We’ll need more than a good Budget to save us
Whereas we were once a country unified in spirit but divided in details of economic policy, we have become one largely apathetic towards economics and split increasingly in spirit.
It is reassuring to see Conservatives in power who want to cut taxes. For too long, the party has wedded itself to the tax-and-spend shibboleths of the left, believing that it is government’s role to merely hoover up as much money as possible and then to throw it around with vigour.
In its years-long attempt to out-left-the-left, the supposedly free-market party all but forgot that it is the productivity and energy of the private sector that gives the nation the resources it needs to function properly. Their forgotten creed is, put simply: make the economic pie bigger, and even if the state’s slice is proportionally smaller, government coffers will overfloweth with more cash.
Don’t believe it? Ask yourself which would bring in more: a 90% income tax in Eritrea or a 15% income tax in Switzerland? If you chose the former, then it’s back to school with you.
Once such free-market axioms guided the party. However, for too long it has dumbed down its commitment, seeking to evade accusations of favouring the wealthy, thereby allowing the usual envy peddlers to spew their predictable bile.
So, yes, Kwarteng’s budget is a good one. However, I fear it is not enough. Resurrecting the ghost of Thatcher and Lawson will not suffice in the upcoming battle. Whereas we were once a country unified in spirit but divided in details of economic policy, we have become one largely apathetic towards economics and split increasingly in spirit.
Questions of the soul – which the Conservatives shy away from, having embraced social liberalism in its entirety – weigh heavily on the body politic. The great many modern lies, now too copious to innumerate, but which rear their head on a daily basis, have to be tackled.
Man is not merely an economic beast. The Conservatives have failed to recognise the interconnectedness of our economic, social, cultural and political lives, hoping that if they could stuff bungs of cash into the right people’s mouths then all would be well, or that the young would simply grow out of their leftward bent.
Such thinking is misguided. Generational changes do occur. Just look at church attendance over the twentieth century. There were surely some optimistic Christians who, seeing the irreligiousness of their children’s generation, thought they would creep back to the pews after their youthful rebellion. Given the mean age of most Church of England congregations is approximately ninety-seven and a half, such optimism was apparently misplaced.
As such, the Conservatives, who have only just reoccupied once long-held territory, must advance into new lands. In venturing forth into this uncomfortable territory, the shrieking of the usual sorts will reach new, eardrum-rupturing highs. Yet, it is the only way to ensure the party’s, and the nation’s, survival.
It will mean pointing to an array of hideously naked emperors and screaming out the blindingly obvious, and it will straddle many spheres. It will require bold moves that favour the mass of ordinary people who now suffer amid the institutional capture of the left.
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion mandates must be tackled, and the citizen’s freedom of speech enshrined. Laws must be implemented that elevate those key components of Western civilisation’s success: the right to express one’s opinions and the security of conscience.
The anti-family, anti-social policies pursued and peddled by ideologues must be countered. That the nuclear family is the building block of any free society – and hence the first target of any communistic venture – must be backed up by words and deeds.
Advanced rot in the wooden structure of our education system must be torn out and replaced with solid oak. The mistruths and distortions which seek to paint our nation as one of history’s criminals have to be done away with, with a proper grounding of our country’s unique history and constitution emphasised.
Immigration – the greatest of the many elephants in the room – will have to be dealt with in short order. The waves of illegal immigrants crossing the Channel, together with continued levels of inward immigration beyond sustainable levels, need to be dealt with. The cost in doing so will be to have those who would never vote Conservative in the first place kick up a stink, but it would all but guarantee the trust of swathes of Middle England.
Heaven knows there is more. Decades of weak leadership have left much work to be done. Until now, politicians have either been too cowardly, fearing their careers, or complicit in the spread of these modern, mendacious mistruths and misgovernment.
Yet, what is at stake is nothing more than the nation’s very survival. Johnson already squandered an unparalleled opportunity. There won’t be many more chances to get it right.
