Sorry Ms Moore, I'm right wing and I believe in freedom

There has, it seems, been some great debate amongst assorted "equalities" mongers - indeed the debate has descended into a row and from there spiralled down into political protest. And all because of something that Suzanne Moore said.

So the Guardian, seeking to pour oil upon these troubled waters, gives Ms Moore the space to explain herself (as it were). In doing so she launches into a justification founded on a belief in freedom:

...I feel increasingly freakish because I believe in freedom, which is easier to say than to achieve and makes me wonder if I am even of "the left" any more.

Of course, Ms Moore spends the rest of her article explaining how she's still a leftie really and that believing in freedom is a good thing. In doing this she can't resist positioning herself away from those on the right who claim to believe in freedom:

What we have is a few rightwingers who took some E in a field once and so claim to be libertarians, but are in fact Thatcherite misogynists. We have the double-think of "free schools", which exclude those who most need them. We have "freedom" for the very rich to take from the very poor while lecturing them on their moral poverty. We have women and gay people pushed into the conformity of lifelong monogamy, even though it clearly does not work for so many.

You see what Ms Moore has done here? That's right, she's parked the idea of free speech (that she claims to support) and sought to redefine freedom as something that cannot reside with the right. Now I'm a right-winger (although I never took an E in a field) and I don't recognise Ms Moore's argument. For sure, I've no time for those patronising sorts who want to judge the lifestyle choices of working-class people - you know the drinking, smoking and shagging. But I don't see this sort of middle-class disgust at such lifestyles as a peculiarity of the right. Indeed, the Guardian-reading left is perhaps more guilty of wanting to make moral judgements about lifestyle.

The problem for Ms Moore is that she likes the license of sexual liberation and the idea that no-one should have their talent dismissed simply because of their gender, sexual preferences, skin colour or accent. But she can't get her mind round the idea of economic freedom - the free enterprise and free trade bits of the great triumvirate of liberties.

As a Conservative, freedom is central to be world view. It is what we fought to secure, it is why we stand in silence every November to remember and it's why we get involved in politics. If freedom were secure - and secure for ever - then we could return to the plough and get on with the joy of life. But that freedom is threatened - by the sorts who would deny Ms Moore her words but also by those who would let others starve to protect their own income and position, by those who would create monopolies and by those who would castigate someone for the dreadful crime of creating jobs, wealth and success.

Suzanne Moore is right about freedom. But wrong to try and suggest - even to hint - that freedom can only be owned by the left.

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On being right-wing....

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It has been a funny experience watching and listening to all that American politics playing itself out on our media. And the thing that makes me scratch my head most is the automatic connection made between being “right-wing” and a set of ossified social opinions. Sometimes this is called “The Christian Right” or “Social Conservatism” and always is it characterised by opponents as “bigotry” or – by the more mild-mannered – “out-of-touch”.

Now I’m right-wing. At least if you define being right-wing as wanting a small government, as believing in self-reliance, personal responsibility and looking out for the neighbours. None of this is about god, gays or the production of babies. Yet these outlooks have become cemented into place as fixtures of being “right-wing” in America.

But I’m still right-wing. Not in some cuddly, metroliberal, noblesse oblige kind of way but red in tooth and claw, in-your-face right-wing. The sort that believes in that old Reagan dictum:

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

If we want change – and boy do we need it – then we have to dump the social conservatism, the judgemental moralising and the ‘Kinder, Küche, Kirche’ attitude to women. And with that baggage goes the tutting, curtain-twitching, lip-pursed, “they shouldn’t be allowed to do that” approach to the neighbours. The speed at which social attitudes to homosexuality have changed should be the starting point for our understanding of how being 'right-wing' must change.

None of this is about the 'nasty party' tag the left - and our current Home Secretary - lumbered us with. Nor is it about some process of centrist triangulation - a sort of Blue-rinsed Blairite approach. Indeed that approach and the "always tack to the centre" attitude of the terminally ambitious in both main parties has been responsible for the managerialist, Whitehall-knows-best policy platform that dominates current agendas. And created the mess we're in.

Thirty years ago I concluded that being right-wing meant being against the establishment's viewpoint and position. Even back in the early 1980s under a Conservative government, the establishment was viscerally anti-enterprise and especially disliked people who drove vans and the reps in their Ford Sierras. The "business" voice was provided by the smoothly-attired, public school leaders of the big businesses rather than by the bloke with a garage on the corner.

And even then - and this still applies - business voices played second fiddle to the sounds of people who weren't trade. You know the sorts - lawyers, doctors, the occasional bishop, folk from the BBC. To this smooth bunch were added, for entertainment I suspect, a few luvvies (only the posh ones with RP accents who went to RADA) and the occasional writer or journalist.

And, for these people, being right wing was the worst sin. I recall being introduced to a senior chap from the TUC by a good friend (who was both a priest and a Liberal) with words like this:

"Ah, this is Simon. He's the presentable sort of Tory."

Now I knew what my friend meant - I wasn't about to call for the blacks to be sent home or for women to be stopped from working. The sort of positions that the sophisticated establishment folk believed (and still believe) are held by most (definitely unpresentable) Conservatives. It was OK for me to be let out in establishment circles - I wouldn't scare them.

Believing in free choice, free speech, free enterprise and free trade seems to me the only moral political position - all others involve preventing someone from doing something because you think you know better. And that free choice, free speech, free enterprise and free trade stuff - that's right-wing. That's what it's about. It's not about god. It's not about gays. And it's definitely not about babies.

And so long as a few so-called "conservatives" think its about god or gays or women having babies and doing the washing up then the establishment - the left-wing corporate state - will have us by the balls. Being right-wing is about believing in freedom. That's it really and trying to build a coalition between people who really want to be free and people who want to take away or prevent others having freedom is never going to work.

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You mights as well say "reassert the primacy of democratic politics over physics"

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I'd never heard of Dr William Partlett, so he fits his own description of "obscure scribbler". However, if he is to fulfil his mission - defined as "overcoming the left-right divide" - he'll need to do better. In truth, Dr Partlett's overcoming the left-right divide is about challenging what he calls but doesn't define or describe. "libertarianism". Apparently the "libertarian right" is intellectually dominant which comes as a surprise to this old liberal.

But the weakness of Dr Partlett's argument is as nothing besides his confusion about economics. Now my understanding is that economics is a field of study focused on how scarce resources get distributed, how people respond to incentives and how the "wealth of nations" comes about. And I do not see that economics is the sole preserve of the "libertarian right" - not if Paul Krugman is anything to go by at least!

So when Dr Partlett says:

Despite a strong mandate and wide discussion of a new FDR-style “New Deal”, President Obama has made only halting attempts to reassert the primacy of democratic politics over the forces of economics.

...he is rather missing the point about economics - after all the "New Deal", whatever we may think of it, was an economic development programme. And, whatever choices governments make none of this changes the reality of economics - those actions may work, they may fail but the underlying rules of supply and demand, utility and such, the toolkit of economics, still apply.

We might as well reassert the primacy of democratic politics over physics.

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Musings from a thick Tory...

A Thick Tory Ponders Life's Deep Truths

It is quite remarkable that I, as a Conservative, am able to make use of this laptop in order to write coherent sentences. Perhaps this is a credit to the education I received and to the glorious simplicity of the English Language plus of course the forgiving nature of you the reader.

It seems that the great minds of Canadian academe have cast the runes (or whatever it is that psychologists do in order to garner “data” for their published work) and have discovered what my left-wing friends have known for years – Conservatives are thick. Or rather that – as I understand the work in question (bearing in mind that I am a Conservative) – a shadowy cabal of clever people manipulate us thickos through ideology:

Conservative ideology is the "critical pathway" from low intelligence to racism. Those with low cognitive abilities are attracted to "rightwing ideologies that promote coherence and order" and "emphasise the maintenance of the status quo".

Now, dear reader, Mr Monbiot who wrote that is left-wing so able to use multi-syllable words without getting severe headaches. We must therefore see clearly that he is right even though those long words hurt our eyes.

Now there’s nothing new in the left explaining to us right-wingers – often in the most patronising tone – that our problem is that we’re stupid. Ergo, we should let them run everything since they’re so much better qualified in the brain department. Here’s grumpy old Liberal John Stuart Mill:

Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.

Not of course that J S Mill with his belief in free markets, liberty and self-determination would qualify these days as a left-winger. But, hey, it’s a good quote! And since that time Conservatives (with and without the big ‘C’) have lived with the designation of stupidity. And it’s the worst form of stupidity – a sinful, corrupting, evil stupidity that divides not the stupidity of Homer Simpson as idiot savant.

So George Monbiot cries the oldest insult levelled at Tories, one that meant little when J S Mill said it and means little today – “you’re thick you are, what do you know?” And George’s ‘oh-so-superior’ left-wing pals echo him (and some second rate jokester called Brooker) in giggling about how they always knew Tories were stupid and right-wingers were thick. I mean look at what they read! Surely anyone intelligent would read the Guardian?

If there is an antonymic personification to the idiot savant then George Monbiot is that person – so well educated, well read, filled with eclectic ideas, a veritable fountain of knowledge. Yet, at the same time, so comprehensively, categorically and consistently wrong.

Let’s grant left-wingers their superiority, let’s embrace our Tory thickness – for all their knowledge these socialists, progressives and the like have brought us oppression, state control, obscene taxes, political correctness and the nanny state. Anyone who takes more than a moment to look at socialism’s record would conclude that these awfully clever (and mostly wealthy and privileged too) people visited disaster upon the ordinary people for whom they claimed to care.

It’s no use having great brain power if you use it to make the simple complicated, the obvious obscure and the common-sensical illegal. Yet that is the legacy of the progressive left.

If that is “intelligence” then I’m staying right here being “thick”.

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The right isn't stupid - it just disagrees with your stumbling and mumbling

Apparently “the right” – of which I am a proud member – are stupid:

What interests me here is: why should the standard of rightist argument be so low - almost wilfully ignorant of opposing evidence?

And the reasons – such as they are explained – relate to several specific factors:

1. The relationship between “employment protection” and levels of employment
2. How minimum wages – especially for the young – affect the economy
3. Whether taxes and specifically higher rates of income tax impact negatively on enterprise

We’re told by this (I assume) left-inclined expert that there isn’t any evidence supporting what the right asserts.

So let’s have a look:

Here’s the International Labour Organisation (ILO) on the subject of how employment protection legislation (EPL) impacts on the labour market:

EPL is significantly correlated with certain labour market flows across countries, such as labour turnover, inflow into unemployment, duration of unemployment and the share of long-term unemployed. The stricter the EPL is, the lower the labour turnover, the higher the inflow into unemployment, the longer the duration of unemployment and the higher the proportion of long-term unemployment in total joblessness are.

So the ILO says that stricter EPL contributes to higher levels of unemployment and especially long-term unemployment. There are a load of caveats to this but it seems that “the stupid right” do have a point when they suggest that looser employment rights might have a positive impact on employment.

In the case of minimum wages the research is (I’ll be kind) all over the place. Much of this is because of ideological and/or theoretical prejudices – both for and against minimum wages. However, nearly all the research shows a small effect on employment and a bigger effect on levels of long-term unemployment especially among young people.

We find that movements in both French and American real minimum wages are associated with relatively important employment effects in general, and very strong effects on workers employed at the minimum wage. In the French case, albeit imprecisely estimated, a 1% increase in the real minimum wage decreases the employment probability of a young man currently employed at the minimum wage by 2.5%. In the United States, a decrease in the real minimum of 1% increases the probability that a young man employed at the minimum wage came from nonemployment by 2.2%.

The “stupid right” are on pretty sound grounds questioning minimum wages and in suggesting that reducing the level of such wages for young people might stimulate employment. For sure, like changes to employment legislation, it won’t solve the problem but it might help!

And the high marginal tax rates – they don’t helpeconomic growth:

This article explores the impact of tax policy on economic growth in the states within the framework of an endogenous growth model. Regression analysis is used to estimate the impact of taxes on economic growth in the states from 1964 to 2004. The analysis reveals a significant negative impact of higher marginal tax rates on economic growth.

OK it’s just one piece of research – there will be others that suggest different outcomes. Indeed, some studies on entrepreneurship see cuts in personal taxes as a disincentive to self-employment – mostly because it’s a damn sight easier to avoid taxes if you’re self-employed!

But again the research suggests that the “stupid right” have a fair point - lower marginal rates of personal tax ceteris paribus have a positive effect on economic growth. Therefore, cutting the UK’s top rate is a good idea!

None of this suggests that there aren't different policy options, different taxes and alternative appraisals of the effect that such decisions have on the economy. What I am saying is that these suggestions – lower minimum wages, less strict labour laws and low marginal rates of personal taxation – are not “stupid”.

And saying they are is well...pretty dumb, really.

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