Douglas Carswell's Blog

The change Britain needs. But when will it happen?

Charles Moore is on great form.  After his thought-provoking essay on how the left has got it right in last Saturday's Telegraph, he follows up today looking at what the right needs to do to fix things.

I believe that much of our faux free market economy looks increasingly like a corporatist racket, with the taxpayer left to pick up the bill.  Think bailouts, think of the hidden green surcharges on your electricity bill .....    

"The priorities and incentives are wrong" Moore writes. "They reflect the preoccupations of the elite rather than the aspirations of the multitude."

In a single paragraph, Moore identifies many of the policies that would put Britain back on the right track; "Spending on overseas aid should not be “ring-fenced”; large subventions to the European Union, let alone assistance to the euro, should not be paid; outrageous levies on energy bills to pretend that windpower will save the planet should stop. Governments should not be prevented by international institutions and treaties from implementing policies designed for the people who elected them. “Human rights” and employment law should not make it impossible to sack people or punitively expensive to hire them. All regulatory burdens should be weaker for small and new enterprises than for big ones. It should be much easier to build your own house on a new site."

It isn't the constraints of Coalition, nor Parliamentary arithmetic, that is preventing these things from happening.  Rather there is a lack of radicalism.  Sir Humphrey has got his talons into too many ministers.

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