosophy lies state-sponsored community organisation – taking Alinsky’s idea of the inspired activist and twisting it to turn these people into agents of authority wrapped in the cuddly language of the “third sector”. Such people become the shock troops of post-liberalism – the advocates of the new corporate state, projectors of moral judgement and champions of subsuming the individual into an allocated geographic, cultural or social group.

This post-liberalism is founded on a different conception of the state than the “F word” – more local, less anti-clerical and closer to the “F word’s” syndicalist roots. But some of the calls are familiar:

“...we've got to re-interrogate our relationship with the EU on the movement of labour…We should be more generous and friendly in receiving those who are needed. To be more generous, we have to draw the line.”

...and:

“a commitment to regional renewal, democratising corporate governance, reform of the firm, a left patriotism, a willingness to work with faith communities and a scepticism of traditional centralising, state solutions.”

As the creator of the “F-word” demanded:

...an active man, one engaged in activity with all his energies: it desires a man conscious of the difficulties that exist in action and ready to face them. It conceives of life as a struggle, considering that it behooves man to conquer for himself that life truly worthy of him, creating first of all in himself the instrument (physical, moral, intellectual) in order to construct it. Thus for the single individual, thus for the nation, thus for humanity. . . .

But above all:

Outside the State there can be neither individuals nor groups (political parties, associations, syndicates, classes)...

So, when those protectionist, anti-immigration, anti-choice, anti-business words drop from the lips of politicians red or blue – couched in a language of populist appeal – listen instead to an earlier post-liberal voice, that of Mussolini, and ask whether we really want those ideas again?

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John Leech - another socialist in liberal democrat clothing

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The government's Faustian pact - a deal that still remains despite the financial train crash - with the banks has cost ordinary folk dear. Yet this so-called "liberal democrat" wants to make it even worse:

...although the taxpayers own 82% of the company, we do not have a rep on the board and cannot force the company to lend money to businesses and create jobs.

This man is an MP - elected to provide intelligent leadership - and he wants to "force" a bank that's lost £1.5 billion in a year to lend money it doesn't have to businesses. It seems the argument is that Vince Cable thinks this a good idea. And, of course, Vince is the man because he used to work in a big (oil) business so understands all this money stuff.

More to the point (and I don't know Mr Leech's background) our MP seems to have not the first idea about the duties and responsibilities of a company director. Generally speaking their first duty is to the company's interest. And right now this is to get the balance sheet fixed, pay off those bad debts and make RBS a viable business. Running the business into the ground by forcing it to make a load more bad loans on political direction is a daft idea.

Mind you, we could have let RBS go bust in the first place. That would have been a liberal response!

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Why Jack of Kent isn't a liberal

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Top legal blogging chap, Jack of Kent, has – in his glory and pomp – issued a definitive definition on his blog. Not to do with the law but an answer – nay a revelation – “what is liberalism?” Forget about the great minds of the past who have pondered the meaning of liberal and liberalism – Jack has given us the definition. In short, easy to digest sentences:

Flowing from this priority placed on human autonomy then come the more practical applications of liberalism: due process, equality and diversity, freedom of expression on public matters, a private space on personal matters, free movement of peoples, internationalism, free trade, an evidenced-based approach to policy and law making, and so on.

Now because I’m a good boy and not as clever as Jack, I’m going to accept his definition of liberalism (even though I don’t entirely agree). Which is why I know Jack isn’t a liberal. He wrote this:

The ongoing economic crisis is a good moment to test this faith in the Market deity

And this…

It is as if the invisible hand has let us all go and started slapping us instead. One really must now have doubts that the Market is omnibenevolent, even if it retains the other two usual attributes.

No-one who claims to be a liberal should hold these views. You cannot be selective in your choice of liberal viewpoints and it is as illiberal to reject the free market as Jack does here as it is to reject freedom in sexuality, worship or diet.

But then, even in his glorious defining statement, Jack falls back on that old leviathan:

The liberal endorses an individual's autonomy unless there is a greater public interest in interfering with that autonomy.

So I can do what I want so long as the Government (or Jack) doesn’t think I shouldn’t do that something. I hate to tell you, Jack, that ain’t liberalism. It's social democracy.

But then, what do I know, I’m not a liberal!

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Is government futile? Two premises of government defined.

It’s not often that I’m reminded of this truth – and never before by someone claiming to be a Liberal Democrat!

The first premise of government is that we the people are unable to organise our lives by ourselves. We can’t be trusted not to mess up. Or worse we’ll commit dire crimes such as not recycling, educating our own children or eating the wrong combination of green stuff. But we’re good at looking out for ourselves – its human nature, instinctive, visceral – we don’t need a government to do it for us.

Government organises our lives in the social interests of the rulers not the ruled

The second premise of government is that markets don’t work. We cannot be allowed to trade free from intervention, from rules and from paying the bureaucrat his slice for managing such intervention and rule-making. Despite the fact that we have proof that markets work – under any condition.

Government intervenes with economic behaviour to the economic benefit of the rulers not the ruled.

I am prepared to accept government only under the conditions where the rulers and the ruled are coterminous. Under all other conditions it is my duty to seek to change it so as to achieve such conditions. I must never defend the actions of government just because they accord with my interests – those actions must accord with the interests of all.