Thoughts from afar

There is so much wrong with the British State it is hard to know where to start. Maybe it is simplest to say that to all intents and purposes it has failed not only to build a new Jerusalem but pretty much anything: it tries too much, while achieving too little.  And as the bills come due, it is increasingly clear the Blairite political consensus is now unsustainable.  

Sadly, he who pays the piper calls the tune. For better or worse the British State and population now exist to keep the Iron Bank of Bravos happy and its priestly acolytes fed and watered in the manor they deserve. And as you might expect, being a priestly caste destined for eternal rule, they invented a new religion to shore up their power and ensure that only the worthy can serve: the moral clarity of the old being replaced by the moral ambiguity of the new and an ordering of things that owes much to an unusual combination of Voltaire and Kafka. In this brave new world, the moon really is made of green cheese. 

Arbitrary power and economic well-being are not great bed fellows. And as growth has faltered, the response has been to double down, taxation upon taxation, regulation upon regulation. For the great mass of those outside the charmed circle, life of high taxes, over weaning regulation and thought control to all intents amount to a new form of indentured servitude. Britain, overly taxed and intellectually bullied, threatened by an AI that literally demands the water and power we need to live, has become a place dreams go to die. 

Failure or not, the Blairite political class that brought us here like turkeys will not be voting for Christmas a moment before they need to. The long defenestration of Starmer was in part brought on by the mildest of attempts to reign in government spending.  The replacement? An “outsider” who since leaving Cambridge has only ever worked in government in senior positions; his appointment a putsch. The Parliament that did for Stamer has not chosen him reform the State; they have chosen him to reconcile the unreconcilable; to find yet more taxation to feed their badly constructed fiscal fantasies without bring the whole structure crashing down on their heads. 

This is not sustainable. Can it though be reformed? Blairite politics for 30-40 years was simply a case of the electorate knowingly being bribed with their grandchildren’s money. A very short-term solution as it turns out. For like most things overly taxed, even grandchildren are now in short supply.  Maybe you get the politicians you deserve after all. 

At the heart of the problem is a failure to find a way to grow the economy. In its absence politics has been reduced to an updated version of Robin Hood: or at least it would be if Maid Marion had not gabbed her jewels and gone to live in Monaco.  And so we got to the heart of the matter: Einstein’s Theory of Insanity made flesh. Without a fundamental change in the political wind, the long slow decline and a once great country can only continue.

Change requires a new consensus about the causes of growth and the role of the State and the individual. Philosophically this is easy: less state, more family, greater personal responsibility, greater social cohesion, more freedom. The usual suspects can be dusted off, but he direction of travel is clear: smaller government means a refocus on increasing the rewards for working and investing, inevitably at the expense of those dependent on the State’s largesse. There is no other logical choice that avoids a Soviet dystopia and creates a climate where growth can thrive. The challenge is in translating this into practical radical measures that one step at a time, bring back a sense of hope and purpose about the future.