The three despicable myths that are dooming Britain to eternal mediocrity

Conservatism – and the UK – are in crisis, because we’ve swallowed an unholy trinity of Left-wing lies

Make no mistake, Britain is in the grip of a historic crisis. It is subtler but no less pernicious than those that we have come to know. After the agonies of the Remainer attempt to cancel Brexit and the anxieties of the pandemic, the country’s slouch into a permanent state of mediocrity is now on the horizon. We seem to be resigned to enduring the highest tax burden for decades, and meekly accepting of a state that only ever becomes larger and more intrusive. Dreams of a pioneering Global Britain have given way to dismay at this rudderless Government.

It is tempting to pile the blame onto Boris Johnson, who has happily forsaken every Right-wing principle going. Yet, removing the Prime Minister would not solve the wider crisis afflicting conservatism. Indeed, most senior Tories broadly appear to support their party’s drift away from its fundamental values. Lest we forget, Tory MPS are not seething that Johnson implemented his inhumane Covid rules – only that he managed to get caught breaking them.

What is behind this crisis of conservatism? Partly, it reflects the rise of a technocratic ruling class that is in charge whichever party is in power – an elite that is as intellectually insipid as it is devoid of principle. But it is also the result of the Conservative Party’s embrace of an unholy trinity of despicable myths that have become baked into conventional wisdom.

The first is that an ageing population inevitably heralds an ever-growing welfare state. Since the hysteria in the 1990s over Japan’s “demographic time bomb” a fatalism has descended over academic and political circles, on the Right as much as on the Left. The pandemic has taken it mainstream. The scramble to “protect the NHS” – and the slew of taxes to deal with the resulting backlog – has reinforced the sense that rising spending on the over-65s is an unstoppable trend. There is no point in calling for a smaller state, the argument goes, because demography is destiny.

This is absurd. It assumes, in part, that people will automatically become dependent once they reach an arbitrary age, when many older people are quite capable of continuing working if they need to. It also ignores that it is only the very oldest people who rely intensively on the healthcare system. Studies suggest that technological innovations – as we discover and roll out new treatments for disease – may be a more significant driver of future healthcare spending. So is poor management of costs, epitomised by our chaotic procurement processes for everything from loo rolls to light bulbs.

And yet the Tories are surrendering without a fight. It is considered sacrilege to suggest that public sector reform could help to remedy this issue. In many countries, patients make co-payments for services, in an effort to create a fairer system in which people contribute more to what they use – and yet no politician dares to suggest that British patients might fork out for anything other than prescription drugs. All talk of raising the retirement age has gone suspiciously quiet.

The second despicable myth, however, is that average earners won’t need to pay for any of this largesse. The bill can be settled solely by taxing “the rich”.

After the grim experiments of the 1970s, it seemed that Britain had finally learned the lesson that “the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money”. But around the time of the financial crisis – amid the public’s desire for vengeance against the bankers held responsible – the seed was again planted that it is not just practically feasible but morally imperative to bail out the masses by squeezing those with money, never mind the risk that they might flee to a more hospitable jurisdiction. Rishi Sunak showed that he is now a convert to this particular myth, when he imposed his windfall tax on oil and gas firms last week.

Then again, the Tories have become hopelessly lazy about making the arguments for tax cuts in general. They have permitted the Left to frame the debate as an ideologically-driven one, as if there is no body of empirical evidence showing that reducing the tax burden can over time lead to a stronger and more dynamic economy to the benefit of everyone. It is now commonly thought, for example, that Tories believe in “trickle-down economics” (where tax cuts on the wealthy are justified, because some of the money will find its way down the income scale). But that has never been the conservative argument for reducing taxation. The Tories will eventually pay the price for failing to challenge this lie.

The final myth is potentially the most dangerous. It is that the challenges Western societies face are so huge and so complex that they can only be addressed through a combination of collective sacrifice and state intervention. We saw this most strikingly in the response to the pandemic, and the lockdowns that have now catalysed the cost-of-living crisis. But it is creeping into policy everywhere. What drives the hubristic push for net zero other than a belief that the environmental cause is so important that the selfish interests of the individual must be overridden in order to address it?

The truth, however, is quite different. To tackle big problems, we need more freedom, not less. Only world-leading innovation by entrepreneurs and businesses can stimulate the new discoveries and technologies that will enable us to deal with super-catastrophic risks. It is not collective sacrifice but a new wave of radical individualism that fuses classical ideals of liberty with a renewed sense of personal responsibility (not least when it comes to health) that will make our country more resilient.

The tragedy of Boris Johnson is that, with all his unbounded optimism, he was well placed to challenge the zero-sum pessimism that underpins all three of the myths that are turning Britain into a middling, despondent country. His failure to do so is bitterly disappointing. Still, it is merely the latest twist in a longer tale of Conservative failure.

‘The Tories have become hopelessly lazy about making the arguments for tax cuts in general’