It’s a touching testament to the power of human irrationality that there are people who believe, with all the passion in their souls, that the Conservatives are a band of hard right-wingers. To believe that I suppose you have to believe that they are infinitely more incompetent than they are evil. After all, this supposedly anti-immigration, anti-environmental and authoritarian government has seen immigration soar to record levels, is pursuing net zero and has overseen a steep fall in crime detection and charge rates.
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Samizdata quote of the day – The Conservatives aren’t conservative in any way, shape, or formJune 15th, 2023 |
 14 comments to Samizdata quote of the day – The Conservatives aren’t conservative in any way, shape, or form |
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I’m reminded of the old joke: “A man is wandering an Irish road and stops a local: ‘How do I get to Dublin from here?’. ‘Oh’, he replies, ‘if you are going to Dublin you don’t want to be starting from here.'”
Which is to say, how far right something is depends on how far left you start out.
Fraser Orr – I have never been to the Republic of Ireland, perhaps I will one day – but I am bit old-and-poor now.
As for conservatives – well there are conservative parties in the South, for example the Irish Freedom Party.
An economic conservative is someone who supports lower government spending, lower taxes and less regulations, and sound money (traditionally gold or silver) – someone like Prime Minister Lord Liverpool, and NOT like Prime Minister Disraeli (who hated the memory of Lord Liverpool) who increased government spending, taxes and regulations – and quite deliberately so.
Quite deliberately so – one can not blame the Civil Service back in the 1870s, the state expanded because Disraeli wanted it to expand, he was a “Social Reformer” NOT a Conservative – that is why he hated the memory of people such as Lord Liverpool, or Canning, or Huskisson, or (although he pretended to revere him) the Old Whig Edmund Burke himself.
A Social Conservative is someone who supports the family and other traditional cultural institutions – against the attack that started, in a British context, with the Bloomsbury Set and the Fabians, but really got under way in the 1960s with the Frankfurt School Marxism of Herbert Marcuse (yes I know he never formally taught at the Frankfurt School – I am using “Frankfurt School” in the intellectual sense) – and has led to the “Diversity and Inclusion”, “Pride”, and-so-on.
Well gentle reader – it is up to you.
Do you believe that the present government since 2010 has been economically conservative – cutting government spending, taxes and regulations and restoring sound money and honest money lending of real savings?
And do you believe that the present government, since 2010, has been socially conservative – fighting against, for example, abortion – and upholding traditional cultural principles against Frankfurt School “Diversity and Inclusion” and “Pride”?
Central Office, if you are reading this (via Brigade 77 or whatever – if so, hello there Tobias, how are you doing…) please note I have not expressed any opinion at all upon the current government – I have merely asked the obvious, and perfectly civil, questions.
To be fair…..
Even if a minister is a real conservative, both an economic and social conservative, what can they achieve?
For example….
I have been somewhat critical of Jacob Rees-Mogg on Twitter recently – and he deserved it, as he insisted on talking about American politics either without a basic knowledge of the subject, or with a deliberate disregard for the facts (sadly I suspect the latter), but the Sir Jacob is a real Conservative – both an economic Conservative and a social Conservative.
Nor, Ben Sixsmith, is Jacob Rees-Mogg “incompetent” – he is highly competent and highly intelligent.
So what was this highly intelligent and competent economic and social Conservative, Jacob Rees-Mogg, able to achieve?
Essentially nothing – because the SYSTEM prevents moves in a conservative direction, economically and socially. People said the system was corrupt back at the time of the despicable coup against Margaret Thatcher in 1990 – but the establishment (the real establishment – the people with real power) are vastly more leftist now than they were in 1990.
If I was, by magic, made Prime Minister right now – I would not be able to achieve anything, indeed I would be out faster than Liz Truss (what was it 40 days before the Bank of England, Mr Biden, and so on, forced her out?).
Liz Truss is speaking right now on GB News – and still clearly believes that our political system can deliver a roll back of the state.
I wish I was so confident.
It’s quite wrong to suggest that the Conservative Party has not actually conserved anything. On the contrary, it has carefully conserved the legacy of the last Labour government so that the next Labour government will be able to pick up where it left off.
AndrewZ.
Much more than “preserved” the legacy of Mr Blair and Mr Brown.
Compare government spending in 2010 to government spending today in 2023, even after inflation.
But you are making the mistake that Ben Sixsmith seems to be making – you are assuming that the elected government is actually in power.
With all due respect Sir – what planet have you been living on?
For example, Mr Johnson was against lockdown – we had lockdown (and he was forced to speak in support of it – every-day, to humiliate him), and Mr Johnson was against HS2 – and there goes the 100 Billion Pounds (plus) on HS2 – what elected politicians wanted on this, or anything else, was not relevant.
I say again – if I (or you Sir) was, by magic, made Prime Minister tomorrow – we could NOT follow conservatives policies, not economically conservative and not socially conservative (I am both an economic conservative and a social conservative), we would not be ALLOWED to follow such policies.
“Get rid of the current bunch and….” and NOTHING.
Politicians can do some things – but the power of elected politicians in the current system is vastly overestimated.
You can be conservative (economically and socially), intelligent and competent – and achieve very little. Ask Jacob Rees-Mogg – a highly intelligent and highly competent person.
It probably matters if you want to know if someone is conservative, or if they are A Conservative. Much like, are you libertarian, or are you A Libertarian?
One is a spot at the end of a continuum. The other is a vector towards that end spot.
Andrew Z, I nominate your comment for Samizdata Quote of the Day.
No bobby b- it does not matter, not really.
For example, Kemi Badenoch is an outspoken opponent of Frankfurt School Marxism (“Diversity and Inclusion”) – yet the agencies “under her department” are pushing it
Suella Braverman is also an outspoken opponent of Frankfurt School Marxism – the lady says, in public speeches, the sort of things I just write here. And the Home Office, which the lady is “in charge of”, pushes Frankfurt School Marxism – every day. Not a surprise as the Home Office had Marxist academic advisers as far back as the 1970s (if not before).
Certainly Conservative politicians can change some little things sometimes – I myself have had such little “victories” from time to time, but anyone who thinks that elected Conservative politicians are “in charge” or “in control” of either national or local government – might as well believe in elves and pixies dancing at the bottom of their garden.
Things may be different in the United States, some conservative (non RINO) State Governors may have real power there, but I am discussing the United Kingdom – and I have been in politics for some 44 years.
On Disraeli…
Only last week an historian specialising in the 19th and 20th century told me a back story about Disraeli’s housing Act of 1875. It appears that Disraeli did not know what was in the Act (and did not bother to find out – even as he made fiery speeches in support of it in the House of Commons) – he just “left it to the experts”. I must stress that this historian is not anti Disraeli – on the contrary he adores him.
I kept silent in response – as “that shows what a dreadful person Disraeli was – how he just wanted to increase the size and scope of government regardless of whether this led to good or bad results” might have offended.
By the way – this historian is also a great fan of Pope Francis.
For balance….
The history book say that Prime Minister Lord Russell supported “laissez faire” – in reality he not only supported (back before he was Prime Minister) the imposition of the “National Schools” in Ireland (Lord Stanley, the future Earl of Derby, had this idea in 1831 – the taxpayers had no say in the matter), and then the Poor Law Tax (1838), and then (as Prime Minister) the massive increase in the Poor Law Tax in Ireland in the late 1840s (one third of the population of Ireland either died or had to flee the collapsing economy) – Lord Russell also bailed out the British banks (making a nonsense of Peel’s Banking Act of 1844) and supported state intervention into education in England and Wales.
Lord Russell was a “Liberal” (or “Whig”) indeed the leader of the party.
Hard to blame the Civil Service – as it did not exist at the time.
Someone who lends out Real Savings, the actual sacrifice of consumption, either their own Real Savings and/or the Real Savings of other people voluntarily entrusted to them, is a Money Lender.
A person who creates “money” from NOTHING, lends it out, and then demands government help (say the courts “suspending cash payments”) when their swindle (for swindle it is) inevitably gets into trouble, is something else – their swindling may be “legal” (as they control the laws in this area), but their swindling still has terrible effects – and they are NOT all called “bankers”, there are many sorts of such people.
In any case, it was them who brought down Prime Minister Liz Truss in 2022 – that is not even denied now. A massive Pension Fund scheme went wrong (as such schemes always go wrong) and the Bank of England (and other filth) decided to blame “tax cuts” (“tax cuts” that-never-happened) for the economi chaos caused by Bank of England “monetary expansion” (creating “money” from nothing) and handing out this Credit Money to their Corporate friends – Cantillon Effect.
These sort of people love the Democrat and RINO regime in the United States – sexual mutilation of children and-so-on.
They are very “socially liberal” – and they love higher government spending and higher taxes as well.
Yes they love “higher taxes on the rich” even though they are rich – after all what do taxes matter when you get endless Credit Money created from nothing.
“And why do people accept this Credit Money created from NOTHING”.
Legal tender laws and tax demands – Professor Krugman’s beloved “men with guns”. Credit Bubble banking and Credit Bubble financial dealings are joined-at-the-hip with government.
Edmund Burke spends more time denouncing all this in “Reflections on the Revolution in France” (1790) than he spends on any other matter addressed in the book.
People who look at the rich in California and New York City and think this is free market capitalism – could not be more wrong.
And that is not just true of America.
I’d like to ask a question of the authors and commentors of this blog.
There are without doubt some less than safe and free nation states in the world.
Nation states are inhabited by their populations and its my opinion that the circumstances of those nations are the responsibility of them as a whole.
My point being, in short, is that people running away from their nations rather than fighting and potentially giving their lives to make them better places is cowardly. Its the reason those nations are hell holes in the first place.
My thoughts are that refugee treaties don’t help troubled nation states. We need to withdraw from them and potentially create them using our democratic institutions.
I’d concur.
Who do we take in from bad nations? We take in the people who had the gumption, the nerve, the self-control necessary to move their lives from a known home to an unknown place.
So we get those people who, if they had to stay home, would be the most likely to push for change in that home.
Every ambitious refugee who leaves his home country – in the case of those who actually move for economic uplifting, which is “most” – removes as asset from that country. Most such countries can ill afford such a loss.
The gumption of people who know they can’t be refused and will get everything given to them rather than sort the problems in their own country? Doesn’t seem like they have any love of their country?