Politics is partly about opinions and persuading
others to vote for those opinions, but it is much more about truth. In an
election we are faced with a choice between Labour and the Conservative
parties. Each puts forward a set of policies and personalities and the voters
choose between them. It’s partly a matter of taste. Do you prefer the Left to
the Right? But much more importantly its about the truth. Which policies
actually will lead to this or that outcome and which will not?
The same of course goes for Scotland. The SNP puts
forward at each election a vision of what Scotland would be like if only we
voted for independence. But while this might seem to be a matter of opinion,
there is a fact of the matter, there is a truth of what would happen.
There is a tendency in politics to try to please
everybody or at least as many voters as possible. It is this tendency that sees
political opinion grouped in the centre.
Labour has moved back towards the centre with Keir
Starmer being a sort of duller Tony Blair. But many Labour voters and MPs still
believe in socialism. They prefer public ownership to private enterprise. They
distrust the market. Their instinct is always to increase public spending
rather than lower it. But Labour knows that it will struggle to win an election
with an honest socialist manifesto, so it is toned down, made more palatable
and more moderate.
But what matters is the truth of whether socialism
will lead to economic prosperity. You can call it social democracy, or democratic
socialism or something else, but will increasing the size of the state make
Britain wealthier or not?
The same goes for the Conservatives. Free market
economics is unpalatable to the electorate. British voters like free things.
They like ever higher public spending on their beloved NHS. Whenever something
goes wrong, they want to be bailed out by Nanny. So, Conservatives always move
to the centre too.
We end up with a choice between watered down socialism
and watered down free markets or in Scotland watered down independence (i.e.
devolution).
While crowding round the centre and adopting each
other’s policies may make sense politically, because the task is to persuade
voters that your opinion is palatable, it only works long term if your opinion
is true.
You can give voters what they want, you can increase
public spending and pay them to stay at home. You can give them free meals and
free beer and they will love you for a while, but if you make them poorer by
doing this, they will kick you out no matter that they once loved you.
Socialism is a theory that has been tested to
destruction. It is contrary to human nature and contrary to the natural way in
which we conduct business with each other. People have traded with each other
since time began in order to make a profit for themselves. They have worked to
help themselves and their families, not for people they have never met. Our
goal has always been success for ourselves and our families. We have never
worked for equality with strangers.
But we are attracted to the idea of equality. It makes
us feel good, noble and virtuous and so we keep giving socialism a chance. But
if socialism is contrary to human nature, then watered down socialism will also
be contrary to human nature. It won’t work as badly as socialism proper, but
neither will it work well, because it is contrary to the natural economics of
barter and exchange.
Everywhere in the world where there are genuine free
markets without corruption there is an increase in prosperity. Trade may be
selfish, but it benefits both the seller and the buyer.
What this means is that theoretically if you could
only arrange society to allow the freest possible markets you would have the
most prosperity.
At the heart of Conservatism is an economic theory
that goes back to the beginning of time, which has always worked. But
Conservatives never quite dare to introduce it. Conservative Governments
invariably spend far too much trying to please the British public who are
socialists at heart. This means that we end up with public services that are
mediocre and inefficient. We don’t allow the market to determine wages, but
rather set a minimum wage and we never do what we could do to make Britain more
profitable, because it would in the short term be unpopular.
The choice then is between a true theory (laissez
faire capitalism), that has been tried and tested for centuries, except we
don’t dare to fully try it and a false theory (socialism) which remains false
even if it is mixed with a bit of capitalism.
The task is to shrink the size of the state and lower
public spending to around 30% of GDP. Having lowered public spending, it will
be possible to lower taxes. People will then work harder, earn more and spend
more.
People are not naturally idle, but if you give them enough
to live for free then they may forget that they are naturally capitalists. It
is necessary therefore to encourage them to cease to be idle, while looking
after those who genuinely cannot earn for themselves.
Brexit will theoretically make Britain richer, because
the EU is a protectionist organisation and leaving it ought to enable Britain
to make more free trade deals around the world than we lost by leaving the
Single Market. But it will only work if we are willing to undercut the EU and
make it cheaper to do business here than there. Naturally the EU wants to stop
us doing this, the folly is that we have allowed them to.
Some argue that picking a Tory moderate would enable
the Conservatives to appeal to Lib Dems and Labour voters. It might. But at the
cost of being wrong. Free market capitalism would make Britain richer,
imitating the Lib Dems and Labour would make us poorer because these parties
essentially want to make markets less free. That is what Government spending
the profits of capitalism does. Leave capitalists, i.e., us to spend our own
money.
The EU with its rules and regulations and its social
charter and its protectionism that stops French farmers facing competition is a
grand social democratic theory that has sent its member states into gradual
decline. Leaving it is the equivalent of Thatcher’s revolution in 1979, but
only if we have the courage to take advantage of the opportunity.
Just as Thatcher was able to move us decisively away
from the failed experiment of nationalisation and rule by the trade unions so
there is a chance to make Britain genuinely less protectionist and freer
economically. This will work, but it needs time and the courage to do what is
necessary even if it is in the short term unpopular. Cutting public spending will hurt some people
and the Labour supporting media will go crazy.
But the prize is this. Ten years from now Britain
could be much richer. Just as we were much richer in 1990 than in 1979. By
following truly right-wing free market thinking, we could pull ahead of the EU
and in doing so destroy by means of prosperity the SNP’s dream of breaking up
Britain. If the EU were worse off than the UK then the SNP would be homeless.
If you make the UK prosperous enough no one will want to leave.
Perhaps just perhaps Liz Truss has the guts to do
this. Rishi Sunak by contrast as chancellor spent more than Jeremy Corbyn
planned to do.
