“In many ways, Cameron faces a task far harder than that which confronted Margaret Thatcher. She was elected three years after the IMF bailout, and so the public finances were being restored to health. She was chosen as leader specifically to bring radical change, and had four years to assemble a team and prepare for the ordeal. Mr Cameron originally assembled a team for the political equivalent of a game of croquet; the same people now find themselves dropped on a rugby pitch.”
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Samizdata quote of the dayMay 28th, 2009 |
 10 comments to Samizdata quote of the day |
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Fraser Nelson clearly doesn’t understand how aggressive croquet can be, even though it’s not a contact sport.
Politics isn’t a contact sport either.
Maybe Cameron just picked the wrong team.
Now would be a great time for libertarians to pester all non-labour parties to adopt libertarian positions! UKIP wants out of Europe- so ask the other parties to also promise to leave Europe, if they want you to vote for them, and not just abstain! What actuak policies is the British Libertarian Party going to advocate? Now is the time to wrestle concessions out of all the non-Government parties!
And if they don’t liberalize enough, don’t vote.
Cameron is going to have to do to the public sector unions what Thatcher did to the miners. I wish him luck but I’m not holding my breath.
Off topic, but I’m surprised this story http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/05/eu-sues-sweden-demands-law-requiring-isps-to-retain-data.ars isn’t rating a mention on the blogs.
Do our editors have any comments?
Nuke Gray!
Check out here(Link).
It’s been the policy since the party started I think.
The difference between us and UKIP though is that the whole point of UKIP is to get out of the EU. Whereas the whole point of LPUK is to bring libertarianism to the UK, albeit we can’t do that until we get out of the EU. Subtle difference!
I agree with your overall point though.
Comparisons with Thatcher are off the mark: the next election won’t be 1979, it’ll be 1970.
Mrs Thatcher had her faults, but (contrary to Dr Gabb and some others) she did have a limited government vision of “ordered liberty” based on private property and she did do some things right (of course, being a human being, the lady also did some things wrong).
Sadly it is unclear what Mr Cameron believes in – so he starts with a major disadvantage. Without a political philosophy……… (and the term “political philosophy” should not be rejected – “practical” people who do reject it are really saying “we are just in politics for the pay and perks” and covering their position with a lot of waffle about “public service” and “values”). Anyway – without a poltical philosophy it is hard to see Mr Cameron achieveing much in terms of the limitation of the size and scope of government.
And yes the situation at the next election will be a worse one (in many ways) than the one in 1979.
As for UKIP:
They wish to get Britain out of the E.U. – this would remove a whole layer of government.
They also have a chance of winning seats next week (although this chance is radically reduced by all the other “anti E.U.” parties standing, some with names oddly similar to the United Kingdom Independence Party).
Of course most people here would like to go a lot further than U.K.I.P. in rolling back the domestic British government – as well as getting rid of the E.U. layer of government.
But getting rid of the E.U. layer (and the Regional layer of government which is linked into the E.U.) would be a good move.
Cameron is a non-entity. Osbourne is a public school twit who knows nothing about economics, or indeed the real world. Osbourne, a man who sees nothing wrong with pumping your money into propping up the dying financial sector, which as Jim Rogers has said has had its day.
If you want even more tons of taxpayers money going into the public sector vote Labour.
If you want taxpayers money being handed out to private corporations in thinly veiled corporate welfare schemes, vote Tory.
What an amazing choice the voters have.
Relugus, sadly Labour (like the Democrats in the United States) are wildly in favour of corporate welfare now. Mr Brown and co think up a new scheme of corporate welfare almost every day.
Of course many countries do this now – indeed in Japan there is a whole government bank that does nothing but hand out “loans” to politically connected corporations “to help them survive these hard times and prepare for the future” (and if anyone believes this justification I have a nice bridge to sell and……..)
It is very depressing as the one thing that the right and left used to agree on was that corporate welfare was bad.
Now although Bushbrain has gone the Republican estabishement are still “compassionate conservatives” (i.e. corrupt corporate welfare supporters) as can be seen by the degenerate Governor of Florida they are supporting for the United States Senate. And the Democrats (with a few exceptions) are rotten to the core.
As you say – what an amazing choice the voters have, in both Britain and the United States.
His out of his depth on this one
Sam, that is what I was hoping for. How do you feel about my earlier suggestion- call yourselves the Partisans of Liberty in the UK, because the initials make a great acronym! (Pluk, as in pluck, plucky)