Douglas Carswell's Blog

The new Huguenots are coming

France last ran a budget surplus in 1974. The French state currently consumes a communistic 56 percent of GDP. 

France's political elite are fixated with the idea that Europe should be organised according to some grand Cartesian design. What still passes for the centre right in France is so enamoured with the idea of the Euro - Europe's grand monetary fix – they have been rendered incapable of making the case for free market anything. The result has been a rout of free market forces in France.

With Euro corporatism about the only thing that the French right has to offer, the left has triumphed. Last week, the French people elected a socialist President, on a promise that he will give France more of what has made her ill.

My guess is that the prospect of 70 percent tax rates and dirigisme running rife across the channel will mean tens of thousands of bright, hard-working, entrepreneurial Frenchmen and women up sticks and move – to London and elsewhere.

London is already the seventh largest French city, with tens of thousands of new arrivals each year.   

One of the consequences of Europe’s disastrous monetary union could be to drive yet more professional people across the English Channel away from the Eurozone in search of a more prosperous future for them and their families. 

The old Huguenots gave the Anglosphere distinguished names like Buffett, Courtauld, du Maurier, de Glanville and de la Billiere. I wonder what great names the new Huguenots will bestow on us?  

But we Brits should not be too smug. Our own government spends about half our national income and is still running up reckless debts. Now is the moment for us to radically liberalise our labour laws, give entrepreneurs tax breaks and get parasitical government off people’s backs. 

Get it right, and France’s loss could be England’s gain. Vive le laisser faire!

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