PEOPLE OFTEN SAY to me ‘how can they be so stupid?’ They, of course, being the Government. It’s a good question and for a while I thought we need to sharpen our arguments so they will see sense. But actually, it was me who was being stupid.
The prime minister’s speech to Labour Conference was another day of State stupidity. Just as the 10-year bond flirts 4.5 per cent – the highest in all the G8 and flashing deep amber – Burnham comes out with a masterclass in stupidity.
He knows fine well Brexit has been a rounding error compared with covid, tax rises, welfare spending, net zero and all, but of course it’s a convenient excuse for a failing political elite. He surely must know this.
Then, despite the bond yield, he opens the cheque book, albeit for the future. Of course there is a big issue with old age care, largely caused by government through exorbitant regulation, very high minimum wage costs and the like, making care unaffordable for many.
The answer is not a National Care Service which will, frankly, likely institutionalise and dumb down care. The NHS started small in 1948. Look at it today; a third-rate bureaucracy rationing healthcare resources at great cost. The effective nationalisation of care is a similar recipe for disaster which may superficially appear to offer a fig leaf of protection but at the price of undoubted mediocrity and scarcity.
Then there is real delusion. Burnham wants Britain to lead the global code on AI. (Laughter from the audience.) This is utterly risible. Who exactly is going to take a lesson in regulation from him? Britain is so far behind both the US and China on AI there is not a cat’s chance in hell of this happening.
Is Xi going to call Andy and say ‘hey Andy, what about regulating DeekSeek or Alibaba?’ Even less chance Trump. Guys like Burnham need psychiatric help for having the deluded arrogance to think anyone gives a 4X as to the British view on this. If Burnham wants them to care he might stand a chance if we had a leadership role in this field. We do not.
Worse, instead of trying to grow this technology, which remains in its infancy, the British approach is to control and no doubt censor it. It’s all we need to know, really, and a metaphor for this country’s deep decline.
So, another day of poor policy choices that obviously won’t work. But the policy makers generally are not stupid, indeed the left have intelligent think tanks and the like so why are they doing this when it is very obviously economically illiterate? Bright people don’t shoot themselves in the foot.
I think the answer is they know fine well their plans are economically illiterate but they are not valuing that as relevant to their policy objectives in the way we might. As an example, take VAT on school fees. One might say it has obviously been economically counterproductive, both in terms of the sum raised (tiny) and the cost to the state of some 30,000 children leaving the private sector for state education. But the left rejoices at this as they see it as a key weapon in revolution – breaking down traditional society which they view as privileged. We see it as economic chaos and a loss of freedom. Different objectives.
They so hate perceived injustice, imagined class structures and privilege that to them it is a price worth paying to tear down current structures even if at a cost and replace it with some socialist utopia of their dreams. They hate our society and wish to replace it. They are revolutionaries. The right needs to wise-up and fast as rational economic arguments cut no ice. We are talking entirely different languages.
The English philosopher RG Collingwood discussed this in a different context in his book New Leviathan in 1942 which I think is highly relevant to today as I believe we are facing an economic, moral and cultural collapse in confidence, the latter to being more profound than the former and in the long term more important.
He effectively said a society is not protected by armies or navies alone but by collective mental philosophy and application of that will. When that society falls into defeatism or the central philosophy collapses the society loses agency and begins to believe nothing can be done and decline is inevitable.
The people, confused, then start to abandon their role as agents of the old historical order. When rational hope is replaced by despair, the deliberate “will” of a society dissolves. People stop acting out of duty, or long-term social health and begin acting entirely out of short-term fear, panic, or self-preservation.
The society enters a state of internal decay effectively defeating itself from within. The society reverts to what Collingwood calls a “non-social community” — a group ruled purely by superior force (intellectual or physical) and fear rather than by mutual agreement or law.
The people then willingly bow to whoever wields the biggest stick, whether that is an invading army or a domestic tyrant who promises safety through subjugation.
Ultimately, Collingwood’s point is that defeat is always an event of the mind before it is an event on the battlefield. The moment a civilization collectively decides that resistance is impossible, it has already ceased to exist as a civilization.
In my view the view of society we cherish – a broadly market based, free liberal society has been collapsing for thirty-years-plus and we now have reached the point of nearly no return. Burham is not stupid, he might be economically illiterate but that’s not his game. He and his fellow socialists have very cleverly dismantled almost all that remains from traditional Britain, economic, cultural and moral.
The right needs to wake up and understand with great urgency, for only the most unified and determined effort to unwind what has effectively been deliberate economic and cultural vandalism has any hope of reversing this new leviathan.
Established in 2006 and celebrating twenty years, ThinkScotland is not for profit relying on donations to publish our wide range of opinions. You can subscribe to our FREE newsletter here – share and follow us on ‘X’ here – like and comment on facebook here and make a donation here. Every contribution helps to meet our overheads.
