J P Floru is a Fellow of the Adam Smith Institute.
The soundest party activist in my ward recently recounted what canvassing was like in the eighties. When you went canvassing on a council estate and you found a freshly painted door, you knew what to expect. The family living behind it had bought its flat. And they would vote Conservative, absolutely. When you go canvassing on a council estate today, do the residents have an equally strong reason to vote Conservative – or any other party?
The Right to Buy policy did not just hand the flat to them, as say the winter fuel allowance hands over money today. The individual had to save money and had to decide to buy the flat. He had to make an effort to effect this change in his life. He felt that he had helped himself to climb the ladder. The individual was helped to gain a stake by his own efforts. Or as The Great Lady said: “Popular capitalism is nothing less than a crusade to enfranchise the many in the economic life of the nation. We Conservatives are returning power to the people. That is the way to One Nation, One People.” When individuals participate and take decisions affecting their own lives the enthusiasm and drive is far greater than if they are given a mere handout.
These individualistic policies – the government retreating and allowing individuals to choose for themselves - gave the Conservatives four consecutive electoral victories. Perhaps for the first time “the little people” felt that they had an interest in voting for what until then had been considered to be the Party of the Top Hats.
Allowing individuals the choice to decide their own futures meant that the size of government intervention shrank. The enlightened few at the political and administrative top saw their power evaporate as the Thatcher years steamed ahead. They never forgave the grocer's daughter for stealing their birth right.
Today good old paternalism is back with a vengeance, and Philip Blond's book Red Tory is a perfect illustration. Some again feel that there is right to deny the little people to live their lives as they see fit. Heaven forbid that you might enjoy yourself! New paternalists do not want to hand state power to individuals. They want to transfer state and individual power to intermediary groups, what they call “society”.
Mr. Blond sees three distinctive spheres: the state, the market, and ordinary people expressed in civic and religious society. He denounces statism and classical liberalism for their fundamentalist beliefs in the first or the second at the expense of the third. It does not seem to occur to him that the market IS society. The market is the free economic interaction between free individuals or groups of individuals. When Mr. Blond reduces the free market to “monopoly finance, big business and deregulated global capitalism”, he forgets that when Mrs. Smith buys an egg she is exercising her stake in free market capitalism, too.
New paternalists think it unwise to hand power back to individual people. Instead they want to transfer individual and state power to groups, who are supposed to have the common interest at heart. Anyone involved in any community organisation quickly learns that the choices and decisions which occur in these are often not the most wise, or leading to the common good. Far too often the prevailing view is that of the loudest shouter or that of the demagogue who manages to convince a majority on the night. The individual who has different views remains firmly out in the cold. Communitarianism is the ideology of the herd. Running into the abyss because the alpha dog does.
So we do not need to privatise the post office: we need to decentralise it (as if bureaucratic inefficiency evaporates when localised). Instead of doing away with wasteful Regional Development Agencies we will localise them (as if that will stop them from picking losers at taxpayers' expense). Instead of going for the cheapest in the world, procurement should only be done locally (the taxpayers presumably picking up the bill for more expensive local products). And yes, “private sector monopolies” such as supermarkets must be broken up, because you are obviously not wise enough to know where and from whom you should shop. Authority knows best!
But the very worst idea of Mr. Blond's large supply is that a meritocracy only benefits the few. Or, in his own words: “(We need to reject) social mobility, meritocracy and the statist and neoliberal language of opportunity, education and choice. Why? Because this language says that unless you are in the golden circle of the top 10 to 15 per cent of top-rate taxpayers you are essentially insecure, unsuccessful and without merit or value. The Tories should leave this bankrupt ideology to New Labour and embrace instead an organic communitarianism that graces every level of society with merit, security, wealth and worth”. Mr. Blond, when the market rewards effort and intelligence more, it shows us the behaviour which is to be encouraged. Working, instead of staying in bed. The best ideas and innovations to be rewarded most so they can enlighten our lives. All this activity increases prosperity, creates growth. And that benefits everybody. If you dole out excessive amounts of money to those remaining in bed the workaholics and the geniuses will end up staying in bed, too.
New paternalism means that state power is not returned to the little people – it is simply devolved to another authority to decide above individuals' heads. It does not matter that this authority may be an essentially private group or association. Fact is that very many individuals will remain as disenfranchised as they are under our present statist system.
If Mr. Blond's defence of paternalism becomes Conservative Party policy I'm afraid that council estates will again become Tory no-go areas for many years to come. Those who believe in liberty should stand up and use that famous left-win slogan: no pasaran!