Why are even the Tories infected by this strange hypnotised groupthink?
THE free world has had seven decades of unprecedented prosperity since the end of the Second World War. Much of that success and contentment has now spread far beyond its original confines of Western Europe, North America and Australasia. Even rigid centralised states such as China have embraced the view that economic freedom is the key to prosperity and growth.
One rule has held good everywhere. Where economic policy is free from dogma and ideology, individual wealth and living standards improve. It is also beyond doubt that in the former Communist world, which collapsed 25 years ago, pollution and environmental damage were far worse than anything which free enterprise created.
Now we seem to be entering a different, dangerous era. A new green dogma has captured the hearts of the people and the minds of politicians. Almost nobody is immune from it.
And this strange hypnotised groupthink continues to affect our drifting Tory Government, as is shown by the resignation (revealed in The Mail on Sunday today) of Natascha Engel, the Shale Gas Commissioner.
She complains that Ministers would rather appease green campaigners than listen to experts. But mere appeasement will not satisfy the new hardLeft, in which Corbynite Momentum, activists and ‘Extinction Rebellion’ protesters are united. And in an amazing development, this coalition of zealots has now gained the personal support of Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell.
Mr McDonnell, who camouflages his fierce militancy with smart suits and an affable manner, is now revealed to have been working closely with climate change activists.
Even more significantly, he has pledged to them that ‘radical action on climate change’ will be a Corbyn government’s ‘top priority for our investment decisions’. This means such a government will put ideology first and reality second, a guaranteed recipe for economic decline. Targets and ideals will dominate government spending and borrowing plans, and its management of the economy as a whole.
Of course, in the complex modern world, some degree of planning and direction is inevitable. So is reasonable, timely action to protect the environment and the planet.
But as the Soviet bloc found in its long decades of economic stagnation, waste and blunders, combined with poisoned air, water and earth, the blinkered pursuit of utopia ends in failure and worse than failure.
The lesson seems to need to be learned over and over again that a flourishing economy is the basis of everything worth having, absolutely including a proper concern for the environment and the future of the Earth itself. And rigid adherence to abstract targets and top-down dogmas will strangle any economy.
Corbyn: A warning we must not ignore
PEOPLE who did not live through the IRA’s long years of mass murder, assassination, torture and kidnapping are inclined to dismiss Jeremy Corbyn’s Irish Republican links as ancient and irrelevant.
They could not be more wrong. The IRA lives on, as a vicious criminal and political organisation, still quite capable of cruel killing – as the dreadful death of Lyra McKee reminded us. Yet The Mail on Sunday shows once again today that Mr Corbyn’s faction still has organic connections with the most ruthless elements of physical-force Republicanism.
It is in his nature to associate with and sympathise with people far outside the normal, civilised spectrum of politics. This may be the only warning we get of just how bad a Corbyn government would be, if the Tory Party is foolish and selfish enough to allow such a disaster to happen.