UK Politics

Bankers, Toffs and Tory Scum

Samuel Hooper16 Comments

SPS strike protest 2b

 

“Chav-bashing draws on a long, ignoble tradition of class hatred” – Owen Jones, Chavs: The Demonization Of The Working Class

 

Less than three weeks ago, fifty thousand people marched through central London almost entirely unnoticed. They came to protest the coalition government’s so-called “austerity” policies and to “demand the alternative”, but their message was lost in a fog of confusion about the undefined alternative they wanted to bring about. Was it the rose-tinted stroll back to the 1970s advocated by Owen Jones, or the peaceful, effortless and joyful revolution promised by Russell Brand? We still don’t know, because they still can’t decide.

Today, Britain observed what was hailed as the largest coordinated industrial action since the general strike of 1926 – but apart from some inconvenienced parents who had to endure the closure of their children’s schools, nobody seemed to notice that anything much was different. And what little serious press attention the strikes garnered was focused mainly on Ed Miliband’s untenable balancing act of supporting the strikers but deploring the strike, and the eyebrow-raising fact that the National Union of Teachers was legally permitted to use a 2012 vote by a fraction of its membership to hold a strike in 2014.

There is a lot of frustration on the British activist Left that they are not being listened to or taken seriously – by the public, the media, the Labour Party, anyone at all. But at some point soon, those people hawking conspiracy theories about a right-wing media cover-up or the dead hand of Ed Balls will have to turn the accusing gaze back in on themselves.

The Left has been shrieking about austerity for four years now, but have utterly failed to convince the electorate that they have a workable alternative. Indeed no alternative has been suggested – save for pumping pre-2010 (or even higher) levels of taxpayer money into the same unreformed government programmes, which is as patronising a suggestion as it is lazy. Worse still, the Left’s level of empathy or willingness to understand the viewpoints of others who do not agree with the “Down With Austerity” mantra is almost non-existent.

Big government apologists on the Left forever accuse the Conservative Party, UKIP and others on the right of stoking fears and indulging in emotional manipulation. Cases of grotesque welfare fraud are cherry-picked and non-representative, they insist, while questioning Britain’s immigration policy and relationship with the European Union is narrow minded at best, but more often a sign of shocking, premeditated race-baiting. But the left use these same techniques freely and often, and they do so in a way that hampers their ability to think of bold new policies to connect with middle Britain.

The bankers. David Cameron’s cabinet of millionaires. Billionaire non-doms. Tory scum. According to many on the Left, this motley crew of villains are not only deliberately rigging the system in their favour (arguably true), they actively delight in hurting the poor at every turn. Michael Gove is an arrogant bully and persecutor of teachers, Iain Duncan Smith is a virtual psychopath in his hounding of the destitute and David Cameron is the evil mastermind at the top, answerable only to Rupert Murdoch. It’s the age-old divide: those on the right think that Left-wingers are well-meaning but misguided, while those on the Left seem to sincerely believe that their right-wing opposites are actually evil.

The anti-Tory slogans and bitter invective have always had their place in Britain’s left-wing grass roots, but when this stubborn inability to empathise with or think like the other side starts to infect people who are supposedly the Labour movement’s greatest minds and political leaders, they have a real problem. The British Left, from Ed Miliband’s shadow cabinet on downwards, can’t seem to get past the mistaken notion – perhaps sincerely believed after so many years of constant, mindless repetition – that those on the right really do hate the poor and long to trample them underfoot.

But the anti-austerity protesters, the public sector strikers and their sympathisers on the Left are fighting a bitter battle against a straw man, a distorted vision of the real spectrum of right-wing thinking. While the British right generates ideas and (albeit limited by coalition) implements them in government, the Left rail against a cartoon foe of their own imagining, and almost completely fail to engage with the substance. Voters are able to discern this disconnect – the British left’s gradual conscious uncoupling from reality – which is one of the reasons why the Labour Party is making so little traction in what should be very fair political weather.

Attacking the usual left wing bogeymen – the bankers, toffs and Tory scum – is not an exciting, compelling pitch for an alternative to our present course. It’s the equivalent of a child’s temper tantrum. And whatever truth there is in the insults does not make up for the yawning chasm that exists where viable alternative left-wing policies should be.

In fact, such is the degree of hysteria and inability to comprehend the attitudes of others on the British Left, it is becoming comparable to the worst excesses of the Tea Party in America, where die-hard “patriots” can see no other motive for Barack Obama’s actions than the deliberate, treasonous undermining of the United States by a foreign-born, illegitimate president.

The hardcore US tea partiers have their hallucination of a Kenyan-born, Marxist stooge sent to make America collapse from within, while the British activist Left have their two-dimensional cartoon of the Bullingdon-bred, Eton-educated aristocrat who wants nothing less than the total dismantling of the social safety net and the subjugation of the poor in permanent poverty to be a source of cheap, expendable labour for his friends and benefactors in big business.

In America, the Republican Party tried to ride the Tea Party tiger, but ended up being eaten. The GOP is now completely beholden to its extremist base, and as a result is entirely unable to propose meaningful, workable legislation on anything from deficit reduction to healthcare to immigration reform. In Britain, the Labour Party is perilously close to suffering the same fate – willingly believing its own hyperbole about the callous Tories, and trying to convince itself (and us, the voters) that everything will be okay if only we start pumping more money into existing government programmes and taxing “the bankers” to pay for it all.

This is a depressing state of affairs on both sides of the Atlantic. To self-identify as a Republican in America today is increasingly akin to admitting that you are a reactionary, bigoted nincompoop, either beholden to corporate special interests or too stupid to realise that you are being manipulated by them. And unless something changes very soon, to self identify as a Labour supporter in Britain will proclaim to the world that you are a success-fearing simpleton who would rather see everyone dragged down to the same level of mediocrity than permit spectacular achievement at the expense of government-enforced equality of outcome.

The infinite monkey theorem states that a chimp sat in front of a typewriter will, given infinite time, at some point be bound to unthinkingly hit upon the long and complex sequence of keys that reproduces the complete works of William Shakespeare. By the same logic, if the British Left continue to hold strikes and mass rallies against austerity, probability dictates that eventually they will quite accidentally come up with a politically viable alternative to the coalition government’s spending plans. But unlike the monkeys, they and the Labour Party do not have infinite time.

The 2015 general election is less than ten months away.

How 50,000 People Marched Through London Unnoticed

Samuel Hooper11 Comments

SPS austerity demonstration 001

 

In 2007, satirical news site The Onion reported on the 30th annual Modesto County Ninja Parade, where the townspeople turn out faithfully every year in the futile hope of spotting the stealthy, invisible ninjas as they furtively slip through town.

A similar event took place in London today: the “No More Austerity: Demand The Alternative” protests organised by The People’s Assembly, in which as many as fifty thousand noisy protesters in central London managed to make themselves almost completely invisible. Invisible, at least, to the news media, the general public and the politicians whom they had presumably hoped to persuade.

Even if the resulting headlines were along the lines of “Wealthy Shoppers And Tourists Inconvenienced On Regent Street”, the presence of such a large number of people in central London should have won some attention from the national media, but at this time only the Guardian and Huffington Post UK have carried anything about the event.

This is not a good return on investment on the part of The People’s Assembly, coming in the same week as the ideologically opposite Centre for Policy Studies’ Margaret Thatcher Conference on Liberty, which generated multiple news stories and a strong wake on social media. Something, somewhere is going wrong for the opponents of austerity, and the most convincing explanation involves a fault in both the message and the messenger(s).

First, the message.

Keynote speaker and Green Party MP Caroline Lucas kindly agreed to be interviewed shortly before she took to the main stage to address the crowd in Parliament Square at the end of the demonstration route. As always, she spoke with great empathy about the plight of people living on or beneath the poverty line, but her policy prescriptions seemed inadequate to the change that she wanted to effect:

 

Calling for higher taxes, a crackdown on avoidance and the scrapping of Britain’s nuclear deterrent – even if you ignore the many side effects resulting from such actions – would only serve to perpetuate an unreformed system of subsidising people who ultimately need (for their sake and the nation’s) to be lifted into self-sufficiency.

When posed with this same question, and the fact that the demonstrators face an up-hill battle in the face of near political consensus from the two main parties (in substance if not in rhetoric), event headliner and spokesperson Russell Brand was only able to repeat his sunny prediction of a joyful, non-violent revolution that would somehow make everything okay:

 

And this is perhaps the main reason that the anti-austerity protests went almost unnoticed today – the messengers were simply too conflicting, and unable to consistently articulate their cause in a way that could win agreement from sympathisers and respect from opponents.

Owen Jones led the way with his excellent, impassioned speech to the assembled crowds. It was fiercely partisan and occasionally played fast-and-loose with the truth about the origins of Britain’s economic problems, but it was also a persuasive and well delivered speech by a very thoughtful, intelligent, charismatic person.

Shockingly, though, event stewards were tugging at Owen Jones’ sleeves to get him to stop talking and make way for the next speaker almost as soon as he had taken the stage, forcing Jones to bring his remarks to an early conclusion:

 

By contrast, comedian Russell Brand, given the honour of closing the entire event (save a couple of musical acts to play everyone out), was permitted to speak at length and say whatever he wanted. Consequently, Brand delivered a meandering (if charmingly self-deprecating) address that made little sense when placed under close scrutiny:

 

“I’ve given you even my vanity”, said Brand after baring his chest as he donned a Fire Brigades Union anti-austerity T-shirt handed to him on stage. But it wasn’t his vanity that The People’s Assembly needed. What they needed was a telegenic intellectual heavyweight with strong ties to the types of people that the demonstrators claimed to represent – the poor, the disabled, the vulnerable and the sick.

The crowd needed someone to tie together the threads of everything that had taken place during the march and rally, drawing together all of the disparate arguments in order to successfully argue that more government spending would actually be a good thing right now (a tough sell when faced with public sentiment and the attitudes of the main political parties).

The speakers at the “No More Austerity” demonstration were well-intentioned (though misguided, in the view of this blog), but a social or political movement that chooses Russell Brand rather than Owen Jones as its figurehead has little ground to complain when their message is met with confusion or indifference on the part of the media and the public.

When celebrities take it upon themselves to become figureheads for a political cause, they have a duty to get to know their topic inside out. To be a good, credible ambassador they must read up not just on the main issues but all of the tangential and second-order considerations so that they are able to engage with politicians and experts as peers and equals.

When Angelina Jolie attended and opened the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict in London last week, there was no doubt among anyone present that she knew exactly what she was talking about and was more than qualified to speak on the issue. And so when Jolie stood side by side with William Hague, the British Foreign Secretary, it did not seem the least bit odd or inappropriate (though Hague certainly benefited disproportionately from the Hollywood magic).

Russell Brand, on the other hand, seemed unable to articulate the “alternative” that he and the fifty thousand other demonstrators are demanding. What’s more, he also ignored or trivialised the various political and organisational hurdles that stand in the way of implementing their favoured policies, falling back instead on the denialist notion that a “peaceful, effortless, joyful revolution” will come along and somehow make everything okay. This would be bad coming from a spokesperson, but from one of the supposed leaders of the movement it is completely untenable.

The fact that the alternative was alternately so weakly and idealistically expressed in different ways throughout the day also increases the level of doubt among the public and sceptics (such as this blog) who perhaps believe that the state did expand too far and do too much before the financial crisis, and that some kind of a correction is needed.

By deploying a self-destructive combination of mixed messages and poorly chosen messengers, the people who answered the call to protest today – various trades union, local organisations and interest groups – managed to sabotage their own efforts, becoming virtual ninjas in their own secret parade.

But the sad truth is that many more than 50,000 people in Britain creep meekly through their entire lives, without their struggles, priorities or concerns ever being noticed by the government or others in more fortunate circumstances.

The anti-austerity demonstrators envision a world where a larger, more redistributive and active state perpetually watches over and cares for these people, ensuring their welfare. Others, including this blog, take a different view – that people should be liberated and empowered to the maximum extent possible to flourish on their own, rather than being condemned to an entire lifetime as a “client”, “service user” or “benefit recipient”.

This is an important national debate for Britain to have, one that our elected politicians are poorly placed to lead, occupying the narrow ideological centre ground as they nearly all do. So it is left to the likes of The People’s Assembly and the IPPR on the left, and think tanks such as the Centre for Policy Studies and insurgent parties like UKIP  on the right, to have the proxy debate that would otherwise not take place.

Those on the right might be tempted to rejoice that the “No More Austerity: Demand The Alternative” march received so little attention, and that both message and messenger seem confused and contradictory. But in the long run, it’s not a good thing. The political right cannot test and sharpen their own arguments and ideas when their left-wing sparring partner is struggling even to express itself clearly.

The disorganisation and lack of media awareness shown by The People’s Assembly could well help to ensure that David Cameron’s Conservative Party sneak back across the finish line in the 2015 general election and form another government. But without being held properly to account by the left, the Conservatives will continue to overlook or ignore the needs of some of the weakest and poorest people in Britain (often people who were led down the path of government dependency and then left high and dry by an arrogant Labour government), and fail to help them as best they can with Conservative policies.

Even if the resultant human suffering is not a cause for their concern, the fact that such unaddressed dissatisfaction will eventually bubble up and lead to the Conservatives being punished at the ballot box should make the alarm bells sound.

It was hard, if not impossible, to dislike the people who so stealthily marched through central London today. Setting aside the rightness or wrongness of their policy ideas, it was clear that they genuinely, passionately want the best for the poor, the weak, the dispossessed and for each other.

Laughing, joking or talking earnestly amongst themselves, the only vitriol you were likely to hear from the “No More Austerity” demonstrators was reserved for the usual bogeymen of the left – the bankers, the city fat cats, the multinational corporations and sometimes the inevitable “Tory scum”.

But perhaps the invisible 50,000 should reserve some of their anger for the comrades who organise them, and who craft and articulate their common message. This demonstration, though not huge, should have generated more media coverage, more comment, and more positive action than it did. At present, some of their leaders are badly letting the side down.

And the 50,000 austerity protesters – not to mention the suffering people for whom they claim to speak – cannot afford to have another invisible demonstration.

 

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Demand The Alternative – The People’s Assembly’s Struggle Against Austerity And/Or Reality

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Peoples Assembly No More Austerity

Semi-Partisan Sam will be covering the national demonstration held by The People’s Assembly in London today, entitled “No More Austerity: Demand The Alternative”.

The timing of the protest is somewhat strange, given the fact that we are less than one year away from the 2015 general election and the end of the current coalition government responsible for the “cuts”. Most of the “austerity” policies have already taken full effect and could not be immediately reversed even if David Cameron (and Ed Miliband, who has pledged to stick to the current government’s spending plans should Labour win in 2015) were to witness the crowds at Trafalgar Square and have a sudden change of heart.

In that sense, just like the Judean People’s Front in Monty Python’s Life of Brian, the demonstrators gathering outside BBC Broadcasting House tomorrow afternoon will be engaged in a struggle with reality rather than against a policy that they have any hope of altering in the near future.

One glance at the list of supporters and attendees reveals that the protesters hail from a variety of backgrounds and have a range of different interests at stake, though they are united in their opposition to any government cuts of any kind and for any reason. The People’s Assembly founding statement declares they “support every genuine movement and action taken against any and all of the cuts”.

The lack of nuance in this statement is interesting – centrists and those on the right may be curious to delve inside the minds of people who sincerely believe that the state should only ever grow larger and do more for people, and that any interruption of this trajectory automatically equates to wanton cruelty on the part of callous people with no hearts.

Semi-Partisan Sam hopes to have just this opportunity, and to report back not just on what is drawing people out onto the streets in protest, but also on what their ideal alternative version of Britain looks like.

It’s a question worth asking, because despite Ed Miliband’s manifold weaknesses as leader of the Labour Party, there is a real chance that he could enter Number 10 Downing Street as prime minister in 2015 – and he is entirely sympathetic to the People’s Assembly aims, dovetailing as they do so nicely with his own “new politics” of brutal tax hikes and renationalisation.

Hopefully the answer – and the mysterious “alternative to austerity” being demanded – will be revealed at The People’s Assembly Struggle against Austerity Reality in London later today. Celebrity guest Russell Brand certainly thinks so:

“The People’s Assembly will bring down any government that doesn’t end austerity. Austerity means keeping all the money among people who have loads of it. This is the biggest problem we face today, all other problems radiate from this toxic swindle. We can organise a fairer, more just society than they can, these demonstrations are the start, it will be a right laugh.”

So there you have it. There’s a fixed amount of money in the world, and all that’s needed is to have a “right laugh” together, toss around a few ideas, redistribute the cash a bit and everything will be just fine. It will be like the evil Tories never existed.

 

Stay tuned to @SamHooper on Twitter for live-tweets from 1PM onwards (London time), and to this blog for discussion and analysis of the demonstration after the fact.

Going Back To Battle For Thatcherism, 40 Years On

Samuel Hooper5 Comments

nights watch 1

 

In this week’s thrilling Game of Thrones season finale, there was a moment when the great wall separating the barbarian wastelands from the civilised world seemed sure to be breached. Disheartened and battle weary, the leader of the wall’s depleted guard crossed enemy lines to negotiate the terms of their surrender to the wildling force besieging them. There was no other way out – when suddenly a saviour rode into view, a king from the south with thousands of armed men galloping behind him.

Trade the fictional land of Westeros for the realpolitik of Westminster, and David Cameron’s Conservative Party are not in quite as bad a shape as the ragtag Night’s Watch army on the wall, holding back the tide of socialism but leaderless and in desperate need of rescue by stronger and more organised forces – at least not yet. But this is largely thanks to the Liberal Democrat implosion and Ed Miliband’s pioneering work in the field of political self-immolation.

Were it not for this hugely favourable climate, the Tories would certainly be on the ropes with less than a year to go until election day. That the conservatives are under siege is evidenced by the fact that they have all the unpopularity of a losing team despite having successfully achieved almost none of their policy goals such as eliminating the budget deficit, rolling back the state or pushing back against antidemocratic EU interference from Brussels.

For British conservatives, libertarians and classical liberals, the heroes riding to the rescue were decked out in workaday business attire rather than the resplendent suits of armour seen in Game of Thrones, but they were no less welcome a sight for that when they arrived at London’s Guildhall to participate in the first annual Margaret Thatcher Conference on Liberty, organised by the think tank Thatcher founded with Sir Keith Joseph 40 years ago.

British advocates of individual liberty and a small state have endured long years in the wilderness – the fading days of the Major government, thirteen years of gradual state encroachment under the benevolent grin of Tony Blair (then the angry fist of Gordon Brown), and four years of conservative-in-name-only meandering under David Cameron’s coalition with Nick Clegg. Aside from the misty-eyed retrospectives following Margaret Thatcher’s death, talk of personal freedom, liberty and unapologetic pride and optimism in Britain have been missing in action from mainstream political discourse, presumed dead.

Before you cry ‘hyperbole!’, think on it for a moment: The main political mantras of the period 2010 to 2014 have been “The Big Society”, “We’re all in this together” and “Paying their fair share” (fairness, of course, remaining conveniently and forever undefined). All are collectivist tropes designed to soothe and placate natural Labour voters, not the principled words of liberty befitting the heirs to Thatcher.

The Big Society was meant to serve as rear-guard cover as the Conservative-led coalition sought to stem the rise in government spending and enlist volunteer groups to pick up the slack, but its architects forgot that a sudden burst of civic-mindedness and philanthropy was unlikely to come to pass if the government did not reduce its ominous presence in everything else that we do.

“We’re all in this together” was always a phrase better left to the teenage cast of Disney’s “High School Musical”, because it sounds both patronising and wooden coming from the mouths of politicians like David Cameron and his Chancellor of the Exchequer. George Osborne & co. are quite clearly not suffering the effects of austerity in the same ruinous way as families who have been deliberately led down the road to government dependence through Labour tax credits and allowances, and stranded there to suffer in the great recession. Suggesting that we are all suffering equally has opened the door to ridicule and Labour’s inevitable counterattack of ‘class warfare!’ as they seek to distract attention from their awful record in office.

And the less said about “paying your fair share” the better; suffice it to note that we now live in a country where any reduction in benefits granted to an individual by the state is not only indignantly referred to by opponents as a ‘tax increase’, phrases such as ‘the bedroom tax’ are unquestioningly adopted by the media without the slightest hint of irony.

As this blog noted yesterday, these are not auspicious times for those Britons who believe in a smaller government and more power for the individual.

But this only made the words spoken and the ideas expressed at the Margaret Thatcher Conference on Liberty all the more heartening for those beleaguered souls who think Thatcher was right, and that we need to embrace rather than repudiate her vision of a modern, capitalist Britain.

From start to finish there were powerful speeches on important topics such as re-emphasising national sovereignty, promoting free markets, tax reform, foreign policy, immigration and defence. Sometimes the ideas discussed were almost startling because they clashed so violently with the centrist orthodoxy that now predominates.

Take the panels on economics and fiscal policy. With Art Laffer in attendance there was no pulling of punches as he restated his timeless keys to success for any national economy: “A low-rate, broad-based flat tax, spending restraint, sound money, free trade and sane, limited regulation”. It cannot go unnoticed that the Conservatives have ceded some of this ground to UKIP in the past few years, but while policies such as a flat tax may be something of a pipe dream, Laffer’s contribution to the debate could be what is needed to help the Tories rediscover their footing on tax policy.

Also looming large in the discussion was growing cosiness between big business and big government, be it through lobbying at the national and EU level (more than 15,000 lobbyists and counting, noted Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan) or direct collusion on matters such as government surveillance. Perhaps surprisingly, given the circumstances, the delegates still considered big government a bigger threat than big business by a margin of 79% to 21%. Art Laffer summed up this sentiment, saying “big or small business is irrelevant – what matters is efficiency and competency”.

The discussions on national sovereignty and the need to stand firm in support of the nation state as the best guarantor of individual liberty were particularly refreshing, as they stood in such stark contrast to the pessimism and declinism which inevitably colour the attitudes of the pro-Europeans and those who have lost the ability to distinguish between patriotism and nationalist xenophobia.

Daniel Hannan argued that the EU should become “a free trade area in the model of NAFTA”, a nice idea, but given the fact that the European project has taken on a life of its own with the EU’s own interests now superseding those of its member states, there was too little discussion of how best to effect a British exit. Indeed, when the time came to vote on whether the EU can realistically be reformed, attendees voted 43% yes (wishful thinking) but a solid 57% no.

One of the most concrete areas of policy development was on tax, with the launch at the conference of the very SEO-friendly #ThePolicy. This proposed tax reform calls for the total abolition of capital gains and corporation tax for small businesses, giving them a shot in the arm to expand and create more jobs. The negative impact on the Treasury would be offset by the falling welfare bill, together with increases in PAYE and National Insurance contributions from the newly employed. While the policy needs further analysis and costing, it seems a lot more solid than Labour’s various hare-brained schemes to achieve full employment by levying yet another one-time tax on ‘the bankers’.

Underpinning all of these conversations on the economy was the imperative to rescue the reputation of capitalism, which has been tarnished partly through its own fault but mostly by left wing saboteurs, crony capitalism and poor government regulation. Charles Moore, Margaret Thatcher’s biographer, posed the question: “How can capitalism work for people who don’t have capital?”. It is certainly the prevailing view, and has too often been the case, that capitalism has not worked well for too many people as implemented by their governments. Changing this negative impression of capitalism, and the element of truth behind it, will be key if the Conservatives are to rebuild the winning coalition of working and middle classes that Thatcher forged in 1979.

This discussion naturally led to the importance of preventing distortions in the market, and the observation that “gifts through the tax code and obscure regulatory benefits” are no less than corporate welfare, and should be discouraged in order to salvage capitalism’s reputation. And in another nod to the importance of semantics, it was reinforced that “libertarians, Thatcherites and other pro-capitalism sympathisers need to speak of being ‘pro-market’, not ‘pro-business’ in order to avoid being associated with harmful crony capitalism.”

There were several interesting debates on the media, with Guido Fawkes blogger Paul Staines and the National Review’s Jonah Goldberg hosting an interesting Google Hangout on the future of news media, the opportunities presented by online journalism and the disruptive impact on existing revenue models – a topic which could have been a day conference in itself. And it was perhaps unsurprising that 70% of delegates were against continued full state subsidisation of the BBC.

On national identity and culture (or what has become known here as the #BritishValues debate), former Australian prime minister John Howard attempted to reframe the argument, describing himself as a “multiracialist, not a multiculturalist”. In doing so, Howard explained that conservatives should be welcoming to immigrants regardless of their race and ethnicity, but hold everyone to the same standards of behaviour and observance of the law – a call to assimilate which many on the left are too timid to echo.

John Howard also had timely words of warning on winning elections, a topic where David Cameron could use advice from a someone with a track record. Howard warned: “The worst way to try to win office is to pretend you’re not too different from your opponents”.

Cameron is limited in what he can do in government by his Liberal Democrat coalition partners, but when the starting gun is fired on the 2015 general election campaign, this will no longer be the case. The Conservative Party – if they are willing and courageous enough to do so – will be able to clearly articulate their policies and present a radically different blueprint for Britain than that offered by Ed Miliband’s dystopian “One Nation” vision.

The centrist status quo was challenged on almost every issue, even if some topics (such as immigration, where delegates from North America and Europe found themselves talking at cross purposes for much of the time because of their differing experiences) were not convincingly resolved.

The only question remaining now the conference is over: Is today’s Conservative Party still receptive to what the small government free-marketeers have to say? Will the Tories reach out and take the help and advice being offered?

In Game of Thrones, those who guard the wall are a motley crew of misfits, idealists and outcasts. Anyone who has ever made the mistake of expressing support for conservatism or (heresy of heresies) admiration for Lady Thatcher at a Hampstead dinner party or northern England working men’s club could immediately identify with their plight.

But despite the prevailing atmosphere of scepticism, the happy warriors at the 2014 Margaret Thatcher Conference on Liberty did something important in defence of the realm the likes of which we have not seen on such a scale since their not-so-ancient order was founded by Sir Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher in 1974 – they came together and boldly, unapologetically proclaimed the principles of small government and individual empowerment that saved Britain once and can do so again.

By contrast, Ed Miliband addresses crowds of the Labour faithful (nobody else listens to him now) and – with a straight face – proclaims that his disproven, tired old formula of tax hikes and renationalisation represents “the new politics” that Britain so desperately needs, if only we realised.

Consequently, the 2015 general election could end up being a battle between two recycled political ideologies. And we will have a choice to make: Shall we choose the one that inevitably leads to the four-day working week, rolling blackouts, industrial unrest, punitive taxation, the brain drain, the politics of envy and ‘managed decline’, or the one that puts its trust in the people, liberating them to make Britain great again through their own efforts?

With the Margaret Thatcher Conference on Liberty, Thatcher’s peers, friends and successors made a surprisingly forceful show of strength on the side of freedom.

Margaret Thatcher Conference on Liberty – Closing Update

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

Margaret Thatcher Conference on Liberty 2014 5

 

The Margaret Thatcher Conference on Liberty 2014 is now wrapping up at London’s Guildhall.

Semi-Partisan Sam is live-tweeting the event here, previewed the conference here, and summarised developments here and here throughout the day.

It has been a very insightful day. Tim Stanley put it well when he observed that many of the old Thatcherites in attendance, though advancing in years, often spoke with more energy and enthusiasm than the focus group-approved, cookie-cutter young politicos filling the ranks of the main political parties today.

Here is a round-up of highlights from the afternoon sessions:

A resounding result from the poll on funding of the BBC. Fully 70% of respondents said that British taxpayers should no longer fully subsidise the organisation.

A stern warning from John Howard to the British Conservative Party on electability: “The worst way to try to win office is to pretend you’re not too different from your opponents”. Will David Cameron’s Tories heed this advice once freed from their LibDem shackles in the 2015 general election campaign?

The roots of the financial crash were analysed, and John Howard pushed back on the increasingly popular idea that it was a crisis of capitalism: “US legislators flung money at people who had no ability to repay housing loans”. That sums it up quite well.

The debate on immigration missed the mark a bit, with US/Canadian speakers and those from Europe talking past each other, not really understanding the huge differences thanks to the EU’s common market and free movement of people.

The seeds of an interesting new angle on immigration by John Howard, who described himself as a “multiracialist, not a multiculturalist”. Howard explained that this meant welcoming all races and ethnicities in the immigrant community, but expecting everyone to assimilate. Could this be an effective way for political parties to express a civic view of Britishness?

Rousing words from Toby Young, saying that the British right wing was ideally positioned to claim the mantles of free speech and equality from a tired left wing that is all too eager to “turn a blind eye [when minority groups] do not stand up for equality in their own communities” – citing the treatment of girls in the schools implicated in the Birmingham school trojan horse scandal.

More Toby Young on free speech: “The left has surrendered free speech to those of us on the centre right. We saw this in the Leveson affair”.

Fighting back against the Thomas Piketty phenomenon, Toby Young declares “They [the left wing] have promoted the idea that there is fundamental antagonism between free market capitalism and inequality”.

Property rights came up, and John Howard called for US-style laws on mineral rights: “Mineral rights should belong to landowners, not government”. If fracking is to become widespread in the UK, it is only fair that affected homeowners, rather than the Crown, should reap the benefits.

Jonah Goldberg’s excellent joke when he suffered a Marco Rubio moment – “excuse me, I smoked a huge amount of pot before I got here, I have terrible dry mouth … That joke worked better on college campuses. And in Colorado” – crashed and burned in the hall. CPS delegates need to lighten up a bit.

Jonah Goldberg gives some sound words of advice – that we should all become happy conservative warriors. “Nothing annoys a liberal more than a conservative who smiles … Our tradition of liberty is the best guarantee enabling people to enjoy life”, he says.

 

Stay tuned to @SamHooper on Twitter for final live-tweets from the CPS conference, and to this blog for review and post-game analysis of the conference once it concludes.