Private capitalism, as it was conducted for some 300 and more years in Britain, was a system wherein private persons (capitalists) provided money to fund business ventures, perhaps taking some involvement in the running of their businesses, but at the very least taking profits. Over time, with the development of banking, alongside share purchasing and the provision of private loans, banking finance came to be a key source of capital provision.
Now that the UK's banking system is either outright nationalised or entirely reliant on State support (with the possible exceptions of HSBC and Standard Chartered, and the more dubious case of Barclays - all of which may relocate from the UK soon), the private sector banking element of private capitalism has ended for the foreseeable future. Private capitalism, as we have come to know it - a system with private sector banks as major directers of business finance - has ceased.
In addition to the ending of private sector banking, the State has become a provider of capital in another way - through direct support of businesses and through nationalisation. Now the State is the major directer of capital in the economy - our economic model is that of Dubai or China.
This is obviously a disaster for Conservative ideology. And it might be thought that this would herald an era of dominance by leftist political parties. But I think not. For it seems to me that with the banking system under state control (and established there by consensus of "inevitability" with other parties and across most of the chattering classes), and with widespread consensus that the State must be a direct provider of loans and capital for other businesses - in other words, with the utter collapse of the ideology of private capitalism - the Labour Party has achieved too much of its raison d'etre for its own political good.
The situation will shortly be rather like that in the early 1950s for Labour or the 1990s for the Conservatives. With State Capitalism ("Socialism") in place, the Labour Party will have achieved so many of the goals of its ideologues that it will be unclear what Labour is for any more. The Labour Party was supposed to be a mechanism by which one introduced or achieved Socialism. But if we are all "Socialists"/adherents of State Capitalism now, what is the point of the Labour Party? (Think of the problems the Conservative Party had in identifying itself a purpose in the era of Tony Blair.)
What is good for Socialism and bad for Conservatism will be good for the Conservative Party. The track of surrender to or at least compromise with our opponents' ideology will for us, as it was for Blair, be the path to sustained power. Only once we implement a Conservative programme in some area (and that won't be the economy for at least fifteen years) and achieve acceptance of that programme across the political spectrum will we once again be at threat of facing a sustained period in opposition. That is the Paradox of Parliamentary democracy.
