Surely this cannot be for real? I can only imagine that our Chancellor, Gordon Brown, is simply tickled pink by the thought of the Brussels elite choking on their morning brioche. Or perhaps someone has bought him a Seethe-O-Meter for Christmas and he has decided to test it out on the Labour Party rank-and-file?
That may be petty but how else can one explain a senior left-wing politician using the Telegraph to set out his ‘big vision’ for Britain?
Now we must build an even stronger and deeper national consensus: a shared national economic purpose that the Britain of the Industrial Revolution should become the Britain of a 21st-century enterprise renaissance.
And, mirroring America, that new consensus for enterprise should embrace not only commerce, finance and science, but all schools, all social groups and all local authorities. There should be no no-go areas and it should include even the poorest inner-city areas, where enterprise is the best solution to deprivation.
Er, come again?
So I want business to seize the opportunities of the upturn in the world economy. The Pre-Budget Report will lock in the stability that is the foundation for growth, sweep aside old rules and regulations, and set out a plan to lead Europe in fighting Brussels red tape.
‘Nurse, nurse…Mr Brown has had a funny turn!’
But more enterprising as we are, Britain still lags behind the American rate of business creation and success. And as the world economy strengthens, this is the time to encourage more start-ups, to provide more incentives for new investment and to build a deeper, wider British entrepreneurial culture that once again rivals America.
Shhh…Gordon, for pity’s sake, keep your voice down. You’re not supposed to say these things.
Starting a business or becoming self-employed in America is not seen as the privilege of an elite, but a chance open to anyone with talent, initiative and the will to get up and go. And in America, failing is merely an interruption and a lesson learnt, not a cause of ignominy or an excuse for inertia.
Listen? Can you hear it? Yes, it’s the unmistakeable ‘popping’ sound of Guardianista heads exploding. So what has happened to this Labour stalwart who was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1997 as an avowedly tax-and-spend socialist? Has he undergone some remarkable Damascene conversion? Has he whiled away his spare time reading the Samizdata? Que Pasa? Not since Margaret Thatcher (Peace Be Upon Her) have I heard such swaggering free market rhetoric from any British politician and I don’t think even she would have been quite so brazenly pro-American.
However, the real question is, does he mean it? All speculation aside, this is a man who, together with his colleagues, have fuelled, fed and hosed the state apparatus with more money and entrenched privilege than it has ever had (though, to be fair, their predecessors did much of the spadework). If Mr Brown really does want to re-ignite the enterprise culture in Britain then what he really needs to sweep aside is the bloated public sector which squats on this country like a gigantic, malignant toad.
So what if he is serious? Will he go about it the right way? We all know what needs to be done but does Mr Brown? Will this be yet another case of style over substance with a flurry of initiatives, consultations, campaigns and postures that make all the right noises but change nothing? On the off-chance that Mr Brown does, indeed, browse the archives of this blog (which I doubt but you never know), allow me to offer up this simple step-by-step guide to achieving his aims:
1. Withdraw from the European Union.
2. Take a buzz-saw to the festering mound of regulatory controls and pointless, smothering laws.
3. Sell off every single bit of the public sector that has any market value and abolish the bits which don’t.
4. Shut down 98% of the government.
That is all you need do, Mr Brown. Then you can sit back, pour yourself a large brandy and bask in the warm glow of the glorious life-affirming prosperity and trade which will rise, phoenix-like, from the ashes of statist sclerosis. After all, there is nothing miraculous about prosperity. It is the perfectly natural and wholly predictable result of political and economic freedom.
Yes, that will do the trick but I will refrain from holding my breath. Others may be inclined to give Mr Brown the benefit of the doubt but let us not forget that he has made no secret of his ambition to push Big Tony out of the cat-bird seat and all this apparently fiery Thatcherite radicalism could just be a jockeying tactic; an appeal to the business community and the middle-classes in order to get them on board for a big tilt at the title.
But even if he has no actual intention of seeing through his new-found devotion to free market ideology, he will find it hard to backpeddle on such a tub-thumping platform without flushing his own credibility down the toilet forever and a day. That is why rhetoric matters (even if it is only rhetoric).
David: You just never know who might turn up in our readership. I’m continuously surprised by the interesting nature of some of those who browse here…
Self Employed people get caught out by that very dodgy IR35 ruling that really really favours the large businesses that give lots to the Slavour party.
Guess who brought it in??? The lying toerag Brown.
No-one should beleive a word anyone in the party of liars says. They are truly the worst filth ever to govern.
Amazing, even if he doesn’t believe a word of it.
Makes me grind my teeth, though, the automatic assumption that government has to provide “incentives” for new business. What government has to do is get out of the way and businesses will start themselves. The only effect government can have on the entrepreneurial spirit is to dampen it.
I’m with Rob Read. Watch my lips: He is lying. (Brown, that is; not Rob.)
Don’t get too excited: he doesn’t understand free enterprise, so he’s talking out of the top of his greasy-haired head. That is why he has raised taxes 60 times. That is why he is destroying the British economy. That is why he is so hellbent on redistribution of other people’s incomes. Brown doesn’t get it.
He’s trying to reassure former Tory voters who may be tempted to return to the Tories. He knows Blair’s going to take a choreographed fall before the Hutton Report comes out and he doesn’t want to come in looking too scary.
He knows he’ll only have a year and a half or so to work into the job before an election, so he’s making reassuring noises. He’s a dyed in the wool lefty. His wife is the business partner of that Hobsbawm woman in a public relations agency which, strangely, is so uniquely talented that the bulk of their business comes from the Labour government.
Gordon, (son of The Manse) Brown a convert to free enterprise? Don’t make me laugh!
Politicians are rarely self-consciously lying villains such as those in Rand’s novels. He probably believes what he is saying. The trouble is that he hasn’t the first idea how free markets and enterprise actually operate and probably thinks that the regulations he puts in place are of some assistance to the market. However he no doubt looks on the free economy as some kind of piggy bank that he can periodically raid to finance his social welfare policies. He is more than likely not radically evil but radically ignorant. He has probably learnt some lessons but his ‘meta-context’ is still utterly deluded.
Too complicated, everyone.
He is just trying to shoot Michael Howard’s fox.
Too true he doesn’t actually get what he is saying. Nice that it imspired such an amusing piece from David though. It will probably get quite a few of the Guardinistas into a twitchfest which will be damn funny to watch.
Doesn’t he realise that most of the genuine entrepreneurs have moved on. That he (they), have all but killed the ‘Golden Goose’.
The only ‘new’ business ‘start-ups’, are either off-shoots of some multi-national, or in the ‘black’ economy, where the tax man can not reach.
Who would be naive enough to believe any of the ‘pitch’ quoted in the post above?.
Contrary to P Coulam, I do believe he knows just what he is doing and saying, and because he knows the right way of doing things, but persists in doing just the opposite in the cause of failed socialist dogma, makes him as evil as any politician in one of Rand’s novels.
A bit like asking for volunteer infantrymen after the war has been lost….
Andrew Duffin – That’s what I said, above.
Ernest Young – I also believe he knows exactly what he’s doing and would be interested in Paul Coulam’s reason for saying he doesn’t. Brown is as mean-spirited and judgemental as all the other socialists. I didn’t believe a word of the article and continue to be puzzled that The Telegraph keeps giving this red shirt a platform for telling lies.
The only good thing about Brown is, he’s going to be a great election loser.
This is simply New Labour political triangulation – Talk Right but Act Left. It is no different from the Labour Party’s Prawn Cocktail offensives of the past. I will believe he means it when such a column appears in the Daily Mirror, not the Telegraph.
If Gordon Brown has really undergone some Damoscene enlightenment, we will soon find out about it as he slashes taxes, burns red tape and abandons his spending spree. Actions speak louder than words.
“This is simply New Labour political triangulation – Talk Right but Act Left.”
That sounds right.
Still, politicians are like insects who possess extraordinarily sensitive antennae for the detection of possible votes. Brown says these things because he believes there is political utility in saying them. That means he believes there are voters who are in play who want to hear these things. That in itself is good news. Yes, he is trying to preempt Howard by making these pronouncements. But, but, some actions in support of this vigorous language may be forthcoming, if he is held to them.
The opposing bench should use these stirring phrases as clubs to batter Brown and Blair. The best way to do that would be with concrete policy proposals, specific proposes legislation. Then say to Brown, “you said these things, we liked the sound of it, we propose to act on YOUR words, sir, to give them effect. What do you have to say.” Is anyone awake to this opportunity on the Tory side.
All I mean is that when people do foolish things they usually act out of ignorance rather than malice. I think that it is implausible to suppose that Gordon Brown is fully aware of all the damage that scialism does, yet persists in it because he is motivated by evil. This is what characters like Ellsworth Toohey in Rand’s books are like – self consciously revelling in their evil. It is not a plausible psychological assessment of most people; even politicians. It means that we should seek to remedy their ignorance rather than just condemn them. They are, however, still responsible for their own ignorance so condemning them is still correct but the main motive is ignorance not self aware misanthropy.
“… when people do foolish things they usually act of ignorance rather than malice.” Paul Coulam: Where did this come from? Since when did you become such a great generaliser? You know you can’t justify this facile statement.
Malice is often the propellant for extremely stupid acts.
I think Brown is malicious in a class sense. He seems to think the middle classes are viciously trying to keep ill-educated children from sink comprehensives out of university. Come to think of it, I think he is probably personally malicious as well. I think, as a very senior member of the British government, wearing a lounge suit to a white tie business dinner in the City is the act of a very malicious man.
Tony Blair has the stench of deeper malice – I would even say evil – about him; but Brown is a malicious creature with a grudge. Blair’s the Phantom of the Opera. Brown’s the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Evidence that New Labour is more confused than Marxist, and that British politicians are uniquely able to take on board pick n’ mix ideas rather than slavishly following inflexible political dogmas, without apologising. Which is good.
I predict more apparently anomalous surprises to come- whoever’s in charge. It’s a Brit thing. Still, maybe there’s something in the air right now, what with Tories planning tax cuts and the Guardian printing occasional sensible articles…
Lexington asks:
“Is anyone awake to this opportunity on the Tory side.”
Yes but “tories disagree with Labour” does not make a good headline, so I guess the following didn’t get much coverage:
Meanwhile, following Tony Blair’s claim – in a speech to the CBI conference – that his government is seeking to reduce the bureaucracy shackling UK firms, Oliver Letwin declared: “The Prime Minister’s claim that the present government is tackling red tape in British business is strangely surreal. I cannot find a way of reconciling it with the fact that 95 per cent of those responding to the CBI survey said that they spent more time complying with regulations now than five years ago.”
The Shadow Chancellor declared: “The Prime Minister talks as if he was engaged in a reform programme that is going in the right direction. British business has made it abundantly clear that tax and regulation are going in the wrong direction.”
Press Release 17 October 2003.
Paul Coulam: For what it’s worth I believe you are right about Brown’s motivations and ignorance. I also agree with your general point about pure evil rarely being a sole or main motivation for people’s actions. Even politicians. 🙂 Brown may be ignorant, hypocritical, self-righteous, hateful and spiteful but that does not suggest that he revels in the evil he causes by his political actions.
His rhetoric is astonishing, especially coming from a socialist politician with an audience whose anti-americanism is almost ‘meta-contextual’.
Of course Gordon Brown doesn’t loll around delighting in how evil he is! He’s not evil. He’s a self-righteous, spiteful, preachy prat who thinks he has a lesson the world would do well to learn. Can evil derive from intent that was not evil? No; of course not. But there is a destructive intent to damage established society munching away at the heart of the Labour machine and the consequences are malign. I maintain that socialism/communism is a malignancy on humankind however well intended those administering it.
The poor sot probably thinks you can get entrepreneurship through government ‘investment’ in state-run ‘entrepreneurial management’ education programmes.
If talk is cheap, Brown’s must be a fire sale.
– Josh
Politicians, at least prominent ones, rarely have beliefs or ideologies. They say what they think will help them get elected. They do what they beleive will help them stay in office (which is of course, unrelated to what they said).
Once upon a time politicians promissed to end poverty, reduce the gap between rich and poor, hand out benefits to everyone, run trains on time and stop global warming.
That they now feel they must speak for free enterptise and deregulation – is a good omen.
This should have given you pause:
“Now we must build an even stronger and deeper national consensus: a shared national economic purpose…”
Or ‘fascism,’ as it’s usually known.
It’s quite simple: a strong private sector is a nice fat cash cow to milk without having to do those unpleasant things like raise taxes or increase the national debt. Plus there’s the small detail that chunks of the private sector benefit from big government spending, from subsidies and bail-outs. And no party ever remained in government without keeping the snouts of business happily in the big public trough.
Perhaps worth remembering that the relationship between public/private sectors is a symbiotic one, not a ‘versus’ one. The latter only put up with loads of regulation as the ‘price’ they must pay for access to all our tax money.
Verity writes:
“I maintain that socialism/communism is a malignancy on humankind however well intended those administering it.”
Yes, I agree absolutely. Its the actions that count not the intentions. I’m not disputing that socialism is an evil – it certainly is – but people are motivated to practice socialism because they generally think it is a good idea. They think this because they are ignorant. Very few, even Gordon Brown, will be fully aware of the horrors of socialism yet advocate it because they are actively malicious. Confusion, ignorance and vanity are nearly always more likely motives than evil intent, that’s why I conjecture that Gordon probably belives what he says even though we can see it for the falsehood and stupidity that it is.
NB. A note for philosophical pedants; I never _justify_ anything I assert. I am a follower of the Popperian methodology which eschews all justification as futile and instead recommends bold, unfounded conjecture and ruthless refutation by plausible counter example.
Paul Coulam writes “confusion, ignorance and vanity are nearly always more likely motives …”. While I agree that evil intent must be comparatively rare, I think class rage (although class in this sense, thankfully, doesn’t exist any more), spite and destructiveness are more likely motivations than confusion or ignorance. Vanity – or arrogance, I will give you.