There is in Scotland an unreasoning, visceral hatred
of Tories. It reached its present level of vehemence in the 1980s when Scots from
the Left and Centre united to prevent the Conservative Party winning even a
single seat at the General Election of 1997 and only one until 2015. Tories in
Scotland are portrayed not merely as being mistaken, but as morally wrong and
even wicked. I generally vote Conservative. Do I do so because I am selfish and
immoral?
The debate between the Left and Right is primarily
about economics. On the furthest Left of the political spectrum, we would have
pure socialism state spending as percentage of GDP would approach 100%. On the
furthest Right of the political spectrum, we would have laissez faire
capitalism with state spending as a percentage of GDP approaching zero.
At present state spending in the UK is around 50% partly
because of Covid, but under both Conservative and Labour Governments public
spending has generally varied between 35% and 45% for the past 70 years. The wicked
Tories since 1999 have spent more public money than any previous Labour
Government and we have in fact come closest to socialism during lockdown when
huge chunks of the population were paid 80% of their wages to do nothing.
The hatred of Tories is unreasoning because historically
there is very little difference between Conservative and Labour Government in
terms of public spending. Both parties tend to increase public spending when in
office and therefore both parties help us gradually approach socialism.
The wrongheadedness of this can easily be
demonstrated. Imagine if your local Tesco was run on socialist principles so
that goods were free at the point of use. What would happen on the first day of
free shopping? Everyone would come into the shop and take what they wanted and at
the end of the day there would be a few solitary jars of pickled cockles that
no one fancied.
The goods would not be free even if the Government said
that they were free at the point of use. Someone would have to be paid to
produce the goods, transport them or import them. Government would have to
cover the cost of this through public spending which it then passed on to the
taxpayer. But so long as everyone could buy what he wanted when he wanted,
there would be no limit to how much the Government would have to spend and no
way to stop Tesco being empty every evening except for the cockles.
The answer would be to tell each shopper that he could
only have one packet of bacon, two loaves of bread etc each week. The answer
would be rationing. Do you now begin to see the problem with socialism. It is
not an accident that you have to wait to see your doctor, or wait to get into
hospital even if you are very sick. It is a feature of a socialist model of
funding which makes healthcare, which has a cost, free at the point of use.
At present companies Amazon are run ultra-competitively
and deliver goods and services remarkably quickly and cheaply. Would this
competitiveness and efficiency continue if we each could buy what we wanted
from Amazon whenever we wanted to and get it delivered free the next day with
everything paid for by the Government? Again, this system would only work if
there were rationing, but worse than this Amazon would begin to treat us like
the lady in the doctor’s waiting room who rations access to the doctor. Quite
soon Amazon or a British version of it would be like the NHS, the Government would
have to continually pump more money into it otherwise there would be a winter
crisis and no one would get their parcels.
Socialism doesn’t work. Human beings are motivated by
profit and to improve their own lives and the lives of their families. This is
why we work and study. If you increase Government spending as successive Governments
have done you end up with national debt which for the UK is now over 100% of GDP
and for all that debt and spending, we still have poor healthcare, poor schools,
decaying infrastructure and energy bills that will be so expensive that many of
us will prefer to sit in the dark with heating off.
But although the Conservative Party is largely to blame
for this situation, it is not conservatism that has got us here it is
socialism. There is nothing remotely laissez faire or capitalistic about what
has happened since the last General Election. We even rig and put caps on the
energy market and think price controls might work. Labour could hardly have
spent more or borrowed more even if it had become the Communist Party of Great
Britain.
The epitome of this absurdity has been reached in
Scotland where we now have sanitary products free at the point of use. Even
free marketeers might see the logic of giving free products that are too
expensive for the poor to purchase, but sanitary products cost as little as
soap and toothpaste. Will the Scottish Government make those free too? From
that point we really are moving towards free shopping at Tesco.
There is not a great difference economically between
Tories, Labour and the SNP. An independent Scotland would certainly have to cut
public spending and there is no way that it could maintain public spending at
50% of GDP. I strongly suspect that after initially attempting to create a
Scottish Socialist Republic, the SNP would have to go towards the free market
laissez faire side of the spectrum. But oddly they would not be called Tories
if they did so and the same people who hate Tories now, would not protest,
because Tories are merely the villain that was created by those in the Scottish
Constitutional Convention who thought they could control nationalism by giving
it a parliament, only to see it take over. There is a long history of the
establishment trying to control nationalism.
I will keep voting Conservative, because the
alternative will be worse. No matter how much the Tories spend, Labour and the
SNP want to spend even more.
We are where we are. The task is gradually to get public
spending down to around 30% of GDP. This can only be done by changing the model
of healthcare funding and cutting taxes when we can afford to do so. It can
only be done through free trade, cutting business costs, eradicating whatever
rules and regulation hinder business and making people accept that when
something has a cost whether it is sanitary products, prescriptions or
healthcare it is not free because the Government pays. Until we change the
mindset that the solution to every problem is to spend more public money, we will
continue our drift towards poverty and socialism.
I am not immoral because I oppose this. Socialism
gives you poverty, no choice, loss of freedom and very frequently mass murder. Socialism
is contrary to human nature and therefore people have to be coerced first by
shouting mobs trying to intimidate, then by laws, and then by Gulags.
