The man whose ideas did more than any to beat socialism

It will be 30 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9. The wall that so obscenely separated the free world from the grim, dark, autocratic world beyond. The one person whose ideas probably contributed most to the spread of freedom around the planet, and to that happy event in Berlin, was the great economist and political philosopher, FA Hayek.

It is 45 years this autumn since Hayek received his Nobel Prize in Economics, and 28 years since he received the US Presidential Medal of Freedom. And this year, we have begun a project to commemorate Hayek with a memorial close to the London School of Economics, where he taught. It is timely in other ways, too, for Hayek was the embodiment of enlightened liberal principles that now seem to be entirely lacking from our politics.

Hayek bemoaned “the socialists of all parties”, but never thought them malicious, only mistaken. He recognised the importance of free speech for progress. He showed why the individual was not a mere tool of the collective, and why they should make their own choices, rather than being nannied by politicians and bureaucrats.

Hayek also knew that democracy had its limits. It must respect people’s lives, freedoms and property. Even the largest majority cannot legitimately kill or imprison anyone it happens to disapprove of, nor confiscate their property. He would see Labour’s talk of the state seizing companies and “coming after the rich” as tyranny, not democracy – the antithesis of the rule of law in which laws are known and principled, apply equally to all and are tested in independent courts, rather than in the court of public opinion.

“This is what we believe,” said Margaret Thatcher, slapping a copy of Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty down on the table. But she had both vision and principle. Tony Blair, by contrast, showed what happens when politicians jettison those things and become mere managerialists. Focused on each day’s headlines, politicians like that are pushed to and fro by polls and the noisy campaigns of vested interest groups. David Cameron’s Tories caught the same disease.

At least today’s Labour Party has a vision, even if it is a crackpot one. Perhaps that is why young people in particular – who sadly do not remember the horrors behind the Berlin Wall – are attracted by them.

Under Boris Johnson, the Tories now need to assert their values, and their more realistic vision, too. Yes, there are pre-election promises about outspending Labour. But much deeper is Boris’s optimism about Britain, his enthusiasm for new ideas, his commitment to capitalism and individual freedom.

Hayek wrote: “We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage … neither a mere defence of things as they are nor a diluted kind of socialism, but a truly liberal radicalism … which does not spare the susceptibilities of the mighty … and which does not confine itself to what appears today as politically possible…”

Heading into the ultimate battle for the survival of society against socialism, the Tories need Hayek’s advice now more than ever.

Dr Eamonn Butler is director of the Adam Smith Institute. Details about how to support the Hayek Memorial are at adamsmith.org/hayek

FOLLOW Eamonn Butler on Twitter @eamonnbutler;

at telegraph.co.uk/opinion

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I’m going right out on a limb here, but I’m determined to say this before anybody else does: there is almost no doubt at all about the result of the general election. The only question is how large a majority the Conservatives will get. But what about the threat from Nigel Farage? What if the Brexit vote is divided? And didn’t the opinion polls predict a stonking Tory win last time? Look what happened then. Aren’t all those desperate Remainers going to vote tactically and sabotage what should be Tory victories?

Yeah, yeah. Expect to hear all this over and over again, to the delight (and possibly at the instigation) of Downing Street strategists whose real fear is that their voters will be too complacent and confident to bother voting at all. So yes, all of those possibilities exist – and none of them will matter in the end.

There is a theoretical threat from Farage’s Brexit Party, but he must know that if he should end up being responsible for undermining Boris Johnson’s chance of forming a government, he will go down in history as the man who allowed a Remainer coalition to win power, thus destroying the possibility of Brexit readerprints@telegraph.co.uk