Douglas Carswell's Blog

Free markets or crony capitalism?

Too often Conservatives have made the mistake of assuming that because we favour free markets, we should always and everywhere favour business interests. 

From banking to the defence industry, from PFI contractors to companies set up to farm the feed-in tariff, businesses often turn out to be positively hostile to the actual free market. 

In the same way that many politicians in fact rather dislike elections, many business interests would prefer not to have to face the competition that the free market can bring.   

Conservatives need to be as aggressive at taking on vested corporatist interests as we are at taking on any other vested interest.  If Toryism becomes little more than an argument in favour of special favours for crony corporatism, masquerading as "the private sector", we'll lose.  

Matthew Sinclair has a superb article on this theme on Conservative Home.  I recommend you read it.

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