If the root causes of a nation’s problems are not addressed by a focused ‘nanny state’, those problems will only multiply and make much bigger calls on a bloated ‘welfare state’.
The liberal-left’s talk of root causes often infuriates the right. The talk can often be an excuse for cowardly inaction. Old Europe’s talk of the root causes of terrorism, for example, disguises a refusal to fight the war on terror’s immediate pre-emptive battles. The Liberati’s talk of the root causes of criminal behaviour hides an unwillingness to imprison repeat offenders and a willingness to tolerate anti-social behaviours.
But conservatives would be wrong to rubbish all ‘root causes’ thinking. If the left is inclined to duck tough choices in the wars on terror and crime, the right sometimes wants to hide from the implications of ‘root cause’ analyses for some of its dearest beliefs.
When right-wingers hear calls for government to do something about the root causes of debt, crime or family breakdown many instinctively complain that any government intervention in society smacks of the nanny state. But an unwillingness, for example, to embrace family-strengthening policies (that can easily be smeared as nanny state policies) is incredibly short-sighted. Failure to arrest root cause trends – like family breakdown - inevitably requires a bigger and bigger welfare (or sixties socialist) state to pick up the pieces from broken homes.
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The root causes of debt, crime and hazardous flows of migrants are examined briefly below for how they challenge anti-state knee-jerkism within right-wing circles.
Debt causes family breakdown
The Relate counselling charity suggests that debt is a factor in a majority of marriage break-ups. This indebtedness is partly caused by the free market in credit – a free market characterised by aggressive marketing of credit cards and personal loans. Intruder capitalists are instinctively inclined to defend the free market but that’s not always the correct instinct and it’s certainly not the correct instinct in this context. Sometimes regulations are needed to protect vulnerable people from the excesses of capitalism. That was the conclusion of Lord Griffiths’ March 2005 report into debt – ‘The Price Of Credit’. Lord Griffiths (head of Margaret Thatcher’s Downing Street Policy Unit) is no lefty. His report – examining Britain’s trillion pound debt mountain – concluded that banks need statutory regulation and problem borrowers should receive face-to-face advice.
Family breakdown causes crime
And if debt causes family breakdown, family breakdown is a major cause of crime. The Archbishop of Canterbury made this point in a March 2005 letter to Britain’s party leaders. Rowan Williams claimed that crime “has a lot to do with a growing number of young people who are severely emotionally undernourished and culturally alienated.” He posed a question for Britain’s political leaders:
”Ask anyone who works with children or young people in any city. The climate of chronic family instability, sexual chaos and exploitation, drug abuse and educational disadvantage is a lethal cocktail. To call for more public support for stable families and marriage is not in this context a bit of middle-class, Middle England nostalgia; it’s life and death. To ask for public investment in skilled, properly resourced youth work is not begging for subsidised leisure; it’s asking for basic human necessities. So what is the programme for fuller and better family support, fuller and better care for our children throughout society?”
Until Oliver Letwin introduced his conveyor belt to crime and neighbourly society analysis the Tories didn’t have a root causes solution to crime. Conservatives traditionally only had a ’lock ‘em up’ message for criminals. Oliver Letwin’s analysis needs to be developed.
Failed states produce hazardous migration
And what about asylum seeking? The Tories have a robust policy – perhaps, a little too robust - on asylum seeking but they have been muted about some of the causes of asylum seeking. It took Robert Kilroy-Silk to expose the short-sightedness of only spending £2.50 for every person in a Darfur refugee camp and then having to spend more than £100,000 on processing the average asylum seeker who reaches Britain. Conservatives have sound aid policies but do not usually communicate the passion that good intentions liberals - like Brown and Blair - bring to global justice.
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