He’s done it again. After advocating strict BoE rules as to whom banks should be allowed to grant mortgages to, Mr. Bean, Deputy Governor of the Bank of England now believes we should just spend our savings like there is no tomorrow.
Both utterances are evidence of a profoundly un-Conservative world view. The reason why we are Conservatives is because we believe in the positive value of private property. People squirreling away to provide for a rainy day or old age. Getting onto the housing ladder and acquiring one’s own castle, however small – your own stake in a hostile world. Not expecting your neighbour to be forced to contribute for your wellbeing but trying to provide for yourself. And not just for yourself: to enable you to help those around you: your family, your friends, charity.
Mr. Bean tells us living off interest is a bad thing. Mr. Bean tells us we should spend it all. In Mr. Bean’s world we would all end up on benefits. He does not seem to be particularly concerned about this – and this is why we should be concerned about the Mr. Beans of this world. Ever larger welfare dependency has never been of concern to socialists in general. In the socialist’s view, scrounging off your fellow human through state coercion is morally acceptable. In the age of irresponsibility we have a party today and somebody else will pay the bill tomorrow. Or, as Mr. Bean’s friend John Maynard Keynes used to say: in the long term we are all dead!
Most of us support the welfare state to some extent: some will never be able to fend for themselves because of for example a disability or long illness. There may be nobody to care for them. We show compassion and agree that something should be done. Part of the support for some sort of welfare state is less altruistic than generally believed: the realisation that any one of us can fall upon hard times. The disagreement between Conservatives and socialists is about the extent of that welfare state; and about who should provide for it: the state, or charity, or a combination of both.
But a safety net is not a hammock. The property-rationed savingless society Mr. Bean seems to adhere to is one of generalised pauperism, where ever larger parts of the population end up with a begging bowl.
Discouraging saving and rationing mortgages is un-Conservative and would cost us dearly at the ballot-box – and rightly so. Thankfully we still have splendid politicians like John Redwood, who effectively countered Bean’s utterances on Radio 4 this morning.
