George Walden, the former Conservative education minister, Foreign Office mandarin and now a writer on various affairs, makes the claim that the Tories may have a hunger for office but lack a clear idea of what they would do. That is true up to a point; but I think it has already become pretty obvious that Cameron’s Conservatives are a pretty centrist lot, with no great obvious desire to shrink the state, reverse the enormous burdens of regulations and tax, or to roll back the intrusive legislation that has robbed owners of private property, be they homes or businesses, of many freedoms to dispose of their property as they see fit even with the consent of their fellows. And when I consider some of Walden’s advice, I wonder what would be gained by taking it:
The luxury of Opposition, meanwhile, has rarely been so alluring. If ever there were an ideal moment not to be in government, it is now. Either you grapple endlessly with unrewarding tasks (gérer la grisaille, or managing greyness, as a Frenchman has put it) or you are on your knees praying that sub-prime mortgage failures in America do not dynamite the economy, or find yourself disarmed in the face of environmental or terrorist threats. At such moments, Opposition is the place to be. The insouciance it can bring can be seen in Tory suggestions that the Government should have had arks in waiting for the floods, or in the cynical denial of the need for identity cards or longer detention for terrorist suspects. Thank God it’s not us in charge, the subtext runs, otherwise we would have had to do both.
Consider “the cynical denial of the need for identity cards or longer detention for terrorist suspects”. Oh really, George? If it is “cynical” for the Tories to deny that we “need” ID cards that proved useless in preventing terror bombings in countries like Spain, where people have ID cards, then the more cynicism, the better. And if it is “cynical” for the Tories to show occasional flashes of respect for the English Common Law, and the web of checks and balances that this legal order contains, then I say “well done Mr Cameron” – a rarity from yours truly.
Here is some other advice from Walden, of equally dubious quality:
Conservatives, like Labour, have backed away from a fundamental rethink of our centrally maladministered, Stalinist National Health Service. Nor has either party the courage to tackle the divide between public and private education which, by severing the head from the body, kills the possibility of a high-quality state sector stone dead. City academies, a refuge from this reality endorsed by both parties, will make no difference. The notion that an absurdly fragmented railway system can ever work in our horribly over-populated island is another joint pretence. So the question is simple: if the Tories have no serious policies to offer, and share the Government’s problem-dodging instincts, what is the point of office?
Apart from agreeing with his description of the NHS, I accept little else. Walden skirts around the fact that the NHS is a monopoly funded out of general taxation, is mostly free at the point of use; there is little serious competition from the private sector (although this is slowly growing) and therefore there is little incentive either for people to arrange their own health affairs more intelligently or for health providers to cater more carefully for what people want. (And in case anyone raises the case of the US health system to bash private medicine, I should point out that the US system is so warped by litigation risk, regulation and restrictive practices that it is hardly a model of laissez faire). Walden then goes on about the supposed evil divide between state and private education and wants to blur this: does this mean that independent schools lose their independence, which is precisely why they appeal to parents and pupils in the first place? What would Walden say about the constant desire of governments to raise the school-leaving age, creating a new grouping of bored and disruptive students? Does Walden not realise that the way to improve education is to inject a sharp dose of competition and parental/pupil choice across the board, through a voucher system or tax-deduction approach? On the contrary, Walden wants the Tories to make the state even more dominant in education, it seems.
The Tories are getting lots of advice these days. I doubt any Tories spend a lot of time reading this blog but for any that do, the best advice I could give them is to advocate policies that expand the liberty of the individual and get the state out of our lives. Period. All else is blather, even if it comes from supposedly clever people called George Walden.
‘our horribly over-populated island’
That told me all I needed to know.
He’s right about the railways – sort of. The seperation of infrastructure and land from train operators is bizarre. It was the real estate where the Victorian railways made their real cash and (I guess) gave them equity to borrow against.
The Metropolitan Railway (the start of the London Underground system) and they made their real cash by increasing property values along their route – who wouldn’t pay more for a property along a useful transport link? Compare with Jubilee extension and the increase in property values across a large swath of London which resulted being essentially a subsidy to landlords from the tax-payer.
Give me the Victorian railways anyday. They were of course much more extensive but still all you needed to navigate was a Bradshaw.
Ooo,
That was horrible, sorry.
Hope you get the gist
“our horribly over-populated island”
That’s a bingo. Time to start acting on it.
Walden is essentially pushing a TRG technocrat europhiliac line. There are some on the old left of the party who are Blairites at heart, and really can’t see what the fuss is about ID cards and other “modern” (= superficially like anything French) developments of governance. People with that sort of view (just like Blair) are highly prone to assume people who disagree with them are only doing it to annoy, that nobody could genuinely believe anything different.
My reading of the current Tory front bench is that they do have working brains, and their opposition to ID in particular comes from a much better understanding of its significance than that of most of the ministers promoting it.
…I doubt any Tories spend a lot of time reading this blog but for any that do…
Probably more than you think.
My reading of the current Tory front bench is that they do have working brains, and their opposition to ID in particular comes from a much better understanding of its significance than that of most of the ministers promoting it.
Yes, that is roughly my feeling too, and that is why I shall probably vote Tory at the next election. I think this is the way to cast my vote that is most likely to help defeat the ID card proposal. (This is assuming I move house before the next election. If I continue to live where I do now, I fear I will have to vote Labour).
John Major (not a man I normally defend) wanted to denationalize the railways – i.e. keep train ownership and track ownership in the same hands (“Network Rail” is not privately owned, although “Railtrack” was for the brief time it existed – and as for the rail “franchises” these concerns often do not even own the trains). But he was told by Civil Servants that the E.U. would not like it.
As for Mr Walden – he is as you suspect J.P.
For years he has been saying (translated into English) – “most private schools are good, most government schools are not good – therefore we should nationalize the private schools”,
As for health care:
Medicare and Medicaid are a total mess (5 billion Dollars together in 1965, many hundreds of billions of Dollars now – and massive knock on costs in the rest of health care, just as government money in higher education has pushed up fees there). So government payment with a “different, non Stalinist structure” does not work either.
I was pleased when Mr Walden stopped being M.P. for Buckingham
Sadly they got another tosspot instead.
God save us from the “clever” (of any political party).
I would much rather have “common sense” (which is sadly uncommon) any day.
For example, the ex Labour party M.P. Brian Walden. As opposed to the Conservative party Walden.
“TRG technocrat europhiliac line”
Hopefully property values will increase along this route also.
Not as romantic as the Acheson Topeka and the Santa Fe,but getting there.
So, Mr. Walden:
Centrally maladministered, Stalinist National Health Service bad; centrally maladministered, Stalinist National Identity Database good.
Or am I missing something?
The detention without charge (not without trial, without charge) stuff is even worse.
If you suspect people are going to do something criminal then charge them with conspiracy. And we are not talking about a few hours here either – George Walden supports locking people up for MONTHS without charge.
As it is the long delays (in England and Wales – Scots law is different) between charge and TRIAL are unacceptable.
They clearly violate the principle of a speedy trial laid down (for example) as far back as 1215.
“But the limitations on the power of King John are not needed when one has a democratically elected government”.
That is the “modern” attitude and it is quite wrong.
I can understand detaining enemies in time of war (and enemies out of uniform can be shot under the Geneva Convention), but we are talking about British Subjects – and people who may be totally innocent of any offence.
Locking people up for months can destroy their lives (“but we are doing to save lives” – not true if they are innocent), by bankrupting their business enterprises and so on.
And let no one think that such “laws” will only be applied to Muslims (and even if they were – either they are British Subjects or they are not, and if they are they British Subjects they must not be held without charge).
Once a Statute is on the books it gets used on all sorts of people.