The Strange Death Of Tory England

‘The Strange Death of Liberal England,’ written by George Dangerfield and published in 1935, was a book I read at Oxford, where I studied PPE (Politics, Philosophy, and Economics). The book explained how the party led by Campbell-Bannerman, Asquith and Lloyd George, which dominated British politics before the First World War, disappeared in the inter-war years.

My reading is that it was a simple swap, Labour for Liberals, as the party of socialism, the workers and the trade unions rose to prominence. Since the 1930s, we have had a two-party system based on Labour and the Conservatives, but with the Conservatives as the natural party of government, winning most elections.

Tony Blair changed the pattern, but he was a conservative and had no time for the weird lefties who keep popping up as leader of the Labour party.

We may have another massive changing of the guard. I voted Reform in the last General Election because I was determined to teach the Tories a lesson. I am a Thatcherite. She was a goddess to me, and my happy time politically, as she kept doing things I wanted her to do.

My disillusionment with the Tories began when that apology for a dead sheep, Sir Geoffrey Howe, may he rot in peace, led the great betrayal which saw her leave Downing Street in tears to be replaced by the invisible man, aka, Sir John Major.

Since then, I have quite liked Blair and supported the war in Iraq. You cannot allow monsters like Saddam Hussein to reign unchallenged. I quite liked Boris Johnson. At least he had some charisma and was not boring.

Kier Starmer is a cypher with no idea what to do, and a chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, who is amazingly inept. The only one who vaguely appeals to me is Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary.

British politics needs a massive shakeup, and it may be happening. We may even be seeing material for a new book – ‘The Strange Death of Tory England’. It would take a transformation of the Tories to bring me back into the fold at the next election. Almost certainly, I will again vote for Reform. I positively want Nigel Farage to be the next prime minister, and Kemi Badenoch may have to help him if she is to avoid charges of letting Keir Starmer back in.

The Lib Dems are a complete non-event, only appealing to people who wear sandals without socks in winter. Community politics – what the hell is that?

I don’t know what Farage’s policies are, but I hope his heart is in the right place and he will implement serious structural change, replacing the current high tax, high welfare, maximum meddling nanny state with something much smaller and more freewheeling.

I’m incredibly disillusioned with the current state of politics. Most importantly, I want a government which stops chasing votes and does what it believes is right. I want a smaller state, a government that slashes taxes (I mean whole taxes like inheritance tax disappearing), that dismantles huge swathes of the welfare state and that encourages work and rewards success.

I am less worried about things like immigration, Brexit and stuff like that. What I want is the full Adam Smith. Unleash talented individuals, get the State off their backs, and success will happen naturally. We could call this programme MEGA, Make England Great Again. I am not bothered by Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, but hopefully they would learn from the English example. If they don’t, they can disappear down a pothole into socialist hell.

My hero before Thatcher was E.W. Gladstone, the great 19th-century Liberal prime minister who said, ‘let money fructify in the hands of the people’. Damn right, exactly where it should be. How dare the government seize chunks of my money and spend it on things of which I don’t approve, and give it to people too lazy to work?

I met a lovely girl in Holland Park several days ago. I was so impressed. She bloomed with health and beauty, she had a smile to die for, she worked as an actuary, but she had spent all her life in a wheelchair with Spina Bifida. What an inspiration she was.

We made a little group on a park bench, joined by two other strangers, surrounded by a riot of colour, with the tulips in blossom, just chatting about this and that for an hour and a half. It was a magical moment. We started talking because I noticed that she was wheeling her chair backwards and forwards, an exercise routine as it turned out.

If she can make such a success of her life, how many people, wasting away at home with imaginary complaints, could do the same? Off your backsides, guys and girls. It is time for Britain to get back into action.

Instead of driving Non-Doms away by targeted taxes, we should be encouraging the world’s best and brightest to come to Britain, encouraged by low taxes and rich rewards for success. If some of them are Russian gangsters, who cares? At least they have some initiative. It is blindingly obvious to me that this is what we need to do, and if Reform cannot get elected on such a programme, what is the point of being elected?

Another politician I loved was Ronald Reagan with his enthusiasm for supply-side economics. The wonderful paradox of supply-side economics is that lowering taxes boosts growth so much that tax revenues rise.

The tech revolution makes it a great time for a new political party to espouse such policies. Palantir alone could probably transform the British scene if its boffins were unleashed across government and the welfare state. Halve the numbers on welfare and halve the army of bureaucrats in central and local government, and it would be like Prometheus unchained.

Britain could become a model for what happens when a nation state takes Adam Smith as its guiding principle. Nothing else matters but a smaller state and lower taxes; from that strong base, all good things will flow.

Alison Pearson, a columnist on the Daily Telegraph, lives on the same street as me in Saffron Walden, and I suspect shares many of my views. I have just read her latest column. I must meet her and find out just how on message she is. If I were younger, I would probably join Reform. Mind you, Gladstone was prime minister at 84!

I am not a Buddhist, but like Richard Gere, I am impressed by Zen philosophy. Trying to do things directly never works because of the Law of Unintended Consequences. You need to be subtle and do the little things which will help the big things you want to happen.

If you want affordable rents, don’t freeze rents and discourage people from being landlords. The consequences will be catastrophic and hurt the very people you are trying to help. You want more landlords to help bring the supply and demand for rented accommodation into better balance. If this doesn’t work, as it probably wouldn’t in central London, it was never going to, and you need to allow the market to find its solutions, which it will do eventually.

I took my family skiing in Aspen once. Property there is insanely expensive. Only zillionaires can afford them. There is no way of changing that without ruining Aspen. Some battles you cannot win, and in the end, the market solutions are best because they naturally deal with any unintended consequences.

If you can’t stand a world where some people are rich and some are poor, go to Cuba, where everybody except the politicians is poor. You will find yourself entering a revolving door through which almost everybody else would like to go the other way.