Douglas Carswell's Blog

Charles Moore should read Atlas Shrugged

I am a great admirer of Charles Moore.  He is one of our country's best writers and commentators, and perhaps, even, the Greatest Living Englishman.  

In today's Telegraph, Charles has a brilliant, thought-provoking article that ought to kick off a wider debate on the centre right.  He complains that "Democratic politics, which purports to enrich the many, is actually in the pocket of those bankers, media barons and other moguls who run and own everything".  He seems to lament the way that the free-market all too often turns out not to be a free market at all, but a corporatist racket for the few.

I rather agree with him.

As the credit crunch came along in 2007, I happened to start reading Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.  By substituting the word "railway" with the word "bank" in my mind as I waded through the book, I was all of a sudden able to see what caused the financial crisis. 

Rand's novel made me realise that for too long I had mistaken big business interests with the free market.  Too many Conservatives still do. 

Just as I was starting to lose faith in our rotten Westminister system on account of my being in the House of Commons, I was began to realise the extent to which big, unaccountable government colludes with big business to produce a profoundly illiberal and anti-free market corporatism.  

From the scandal of defence procurement to the bailing out of bankers to the stupidity of Eurozone officials, there seems to be a common problem.  Too much power is vested in the hands of remote and unaccountable elites.  Too many vested interests are able to shape and twist public policy for their own designs - usuallly at our expense.  

Traditional Toryism does not seem to recognise this the way we should.  Conservatism today needs to be as suspicious of Big Business and Corporatism as we have been of Big Government.

Charles Moore may well have read Atlas Shrugged - he is, I'm sure, far more widely read than I am.  But it seems to me that Conservatives who recognise the shortcomings of our traditionally Tory script could do worse than begin by examining her ideas.  

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