"Everyone wants growth. But will ... they have the courage to upset vested interests on their own side?"

"The problem is that politics is not about good intentions, but trade-offs and results. Everyone wants growth. But will ... they have the courage to upset vested interests on their own side? The government still has promising changes in the pipeline on housing and infrastructure. But elsewhere? ...

"[H]ere’s [a] strategy, one advocated in a fascinating essay from 1989. The author opens by arguing that 'politicians tend, worldwide, to avoid structural reform until it is forced upon them by economic stagnation, a collapse of their currency or some other costly economic and social disaster. Politicians tend to close their minds as long as they can … because they believe that decisive action must inevitably bring political calamity upon their governments.'

"But the writer goes on to make precisely the opposite case: 'Political survival depends on making quality decisions; compromised policies lead to voter dissatisfaction; letting things drift is political suicide.'

"Voters, he argues, 'ultimately place a higher value on enhancing their medium-term prospects than on action that looks successful short-term but which sacrifices larger and more enduring future gains … There is a deep well of realism and common sense among the ordinary people of the community. They want politicians to have the guts and the vision to deliver sustainable gains in living standards.'

"Strategically, he also advises pursuing reform in 'quantum leaps' rather than small steps; 'otherwise the interest groups will have time to mobilise and drag you down.'

"The whole 35-page paper, 'The Politics of Structural Reform',' is worth reading, not least because so much strikes a chord today ('Inadequate politicians see instant popularity as the key to power. If their rating slips, they feel threatened. They look for policies with instant appeal to create continuous public bliss').

"But what is most striking is that the writer is a Labour politician: Roger Douglas, who, as minister of finance — equivalent to [the UK's] chancellor — led New Zealand through one of the most bruising periods of free-market reform in any nation’s history (a programme known as Rogernomics) and saw his party re-elected with an enhanced vote share at the end of it.

"Starmer’s Labour came to power by taking the opposite of Douglas’s advice. It told the public that spending would rise, growth would rise but taxes and borrowing would not. That no one would have to feel any pain. And when that turned out to be a lie, it got hammered for it.

"Wherever the government goes next, it is unlikely to be down a path of Douglas-esque, business-friendly radicalism. But I believe — I have to believe — that the public will still reward politicians who are honest about our country’s problems and visibly try their damnedest to fix them. Because if not, what hope have we got?"

~ Robert Colville from his London Times column 'https://archive.fo/E7HXi'

Offshore emissions

"Can someone explain how the deindustrialisation of the UK and Germany [et al] will save the planet? 

    "I still struggle to understand why they sacrifice their industries, jobs and prosperity only to outsource production to Asia, which increases global emissions. Does it make any sense to you?"

~ Michael A. Arouet

"Suddenly, the race is on to be skeptical." [updated]

"Everywhere countries are saying they care about climate change but doing the opposite. The EU nations are fighting over their 2035 and 2040 emissions targets, Mexico is borrowing up to keep its oil company afloat, Canada scrapped their carbon tax, and is being 'coy' about their 2030 target. Governor Gavin Newsom just boosted oil drilling in California a year after he described the industry as the 'polluted heart of this climate crisis.'

"Now Kemi Badenoch, leader of the Tories in the UK, is promising to dump The Climate Change Act if she gets elected. Suddenly, the race is on to be skeptical."

~ Jo Nova from her post 'Deniers are everywhere. The race is on to be a skeptic now — Kemi Badenoch vows to repeal Climate Change Act'

UPDATE: 

"Kemi Badenoch has now confirmed that she will scrap the Climate Change Act, along with its Net Zero targets.
    "But will her MPs allow her to do it?"

"If you’re going to issue a cultural call to arms, it helps to have an idea what 'our own culture' actually means."

"If you’re going to issue a cultural call to arms, it helps to have an idea what 'our own culture' actually means. Reform and the Conservatives only know what they are rejecting: Islam and Europe. As for Labour, when Lisa Nandy became culture secretary a year ago, she pledged to transform Britain into a 'self-confident' country, one where everyone can 'see themselves in the stories we tell.' On the question of what that national story is, however, she was tellingly silent. ...

"Our culture has been impoverished. There are many culprits here. Woke traduces hundreds of years of history as tainted with criminality, leading to swathes of our national story, in all its gore and glory, being lost to sight. ...

"When I asked a young Briton to summarise the dominant culture among his generation, he replied, 'an international version of American culture that can be found anywhere.' The Right demands that immigrants 'integrate' — and rightly so — but if we are not careful there will be nothing left to integrate into. ...

"[T]he cultural emergency is real. 2012 is an age ago. The Queen is dead and Bond is on gardening leave. Society has been further weakened by rancorous lunges for power by aggrieved minorities, whether ethnic, sexual or religious, and the furious reaction of their opponents. ...

"Tell the story of this country, warts and all. But tell it. Tell it and tell it again until we see ourselves in it."

~ Christopher de Bellaigue from his post 'Britain can’t tell its national story' [Q: Can we?]

"Coal is expected to dominate the energy sector for at least three more decades"

"[C]oal is the backbone of energy production, supplying over 70% of India’s electricity. The dark evenings of my childhood have been brightened.

"Other developing countries have learned from China and India how coal jump-starts economies and lifts millions from poverty. Now, they too line up for their share of the fuel that sparked the Industrial Revolution.

"Global coal production reached an all-time high of nearly 9 billion metric tons in 2024. Chinese and Indian output continued to grow, and Indonesia set export records.

"India is on track to burn twice as much coal as the U.S. and Europe put together – possibly within the year – while China has already surged ahead, consuming 30% more coal than every other nation combined. ...

"Coal shipments to Southeast Asia are on a steady climb ... Rising production of South American crude steel will increase demand for metallurgical coal ... African energy production [is] on the rise ... Even the U.K. government, while still parading its 'net zero' credentials, is, nonetheless, procuring [imported] coking coal to keep British Steel alive ... In the U.S., President Trump has prioritised coal under a new executive order ...

"Coal is expected to dominate the energy sector for at least three more decades, barring a disruption by rapid innovation that would enable its economical displacement. Similarly, the mineral will continue to play a crucial role in iron and steel production absent development of a viable alternative.

"Predictions to the contrary are just so much hot air – largely from those most averse to a warming atmosphere."

~ Vijay Jayaraj from his post 'Big, Beautiful Coal Here for Many More Years Despite ‘Green’ Demonisation'

"A movement that changed a country." Peacefully.

It's been risible watching statists here struggling over recent months to get their heads around the Atlas Network think tank—and what exactly think tanks do.

What troubles them most perhaps is the word "think" in the description. Many have forgotten how to.

Nonetheless, to help them understand, the think tank Students for Liberty sets out to explain what they do. 

They begin by asking: "Why is the President of Argentina wearing THIS pin while announcing major policy changes?"

The story goes back to 1945, when a war hero wanted to save his country—and a Nobel Prize winner told him to forget about politics.

This isn't just about a pin. It's about how ideas travel from university classrooms to presidential palaces. And why every student needs to understand this journey—because you're living through it right now.

In 1945, World War II just ended. F.A. Hayek, teaching at the London School of Economics, meets Antony Fisher—a combat aviator and war hero. Fisher had read Hayek's The Road to Serfdom and was terrified about Britain's socialist direction. "I want to enter politics," Fisher declared.

Hayek stopped him cold. "The political battle isn't won in the political arena," he explained. "It's fought—and ultimately won—by intellectuals." Politicians follow public opinion. But intellectuals? They shape it. 

 

Fisher listened. Instead of running for political office, he founded the UK's Institute of Economic Affairs. For decades, IEA scholars published papers, hosted debates, and educated a generation about free markets. The result? Britain elected Margaret Thatcher. 

 

Legend has it that in her first Cabinet meeting, Thatcher slammed down Hayek's book Constitution of Liberty—published by the IEA—and declared: "This is what we believe!" Ideas had become policy. Intellectuals had changed a nation. 

This wasn't an accident. Hayek had studied how ideas spread. It's like a pyramid:

        Scholars develop ideas ...

                ... Intellectuals* spread them 

                        ... Media amplifies them

                                ... Politicians adopt them

Every revolution starts at the top of that pyramid.

[* Note that the bar for "intellectual" here is clearly set very low.] 

Now look at American universities today (and this is fairly universal everywhere):  

X Professors teaching government as the solution to everything  

X Students defending socialism (70% of Gen Z consider voting socialist)  

X 53% of graduates feel unqualified for jobs in their field  

X Ideology of resentment toward achievement

 The pyramid is working—just not for liberty.

This is why Students For Liberty exists. 

Our Local Coordinators host events, educate peers, and develop as leaders worldwide. 

In 2024 alone: 3,881 events reaching 150,000+ people. 

One person who helped SFL in Argentina? An economist named Javier Milei.

Milei didn't just wear our pin—he partnered with us. 

He attended our events, explained our mission on TV, and mentored pro-liberty students across Argentina. 

Why? Because he understood: to change politics, you first have to change culture. 

 

Take Ethan Yang. Started with "no leadership experience, no professional skills. Just a small libertarian club that met in the basement of our dining hall." 

As a Students for Liberty coordinator, his Freedom of Information Act request helped halt the Biden administration's social-media censorship. The case reached the Supreme Court.

A federal judge called the Biden Administration's collusion with/threats to Big Tech "the most massive attack against free speech in US history." 

Stopped by one student. One request. Supreme Court case. 

That's the power of the pyramid when it works for liberty. 

 

Here's what every student needs to understand: 

You're not just getting a degree. 

You're being shaped by ideas that will define the next fifty years. 

The question isn't whether ideas will spread from campus—it's which ideas will spread.

Milton Friedman explains the point: "Our basic function is to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable." 

Before Milei became president, he was attending SFL events. 

That pin? It represents a movement that changed a country.

Tired of feeling outnumbered, silenced, or lost in campus groupthink? 

The College Survival Kit is your first step into this global movement. 

Learn how real change begins—with students who refuse to stay silent: DOWNLOAD YOURS HERE. 

"The deal, it turned out, was somewhat less than advertised"

"On Thursday, the press pool was summoned at 10:48 A.M. for what Trump had billed as a “very big and exciting” announcement of a new trade deal between the U.S. and the U.K. …

“The deal, it turned out, was somewhat less than advertised—an agreement in principle, after years of talks, and with many details to be finalised. …

“Still, it was something, and Trump, with all the zeal of a used-car salesman, plumped for the agreement, though he admitted it wasn’t quite done yet. “In the coming weeks, we’ll have it all very conclusive,” he vowed. ….

“There are many words that come from Trump’s mouth, and few that he will not renounce when they are no longer convenient.“

from the article A Day in the Life of a Live-Streamed Donald Trump

"Trump's "big" trade deal is with the UK:- It's a framework not a deal - They're our 11th largest trading partner - They're only 3% of US trade (97% to go) - They *already* charge average tariffs of only 1% (limited upside)
    "It's a photo op, with little macroeconomic significance. ...   

"Overwhelmingly the most important news here -- in terms of macroeconomic impacts -- is that the US is retaining 10 percent tariffs on nearly everything. Do the numbers and it's obvious that any industry-specific tweaks are second order."

~ Justin Wolfers on the "major" UK-US Trade announcement

REPOST: "What's a woman?"

I'm not sure it's really the government's job to define a gender. But since that's where we're going, here's a relevant re-post from a couple of years ago ...

"What is a woman?"

Trans issues, for some people, have become a sort of "litmus test." Part of the so-called "culture wars." Asking the question "what's a woman?" -- asking it even of Prime Ministers, as a "gotcha" -- has become something of a popular test, a method to confront others in that so-called "war."

Which makes the whole issue tiresome.

And largely obscures the real issues.

What is the real issue? Answer: that everyone is entitled to pursue their own happiness in their own way -- as long as they don't force that on others. Everything else comes from that — including questions about sports and toilets.

In some ways, anti trans-activists are opposed to people pursuing their individual happiness.

In the same way, pro trans-activists are in favour of forcing some people's choices on others.

Both buggers are confused.

Yes, there are some legitimate issues involved here. Medicine can now transform people in some pretty fantastic ways, in ways that help some people see themselves better. It might take some time to get used to that. Some time for both sides and for our human institutions to get used to it, and to all the implications of it. (Sometimes sports and bathroom use might get more complicated because of that.) That doesn't mean shouting at each other about it; it might instead mean thinking about these things a bit more deeply.

Radical, I know.

I'd suggest both sides might think about it a bit more. A lot more. 'Cos both sides, as currently structured, are wrong.

Yes, there is a reliable definition of a woman: a woman is an adult female human being. So far so simple. Without that definition, we'd have no ability to define a girl (young woman), or a lesbian (a woman sexually attracted to women). But let's understand what a definition is: it's not a closed set with firm boundaries. It's a description of what exists in the world, identifying and describing the particular units subsumed under a particular concept, under a given label. But things change. If new things are identified, or created, we can create and recognise new and wider (or narrower) concepts, new labels, and new definitions. So much, so uncomplicated. (Or so you would think.)

Point being that definition comes after existence. Not before. So the definition (adult human female) doesn't thereby determine what that adult should do. Or become. In this context, individual adults themselves come first.

Let's recognise that each person, each adult, is an individual — an individual entitled to pursue their own happiness in their own way. [" ...full respect for the life project of others," as Javier Milei said in his inauguration speech.] Furthermore, let's acknowledge that modern life offers them more choices in that pursuit than ever before. That they might sometimes be mistaken, especially about something as deeply-seated as their sexuality, and they may even need guidance. And they might be wrong. But it is their right to choose — a right however that gives them no special right to force their choices on others.

Maybe we just try respecting each other. How about that, eh? 

How about we all try to act as adults.

It's the age of the Neotoddler protestor

Young men riot in Sunderland (Drik/Getty Images)

"Across the West, protests are getting larger, more frequent and more disruptive. Over the weekend, the UK saw nationwide anti-immigration riots in which mosques and other buildings were set aflame. A few days before that, Just Stop Oil activists sprayed orange paint in the world’s second-busiest airport, Heathrow. The week before, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the US Congress, pro-Palestine activists rioted in Columbus Square, vandalising memorials and releasing a swarm of maggots and worms in his Washington hotel.
    "These are just the latest examples of a growing trend of shock-activism that combines political protest and public nuisance. Ostensibly, they are carried out by distinct groups motivated by a particular cause, such as immigration, the environment, or Palestine. In reality, however, all are animated by the same, self-destructive ideology: neotoddlerism....
    
"[T]he ease with which theatrical behaviour goes viral online has convinced many that a better world doesn’t require years of patient work, only a sufficient quantity of theatrics. Many activists — on both the Left and Right — now hope to bring about their ideal world in the same way a spoiled brat acquires a toy they’ve been denied: by being as loud and hysterical as possible. This is neotoddlerism: the view that utopia can be achieved by acting like a three-year-old....

"Instead of trying to produce the best arguments, neotoddlers try to produce the most shocking video clips, which typically involve vandalism, desecration, or some other kind of public meltdown. Thus, they outrage others by embracing their own outrage and lashing out at the world. ...

"Not only do neotoddlers lack impulse-control, they also mistake their lack of impulse-control for morality, and mistake the impulse-control of others for callousness. 'Where is the outrage?' they commonly yell, demanding everyone be as irrational as them. For the neotoddler, impatience is a virtue. ...

"They therefore don’t have the means to create, only to disrupt.
    "And so they disrupt, with the goal of spreading awareness. Yet ... for all the issues they protest about — from immigration to climate change — the problem is not a lack of awareness; it’s a lack of solutions. We don’t need to be told that war, injustice, and pollution are bad, because we learned these lessons in primary school. What we need are realistic plans of action — but the neotoddlers have none. A 'ceasefire now!' would quickly be broken by Hamas. To 'just stop oil!' would be to cause Western civilisation to regress technologically into an age of famine, war and superstition. On immigration, the Government can’t just 'get them out'. ...

"But if nuisance-protests are counterproductive, why are they spreading? Because protests are usually motivated more by emotion than reason. Take the recent Southport riots. These have been driven not by any rational plan but by the frustrations of Right-wingers and ordinary working-class people about their concerns over immigration not being taken seriously by politicians. These frustrations, stoked by fake news, have led them to engage in infantile — and dangerous — actions like vandalising mosques and setting fire to police cars, which will hurt their cause more than help it. But it does make them feel good for the moment, and they live mostly for the moment.
    "As for Left-wing neotoddlers, their motivations tend to be more complex (but no less childish) than those of their Right-wing counterparts, because, instead of being impoverished and alienated, they tend to be privileged and popular. For instance ... Gaza campus protests were largely confined to the most expensive and elite colleges. And Just Stop Oil members are themselves quick to admit that their movement is 'privileged' and living in a white middle-class 'student bubble.' ...

"Unsurprisingly, the harm neotoddlers cause to liberal democracies has endeared them to foreign dictators. The Ayatollah developed a soft spot for the Ivy League campus protesters, cheerleading them on X, and even writing them a letter of support. It also recently transpired that Iran has been funding and directing activists across the US, and that they even masterminded an anti-Israel protest at McGill University in Canada. Closer to home [in the UK], the misinformation that caused the Southport riots was amplified by a fake news website linked to the Russian government. ...

"There is a way out. The solution to neotoddlers is the same as the one to regular spoiled brats: to ignore their outbursts and deny them attention. If someone sets fire to a car or makes a mess with orange paint, it shouldn’t make global or even national news. The media will stop reporting on these stories when we stop engaging with them. ... So we should learn to react more slowly to news, to pay attention to what we pay attention to, and to give more of our attention to behaviours we wish to encourage rather than those we disapprove of. It’s not just the neotoddlers who need to be less impulsive, we do too. ...

"Every child begins life throwing tantrums. And every good parent learns to ignore them, because they know that acknowledging attention-seeking behaviours validates them, and prevents their kids from outgrowing them. If we wish to stop seeing good causes ruined by bad actors, we must stop rewarding immaturity. If we wish to usher in an age of post-toddlerism, we must stop making neotoddlers famous."

~ Gurwinder Bhogal from his article 'The scourge of Neotoddler protestors: The Left and Right now rely on shock activism'

UK immigration misinformation

On this subject more than maybe any other, misinformation rules. 

News reports say that Britons are rioting in the street over a knife attack by a Muslim immigrant a locally-born Christian. 

The misinformation is almost symbolic.

Rioters (committing these violent crimes) are alleging that violent crime has risen with immigration. Yet ...

They've alleged that "grooming gangs" are everywhere in immigrant communities. Yet ...

...

It's been claimed that migrants — especially illegal migrants — overwhelmingly take benefits. Yet ...

• the vast majority of new legal migrants are unable to access benefits due to a policy called "no recourse to public funds"
• new migrants pay something called the Immigration Health Surcharge (on top of other taxes) at rates greater than some private health insurance
• illegal immigrants aren't entitled to any benefits at all
• far from being "a burden on public services" it is overwhelmingly migrants who work in public services (health, education etc.) without which these government systems would have collapsed long ago

It's claimed nonetheless that illegal immigrants "abuse the asylum system." Yet ... you cannot be both "illegal" and "abuse the asylum system" because, by law, someone seeking asylum is allowed to use irregular means of entry to do so without penalisation.

It's said that new legal migrants have created Britain's housing crisis ... not the planners, politicians and NIMBYs who for decades have stopped Britons building.

It's argued that "migrants don't integrate." Yet ... despite many hurdles, research suggests that on five measures assessed (structural social, cultural, civic and political) there is no lack of integration, or any lack of motivation to integrate.

Protesters suggest that all Britons are with them. And yet ...

• out of 17 countries surveyed, the UK public were least likely to push for strict limits on foreigners or prohibitions on immigration
• ... were least likely to believe immigration increases the crime rate
• ... were least likely to say that immigration causes unemployment
• ... among the least likely to say that immigration increases the risk of terrorism; and
• has one of the most favourable views of the impacts of immigration

So why, you may wonder, are some Britons rioting in the street about immigration over a crime by a locally-born man.

Dunno.

It's almost like they've been played.

[Hat tip Dan Sohege, from whom most of these links, graphs, news and answers are sourced.]

After the UK election, what is the future of British conservatism?

Conservative Party MP (and Austrian economics enthusiast) Steve Baker lost his High Wycombe seat in the UK election. He was asked about the future of the Conservative Party, about which he has himself been severely critical even when in government, and if "small c" conservative policies were the cause of Britain's problems. [Starts at 9:16]

“GB NEWS INTERVIEWER: What is the future of British conservatism?”

“Whatever problems Britain has got, they weren't caused by government being limited, by taxes being too low, by budgets being balanced, or by debt being too low — or even by money being too tight with high interest rates, because we haven't had those. …
    “The problem is that we've had big government. High spending. Lots of debt, QE and cheap credit. That is not conservative economic policy. And the problem is we've really — and I've said this in all the interviews I've done for 50 years — the [whole] Western world has been living systematically beyond its means and using cheap credit and now QE to cover the gap. And you can't do that without manufacturing Mass Injustice. This is why people can't afford houses — young people particularly. If you pump lots of cheap credit into houses don't be surprised if the price soars, particularly when planning law constrains the supply of land.
    “These are disastrous policies. But in the end, they arise because the state spends too much. So the future of conservatism actually is to face the real world as it is which is that you can't spend more than you're earning in the long run. And your viewers know that.”

 Meanwhile, Razi Ginsberg and Morgan Carter at the Ayn Rand Centre UK observe that things can only get worse ...

"Yes, Labour has won a landslide, but it’s not quite Starmer-geddon."

Britain's 'leaders' mourn the death of the Uniparty

"Yes, [UK] Labour has won a landslide [in the British election overnight], but it’s not quite Starmer-geddon. According to the exit poll, his landslide, predicted to be the largest since 1832 in one eve-of-election poll, is in fact smaller than Tony Blair’s in 1997, although not by much (170 v 179). 

    "More encouraging, if the exit poll is to be believed, is that Labour only managed a vote share of 36%, significantly lower than in 2017 under Jeremy Corbyn (40%). 

    "By contrast, the Tories and Reform won a combined share of 43%. [Labour leader] Keir Starmer has won a landslide but not a mandate – his own majority is down by 16,000 – although I doubt he’ll be constrained by that.
    "The Left of the Labour Party will point to the fact that Starmer polled fewer votes than Corbyn – we don’t know that for sure yet, but it looks likely – and dispute that Labour only won this election by tacking to the centre, just as the Right of the Conservative Party will argue the Party didn’t lose by abandoning the centre ground (which is the prevailing orthodoxy among ‘One Nation’ Tories, believe it or not). And they’d both be right, in my view. In spite of Starmer’s victory, technocratic managerialism – or 'stakeholder capitalism,' as Klaus Schwab calls it – hasn’t exactly triumphed in this election. 

    "The Uniparty – that is, the Conservative Party under Sunak and the Labour Party under Starmer – got a bloody nose in the sense that the two main parties received an even lower share of the vote – 62% – than they did in 2010 (66%). That’s a lower share than in 1983 at the height of the SDP‘s popularity (70%) and worse than in either of the 1974 elections. Indeed, lower than in 1923, when the two main parties won 68.7%. You have to go all the way back to 1918, when the Liberal Party hadn’t yet collapsed, to find find Labour and the Conservatives collectively polling a lower vote share (59.2%).

"The superficial take on the result is that the U.K. is bucking the anti-technocratic trend sweeping the rest of the globe, particularly France where we may be witnessing the death throes of the Fifth Republic. But look beyond Labour’s landslide and the real story of the last six weeks is the rise of Reform and the lack of enthusiasm for the two centrist parties. 

    "Indeed, if we had PR in the U.K., as they do in the EU, we might now be looking at a Right-of-centre coalition with a populist leader at the helm and a move away from the Uniparty’s position on immigration and Net Zero, as well as its uncritical embrace of sectarian identity politics. We may have to wait another five years before that happens, but it seems unlikely, to put it mildly, that Starmer’s premiership will breathe new life into this calcified ideology. Much more likely is that a succession of policy failures, leading to a financial crisis, civil unrest and rolling black-outs, will be the death knell of technocratic managerialism. 

    "In 2029, the British electoral may finally vote for real change."

~ Toby Young from his post 'End of the Uniparty'

UK Election: Choosing "the spam sandwich over the bowl of cold sick"

"I write this entry less than a week before the country ‘goes to the polls’. On July 4th, the British electorate will vote, and it will pick – as it always does – the best option before it. This will mean electing a Labour Government. ...
    "I wish that the people had better options to choose from. But that is not the way democracy works. The voters have to eat what is in front of them on the dinner table, not the Michelin-starred feast they could be having if only they had Michel Roux in the kitchen. And they will, naturally, choose the bland over the actively distasteful – the spam sandwich over the bowl of cold sick. ...
    "People don’t vote on the basis of wanting to 'punish' the Government or because 'they don’t know what they’re voting for.' In aggregate they vote on the basis of a rational choice. And the Tory Party has simply presented the U.K. electorate in 2024 with only one such choice: not to elect it into Government."

~ David McGrogan from his column 'Why the Labour Party Will Win'

"Sunak is a walking, talking reminder that technocracy is a con – that the politicians and institutions most keen to fetishise ‘competence’ and ‘delivery’, over the messy business of ideology and democratic politics, are often rank incompetents who would struggle to deliver a pizza. 

    "Indeed, it is precisely Sunak’s deference to the blob – to the prevailing orthodoxies of the state and the quangocracy – that made him being the man to finally fix Britain’s deep-seated problems such an unlikely prospect. His coronation as PM – all without the say-so of Tory members, let alone the country at large – was premised on the claim he would ‘calm the markets’ after the mini-budget meltdown and that he would defer to the wisdom of the Treasury mandarins, the Bank of England and the Office for Budget Responsibility, who were all so outrageously defied by Truss and Kwarteng. 

    "In practice, this meant deferring to the very ‘experts’ who have for decades been presiding over Britain’s economic decay. ...

    "If there’s a lesson to be learned from the Rishi Sunak era, it’s this: politicians who believe in nothing, quite often end up achieving nothing. Nothing good, anyway."

~ Tom Slater from his op-ed 'Rishi Sunak and the folly of managerialism'

"Relations between journalist media and government should always be bad and never on any account should be allowed to get better."

What is the ideal relationship between government and media? Editor, interviewer and media owner Andrew Neil tells the UK Parliamentary Inquiry that "Relations between journalist media and government should always be bad and never on any account should be allowed to get better." How should government help struggling media organisations? "You should stay the hell out," he tells them.

Q: Looking forward over the next few years, how interventionist do you think government should be in supporting the news sector, if at all, and what do you think would constitute government overreach?

Andrew Neil: You should stay the hell out of it. You do not know anything about it. You are only trouble. We are not on your side; you are not on our side. We are different. Relations between journalist media and government should always be bad and never on any account should be allowed to get better. I do not want any of your help. I have rebuilt the Spectator without any help from anybody here or any Government or any tax incentives or any intervention. You cannot even keep the streets safe at night. The Scottish Government cannot build two bog-standard ferries. This Parliament cannot build a single high-speed line, so stay out of news. You are just trouble. We do not want any help. I just do not want you to interfere. I do not want your tax subsidies; I do not want your help. I want you just to concentrate. I am a Jeffersonian. The Government should concentrate on doing what only government can do and do it well. We have government that concentrates on doing far too much, all of which it does badly. Please. We have gone through a major industrial upheaval, a major technological revolution, and we have come through the other side. We have lost people by the wayside. At times it has seemed like the Bataan Death March, but we have come through and we now know what we are doing and we just want to be allowed to get on with it. ...

Q: Should there be any support, public sector support, for local journalism, for local news?]

Andrew Neil: ... I would not overdo how great local news was. ... All these local newspapers depended on local government for advertising. They were not fearless seekers of truth, uncovering local government corruption and wrongdoing. That was done by the national papers which were not beholden to them, so I would not romanticise that. I think there are alternative forms growing up. Quite a lot of concerned citizens now produce blogs that are excellent commentaries and insights into what is happening in local government and they have big followings. Almost a kind of citizen journalism is the way for local journalism to go. I am more worried about regional newspapers ... I think that is a bigger problem but how you resolve that I have no idea. Sometimes things just change and you cannot replicate what happened before. The idea that government should subsidise local journalism fills me with horror because he who pays the piper in the end always calls the tune.

A Halfling has commentary and a lengthier excerpt.

"National 'service'"

"Translation: your life isn’t really yours. You have to buy it off from some higher entity. To be left alone, you have to pay ransom, in the form of some service to the group. Both the draft, or ‘volunteer weekends’ are this ransom. Despicable. The Tories are a disgusting Party. I wish them a historic annihilation in the elections."

~ Nikos Sotirakopoulos, from his tweet in response to Rishi Sunak's pledge to "bring back National Service" iff the Tories win the UK election

RELATED: 

"Of all the statist violations of individual rights in a mixed economy, the military draft is the worst. It is an abrogation of rights. It negates man’s fundamental right—the right to life—and establishes the fundamental principle of statism: that a man’s life belongs to the state, and the state may claim it by compelling him to sacrifice it in battle. Once that principle is accepted, the rest is only a matter of time.
    "If the state may force a man to risk death or hideous maiming and crippling, in a war declared at the state’s discretion, for a cause he may neither approve of nor even understand, if his consent is not required to send him into unspeakable martyrdom—then, in principle, all rights are negated in that state, and its government is not man’s protector any longer. What else is there left to protect? ...

"The years from about fifteen to twenty-five are the crucial formative years of a man’s life. This is the time when he confirms his impressions of the world, of other men, of the society in which he is to live, when he acquires conscious convictions, defines his moral values, chooses his goals, and plans his future, developing or renouncing ambition. These are the years that mark him for life. And it is these years that an allegedly humanitarian society [would force] him to spend in terror—the terror of knowing that he can plan nothing and count on nothing, that any road he takes can be blocked at any moment by an unpredictable power, that, barring his vision of the future, there stands the gray shape of the barracks, and, perhaps, beyond it, death for some unknown reason in some alien jungle."

~ Ayn Rand from her 1967 lecture 'The Wreckage of the Consensus' [excerpt here]

Israel + Gaza: What Would Thatcher Do Today? (WWTDT?)

"For a party that has failed to escape [Margaret] Thatcher’s long shadow, ... perhaps what is most remarkable is how far the current [U.K.] Conservative Party’s aspiring populist wing diverges from Thatcher’s own approach to the conflict. Following [Israel']s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, a disaster that she correctly foresaw would birth new and harder threats to both the Western order and Israel’s own security, Thatcher placed an embargo on British weapons sales to Israel, a policy that was not lifted until 1994. Her rationale, as she told ITN, was that Israeli troops had 'gone across the borders of Israel, [to] a totally independent country, which is not a party to the hostility and there are very very great hostilities, bombing, terrible things happening there. Of course one has to condemn them. It is someone else’s country. You must condemn that. After all, that is why we have gone to the Falklands, to repossess our country which has been taken by someone else.'...
    "For Thatcher — perhaps counterintuitively, viewed through the prism of today’s Conservative party — the 'plight of the landless Palestinians' was a major foreign-policy concern. ... Striving to find a workable peace, Thatcher asserted the only possible solution to the conflict was an approach which balanced 'the right of all the states in the region — including Israel — to existence and security, but also demanded justice for all peoples, which implied recognition of of the Palestinians’ right to self-determination.' Writing of her visit to Israel in 1986, the first by a British prime minister, Thatcher remarked that 'The Israelis knew… that they were dealing with someone who harboured no lurking hostility towards them, who understood their anxieties, but who was not going to pursue an unqualified Zionist approach.' Instead, she 'believed that the real challenge was to strengthen moderate Palestinians, probably in association with Jordan, who would eventually push aside the… extremists. But this would never happen if Israel did not encourage it; and the miserable conditions under which Arabs on the West Bank and in Gaza were having to live only made things worse.' ...
    "To Thatcher, peace would entail not an independent Palestinian state — she thought this unviable, and most probably undesirable — but the incorporation of the West Bank and Gaza under the rule of Jordan’s Anglophile King Hussein. Yet when Thatcher signed on to an European Community declaration of support for Palestinian statehood, just days after the PLO confirmed its commitment to the destruction of Israel, and was condemned for this by the Labour leader Jim Callaghan — British attitudes on the conflict were yet to assume their present form — Thatcher responded in robust terms. “The words in the communiqué I support entirely,” she told the House. “They concern the right of the Palestinian people to determine their own future. If one wishes to call that ‘self- determination’, I shall not quarrel with it. I am interested that the Right Hon. Gentleman appears to be attempting to deny that right. I do not understand how anyone can demand a right for people on one side of a boundary and deny it to people on the other side of that boundary. That seems to deny certain rights, or to allocate them with discrimination from one person to another.”
    "Strikingly, Thatcher condemned Israel for its annexation of the Golan Heights from Syria, for its attack on Saddam Hussein’s Osirak nuclear power plant, and for its seizure of Palestinian land for settlements, including the housing of Soviet Jewish refugees: as she told the House in 1990, 'Soviet Jews who leave the Soviet Union – and we have urged for years that they should be allowed to leave – should not be settled in the Occupied Territories or in East Jerusalem. It undermines our position when those people are settled in land that really belongs to others.' Indeed, as she later remarked in her memoirs, 'I only wished that Israeli emphasis on the human rights of the Russian refuseniks was matched by proper appreciation of the plight of landless and stateless Palestinians.' With such sentiments, it is doubtful that today’s self-proclaimed Thatcherites would find a prominent place for Thatcher herself in their nascent faction."

~ Aris Roussinos, from his article 'What Thatcher can teach the pro-Israel Right'

 

"The majority of British Muslims are neither downtrodden victims nor Britain-hating extremists."

"Debates about British Muslims tend to be based on crude caricatures. Identitarians on the left see Muslims as a victimised and disaffected bloc, marginalised by a supposedly bigoted society. Meanwhile, identitarians on the right tend to see them as disloyal and anti-British – a potential enemy within. My latest report, co-authored by Dr Jake Scott and published last week by the Institute for the Impact of Faith in Life, shatters these myths and misconceptions about British Muslims.
    "Our polling shows that the overwhelming majority of British Muslims feel positively towards Britain. We found that 86 per cent believe Britain is a good place to live and that there are opportunities here for people to make progress and excel in life. This is actually higher than the general population, where the proportion drops to 70 per cent.
    "This optimism towards Britain stands in stark contrast to the left’s view of Muslims as a helpless and downtrodden minority. It also debunks the myth among the right that Muslims are poorly integrated and uniquely hostile to the UK. But this finding shouldn’t actually be a surprise. Not least as many British Muslims are born outside the UK. Generally, they tend to come from underdeveloped countries with relatively high levels of social unrest, political instability and institutional corruption. This is why, for many Muslim migrants, Britain represents opportunity, not oppression. ...
    "[A]ll too often, ordinary Muslims are ignored, while the state panders to vocal, assertive and self-selected ‘community representatives’, who tend to prioritise tribal interests over the wider common good. This mode of multicultural policymaking is not welcomed by most fair and civic-minded Muslims.
    "When we let British Muslims speak for themselves, it turns out they actually have lots of positive things to say about life in the UK. We must not allow radical activists on the fringes to shape the national conversation on British Muslims and their place in society. It’s high time we left the caricatures behind."

~ Rakib Ehsan, from his post 'What the left and the right get wrong about Muslims'

New Zealand's About‐​Face on Tobacco Prohibition - The View from Washington

 

Jeffrey Singer reports from Washington DC, in this guest post, that the Luxon Government's reversal of the forthcoming tobacco prohibition may have international repercussions. Positive ones ...

New Zealand's About‐​Face on Tobacco Prohibition

by Jeffrey A. Singer

New Zealand’s newly‐​elected centre‐​right government announced yesterday that it intends to scrap a planned phase‐​in of tobacco prohibition that would have banned sales of tobacco products to people born after 2009. The plan would have also cut the number of retailers permitted to legally sell tobacco by 90 percent, and ordered tobacco makers to reduce the nicotine content of cigarettes they may sell. Anyone versed in the economics of prohibition would have predicted that each of those three measures would help fuel a vibrant black market with its corresponding violent crime and corruption.

This is good news for New Zealanders, where fewer than 14 percent of persons over age 15 smoked tobacco in 2020. They will avoid yet another state encroachment on their personal liberty along with tax increases to fund government spending on enforcing tobacco prohibition and fighting tobacco smugglers.

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak should take notice. Last month, his government announced plans to clone New Zealand’s tobacco prohibition plan. Announcing his plan at Britain’s Conservative Party Conference, Sunak said, “A 14‐​year‐​old today will never legally be sold a cigarette.”

Sunak’s announcement came as both a surprise and a disappointment to tobacco harm reduction advocates, given the UK’s heretofore reasonable approach to reducing tobacco smoking. While nicotine is the addictive component of tobacco smoke, it is a relatively harmless stimulant, not very different from caffeine, as Scotland’s NHS Informs has stated. It is the other components of tobacco smoke that produce harm to health.

The UK’s Royal Society of Public Health says nicotine is “no more harmful to health than caffeine.” Public Health England has said that “vaping” with nicotine e‑cigarettes is “95 percent less harmful than tobacco smoking.” The Royal College of Physicians has issued the following statement:

• [T]he available evidence to date indicates that e‑cigarettes are being used almost exclusively as safer alternatives to smoked tobacco, by confirmed smokers who are trying to reduce harm to themselves or others from smoking, or to quit smoking completely.
• There is a need for regulation to reduce direct and indirect adverse effects of e‑cigarette use, but this regulation should not be allowed significantly to inhibit the development and use of harm‐​reduction products by smokers.
• However, in the interests of public health it is important to promote the use of e‑cigarettes, NRT [nicotine replacement therapy] and other non‐​tobacco nicotine products as widely as possible as a substitute for smoking in the UK.

So far, Brookline, Massachusetts is the only jurisdiction in the United States to have enacted a tobacco ban. Brookline bans the sale of tobacco to anyone born after the year 2000. It doesn’t take an entrepreneurial genius to figure out ways to make money legally selling cigarettes to adults from the other side of the Brookline town line.

Earlier this year, California lawmakers considered making the Golden State the first in the nation to enact New Zealand’s tobacco prohibition model into law. A bill to that effect failed to advance during this year’s legislative session. Interestingly, California’s major anti‐​smoking and anti‐​vaping groups chose not to lobby for the bill. A Cal Matters report quoted Autumn Ogden‐​Smith, director of California state legislation for the American Cancer Society Action Network, saying, “This is not the time to tackle this. We’re trying to do the clean‐​up on the flavored tobacco ban. We’re having enforcement issues.”

As I wrote here, banning menthol tobacco creates its own set of harmful unintended consequences.

New Zealand’s recent about‐​face on tobacco prohibition will hopefully put to rest similar efforts in California and other states. Let’s hope it will also cause Sunak and his Conservative Party to reconsider their plans. The UK had the right approach to reducing tobacco smoking until now: opting for evidence‐​based tobacco harm reduction instead of prohibition.

* * * * 

Jeffrey A. Singer is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and works in the Department of Health Policy Studies. He is President Emeritus and founder of Valley Surgical Clinics Ltd., the largest and oldest group private surgical practice in Arizona, and has been in private practice as a general surgeon for more than 35 years.

His post first appeared at the Cato at Liberty blog.

"If Liz Truss’s car-crash premiership is to be a cautionary tale, let it be one about the dangers of affirmative action."

"Amid all the commentary on [Liz] Truss’s rapid rise and precipitous fall—which one year on blames either her free-market purism or the Whitehall 'Blob,' according to political taste—one key component of her career has been conspicuous by its absence. Truss’s rise coincided with the 'modernisation' era of Conservative leader David Cameron. And because she is a woman, Truss benefitted from preferential treatment within her party and sympathetic treatment in the media, even from traditionally hostile papers, in spite of numerous gaffes and failures. The liberal press may now wax apoplectic about Truss’s uselessness, but it surely protests too much—after all, it did so much to foster the tokenistic political climate that put her there....
    "When David Cameron was elected Conservative leader in 2005, he introduced his 'A-list' as part of an effort to remodel the party along the lines of Tony Blair’s incumbent New Labour and make it less male, pale, and stale. ... After he assumed power as head of a coalition government in 2010, Cameron made Truss a junior minister for education in his 2012 cabinet reshuffle.... the reasoning behind that decision: it was 'clinically designed to neuter claims Downing Street had a "women problem".' New female appointees were duly met with praise in the press, and hailed in the left-wing 'Independent' as 'the rapid rise of Cameron’s new girls.' ...
    "Before his election, Cameron had pledged that a third of his ministers would be women in the next parliament, and he was under pressure to deliver. Accordingly, ... on the morning of the [2014 cabinet] reshuffle, Cameron decided to promote Truss to the cabinet position of environment minister, a decision the former PR man would later describe as 'gut instinct.' 'I looked at people like [Truss and others],' Cameron recalls of the reshuffle in his autobiography, 'and saw the modern, compassionate Conservative Party I had always wanted to build.' ...
    
"Affirmative action is often used to placate media criticism, and politicians may even announce sex- or race-preferential appointments explicitly and be praised for doing so. Lavish praise then follows for the appointee, who is somehow held to have struck a 'historic' blow for representation. But how can box-ticking be considered ground-breaking female advancement? ...
    "The very question of 'women's advancement' requires us to view individual female politicians as representatives of women in general—a supposedly monolithic political category, whose interests are presumed to be the same. In reality, Truss’s rise was good for one woman and one woman only: herself (though the honour of being the UK’s shortest serving prime minister ever is surely a dubious one). To consider Truss’s high-flying a win for women as a whole is to subscribe to a collectivist mindset over a meritocratic one that values individual talent and ability."

~ Laurie Wastell, from his article 'The Disaster Artist: Was Liz Truss Britain’s first affirmative-action prime minister?'

UK-NZ-Australia free-trade deal -- good for everyone, says Hannan

Daniel Hannan explains to the UK's House of Lords why the UK-NZ-Australia free-trade deal is not just better in "food miles," not just "better for Britons," but better all around for all.

Few things worked better historically to raise the UK to success than free commerce and free exchange, he points out. "We invented them." The biggest advantage of unhampered international markets, he says, is to allow prices to fall. That's good for everyone.