The freedom party lives on in this grim, nannying Government
Mrs May’s speech was rhetorically strong, but young activists yearn for real capitalist solutions
Ban, tax, regulate and intervene some more: Britain’s new modus operandi is grim indeed. The stream of silliness never ends; petty, meddling officialdom, empowered by the most controlling, puritanical government in living memory.
Only fashionable freedoms, such as the ability to get divorced at will, are promoted; unfashionable ones, such as the right to eat whatever we wish or to keep more of our hard-earned cash, are trampled upon in extraordinary fashion. There is ever-more red tape, and the tax-to-gdp ratio has reached its highest level in decades. This is neither real conservatism nor real liberalism: it is mushy, unprincipled, command politics, a regression to the Whitehall-knows-best mentality of the disastrous Harold Macmillan era.
The ideological shift is now so severe that it has emboldened the nomenklatura into floating at will the maddest of freedom-annihilating ideas, such as banning takeaways from offering free poppadoms and prawn cocktail crisps. That particular proposal won’t happen for now, but it was dreamt up in Scotland, which is significant: for the past decade, the Tories have treated socialist, SNP Scotland as a laboratory for the bad ideas they seem to crave, such as punitive rates of stamp duty, so it must only be a question of time before another crackdown on restaurants will be on the agenda for the rest of the UK.
Just to add to the fun, or rather lack of it, advertisers promoting greasy breakfasts are no longer even allowed to mock avocados lest in doing so they encourage unhealthy diets, according to the latest diktat from those in charge of regulating commercial speech. At least the disposable nappies that have liberated millions of parents from domestic drudgery won’t yet be banned, but the Government appears intent on “cracking down” on everything else that makes life bearable, from razors to Biros. Welcome to modern Britain, where progress, convenience and the wrong kind of humour are all frowned upon.
It is in this depressing context that we should consider Theresa May’s speech to the Tory party conference. It was, in technical terms, the best she has delivered since becoming leader. The content was, at times, surprisingly strong, including a nod to Margaret Thatcher’s famous observation that “when people are free to choose, they choose freedom” and a cogent attack on Jeremy Corbyn’s plan to confiscate 10 per cent of the shares in all medium and large companies. It was a unifying address, despite Mrs May’s inability to move away from Chequers, a ticking time bomb of a plan which is so toxic that the Government no longer mentions it by name.
She thanked entrepreneurs, which was refreshing, and committed her party to “back” business. But while the rhetoric was so much better, the substance hasn’t changed. No sooner had her uncharacteristically rousing defence of capitalism ended than she reverted to type, defending the energy price cap and her other Corbyn-lite policies. She hinted that there could be more regulations to come; rather than being designed to make markets work better and increase competition, such interventions will inevitably drive up costs and bake in problems.
She spoke of her belief in the “freedom to make decisions for ourselves, rather than having them made for us by government”, but how is that compatible with the Government’s actual nannying philosophy? She is right to reject monopolies, of course, but I wish that one day a Tory leader will have the courage to extend that to the NHS.
It was when it came to housing that the disconnect between the new pro-capitalist May and reality was at its starkest. There was no movement on releasing more land, or liberalising planning laws, or changing the rules in other ways to encourage much greater amounts of high-quality, private-sector development.
Instead her big idea was to allow local authorities to borrow as much as they want to build more council flats. In other words, she believes that statism, not capitalism, is the answer to the greatest social problem of our time. This leap backwards will be welcomed by almost all housing “experts” but it is a tragic repudiation of real conservatism and could lead to councils engaging in, and winning, bidding wars for land with developers.
Instead of embracing the 1930s model that saw the private sector build vast, affordable suburbs that remain popular today, the Prime Minister is opting for the 1960s Macmillanite council-led approach, which ended in tears. The contrast between this and Boris Johnson’s brilliant exposition the previous day of the moral value in encouraging as many social (and private) renters to become homeowners was striking. The best solution to the housing crisis is to bolster home ownership by building far more private homes, not to create a new generation of social tenants, which is what could now happen unless the Right to Buy rules are turbocharged.
Mrs May’s other big idea is a tax on overseas buyers which will have zero impact on priced-out British first-time buyers from Southampton to Sheffield, but which may make it even harder for many of the big central London housing projects to get off the ground.
Yet despite all of this, and the prospect of an imminent Brexit implosion, I left Birmingham in a more upbeat mood. The reason?
To my amazement, the Freedom Party still lives. Wherever one looked on the fringes of the main conference, there were meetings jam-packed with activists; most were desperate for an alternative approach. Libertarian and free market think tanks such as the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Centre for Policy Studies and Freer hosted their best attended talks in years. I chatted to activists, including a much larger contingent of fresh-faced, youthful members. Not all young people are Corbynites: many loathe the authoritarianism and collectivism that dominate universities, and are trying to organise a backlash. I discovered dissidents everywhere and, in many cases, a yearning for policies that would liberate, rather than stifle, and return power to individuals and families.
Encouragingly, it is clear from their speeches and actions that most of the next generation of potential party leaders or key players would be far more pro-capitalist that either Mrs May or David Cameron. Mr Johnson, Sajid Javid, Liz Truss, Jeremy Hunt, Dominic Raab, or David Davis would all, to varying degrees, embrace a modernised Thatcherite agenda, as would rising stars such as Sam Gyimah. British politics has rarely been as chaotic, but there is still hope for those desperate for a more liberal, freedom-loving, brand of conservatism.