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On the Tory Leadership CampaignThe British Conservative Party is looking for a saviour, which
is understandable - it needs one. But can either of the two Davids, Cameron or
Davis, save the Tories? Personally, I'm a Davis man. He's my kind of guy. He's
the one who educated himself. It doesn't take much to do what Cameron did, which
is to get a good education at the best private school in the country. Davis
managed to get himself educated at a lousy state school. That takes commitment. Cameron appeared on Today and answered the usual question about
what he was going to do about some terrible social problem with: "We're
going to bring the best minds to solve this one." That was the moment when
he lost me. The guy obviously doesn't understand the fundamental truth about
politics, which is that the best minds only produce disasters. Scientists, for
example, are famously idiots when it comes to politics. I agree with Friedrich
Hayek, who said in The Road to Serfdom that the "worst imaginable world
would be one in which the leading expert in each field had total control over
it". Just once, I'd love to hear a politician say: "We're going
to bring the second-best minds together to work on this." The second-best
minds are all much more practical people than the first-class guys. More
importantly, they are not going to try to do anything very much. They'll fix
lunch or take the dog for a walk before they get on to pressing political
problems of the day - and by the time lunch is over, it's time to take the dog
for another walk and prepare dinner. That's the right order of political
priorities. The greatest danger in politics is people who try to do things. The Conservative Party used to be the party of not doing very
much, or at most of only doing things which scaled back government programmes.
Conservatives wanted to take government out of people's lives and reduce how
much government took from their pockets. But recently, under the influence of
Tony Blair, they have started saying that they're no longer the party of cutting
back on government: they're really the party of using government to give people
things. This is a mistake. The Tories can't junk all of their economic principles at once.
The result is that they end up saying: "We're in favour of giving you all
the things the other party say they'll give you - just a little less of
them." There's no mileage in that. There are no votes in it, either. David Cameron looks a lot like Tony Blair did at the same age.
He has much of the same manner. The trouble is, Tony Blair has cornered the
market in compassionate conservativism. The Tories won't win by saying:
"Hey, we're the other compassionate conservatives!" Tony Blair,
admittedly, has been ground down by nearly a decade in office. He has started to
look like Sir Paul McCartney. Politics is very gruelling. But then politicians
deserve it: they deserve to be gruelled. That's the nice thing about picking on
politicians: you never have to feel bad about doing it. When you pick on other
people, there's an element of human pity that always comes up - but that's
completely absent with politicians, which makes it a lot easier to tell the
truth about them. David Cameron's problem is not just that he thinks first class
minds have something to offer politics. It's that he doesn't want to tell voters
the fundamental truth about economics, which is that getting more from the
Government actually means you wind up with less. Ronald Reagan - of average
intelligence and spectacular common sense - used to be wonderful at explaining
it. He used to say things such as: "The 10 most frightening words in
English are: 'I'm from the Federal Government and I'm here to help.' " (The
people of New Orleans have recently learned the truth of that one.) Restraining people from demanding ever bigger hand-outs of
other people's money is the chief role of government in a democracy. Alexander
Tytler, an 18th century Scottish historian and judge, used to insist that
democracy could only last as long as people didn't realise that they could vote
themselves as much as they wanted from the public treasury. Democracy has in
fact survived that realisation, but only because voters have been persuaded that
the other systems of government are so awful that they'll get more under
democracy. And they do: in a democracy, everyone steals from everyone else,
whereas in all the other systems, a small political elite plunders the
population with a ruthlessness and efficiency the people as a whole can never
quite manage to do to itself. Terrible danger lurks in the idea that the government should do
more to protect people and give them more of the things they need. France shows
you what happens when you base politics on the idea that the government has to
give ever-greater protection and benefits to people: the economy simply gets
asphyxiated. France's official unemployment rate is 10 per cent; its real rate
is probably closer to 40 per cent. Government regulations ensure that
business-people can't fire anyone in France. They respond by not hiring anyone.
The point being graphically made by those young Muslim men burning cars in the
suburbs is that the net result of government programmes to help people is
economic sclerosis. These kids can't get jobs. They're effectively locked out of
society. So they riot. And in a way, who can blame them? Contrast that with the position of immigrants, Muslims
included, in America. They face prejudice and discrimination - we Americans have
taken prejudice and discrimination to new levels - but they also have the
opportunity to advance themselves. The government keeps its interference in
business decisions at a relatively low level (still too high for my taste, but a
lot better than in France). The labour market works: immigrants can get jobs,
start businesses, make money, be happy. As a result, immigrants in America don't
riot. They are not the cause of America's social and economic ills. Why have the French institutionalised the idea that you can buy
your way out of trouble with higher taxes and more regulations? For, of course,
the French have the finest minds. But that's just the problem. They've let the
best minds take control of politics. The results have been what they always are
once you let the best minds take control: disaster. It's just what Cameron says
he's planning to do - and it's why I'm hoping he won't win. Reprinted from the Sunday Telegraph 13 Nov 2005 |
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