Andrew Lilico: Germany is not responsible for the debts of other countries. Why should it have to pay them off?

David Cameron has been widely quoted today, asking for more German action to save the euro.

He appears to have two key things in mind: first, that the Germans should drop their opposition to the European Central Bank directly engaging in even larger purchases of Italian debt than the tens of billions it has already purchased; and second that the Germans should support a significantly larger European Financial Stability Facility — perhaps of €2-3trillion.

Cameron has been joined in this position explicitly by the Americans (e.g. Tim Geithner), apparently by the European Commission, and at least in private by the French (though Sarkozy is supposed to have essentially told Cameron to mind his own business).

All such schemes — Eurobonds, a huge EFSF, mass ECB purchases of Italian and Spanish debt — all amount to the same thing, namely that the Germans should guarantee trillions in debts from other countries, accumulated before the euro even existed. I find the Cameron/Geithner view that this is a good solution to the euro crisis extraordinarily intellectually lazy. Of course it would be a “solution”, in the short-term, if the Germans paid off all the debts that others have accumulated across Europe. Indeed, why stop there? Why not get the Germans to pay all the debts of American households as well? We can chuck in the debts of the Chinese middle classes, whilst we’re about it. Then we’d “solve” the US and Chinese financial crises as well as the Eurozone one. Alternatively, perhaps we could “solve” the Eurozone crisis by getting the Americans to guarantee all the debts of Italy, Portugal, Spain, France and Ireland? Would Geithner be keen on that “solution”?

Dr Andrew Lilico: Why we lost in 2001 and 2005

Dr Andrew Lilico, Managing Director of Europe Economics, asks you to consider the following three accounts of why we lost in 2001 and 2005 and what the implications are...

Account 1:

In 2001 and 2005 we were perceived by the public as far too right wing.  People believed that we were overly ideological, wanting to privatize everything, and were obsessed with economic and financial issues - wanting to cut taxes and slash spending.  This meant that our policies on issues like health and education and tax rendered us totally unelectable (i.e. it was certain important policies that made us "right wing") .  Because the Party leadership understood that our policies on public services and the economy were impossible to sell, it rightly focused on more popular policy areas such as immigration and Europe.  Unfortunately our strength in these areas was insufficient to overcome our basic weakness in public services and economy-related issues, and Labour was able to leverage off its lead in these issues to underpin its own authority and undermine our credibility.

Although, in principle, Labour might eventually make itself so unpopular that a "one more push" strategy could one day work, we cannot afford to rely on this happening soon, and so must address our weakness on these core questions.  The way to do this is to adopt policies that the public can understand are close enough to Blair's to be credible, but then impose on those policies our own Conservative spin - so that we will carry Blair's agenda to a Conservative conclusion.  With credibility on public services and economic issues, we can then take proper advantage of our lead on other issues - moving the debate onto new and radical ground such as the environment, on which Conservatives have something unique and interesting to say that the public has no heard before.

Dr Andrew Lilico: Is it time to reconsider our opposition to the euro?

Dr Andrew Lilico is Managing Director of Europe Economics, a member of the IEA/Sunday Times Shadow Monetary Policy Committee.

Why did you oppose joining the euro? I'll tell you why I did. It was because, although I was in favour of a Single European State (SES), I was not in favour of Britain being part of it. And that wasn't because I feared that English, Scottish, Welsh or Ulster cultures would be degraded as part of an SES. Whether within the SES or not, I guess that bluebells will still grow in the woods, Shakespeare's plays and Burns' poems will still be honoured, male voice choirs will still lament Wales' performance in the Rugby, and local election counts in Ulster will still proceed at their traditional steady pace. No, it was not for cultural reasons, in this sense. Instead, it was because I regarded Britain as, at its essence, a particular constitutional arrangement; I thought that arrangement a great gift to the world; I believed that it would be extinguished within an SES; and I thought the other places it exists - New Zealand; Canada; perhaps some Caribbean islands - not significant enough to preserve and promote it without Britain.

Andrew Lilico: The New Crimethink?

Dr Andrew Lilico is Managing Director of Europe Economics, a firm providing consultancy services in economic regulation, competition policy and the application of economics to public policy and business issues.

Holocaust denial is to become a crime across the EU, provided that it incites violence or hatred against specific groups. Care has been taken to allow of space for plays and parodies (e.g. The Producers). The intention has been to target the use of denial of the genocide of the Jews during the 1940s and in Rwanda in the 1990s for inciting hatred against particular ethnic groups. The Germans have been keen to introduce this law across the EU during their current presidency.

A measure of this sort introduces many issues, including in particular the debate over whether it is appropriate to have any criminal offences set at an EU level. Without hiding my own view (I don’t believe that any crimes in the UK should be set at EU level, but I believe that the UK should be part of the EU but not the euro, and I am an advocate of having a Single European State that does not include the UK), I wish to set that procedural debate aside for now and focus on the substantial debate. For this is an important issue on which I believe the Conservative Party should offer a clear position — opposed — and I wish to explain my view as to why.

Opposition to a measure of this sort is often expressed quite abstractly — in terms such as “freedom of speech means freedom for the speech we hate” — which I would fully endorse. But on this occasion I wish to make matters a little more concrete. Holocaust deniers typically deny that the Nazis deliberately and systematically murdered millions of Jews. More subtle positions are sometimes also denounced as Holocaust denial, such as that of David Irving (who denied that as many Jews were killed as commonly alleged and that Hitler was aware of the murders until later 1943).

Both crude and subtle versions of Holocaust denial are manifestly wrong and maintained in the face of overwhelming evidence. But should denying what are obviously facts be any part of a crime? For example, some people believe that the Earth is only 6,000 years old and deny evolution. They are also wrong, and maintain their view in the face of overwhelming evidence. Furthermore, most Evolution Deniers are, often largely as a straightforward consequence of the same outlook that leads them to deny evolution, opposed to (among other things) practicing homosexuality. Should we say that Evolution Denial when used to incite hatred of homosexuals should be a crime?

In the past some other people denied that the Sun moved, taking the view that the Sun was stationary and that the Earth moved around it. Their view was maintained in the face of overwhelming evidence, and they, like those above, were wrong (the Sun is no more — or less — stationary than the Earth). They used their view to incite hatred of Jesuits. Should Sun-movement Denial have been a crime (as indeed it effectively was in some countries, for a while)?

My point is just this: believing or not believing in facts, and expressing one’s beliefs, surely cannot be the sort of thing we accept as a crime? Or are we now advocates of Orwellian crimethink? And if do start to accept it as a crime, we should not expect it to stop there. Hate crimes legislation did not stop with Jews or other races, but has graduated to homosexuals and religious groups and may yet have further to go. Once we start to restrict people’s ability to say: ”No. I don’t care how much evidence you have. I believe something else.”, we have crossed a vital line of principle that separates us from the societies of the Inquisition and the KGB — then the difference between them and us becomes one not of quality but of quantity at least for now...

Andrew Lilico: Smacking, liberty and order

Dr Andrew Lilico is Managing Director of Europe Economics, a member of the IEA/Sunday Times Shadow Monetary Policy Committee, and author of more than forty articles, pamphlets and reports on political and economic questions

I, as, I suppose, almost all readers of this article, was smacked as a child.  And, like most readers, I sometimes smack my own children.  Yet in a number of EU Member States smacking is illegal, in 2005 New Labour restricted smacking in England and Wales, the Scottish Executive has recently come under pressure to tighten the law in Scotland (even to consider an outright ban, as was considered in 2003), and in New Zealand today, a bill is being debated that would ban parents from smacking.

Opponents of smacking offer a number of arguments.  Most are very poor.

Probably the poorest is that smacking is an ineffective disciplining tool and that children not smacked will grow up to be better balanced adults.  Why is this a bad argument?  Because surely the last thing we want is legislation that criminalizes people based on the latest fashionable fad in child-rearing!  Imagine if research said that using phonics was an ineffective way to teach people to read, so it was made a criminal offence for parents to teach their children to read using phonics?  Or if we made it illegal to give birth any way other than under water, on the grounds that research suggested that babies born under water were happier.  Research into the best way to rear children is very useful, and can be very helpful to parents.  But it is surely totally at odds with any notion of ordered liberty that legislation should force us to bring up our children only in the most "approved" ways?

The two key arguments are surely: First, that hitting adults is not permitted, so why is hitting children?  And, second, that it becomes more difficult to report child abuse when smacking is permitted.  It is to rebut these arguments that I am writing.

Andrew Lilico: Why Conservatives should oppose all current options on Lords reform

Dr Andrew Lilico is Managing Director of Europe Economics, a member of the IEA/Sunday Times Shadow Monetary Policy Committee, and author of more than forty articles, pamphlets and reports on political and economic questions.  Andrew submitted this article before last night's Commons vote to have a 100% elected Lords.

Yesterday, Theresa May posted an article entitled 'Why we are the democrats and Labour are the reactionaries'.  She has three propositions to offer:

1. It is good that MPs are to have a free vote;
2. It would be best if the second chamber were democratic; and
3. The Labour cabinet represents the forces of conservatism on this issue.

She is quite wrong on the first two points, but, alas!, not wholly wrong on the third.

Considering the issues in turn, first, Conservatives (along with MPs of other parties) are to have a free vote.  But does this make any sense at all?  How could it be that on such a vital constitutional question as how our second chamber is to be made up, we have no party line?  Surely we should have some vision of what the British constitution is to supposed to be directed at, what the institutions are that should make it up, what the powers are to be of those institutions, and how those institutions are to be made up?  If we have no line on these sort of matters, on what basis are we formulating other policy?

Taking the most fundamental of these, if, as a party, we do not have a view on what politics is supposed to directed at — is it ordered liberty, personal liberty, collective order, collective honour, British sovereign power, justice, social justice (Rawlsian or otherwise), or something else? — if we do not have a view on something as basic as that, how is the public supposed to have any idea of what our general political programme is trying to achieve, or (to put matters differently) what underlying long-term values it will attempt to preserve whilst achieving passing short-term goals.

It shouldn’t be difficult, really!  Burke set us our goal in his original writings on conservatism — the promotion of ordered liberty.  Perhaps that’s not what we are in favour of any more?  Well, then, what alternative underlying goal are we in favour of?

If we still understand ordered liberty as the proper goal of a constitution and sine qua non of specific policy, then this must have implications for the nature of our constitutional arrangements.  To be sure, Conservatives might disagree about exactly what constitutional arrangements are best, as we disagree about what public sector reforms are best, but we cannot pretend that we do not have a view qua Conservatives!

I shall offer you my view.  It’s not the only possible line, but I cannot see how one could defend having no collective line at all.

Dr Andrew Lilico: A plea for the demand-side in health

Dr Andrew Lilico is Managing Director of Europe Economics, a member of the IEA/Sunday Times Shadow Monetary Policy Committee, and author of more than forty articles, pamphlets and reports on political and economic questions.

The nineties and noughties have seen extensive reforms in the NHS.  Such reforms have been overwhelmingly on the supply-side — that is to say, they affected the way that healthcare was supplied to patients, rather than the way it was obtained by patients.  They have included reforms of the organisation of GPs, of hospitals, of the nature of ancillary service provision, of the use of private sector doctors and nurses, the use of central targets, and so on.

These supply-side reforms have often been contentious, and have tended to create political difficulties for those implementing them.  The reason, I suggest, is as follows: the public at large is vastly indifferent to the precise mechanism by which it receives its healthcare.  All it cares about is that treatment will be available when it is needed, and that it will be free.  The details of internal markets etc. are quite inaccessible to the public and it is difficult to explain why one system will deliver higher-quality healthcare than another.

Dr Andrew Lilico: The role of paternalism

Dr Andrew Lilico is Managing Director of Europe Economics, a member of the IEA/Sunday Times Shadow Monetary Policy Committee, and author of more than forty articles, pamphlets and reports on political and economic questions.

Tim Congdon, in today's Daily Telegraph, has said he is abandoning the Conservative Party for UKIP.  His main grounds for doing so appear to be that he sees David Cameron as a Paternalist.  As he puts it:

"I never imagined that the modern Conservative Party would again embrace old-fashioned Tory paternalism, with a frank advocacy of expanding the state's responsibilities."

Back in 2000, I published a series of articles on what was the correct political philosophy for the Conservative Party to be projecting in our age.  In one of them, "The Next Conservative Coalition", I considered the role of Paternalism. I consider the basic argument still valid today, and I would like to rehearse it for you. 

Dr Andrew Lilico: Defining child poverty

Dr Andrew Lilico is Managing Director of Europe Economics, a member of the IEA/Sunday Times Shadow Monetary Policy Committee, and author of more than forty articles, pamphlets and reports on political and economic questions.

This paper summarizes Measuring Child Poverty and Targeting its Elimination.

Child poverty is a significant political issue.  Tony Blair’s government has set targets for its reduction and eventual elimination, and the Conservatives now aspire to this goal, also. The government currently defines child poverty using a three-part definition, including an unchanging income poverty line, a relative income poverty line, and a measure of access to material goods.

Characteristics of a Good Definition of Child Poverty

Let us consider four key characteristics of a good definition of child poverty:

1) True to the concept of “poverty”

If those in “child poverty” are not in “poverty” then something is awry.  In particular, should poverty be thought of as absolute or relative?  There are two parts to this.  First there is the question of whether “poverty” is absolute through time and place, so that what it is to be “poor” for a British child today is the same as for a British child in the 13^th century or for a Sudanese child today.  Second, even if we reject the notion that poverty is absolute through time, one might urge that it depends only on someone’s own circumstances in a particular country at a particular time, rather than on how one’s circumstances compare with those of other people.