Lord (David) Frost is in suitably scornful form this morning in the Daily Telegraph (£). He takes aim at the idea, set out in yesterday’s Labour manifesto, that economic growth can be lifted from its torpor by a mass of councils, committees, agencies and the like, all directed from Whitehall but working, somehow or other, in “partnership” with private sector firms. As he notes, Starmer and the rest of them have learned all the wrong lessons from lockdowns, and in fact they liked the lockdowns precisely because of the ability to order the public around, to mark their movements and somehow command innovations (vaccines) by clapping one’s hands together. The headline of the article is excellent:
Lockdown is the inspiration behind Labour’s ‘plan’ for growth.
Excerpt:
The truth is, of course, that don’t get growth just by saying that you want it, by spending money, or by getting bureaucrats to draw up plans. You get growth by allowing people and companies to invest, spend and invent, as they see fit; by letting them keep what they have earned; and, as far as possible, by staying out of the way.
I cannot resist parallels with where we were in 1964. The Conservatives, led at the time by Alec Douglas-Home (a much underestimated politician and a sharply intelligent man), appeared exhausted and “out of touch”. There was this whole thing about the “grass moors” – pictures of toffs shooting game birds on Scottish estates, and speaking in absurd public school accents. The times they were a changin’: the Beatles were exploding, George Best was transforming the world of football, Sean Connery was on the big screen doing battle against Spectre, and Peter Cook and Dudley Moore were making us laugh on TV; consumer goods were more accessible in our shops, and Labour sought to go for the “white heat of the technological revolution”. A lot of this was flim-flam, although some wasn’t. Harold Wilson, who smoked a pipe in public to appear more “sound”, apparently, did a lot of arguably good liberal things: censorship of literature more or less ended; the death penalty ended; homosexuality was decriminalised, divorce laws eased. Social conservatives may jib at this, but there was an aspect of genuine liberalism on parts of the Left that have vanished now in these “cancel culture” times. The downsides were still enormous: ugly buildings, the launch of the destruction of grammar schools and encouragement of egalitarian (and mostly bad) ideas in education. (This Dominic Sandbrook article gives a flavour.)
We know how things ended. In 1967, there was a serious run on the pound in the foreign exchange markets (the UK was still part of the Bretton Woods system, which was ultimately underpinned by the dollar and the $ was still linked, however tenuously, to gold); attempts to rein in trade unions failed; spending on welfare and health rose. Horrid tower blocks were built to replace older housing, to the questionable benefit of the country. There was a “Brain Drain” – sky-high taxes on the “rich” meant that anyone of note in music, film, entertainment, commerce and industry lived abroad.
By 1970 the wheels had come off. Wilson’s government appeared out of ideas, and its enthusiasm for central planning and control appeared as discredited as the Soviet Union. Throw in the turmoil abroad (Vietnam, end of Bretton Woods, the OPEC oil shock, racial and social mayhem in the US,) and things moved fast. Unfortunately, when the Tories were elected on a slim majority in 1970, a promise of radical reform under the horrible Edward Heath did not endure, and by 1974 the country was in deep trouble: strikes, power cuts, civil disorder, the nightmare of Northern Ireland. It wasn’t until 1979, with the election of Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives, that matters improved. And for several years it was turbulent, and not a sure thing.
Consider the parallels, even beyond the confines of the Labour manifesto: We have seen a relentless assault on “the rich”; and taxes are rising on them, and there is in the background the threat of a wealth tax, encouraging people who can to get out. The Labour Party wants to impose value added tax on private schools, consolidating the power of unions who hate any form of choice in education. There’s likely to be a lot of house building (something I broadly support), but one has to ask about the likely quality and appearance of it. And to go back to Lord Frost’s point, there is an inability, a sort of complete mental block, to think of bottom-up solutions by individuals doing their own thing to anything. Every problem, in the Labour mind, starts with what government can do about it. I am reminded of the theme of that excellent book, “Seeing Like A State, How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed”, by James C Scott. I doubt that Keir Starmer or his likely future Chancellor and finance minister, Rachel Reeves, have read it.
The groundwork for this memory-holing of lessons from the past has been in evidence for some time. I think the 2008 financial crisis, and the way that a poisonous narrative was allowed to build around what caused it (evil bankers, deregulation, etc, when the causes were mostly about government), carries a lot of the blame for this.
There’s also just a dreadful complacency among those who just assumed that arguments for free enterprise had been won and we can focus more on gender pronouns or so on. (I have seen plenty of comments like this from “social conservatives” who have even told me, at times, that public debt “does not matter” because immigration is so much more important.) What has happened is that the classical liberalism tradition has gone soft. I was struck by how, for example, you can go into a bookshop such as Waterstones in the UK and almost every tome on politics and economics will be banging on about the alleged evils of neo-liberalism and how such ideas rule the world. If only. (A book, Free Lunch Thinking, by Tom Bergin of Reuters, is one of the more intelligent ones, but it is full of questionable conclusions, such as its attacks on the idea that incentives matter, and has been nicely and politely taken apart by Kristian Niemietz of the IEA.)
It is worth recounting all this to understand that while history never exactly repeats itself, it does rhyme. The 60s aren’t coming back as far as music, fashion and films are concerned (shame), but we are likely to get some of the other stuff.
Two thoughts. Firstly, the key to growth, apart from government staying out of the way, is cheap energy. We must get fracking. Secondly, while the curse of a Labour government is exactly that – a curse – the Conservatives have to be destroyed so that the party can be rebuilt as truly conservative. Destroying the current Conservative party is also necessary pour encourager les autre by reminding all political parties that they work for us.
Spot on YAC. Even if we elect the Tories for another hundred years, all we will get is a hundred years of more managed decline. Five years of Starmer may be as palatable as a bucket of cold sick, and economically disastrous, but it will, hopefully, send the message that we need the right-wing parties to deliver a small state / Cobdenite / Austrian school / Maggie II / Free Market (call it what you like) alternative that we can vote for and put in government. Only then can we stop the rot.
Or, as has been stated elsewhere, Tories Delenda Est.
I wouldn’t say debt doesn’t matter but they are right that immigration is so much more important, because the latter is becoming increasingly existential.
Also immigration is fueling public spending so if you want a smaller state and lower taxes it would seem wise to curtail it: Britain facing £100bn tax jump as immigration surge stretches public finances, IFS warns
There is a very important difference between the 1960s and now – like the 1960s the Labour Party is committed to more spending and more regulations (“planning” and so on), but it is also (UNLIKE) the 1960s committed to censorship of all dissent and handing over all power to unelected officials and “Woke” (Frankfurt School “Critical Theory”) legal authorities. True there were signs of some of that in the 1960s (for example in the 1965 Race Relations Act – this covered speech, which the 1964 American Act did not) – but only to a limited extent, now it would be total.
So the idea that it would be “five years of leftist government and then we get a real pro freedom party in power” (or whatever) is totally wrong.
You will not be allowed to dissent – for example much of what is said on this blog is more than enough to get the Samizdata site closed down as far as Progressives are concerned.
And if, by some miracle, Labour lost the election in five years time – the incoming party would find themselves with even less power to undo “Progressive” policies than the present Conservative Party government has. And facing an even more Progressive Civil Service and Judiciary.
None of this is hidden, it is all in plain sight – but people around here refuse to see it.
They seem to think they can put Labour in power with a vast Commons majority and undo what it does in five years time.
The world does not work that way any more – if it ever really did work that way.
Martin – as you know, the “One Nation” types who are weak on government spending are also weak on mass immigration (which, of course, is benefit immigration – government benefits, public services, housing and-so-on).
People who are leftist on one thing (say Frankfurt School “Woke” DEI-EDI cultural policies) tend to be leftist on everything else as well – government spending, immigration, and-so-on.
On the 2008 crises – like the 1929 bust the Credit Money bubble was pushed, every step of the way, by the Central Banks – the late 1920s “gold standard” did not mean that gold was the only money, on the contrary it was a smoke screen to cover up a massive Credit Money expansion (pushed by Benjamin Strong in the United States and Montague Norman in the United Kingdom).
But the bankers did not say “No, No, do not do this” – on the contrary the loved the policy, indeed the reason that the Federal Reserve was created in 1913 was so that banker Credit Money bubbles could be even bigger than they already were.
So “evil bankers” is not totally wrong – it is just correct in a very different way to what is normally presented.
As for the present situation – it is hopeless, the financial and monetary mess in Western nations is passed all repair, a massive crash is inevitable.
Perhaps that is why the governments of the United Kingdom and France rushed to the polls – so someone else would be in office when the Credit Money system collapsed (with all the horror such a collapse will mean).
In the United States – if President Trump wins he will be blamed for the economic and societal crash which is coming, and if he does not win (say he is imprisoned by one of the Kangaroo Courts, or the election is rigged – as the 2020 one was) then the international establishment will use the crash as an excuse to do what they want to do anyway.
In 1933 Constitutional money and contracts (or what was left of them) were destroyed – and in 1935 the Supreme Court said that robbing the people of their gold and violating all contracts (public and private) was fine.
In 2025 the Dollar system itself will go – to be replaced by an international digital currency and world tyranny.
At least that is the plan. And a Labour government would happily put Britain under such an international tyranny – there would be no reservations or limits at all.
It would be – Game Over.
Martin:
High debt, as a share of GDP, gets existential if the interest charged on it is greater than a defence budget, and where it crowds out private borrowing and hurts a country’s ability to keep in shape, as it were, including the ability to pay for infrastructure.
Immigration on the scale we have had in the UK and the sheer pace of it is a threat if it continues and if assimilation does not happen. But refusing to grapple with this is a choice that isn’t that hard to make. The vast majority of immigration is legal. If we want to turn down the dial, we can by changing how visas are given out. This isn’t difficult. If Home Office civil servants refuse to comply with enforcing the rules, they can be fired.
With national debt, however, cutting it is intensely painful in political terms, and we know from dozens of examples in history how hard it is for countries to shed the debt addiction. It can lead to wars, bankruptcy, massive economic dislocations, and more. Just look at the struggles of the current Argentinian president to cut debt and take Argentina back to something approaching sanity.
Paul, another big difference between the 1960s and now, which I did not mention (I cannot think of everything) is demography. Look at birthrates, and look at the ageing of the population, even after net immigration. That changes the character of the population: more risk-averse, for example. And that means people are more inclined to want to hang on to what they have, including the things they imagine they are entitled to, such as various state handouts.
I don’t think the rot of the entitlement culture was as bad in the early 60s as it is now, because while we had had lots of gushing propaganda about the Welfare State under Attlee and after, there was still enough of traditional moral disapproval of laziness, shirking and malingering to keep people on the line. Today, almost a one in five working-age “adults” (the scare quotes are deliberate) are not seeking a job. I cannot imagine the old union member types who made up the 60s LP being very happy about that.
Yet Another Chris wrote:
The problem, of course, being the political parties don’t learn the lesson. At best, they figure they just didn’t get their message across to us simpletons who vote and double down on the message the next time there is an election. At worst, they change the message and once in power go right back to doing what got them chucked to the gutter the last time.
Both public debt and immigration matter, they are both important, but neither problem can be tackled unless you crush the Deep State, see it driven before you, and hear the lamentations of the woke.
Which brings me to Paul’s comment:
Most probably true, but doubly irrelevant to how one should vote now.
First, Reform looks set to overtake the Tories. If you want to keep Labour out (hey, there is always hope!) then your best bet is to vote Reform, not Conservative.
Second, even if, by some miracle, the Tories win the current election, then they aren’t going to use their power to undo “progressive” policies, in fact it seems likely that they would use their power to implement more “progressive” policies, thereby increasing the power of the Deep State and reducing the power of subsequent governments to reverse “progressive” policies.
OK, the Deep State would have slightly less power after 5 more years of Tory government than after 5 years of Labour government — but that does not strike me as a good reason to vote Tory, for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that this is a historic opportunity to expurgate the deep-statist elements of the British “”Right””.
Still not voting Tory, Paul.
Phuc ’em!
PS:
Much depends on the Tory candidate in your constituency, of course: his/her wokeness, and his/her prospects. You should vote tactically.
BTW: I do not think that Farage would make a good PM.
But then, i did not think that Trump would make a good POTUS.
Still, i have better reasons to distrust Farage than i had to distrust Trump.
And yet… who else, other than Farage, can tackle the British Deep State?
(Having gone back+forth 4 times, i’ll stop here.)
The problem for the Tories is since their only real talking point against Reform has been to say they’re a wasted vote and effectively voting for Labour is that if Reform keep pushing ahead in polls, it will just look like voting Tory is a pointless, wasted vote for Labour.
Farage’s political career is a good example of if you want something doing you have to do it yourself.
UKIP got it’s best success with him at the helm. When he wasn’t leader the party usually fell to shit. When he was leader of UKIP he was able to pressure the Tories into things like an in/out referendum. Once the referendum happened and Farage stood down, the Tories went to trying to temporise and fudge over Brexit. Farage sets up Brexit Party, crushes everyone else in the Euro election in 2019 and then the Tories do get their act together in response and deliver Brexit. But after the general election in 2019 Farage steps away again, and the Tories resort to their bad old ways. With the boring and awful Richard Tice at the helm Reform were going nowhere. Now Farage is at the helm again Reform actually look like a credible party, and he’s completely burying everyone else in those debates.
The Reform candidate in my area is pretty dubious to be honest. Someone who has failed to run as a Lib Dem councillor multiple times before detecting to Reform some time in the last 2 years. And while Tice was leader I couldn’t take Reform seriously. He has very Ian Duncan Smith uselessness vibes. But with Nigel back in charge I think I’ll be voting for Reform, because we need a human hand grenade right now, and he’s the best we have in Britain of that mold right now.
If we were all smart, across the so-called “Anglosphere”, we would make a careful list of everyone who’s been involved in politics over the last fifty years, even peripherally as “staff”, and then we’d ban all of them from holding any form of office in any branch of government. I’d also take their pensions, their pay, and confiscate all their “generational wealth”, unless they could prove that it came from some legitimate source.
I don’t think people appreciate enough that the current lot of criminal politicians and their enablers have been performing a classic mafia-style “bust out” operation on our nations. They are crooks masquerading as “public servants”, and if you think anything different about any of them, you’re a damned fool.
Precisely none of what’s “gone wrong” in our nations has “gone wrong” because someone made a “bad decision”. All of it has happened because someone thought they’d chisel out a bit of advantage for themselves, or wanted to lord it over someone else in the name of the ego-boo they get from wielding power over the helpless. Perfect example is going on in Eastern Idaho, right now, with regards to farmer’s water access. They are deliberately breaking the agricultural system, with malice aforethought. If you manage to stomach watching Jeremy Clarkson on his farm, and haven’t cottoned on to the fact that the primary drag on all our economies are these numpty busybody drones infesting the government, well… You’re too stupid for words, and ought to be kept confined somewhere for your own protection.
Our problem is government, and all the idiots that think they “know better” and who are trying to live out King Canute’s supposed order to the sea. Thing is, they’re not Canute, who was likely making a point to his courtiers; these idjits really think they can tell the tide not to come in. Literally, in some cases.
Frankly, if you’re in government, and just evaporated overnight? The world would be a better place tomorrow, filled with much happier and far more productive people.
Biggest improvement I think I could make to the human race is if I could (and, believe me, I would…) eliminate that gene pattern which goes along with the typical Karen mentality, the “there ought to be a law…” one. No, Karen, there oughtn’t. And, by suggesting there should be, I think that should serve as a notice to all your nearby fellow apes that you yourself need to be eliminated from the gene pool as an act of legitimate self-defense.
Seems like Ace of Spades agrees with Snorri Godhi, for what that’s worth.
Which probably isn’t that much, and he’d likely admit it himself. As he says in the linked post, ‘I’m not a “journalist,” so I don’t know everything by simply existing and reading headlines on Twitter.’
Polling since the 1990s have consistently shown majorities in Britain felt immigration was too high. And at the last four general elections the public elected a government promising to reduce immigration, yet never doing this. The current government enjoys a large majority, yet has increased immigration on an unprecedented scale. This may not need to be difficult, but it sure seems to be.
This may be the case. There was certainly plenty of unrest in Britain in the 70s and 80s. Now, would throwing in even more ethnic, cultural and religious enmity and rivalry that comes from mass immigration make this task to cut debt any easier? Ending mass immigration (along with other things) is likely going to be essential to obtain sufficient public buy-in to achieve this.
I’ll admit this is purely anecdotal so judge it for what it is: both sides of my extended family are industrial working class backgrounds from Hull on one side and Leicester the other, and many of the older generations were very tribal Labour voters. I remember speaking to many of my older relatives when they were alive about politics and outside what she did with the Falklands War and perhaps right to buy, few had many kind words for Margaret Thatcher. On the other hand, despite their Labour allegiance, most wouldn’t hear a bad word be said about Enoch Powell. They almost all thought Powell was right about immigration and race relations. When I’d gently point out that Powell economically in many ways was more Thatcherite than Thatcher, they didn’t care so much. They would say that the stand he’d made over immigration, and even the common market, showed he was on ‘their side’. You can see this in pro-Enoch Powell protests in the 1960s. Most of the participants were manual working class. Of course, it was Thatcher who was PM rather than Powell, and had the latter been PM opinions may have differed. But it has impressed me how a (albeit very unconventional) free marketeer was so popular with many otherwise tribal Labour voters. It may prove impossible to reform the UK without massive civil disturbances, but it would seem while attempting to, some quite considerable effort to maintain and even improve what social cohesion still remains would be necessary.
Ace does seem to nail it: “We have to beat our first enemy first, and our first enemy is the fake Conservative Party that we vote for only to see it implement the left’s agenda with gusto.”
Nice to know, thank you.
…But i note that Ace of Spades, unlike me, does not make it the top priority to crush the Deep State, see it driven before us, and hear the lamentations of the woke.
Johnathan Pearce – yes the demographic position is terrible, and I was wrong not to even mention it (I apologise for that).
Mark Steyn pointed out years ago what was happening – but he still had hope for the United States, which did not seem to be going down the same road. Then after 2008 (as late as that) the American fertility rate (especially among productive taxpayers) collapsed (and has continued to collapse – from 2021 with the help of the Covid so called “vaccines”) – basically the United States joined-the-parade of the rest of the dying West.
Although, it should be pointed out, Russia and China also have very severe demographic problems.
Snorri – you are not making a distinction between good Members of Parliament and bad ones, but then neither does the Reform Party – which is standing against everyone (even against the Independent M.P. Andrew Bridgen).
As for your idea that Reform is the main alternative to Labour – you do not understand how elections work (that is not an attack on you – it is just pointing out that neither you, or the other people round here, have any practical experience of how the British election system works – never been elected to anything in Britain) – Reform will end up with very few Members of Parliament, perhaps only one.
If you think that some (some) Conservative M.P.s have not held back some of the evil – you are mistaken, because they have (although not as much as I wish they had). With a Labour government that check will be gone.
It will be “game over” for the United Kingdom.
Martin – there have been many failures against the Civil Services, the independent agencies and the “Woke” judges.
But if had to pick out the worst failure it would indeed be on mass immigration.
As Liz Truss pointed out in here recent interview on the Lotus Eaters podcast – any minister, or Prime Minister, who suggested really cracking down on mass immigration was threatened (yes threatened) by officials – threatened with dire economic forecasts, charges of racism, and-so-on.
The entire administrative structure needs to be cleared out – so that elected politicians (not officials) can really make policy. But that is not going to happen – on the contrary the next Labour government will give even more power to officials.
Again the bitter truth is that it may well be over for the United Kingdom – the end of this island story.
A minor comment, re this “The 60s aren’t coming back as far as music, fashion and films are concerned (shame)…”
I love a lot of 60s music but whenever I sit back and really listen to the lyrics, it’s mostly wrong-headed, destructive shite! Great melodies and music but the lyrics are part and parcel of all the worst leftist nonsense that floated to the top in that era.
If I were (much!) more talented, I’d re-write some of those songs with lyrics more in line with right thinking: classical liberal, small “c” conservative, even libertarian! And of course it’s art so not always all about politics!
“There’s likely to be a lot of house building . . . but one has to ask about the likely quality and appearance of it.”
Given what we see every day here in the Northest part of North Derbyshire, nobody’s asking and buyers will accept rooms which would normally identify as cupboards and ugly houses crammed onto floodplains.
The population problems this country has cannot be solved by a bit of ad hoc housebuilding, it’s reached the point where new towns must be built. You can’t just keep adding more and more houses onto existing infrastructure unless you want to turn all our cities and towns into slums.
Alex – de facto new towns are being built, for example my own town is getting five thousand extra houses (on top of the thousands of extra houses it has had over the years) that is a new town in all but name. But there are also official new towns being built – indeed housing is being built in many parts south east England (although the official figures often ignore what is actually happening).
But the idea, of the IEA and ASI and the rest of the London crowd, that building more houses and more “infrastructure”, yet more roads and so on, will solve the problem is utterly absurd – there have been around 10 million immigrants in the last 20 years and millions more are coming.
There is no way that such mass immigration can work – and people who say it can work are either fools, liars, or both.
Hungary was quite right to block this mass immigration – and the European Court has let the cat of the bag by its recent ruling (fining Hungary X million – plus a million a day) – let the cat out of the bag about the real agenda of the international establishment elite.
The agenda of the international establishment elite is to utterly destroy historic nations. To destroy communities and to reduce the population to atomised individuals without any cultural support network – serfs for governance and for partner Corporations (which are nothing to do with free market capitalism – and which are sustained by Credit Money created from nothing and dished out to the politically connected – a “Cantillon Effect” world, where Corporations no longer have to care about the preferences of customers indeed can openly despise ordinary people as “toxic”).
The efforts to destroy the family (and so on) since the 1960s, has the same objective.