This New Statesman article argues that while the proponents of Brexit were libertarian, what we are going to end up with is more statism. I happen to think that we would never have reduced the size of the state inside the EU, so leaving it was a necessary first step. But it was never going to be all that was needed. Theresa May does seem to favour some particularly odious policies. On the other hand, there has been talk of reducing corporation tax and VAT. Trade could still end up being free-er on net. We might eventually get rid of May, or new political factions might rise to dominance that offer more hope. Am I right to be at all optimistic?
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24 comments to The Statism of Brexit |
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It was a necessary but not sufficient step.
With Labour imploding a shift to the left (e.g. see Theresa May’s speech) for Conservatives would make sense if they were still operating in a complete two party system. In that situation they theoretically keep voters that are to the right of them whilst hoovering up more voters to the left. The existence of the Lib Dems never impacted the viability of this strategy as they tried to sit in between the Tories and Labour. A prominent UKIP (provided they sit, in some ways, to the right of the Tories) does upset this, however. As has been widely recognised, a prominent UKIP promoting their more libertarian aspects ensures the Tories cannot swing to the left too far and is a safeguard that Brexit will move us in a better direction.
We need the version of UKIP shown to the southerners to prevail over the more socialist leaning version in the north. We need the Tories to truly appreciate this threat to them if they shift leftwards. We need the left to continue imploding so there is no pressure from the 20th century abomination that is socialism.
Given UKIP’s current problems with transforming themselves into a post-Brexit viable party we have issues.
I still dream that the Lib Dems, realising their ridiculous, unprincipled, “middle ground”-between Labour-and-Tories stance will never get them anywhere, will vaguely return to some form of Whig party. We could carve the 21st century politics up into Tories versus Whigs, or Globalists versus Nationalists, and ditch socialism forever.
Do not look to UKIP.
The guy who collapsed today was recently heard talking like a libertarian. I am not familiar with the full field of hopefuls but there can’t be that many who would pretend in that direction.
Precisely.
I thought your article was realistic rather than optimistic. Brexit was essential but it was never going to make our enemies just disappear. Predictably, May is turning out to be cut from the same soiled cloth as her Tory Blairite predecessor Cameron, so yes, much work remains to be done. But post-Brexit there will actually be a game worth playing đ
That is what worries me about May, too authoritarian for me. I want a proper conservative government that I voted for, small government, less quangos and less listening to the lobbyists, especially green lobbyists. We want, nay need, secure, affordable energy and less interferrance from MPs lacking knowledge but claiming to know all.
UKIP have a golden opportunity to be the opposition now, but they are blowing it big time.
Brexit, ha ha. Any year now.
In the UK do you:
1. know all your governments
2. know what each of them does
3. know which activities are done least properly
4. know which activities are least popular
In the US, we don’t have any of that and that lack is something of a source of doom over here. How are you guys doing on the same question over there?
Can UK politicians look at a smart phone equipped with GPS and say exactly how many governments apply where he is making a speech, what are their most egregious programs, and how many of them have ready alternatives that could be quickly brought into play so society gets the same thing done with better quality and fewer resources?
That would be a great thing to have and make the small government case more electorally viable at present. This is a simple (if tediously large) data problem.
Would something like this be of commercial interest on that side of the Atlantic? Or is it going to have to be done on a non-profit basis?
Now, there is at least the possibility that perhaps someone (Danniel Hannan?) will be able to say:
There seems to have been a “pivot” in certain of the means the people of Britain were willing to accept for particular ends; whether and how (to what degree) that pivot is a change
in the acceptability of particular means or a reassessment of certain ends – will set the “optimism” for individual liberty in that society.
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Sam Bowman is suggesting we strategically join forces with “left-liberals” against authoritarian measures, though I am not sure about some of the compromises he suggests: https://www.facebook.com/samuelbowman/posts/562595579422
TMLutas, I don’t understand your questions. I live in the US and I certainly know the answers to all four. (Well, #3 and #4 are judgment calls, but I know which activities I think are badly done and disliked.)
The problem with policies that shrink government is effectively promising something that people want and will benefit from in the shrinkage. Right to buy council houses produced results the public could see on a scale that got in a good percentage of the vote for the policy maker and shrunk the power of the state. If shrinking the state creates a hard core of losers, all libertarian policies do is drive voters to big government parties. If libertarian ideas are ever to make real ground with voters, they must believe on a emotional level that they will benefit. As far as I can see, libertarian thinking is very largely directed at what policy should be and very little on what persuasion is needed to sell the policy to the public.
Meme’s like the NHS killed your Granny, the Council begrudge taking the rubbish away and have wreck the school your kids have to go to, Westminster politicians tax low paid workers, just to give government contracts to their rich friends in big charities or big business, Big Government stops jobs from Heathrow/Gatwick expansion, Fracking or any economic activity that gets you jobs so you can look after your family. They all need pounding into the Overton window if there is ever to be a libertarian realignment. To be fair, the European Union has been successfully “demonised” to the voting public.
I have a love hate relationship with people. I love what our civilisation has wrought, but I really don’t like the methods necessary to change attitudes in the general public. Basically people vote against what they fear. If you want to look at how to make libertarian ideas mainstream, you have to copy the methods used against drink-drive in the UK to make it socially unacceptable, or how a vast amount of our culture promises the Government can replace God if only you pay enough tribute in taxation. Government will look after you.
All of which runs straight up against the ethics of libertarians as it’s exactly what big government parties do, fear loosing government largesse, vote for us. At some point libertarians have to embrace some of the tools of other movements because we have to learn the same lesson that every other large political movement has to learn, true believers aren’t enough and the general public votes against what it fears far more than for what it loves. Though combine the two and you have a winner. Hate the EU, love Britain. Victory.
Discredited politicians arguing for more government helps.
Across the libertarian sphere, I large absolute numbers of very clever people designing a brilliant society of the future, with much less effort in how to gain the democratic support the ethics of liberty require.
Also, someone needs to be quietly thinking about sure the mind set necessary to capture the vote doesn’t end up wagging the dog and the whole movement becomes more statism. A constitution has not worked. A person put in charge of achieving that will eventually come to love the power or be replaced by someone who does.
End mad rant.
Personally, I’m optimistic. There are two reasons for optimism that I think people are missing. Firstly, the prospect of Brexit means a lot of reorganization for bureaucrats. While they’re reorganizing they can’t be interfering. This is good, many regulations won’t get enforced while the readjustment continues, which will be good for the economy. Secondly, many politicians weren’t loyal to the EU out of ideology, they were loyal because of the EU’s excellent pensions. Since it now look as though Britain will leave the EU they can no longer look forward to an EU position and pension in the future. This encourages a different point of view.
Reading the “New Statesman” is bad for one’s mental health – even I would not touch it.
Getting rid of the E.U. means less statism (it is an extra layer of government) – not more. But YES the problem of the Keynesian Mrs May and Mr Hammond remains – with their dream of “Social Justice”.
Of course they are actually no worse than Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne – who were also spend-spend-spend regulate-regulate-regulate people.
Mrs May and Mr Hammond just do not pretend to be anything other than the Keynesians they are – they are honest about it.
Laird – I’ve never actually met someone who knew all that. Congratulations, if true.
I currently live in Charleston, SC, having relatively recently moved. This is what I had to do to figure out how many governments apply to my new address.
1. Look up all the governments that have a mailing address in Charleston county, South Carolina. There are 35.
2. Go through them by hand to identify the ones that apply to me. There are 12. I think.
3. Add back in the two governments that are not local, which would be the state and federal government. That gives me a total of 14.
This is down from my previous permanent address, just outside of Chicago. There, the total was 15.
The list of all governments is created by the US census in their census of governments. You can find them here:
https://www.census.gov/govs/cog/
That’s just to figure out item 1.
Then you have to go contact each of the governments and actually find out what they do. Be prepared to ask multiple times and to get different answers each time you do as *virtually nobody asks the question* and they’re thus not usually prepared with a canned answer that is accurate.
That gets you item 2.
Then you need to iterate through that list of things that are done and figure out what are the key productivity indicators (kpi) for each item, what is the acceptable range, and what are the actual values.
That gets you item 3.
Finally, you need to investigate alternatives for all the lousy performers.
That gets you item 4.
Again, if you’ve gone through this process and actually have the answers, I want to meet you, shake your hand, and possibly give you a job offer.
Hey, Itellyounothing, there is another way to make a nation into a freedom-loving country- encourage the right sort of immigrants! If all the different libertarians from around the Anglosphere decided to become Australians, that would upset the local balance onto the side of less government for a long time. Australia encourages people to come here, if they have some useful skills. The government doesn’t worry about your political orientation. The local population is almost 25million, so a few million libertarians trickling in would have a big influence. Or you could move to Naziland next door, a.k.a. New Zealand. Their numbers are smaller, so a million small-government immigrants would have a bigger impact! And the current government is a free-enterprise one, with rising living standards.
Nicholas Gray: isn’t New Hampshire in the USA attempting something similar? Although as far as I am aware it is not showing up in voting patterns yet at all…
Nicholas gray,
I like it. If we did it for Mars, we get our own planet and an instant majority…. đ
I now know how the backstory to Battlecruiser Alamo series of books happens…..
I am interested to see how New Hampshire works out. Though they are already pretty libertarian to start…
Paul Marks, October 6, 2016 at 11:40 pm: “Reading the âNew Statesmanâ is bad for oneâs mental health â even I would not touch it.”
In one sense, I see exactly what Paul means. However I grew up reading the New Statesman from my early teens till my early twenties – it was one of the papers (all left-wing) that the family took. As early as my late teens, I began to become aware that it was unwittingly training me not to believe it – and so to be wary of similar-sounding PC propaganda when I met it elsewhere. There were many reasons. If I had to name just one, I’d point to the comical contrast between the “working class good, rich bad” hectoring of its articles and the arty-farty rich-kid-drop-out style of its culture. It was terribly obvious that these “everything for the working class” writers despised almost everything a typical member of that class thought – and would take from them the freedom to think it in the brave new world.
TMLutas, that makes us neighbors; I live up in Greenville County. I hope you’re making out OK with the hurricane. If you need any help let me know.
The governments which directly affect me are federal, state, county, city, school district, and a handful of special-purpose districts which really don’t matter much. I know what each does. Other than those SPDs I make it a point to know personally my elected representatives at all of those levels, as well as some others who represent districts other than mine (primarily in the state legislature and county council). It’s really not terribly difficult for someone paying attention and willing to do a little research once in a while.
“Itâs really not terribly difficult for someone paying attention and willing to do a little research once in a while.”
And yet, I bet less than 3% of the citizenry can answer the first question.
Laird – Prudent purchasing led me to buy a house on (relatively) high ground and my worst trial is that I get my broadband back on the 11th. I’ve dealt with scarier storms in Indiana as far as personal risk. Give me a nice predictable hurricane that gives you days of warning and a good 12 hours forecast predictability over a tornado that can ruin your life in the course of an hour from weather formation start to finishing off your house and possibly your life.
I looked up Greenville county. It has 37 governments by the most recent census. The special purpose districts never matter until they do and you find out the hard way they have the power to get your property seized and you put in jail just like the general purpose governments.
I hope to get all the governments listed, have contact methods for them, and *mapped*. That means that you’ll know exactly which governments have jurisdiction wherever your smartphone is. No more research needed even for people not particularly interested in oversight per se.
A thousand little apps can be made on top of that.
What I want to establish is a baseline functional level on top of which a lot of libertarian friendly political apps can be built. There’s an entire class of software that is just missing.
The next time the country’s obsessed with poor bridge maintenance because a major bridge goes down, the national bridge inventory can be mixed in to create a list of politicians who are not doing their jobs and endangering the public.
The next time police go and shoot somebody’s dogs in a no knock raid, an app can show you not only all dog shooting policies that apply to your home but also the politicians who have the power to change them.
Thousands of databases are out there already that could be deployed to enhance oversight and make the case for smaller government. Without the map of which governments actually apply to you personally, all that data just doesn’t connect in a way that inspires real action.
bobby b – before I started this quest to create an oversight infrastructure, I had never heard of the census of governments. It’s not a very well known operation as it consists entirely of one government talking to other governments. If 3% know, I would be very pleasantly surprised.
TMLutas, glad to hear you made out well in the hurricane. Just so you know, we do get tornadoes around here, just not many. I’ve never seen one and hope I never do.
Good luck with that app. I’d use it. But of the 37 “governments” in Greenville County not many actually affect me. Most are special-purpose districts (I’ve read that SC has more of those odd creatures than any other state), and only a handful of those have jurisdiction over me. And while they do have taxing authority they don’t have tax sale authority. Those taxes are collected through the county, which handles the collections.
While you’re studying our governments, take a look at the Regional Councils of Government. Technically they have only an advisory role, but their leadership is unelected and they get their fingers into a lot of things. And their financing isn’t exactly transparent; they get a lot of money from lobbyists and big corporations that isn’t fully disclosed. A lot of states have similar entities (they had their genesis in the FDR era, like many of the evils of our current government), but SC is one of only two states which have enshrined them in our state constitution. It’s a “sleeper” issue few people know anything about.
Let me know when you’re ready to join the SC Libertarian Party. The current chairman lives in Charleston; I’ll introduce you.
Thanks for the offer. I believe I already know the gentleman.
The state of SC has 281 special purpose governments. It is not a heavy hitter in the field.
I don’t have this set up for a quick listing but here are some state totals I searched up in the minute I limited myself to researching this.
IL=3228
CA=2778
ND=756
NY=1169
GA=498
TX=2305
The last COG (we’re about due for another) listed 89304 total governments and that number is known wrong from a government oversight perspective. It is undoubtably higher because virtually all of the governments are established by state law and each state has a different definition as to what is a separate government. Some entities that the feds say is a govt, the state disagrees and vice versa.
If you “already know the gentleman”, and get yourself involved in the Libertarian party, perhaps we’ll get to meet sometime.