A Lesson in Politics from Across the Pond
Dr. Eammon Butler, director of the Adam Smith Institute — one of the UK’s oldest and best known think tanks — has written a scathing critique of the current British government. The Rotten State of Britain could provide a template for the U.S. Republicans in opposition, and possibly help them combat the socialist policies of the Obama administration and the Pelosi-run House of Representatives.
In his book, Butler describes the country’s deterioration under the Labor government — now led by Gordon Brown — from personal freedom and taxation to the most basic National Health Service (NHS) provisions. Although many of the problems began under former Prime Minister Tony Blair, Butler explains how they have accelerated under the current prime minister. He eviscerates Labor’s constant arguments that Britain’s current woes are due to the previous Conservative government (the Conservatives left government a dozen years ago.) This may explain why the mainstream UK media has shown no interest in Butler’s publication. While the BBC’s political programs thoroughly covered a similar book (The State We’re In by Will Hutton), that book denounced the policies of the former Conservative government.
The British bureaucracy was once capably run by experienced civil servants, but now there are party apparatchiks who have taken to meddling in the hopes of ensuring that every government activity meets with the Labor plan for Britain. Ironically, all those things that were criticized by Labor in opposition have been ramped up under Labor. The centralization of governance, politicization of the civil service, dogmatic policies, and corruption are all far worse under Labor than they were under the Conservatives.
The crumbling of the UK’s economy, infrastructure, and place in the world reveals Labor’s race to repeat the disasters of its 1970’s government: the near bankruptcy of the country, the falling pound, and rising inflation. Similarly, in the U.S., there are indications that President Barack Obama seems keen to repeat the mistaken policies of the Carter administration.
Butler’s book is both enlightening and wholly depressing for those of us who generally admire the United Kingdom. New Labor promised much only to deliver far worse than their predecessors. Their idealist view of politics did not reflect reality and their subsequent attempts to warp reality have resulted in situations varying from the laughable to the dangerous.
Mr. Dodge,
This article was a heady read that filled my heart with a bit of [much needed] hope. Your last paragraph filled my heart with the patriotism I’ve always felt for my country.
RIGHT ON.
“Although many of the problems began under former Prime Minister Tony Blair, Butler explains how they have accelerated under the current prime minister.”
Hahaha! Of course they did. Everything was rosy when the Conservative Party lost power…
Some of us have longer memories than most. If you take lessons from the Tories you’ll be out of power for a very long time.
The goal of socialists/liberals is to create the
“total society”. The purpose of this society
is total control of the individual from
conception to grave. What they cannot control
legally at present is manipulated through
other tactics such as the public education
system, public daycare and so on.
There is no “power to the people”, only power
to the government. The government maps your
life according to its principles. Useful
idiots who can be controlled are recruited
to provide support. State funds underpin
the support of the “empowered” useful idiot
groups.
The critical error made by conservatives
was in allowing the education system to
be run by self interested unions and leftist
propagandists.
The problem as Steyn has said is that societies
never completely recover from periods of
leftist rule. A slippery slope of 10 steps down
and then 5 up. The cycle continues. The
growing army of “entitled” swivel servants
and empowered groups provide the muscle to
counter conservative initiatives when the
leftists are officially out of power.
The real “Brave New World” beckons, yes we can.
A prospective Republican candidate for 2012 could benefit from this book, unfortunately the British Conservatives cannot because Labour or Team NuLab as some of us have taken to calling them due to their obsession with Orwellian Newspeak and Big Brother style curtailments of civil liberrties have move to the right of where the British Conservatives would be willing to go.
Labour are now the party of authoritarianism, the place where Obama is headed.
The writer here says:
“The British bureaucracy was once capably run by experienced civil servants, but now there are party apparatchiks who have taken to meddling in the hopes of ensuring that every government activity meets with the Labor plan for Britain.”
Evidently Britain’s vast socialist bureaucracy (at least half of which was instituted under Tory regimes) is a Good Thing but, alas, for the politicized hirelings from the recent Blair/Brown regimes.
If only Britain could get back to being taxed, regulated, and manipulated by those wonderfully “experienced” (read: sure old hands of Statist control) “civil” (read: government) “servants” (read: coercive parasites), how lovely things would be. (As depicted in those Thatcher-era television programs, _Yes, Minister_ and _Yes, Prime Minister_.)
I’m the last one to defend Gordon Brown, but this commentary (and apparently the book being promoted) come across as partisan baloney. Dodge, and perhaps Butler, is just issuing party polemics in hope that his beloved “Conservative” Party can get back to its old role of stealing from and running the lives of Brits while intruding into affairs across the globe (at taxpayer expense, of course).
I would point out that neither Dr Butler nor I are in fact members of the Conservative Party. Not being pro-Labour does not necessarily mean ipso facto one is a Tory.
6. Andrew Ian Dodge:
“I would point out that neither Dr Butler nor I are in fact members of the Conservative Party. Not being pro-Labour does not necessarily mean ipso facto one is a Tory.”
~
Goood golly, Andy. You make “Conservative” out to be a bad word…almost.
I’m lost — what ‘Conservative’ party is the author talking about?
There is Labour and then there are the new, reformed, touchy-feely, all-inclusive, diversity-affirming socialist toffs.
Conservatism died when the Tory party sank in petty theft, sleaze and incompetence in 1997 — that is officially it did, it was dead long before, rotten in the core.
Don’t take any lessons from those embarrassing losers and traitors, other than learn from them what one should not do!
At least in the United States presidential powers are limited, thanks to the system of checks and balances. Obama may espouse horrible ideas that in the long run will turn the United States into a bastion of uncivilized out-of-work hooligans seeking handouts (like present day Britain), but his ideas most likely will not come to fruition, even with a Democrat-controlled Legislative Branch. It’s realizations like this that make me each day thank our Founding Fathers!
Tory party sank in petty theft, sleaze and incompetence in 1997
Tory sleaze pales into insignificance beside Labour thievery.
Mary, a petty thief remains a thief, no matter what his accomplice gets up to.
This shower destroyed the Conservative party that once was and turned it into a team of career apparatschiks without believes and convictions other than that election secures their income and that expenses exist to be fiddled.
Compare this issue with the Steele and Rush story that happened lately where Steele dissed Rush — one is a fake, the other is the real thing and it’s plain to see… one of them fails utterly on basic principles, the other is hated for his conservative principles.
Don’t give ‘second’ chances to people at this level of the game — when you’re seen the cat in the bag, you well know it isn’t going to fatten into a suckling pig magically, you know you’ve been sold a fake, might as well admit it before you end up serving roof rabbit to your party…
I think Cameron’s Tories should server rather as a positive than a negative to Republicans.
Since the Goldwater times, Republicans are becoming less and less Conservative in the old sense: anti-ideological, moderate, practical, common-sensical, Burkean. They more and more look like building an ideology themselves, kind of an “Older kind of Progressivism”: really, W. Bush had the foreign policiy of Woodrow Wilson combined with FDR’s respect for constitutional rights.
Tories were similarly ideological in the Thatcher-era, and thus it’s quire refreshing to see that Cameron is rediscovering what Conservatism should be _really_ about:
I think f.e. Russel Kirk would like this, for example, a lot:
“From the first days of my leadership I made clear that the modern Conservative Party believes in responsible business and ethical capitalism – an economy with rules. The rules completely broke down under Gordon Brown and it is part of our economic vision to recreate them without chucking free markets and all their benefits overboard. And our vision of a good future is of a less materialistic country, more concerned with people and our relationships; a contributor society not a consumer society.
Our economy will be more green, more local, more family-friendly, less arrogant about what central government can do for us and more optimistic about what we can all do for ourselves if we all work together individuals, communities, businesses – in a spirit of social responsibility.”
http://www.conservatives.com/News/Speeches/2008/12/David_Cameron_Britains_Economic_Future.aspx
I think this is a positive example.
RightwingHippyChick gets it.
By the way, just so you know, all the sleazy apparatchiks from New Labour are ditching that party and heading to the Tories, since it looks like Labour are going to get slaughtered at the 2010 election. This was in the news about 2-3 weeks ago. This means that the same old movers and shakers who are making life in Britain somewhat less pleasant than it was will still be in power even when there is a Tory government. It also means that democracy itself has been turned inside out in Britain in recent years.
It is very true that Mrs Thatcher was an ideologue and not a typical Conservative, but her vision for Britain was not a complicated, intellectually-driven exercise in cultural Marxism; instead it was about working hard to repair a country damaged by years of socialism, and to recognise the sanctity of the individual in order to get the British back to being self-reliant, stronger, less dysfunctional. The problem was that the kind of liberty she and Reagan advocated can only be truly exercised with moral restraint in tact. And everyone knows that the West has been in sharp moral decline for years. So just because Blair and Thatcher both believed in concrete things and had goals, doesn’t make them the same.
On the subject of NuLab inheriting the Tories’ mistakes, no government could ever hope to be perfect, so naturally some problems will have had to have been sorted out by NuLab on election. But 12 years on, these should have been taken care of. It is worth noting that many sources say that NuLab inherited the best set of accounts that have ever been inherited by any party on election in Britain. John Major’s Britain was a nicer place to be for many: shootings were extremely rare, drugs were all illegal, the Police weren’t fearful of their own shadows and Islamism had not yet been shoved in our faces.