Yasmin Alibhai-Brown has a history of racism, unable to view any issue except in terms of race.

She is obsessed with promoting multiculturalism, which for her means encouraging mass immigration of non-white people to make the UK less white. She doesn’t like the current situation with too high a proportion of white people, who she repeatedly calls a “mongrel nation” to make mass immigration seem less unusual.

When she opposed Boris Johnson’s run for London Mayor, she bemoaned “rich white folk” voting for him.

As Iain Dale commented, “There are some very ‘rich black folk’ in this country - and a jolly good thing too. They’ve seized the opportunities Conservative politicians like Boris have presented them with. Why is it that Yasmin has to reduce everything to race?” There are black Conservative politicians, too. Conservatives and Libertarians see people as individuals and judge them on their own merits. Yasmin can only see the colour of a person’s skin.

Here is a more obvious example of her racism: In 2004, Mrs Alibhai-Brown went on the BBC World Service with Dr Sean Gabb, Director of the Libertarian Alliance.

Alibhai-Brown objected when Gabb said that the Libertarian Alliance believed the government’s Commission for Racial Equality should be shut down, saying that without laws meant to control discrimination, it would occur more frequently. Gabb asked her, “Yasmin, are you saying that the white majority in this country is so seething with hatred and discontent that it is only restrained by law from rising up and tearing all the ethnic minorities to pieces?” to which Alibhai-Brown answered “yes.” Gabb asked if Alibhai-Brown seriously thought that Gabb wanted to murder her, at which point the discussion abruptly ended…

The Libertarian Alliance responded,

The Libertarian Alliance, which believes in freedom of migration, and is opposed to all forms of collectivism, including racial collectivism, finds it disgraceful that Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is allowed to make racist comments against the white population of this country, while a liberal defender of civil liberties, freedom of association and free speech is censored. How would it be, if a white person had said that blacks were only kept from raping and looting by fear of the police?

Mrs Alibhai-Brown had an incredible article in The Independent today, despairing at the current rise of the Conservative Party.

We, who believe in fairness, equality, human rights and universal justice, are of no consequence

The arrogance of the Left is astonishing; believing that Conservatives don’t believe in fairness, human rights or universal justice. What nonsense. (I am proud to say I don’t believe in equality.)

Local election results show the country lurching right, in some parts even embracing the BNP. Instead of condemning the scum, Britons are instructed to “understand” why these voters are “driven” to vote for neo-Nazis. We are simultaneously warned to show no such understanding of young Muslims who are seduced by hate-filled Imams. White resentment of “foreigners” is no more respectable than Muslim hatred of Westerners. Yet in our unequal world it is.

Overlooking the clichéd “lurch” to the right, I object to her description of the BNP as right-wing. They are socialists, as their manifesto makes clear. They are also racists, and I strongly object to claims that racism is right-wing. As Ayn Rand said, “Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism.” I do not wish go into detail about the BNP at the moment, but it is odd that she describes BNP voters as scum. Presumably new BNP voters are people who have previously voted for the three major parties. The BNP have been working to play down their racist image, and many people now feel able to vote for them out of frustration with the major parties. Johann Hari: “as one fiftysomething white woman said, ‘I just want to tell politicians to fuck off.’” I don’t know how we can defeat the BNP unless we engage with their voters.

The coup was complete when Boris took over our London… And so power inexorably shifts towards authoritarianism… enforced assimilation… unregulated capitalism which creates both appalling levels of wealth and poverty…
Are right-wing ideas and policies irresistible to the British public (always more conservative than most European partners) and is this a return to the natural state of this nation?

Yasmin’s contempt for democracy is clear, describing Boris Johnson’s victory as a “coup”, and bemoaning the likelihood of a Tory victory at the next General Election. How typical of those who think they know better than “ordinary people”.
Though I disapprove of Johnson’s decision to ban alcohol on the London Underground, and don’t think the Tories will be very liberal, they could hardly be more authoritarian than the Labour Party, who banned smoking in private clubs and are gradually eroding the right to a fair trial, or indeed a trial at all, with their attacks on double jeopardy rules and habeas corpus.

And I don’t know what’s appalling about high levels of wealth. Creating more wealth is a good thing.

Now here is the racism.

Almost more depressing is the sight of black and Asian Britons following the wind blowing the Tories to victory. Boris has recruited Afro Caribbean “leaders” who believe in physical chastisement and smart young Asians who deny the existence of racism and want an end to political correctness. The more old-fashioned Uncle Toms and their female equivalents are now expediently making themselves known to the Tories and right-wing think tanks.

For reasons I have yet to fathom, two weeks ago, I was invited to address a meeting at the House of Lords organised by the Conservative Muslim Forum. The room was full and the discussion on Muslim women lively. Many there were previously New Labour acolytes; others were young and ambitious and now devoted to the charismatic Cameron. To see such enthusiasm for a party whose members have always opposed our presence on these shores was a wake-up slap.

As Iain Dale says, “I could hardly believe what I was reading. Which party was it that welcomed Ugandan Asians into this country in the early 1970s? Yes, of course, there was a small element of the Conservative Party which opposed any immigration at all - just as there was in the Labour Party”

Yasmin is essentially saying non-white people should be left-wing. Her description of non-white right-wingers as “Uncle Toms” is disgraceful.

Equality is not a good thing. It’s not a bad thing either. It’s morally neutral. Less inequality is not a good thing, and neither is more inequality.

For example: The reason living standards are better than they have ever been before is the creation of wealth. What will improve people’s lives most in the future is the creation of more wealth. Inequality doesn’t matter: if someone’s real income doubles over ten years, it just doesn’t matter if someone else’s income quadruples. Except, of course, in the extremely unusual case of the second person’s income quadrupling hindering the growth of the first person’s income. The opposite is much more likely to be the case.

We should also be wary of redistributing wealth, because while it will cause a short-term increase in the incomes of the less-well-off, it will reduce long-term increase.

As Andrew Perraut says,

“if markets are as massively productive as we libertarians believe and compounding returns to growth in the long term are taken into account, you could probably justify no more than very basic safety nets, for fear of distorting the economy and dramatically lowering everyone’s goods in the future.”

So equality may not be a bad thing, but promoting equality is a bad thing for two reasons. Here’s a third: promoting equality kills. The promotion of equality, for no other reason than ideology, is leading directly to many deaths.

I’m talking about the NHS, and the cases of Colette Mills and Linda O’Boyle.

Both were suffering from cancer. The NHS does not have enough money to pay for certain extra drugs. The patients wanted to pay for the extra drugs themselves, but were told that if they did, they would have to pay for their entire treatment: any treatment they were currently receiving for free would cost them. The patients could afford the extra drugs if they continued to receive the treatment they were already getting for free. But they couldn’t afford the whole lot.

The Department of Health said: “Co-payments would risk creating a two-tier health service and be in direct contravention with the principles and values of the NHS.”

Yes, it would. Rather, there is already a two-tier health service in this country. There is the NHS, and there is (better) private healthcare. (It must be better, otherwise people wouldn’t pay for it.) Private healthcare still exists, even if they would like to ban it. (They can’t afford to, of course, because patients going private save the NHS money).

Yes, patients paying for extra treatment would promote the private sector. This would be a good thing. It wouldn’t harm anyone who couldn’t afford to. Indeed, it would help the NHS, because even people who don’t go completely private might start increasing the use they make of the private sector, thus saving the NHS money and allowing it to spend it on those who need it more.

The problem is the people who think that inequality is always at someone’s expense. It isn’t, as these cases show.

The “principles and values” of the NHS are clearly stupid, and lead to entirely preventable deaths.

“It wasn’t going to cost them. I was going to pay for it. How can they say this policy is far more important than somebody’s life?”

Will the Conservatives fix this?

David Cameron, the Conservative leader, said in a statement that it was “tempting” to allow patients to pay for extra cancer treatments that were not funded by the NHS.

The party has been reluctant to express an opinion on the issue, fearing that it could be portrayed as favouring middle-class patients who can afford to buy themselves extra treatment.

I guess not, then.

Those who supported the various alterations that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill made or aspired to make to law most probably saw it as an opening up for discussion and reform of long-standing issues that were causing concern to various parties. Scientists wanted legal permission to create hybrid stem cells and increase production of embryonic stem cells besides. Liberals wanted to abolish the requirement for IVF providers to consider a child’s need for a father. Pro-lifers wanted to lower the time limit on abortions, apparently by any degree possible (votes were taken on reductions to 16, 18, 20 and 22 week limits). I’m not exactly sure how to politely stereotype those who wanted to legalize the practice of having a child so as to donate its body parts to a sibling.

The discussion and controversy that surrounded the bill and its amendments, however, made it appear a more and more curious parliamentary phenomenon - it gradually became clear that its various elements were basically unrelated as commentators spoke with the pretense of expertise in fields that were far from their own.

If we look at the arguments for considering some of the changes made, it becomes clear that there was a more subtle reason for introducing all these ideas at once, and one that may have indelibly increased the prerogatives of the government against the rule of common law in this country.

Let’s begin with the attempt to lower abortion limits. The argument used in opposition to this was that scientific evidence had not sufficiently changed since the 24-week limit was set even to show that children are ‘viable’ at twenty-two weeks. Whether this was the case or not (13 of 18 witnesses giving evidence to the Science and Technology Committee were known Pro-Choicers and many did not submit written reports), the argument’s strength rested on the fact that all ‘ethical debate’ on time limits had been ruled in favour of supposedly impartial ’scientific’ debate: terms of discussion had been established that prejudiced a given outcome, although this is less important than the fact that the debate had been limited in this way. The government had assumed the right to define human life, in this case by viability.

The debate concerning stem-cell research was full of red-herrings. Outspoken religious leaders bandied about sensationalist descriptions defaming both sides of the debate, whilst the scientific case in point - that adult, rather than embryonic, stem cells have produced the most significant advances in research - was ignored under the weight of scientistic rhetoric. Supporting stem-cell research per se was joined to the issue of ‘hybrid’ cells, an unnecessary confusion of separate issues. What was assumed all along was the forgone conclusion that human life should be defined exclusively and executively, rather than inclusively and cautiously: you are an inhuman without rights if you have a certain amount of animal DNA, and an inhuman and without rights if you are below a certain age or do not possess certain faculties.

The other two issues I have flagged up are relevant her insofar as they were irrelevant to each other and the other elements in the Bill. That is, we need to ask why they were included. The reasons for including an amendment to the Abortion Act revolved around the renewal and replacement of that piece of legislation, whereas IVF parenthood requirements are a social and fiscal, rather than scientific or negative-rights related. The ’saviour siblings’ section of the Bill is not related to human fertilization or embryology, but rather, perhaps, human termination and why some embryos are more worthy of life than others.

What a human is and when life begins is a philosophical question, not one that can be adequately addressed by legislation. This is why British common law is such an excellent tool to deal with its social and legal implications. Common law is cautious and case specific, ideally independent of party-political programs. Government legislation, however, affects the entire nation at once; it creates attitudes, delegitimizing some opinions and legitimating others. Yet in the HFE Bill we saw the latest assertion of this Government’s assumed right and ability to answer all our questions, make all our choices, for us.

By lumping all these different issues together, the real issue of whether we define human life exclusively (excluding others from humanity by chosen criteria that ’serve society’ like slave-traders and racialists) or inclusively was overlooked and the Government control over the answer to this question asserted. The artificial complexity of the Bill also made it nearly impossible for politicians who share my view - that morally ambiguous legislation be left to our common law tradition - to decide how to negotiate the issue. Abstention is seen as support or careerism. Voting no or yes agrees that Parliament is the place to deal with these issues - but it is not. Doubtless the HFE Bill is only part of a trend, where the state assumes prerogatives until we agree with them. It is a deeply regrettable trend, especially when such literally vital issues are at stake.

“Human rights”, which don’t “exist” but are a handy legal construct, always used to be very simple. They were enshrined in law, and by calling them “rights” we gave them the aura of special status, not to be taken away by future politicians.

They included the right to life, the right to free speech, etc. They were simple and easy to enforce. They didn’t cost much: only a legal system.

But then people started saying that these were only a subset of rights, called “negative rights”, and there were other rights called “positive rights” which previously hadn’t been recognised. These included the “right to education” and the “right to healthcare”.

The crucial difference is that positive rights cost money. There’s no such thing as free education: it has to be paid for, e.g. by taxes. So you can only get positive rights by taking money from other people.

That doesn’t mean positive rights are necessarily bad. But it must be recognised that they can only exist by forcibly taking money from other people. (Taxation is “extortion with menaces”.) Failure to recognise this leads to a lack of respect for public services (bad as they are). If, whenever you visit hospital, you remember that it is all paid for from other people’s hard work, you realise what a privilege it is to live in England where this is possible.

Whether “positive rights” are rights or not, they are certainly a privilege, funded by other people’s hard work.

The problem with positive rights is that they are a ratchet. People always want more, and a government can always buy a little short-term success by increasing taxes and increasing what some people get for free (and what other people pay for). Those that stand to gain always shout louder than those who stand to lose.

When the NHS was founded, the services they provided were small, though similar to contemporary private medicine. As new treatments are invented or discovered, these are added to what is available. The bill rises. The NHS now provides all manner of things that have nothing to do with what people need, but with what they merely want, including non-medical plastic surgery, fertility treatment (nothing to do with healthcare), and pseudoscience (homeopathy or magnetic bandages, anyone?).

It provides treatments costing tens of thousands of pounds. Because with finite resources it cannot provide everything, there is the amusingly named NICE (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence), whose job is the necessary but not nice task of deciding what to spend the money on. If someone needs a £100,000 drug to treat their cancer, they probably won’t get it because that £100,000 could do much more good if spent on lots of other people.

So here’s another problem with “positive rights”: they’re not necessarily even possible. Does someone have a “right” to a particular drug, if 50 years ago it didn’t exist, and certainly would have been unaffordable if it was? Would they have had the right to it 50 years ago if it was unaffordable? Would they have had the right to it 50 years ago if it didn’t exist?

Does someone have the right to a £100,000 drug now if the money could save more lives elsewhere? The phrase “right to life” always used to mean “right not to be killed”. Negative rights are all about stopping other people doing things to you, not forcing them to do things for you like “positive rights”. However, consider the recent case of Ann Marie Rogers, who tried to claim that by not paying for Herceptin (an expensive cancer drug) the NHS had violated her “right to life”. Clearly “right to life” had been redefined, from the old negative right not to be killed, to an absurd positive right to have one’s life sustained at all costs. Negative rights have a clear infringer. Positive rights don’t clearly specify who is to pay for what is demanded: just a vague “everyone”, through taxation.

Why was the NHS rather than anyone else accused of violating this woman’s claimed “right to life”? Would her right to life have been violated if she had an untreatable illness and was going to die within days? If so, by whom?

Another claimed right is the “right to (’free’) education”. At present, state education is paid for through taxation. But we all recognise that once you have learnt a certain amount, you have to go off in to the world and earn a living.

You do not have the right to stay in education for the rest of your life, at other people’s expense. If everyone did that, there wouldn’t be any education because no one would be working to pay for it. If everyone exercised their positive rights, no one would get anything.

There is not, for example, a right to go to university to be taught about medieval art history.

What is the cut-off point? Does the state have a duty to teach you calculus if you’re good enough, or should it just teach you basic arithmetic?

The possible justification of tax-funded education is that we will be better off economically and/or socially if everyone can do basic arithmetic. That doesn’t mean it is a right. We might also be better off in a society where some people know about medieval art history. But that doesn’t mean our taxes should pay for it, and it doesn’t mean it is a right.

Clearly positive rights can be absurd. We should drop the phrase, recognising that talk of rights is not necessary for attempts to justify taxation to spend on things like the NHS and education. The “merit goods” argument does just as well, and doesn’t attempt to justify things like government-funded medieval art history.

Simon Heffer visited CUCA in Lent, resulting in the most attended and best talk of the term. He spoke of the creation of a “client state”, where the Labour Party massively increased the number of tax-funded state jobs in order to increase their voter base. People working in the state sector tend to vote Labour, so Labour’s strategy was clear: make more of them. This is massively costly, but seems to work.

Heffer’s solution is that the Conservative Party should not bother seeking these votes, because they will not vote Conservative anyway. Heffer is a critic of Cameron’s rebranding and apparent change of focus of the party, though has recently said he might consider voting Conservative. (He probably will.) He suggests that Cameron should not adopt policies to try to please everyone including these voters, but should focus on their traditional voter base.

In an article since, “Labour is malignant, not incompetent” (Telegraph, 2nd April 2008), he sees this strategy repeated by Labour with immigration. The Lords Economic Affairs Committee report on “The Economic Impact of Immigration” showed quite clearly that net immigration is not beneficial to the country. This has been obvious for years. The figures show that net immigration does not increase GDP more than it increases population, so has no effect on GDP per person and therefore general well-being. Government responses to this resort to obvious double-speak.

Heffer believes, as do I, that the government has known full well that net immigration is not beneficial, but has pursued it because it knows that immigrants tend to vote Labour. It has put electoral success above the country when it knows they are opposites.

Heffer calls for a radical cut in the amount of money spent by the government, which currently spends over £600 billion per year. Government spending has increased by 50% in real terms while Labour have been in power over the last ten years. As Lord Blackwell pointed out in his talk, the amount of stuff the government needs to provide doesn’t increase every year, so government spending should remain constant. Indeed, this means it should reduce as a percentage of GDP. If the government was spending the same as it was ten years ago, we could have abolished income tax.

Heffer demands tax cuts mostly to save money and free the economy to grow, but he echoes the calls of Sean Gabb for tax cuts to cut the funding to the ruling class - those who draw money and status from the state.

Lord Norman Blackwell visited CUCA yesterday, speaking and taking questions in the Union Dining Room, and then over dinner at Strada. Like me, he is very keen on policy: he worked on policy for Margaret Thatcher and John Major.

He started by talking about how radical some old policies seemed at the time, and how he believes others which seem radical now will be considered common sense in the future. For example, the Post Office used to run the telephone network in this country. As one might expect from a monopoly, the service was shoddy and expensive. If you wanted a telephone, you had to be put on a waiting list, and an engineer had to come to your home and fit one into the wall. You could only buy telephones manufactured by the state, which were very expensive.

People thought that the telecommunications couldn’t be provided by private companies. Now that it is, we know that of course they can.

Later, Lord Blackwell himself presented a report to British Telecom trying to convince them that it was safe for people to have telephone sockets, rather than a telephone hard-wired into the wall. Now, the idea that telephone sockets are dangerous is ludicrous. Then, it seemed radical.

Of course, there is an element of natural monopoly in landline telecomms. It does seem there needs to be some involvement by the state. But it should be as small as possible. As Hayek said, the state needs to create a legal framework in which competition can function. This should be designed to encourage as much competition as possible. Just because a market can’t function without the state, that doesn’t mean the sector should be run entirely by the state.

In the UK, British Telecom runs the lines (and even this is changing), but other companies can run calls on top of them. Much like Network Rail running the train tracks, but other companies running the trains. This is much better than BT doing everything, without having to compete and therefore having no incentive to provide a good, cheap product.

The same thing has been done with broadband internet. Can you imagine what our internet would be like if the government still had complete control of telecomms? Atrocious! Things would never have improved so rapidly.

We probably wouldn’t even know what we were missing out on. In Cuba, the state has to stop its subjects from finding out about the standard of living in other countries, so that they don’t know what they’re missing (toasters). What are we missing at the moment that we don’t know we’re missing? We’ll only find back if we stop the state slowing us down.

So telecommunications is one area where those advocating privatisation have been proved right. So are railways. Alex Singleton of the Globalisation Institute addressed CUCA at the Gin & Tonic party at the beginning of term, and he pointed out that by every objective measure, the railways have been improving since Conservative privatisation - the turning point.

Lord Blackwell suggested that healthcare and education are next to be privatised. People don’t know what they’re missing. They don’t know how good things could be.

However, Lord Blackwell didn’t suggest that “privatising” healthcare meant abolishing tax-funded (“free”) healthcare. Abolishing state-run schools doesn’t mean abolishing free education.

He suggested a voucher system. Consider education. The system would require very little change. Instead of being told what school you must go to, you could choose. Instead of only the state being able to set up state-funded schools, anyone could. That’s all.

He suggested not using the word “vouchers”, for two reasons. One, he thought it was as tainted as “privatisation” for many voters. Two, people didn’t know they wanted it, even though they wanted its consequences. If you offer people “choice” in your manifesto, they say “We don’t want a choice of schools. We don’t want to send our child to the next village. We just want to send our child to the local school, and we want it to be good.”

Choice (i.e. competition) doesn’t even need to be exercised to have beneficial effects. You don’t have to take your business from the local pub and drive to the next town. It’s just the fact that you could that means your local pub has to make an effort.

Similarly, if you go to a bad school and a good new one starts up, things won’t just be improved if everyone moves to the good school and the bad school shuts down. In most cases this won’t even be necessary. All that is necessary is that you can move. That is enough to give the old school some incentive to improve.

A similar scheme could be implemented for healthcare.

He suggested rolling out education vouchers in poor areas first. Even though this would mean richer areas wouldn’t get the benefits so quickly, it would demonstrate that the measures were to improve education in poor areas the most. This might help get voters used to them.

“Privatisation” seems radical in the UK at the moment, but it won’t when people see the consequences. We just need to look at the success of the Swedish implementation of vouchers.

People like to claim that there is something special about education and healthcare: that they are “public services” rather than products like any other. This is wrong. They are products like any other. People said the same about telephones.

Lord Blackwell used much libertarian rhetoric, and seemed to consider himself a libertarian. I’m not sure whether I’m a libertarian or not, though I have very strong libertarian sympathies.

I think vouchers are a good idea. But they’re not a libertarian idea. Vouchers roll back the state by allowing the state to pay for, but not run, education and health. They do mean that the state bureaucracy is smaller even if taxes stay the same. But libertarians would not even have taxes to pay for education or healthcare.

It may be that complete abolition of the welfare state is better for the country, especially in the long run. As Andrew Perraut says, “if markets are as massively productive as we libertarians believe and compounding returns to growth in the long term are taken into account, you could probably justify no more than very basic safety nets, for fear of distorting the economy and dramatically lowering everyone’s goods in the future.” But the safety net could include healthcare and education.

In any case, vouchers are better than the current system, and we need them fast.

My commitment to reducing the size of the state is Perraut’s: any taxation reduces economic growth. Some taxation is necessary, but the optimum amount is far lower than it is at present.

Lord Blackwell’s seems to be for a different reason. Statism cows people. It reduces the striving, self-reliant ethic. If people have a problem, it encourages them to expect the state to solve it, rather than solve it themselves. This attitude reduces economic growth because it discourages innovation.

He ended on a quotation that Lady Thatcher looked up while they were working on a speech. It is one of the closing sentences from John Stuart Mill’s “On Liberty”:

“a state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands, even for beneficial purposes, will find that with small men, no great thing can really be accomplished.”

Postscript.

Afterwards, over dinner, he talked about the historical consequences of global cooling, including the halt of the expansion of the Roman Empire. This would be an excellent way to write an article aiming to change people’s minds about global warming. The scientific evidence that global warming will stop, rather than being catastropic, is clear. We haven’t had any for over ten years. So take this for granted! Treat global cooling as inevitable, and write an article about its historical consequences and how we must prepare to meet them again.

It is a modern assumption that Religion and Politics don’t mix. The American Christian Right are synonymous in secular Europe with a regressive social agenda and intolerance of minorities. Closer to home, reactions to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s recent incursions into politics with his comments on accommodating Sharia law come firmly from the Henry II school.

This is an assumption I share. I may go to church, and I may go to CUCA events, but never the twain shall meet. However I was rather taken aback last Sunday having hauled my caucus to church early in the morning that the day’s sermon was overtly political. More manifesto than Mark.

The speaker was one Dr. Michael Schluter, founder and chairman of the Jubilee Centre, a Christian research group based in Cambridge. In his paper ‘How to create a relational society: Foundations for a new social order’ (published in the Cambridge Papers), he advocates a complete rethinking of our economy and society along biblical lines. This rethinking takes as its inspiration the Jubilee legislation (from which the organization takes its name) as laid down in the book of Leviticus. As he laid out this vision in his sermon, I sat incredulous that our 21st century, post-industrialised, multicultural land should seek to model itself on that of a 5000 year old agrarian society. But as the sermon went on I realized that what Dr. Schulter was talking about was of great relevance today, particularly for Conservatives.

The legislation is designed to maintain the division of land between the tribes of Israel as decreed when they first came out of the desert and settled in the land of Canaan. It requires that every 50th year, the Jubilee year, all Israelis return to their place of birth, and the compulsory selling of property back to the original owner or their heirs. The point of this is twofold. Firstly it ensures that all property is shared equitably and universally. Secondly it discourages geographic mobility, encouraging families to stay together where they have deep roots. This is the relational society, placing the strength of relationships with family and community alongside economic growth and greater equality as the main political aims.

The universal ownership of property is a very old Tory idea. Margaret Thatcher may have re-popularised the phrase “a property-owning democracy” with her council house sales in the 1980s, but it has been a key plank of Conservative thinking since the Second World War, when in 1950 Anthony Eden pledging to build 300,000 new homes a year, and the concept can be found in Conservative thinking at earlier dates. An Englishman’s home is, after all, his castle. The idea is that when a citizen owns an asset in their society, they have a stake in the success of that society and see it as part of their responsibility to further that success. Property is also a wealth-generator- many families have more wealth stored in their pile of bricks than they do in their bank accounts, and more wealth can be created with rising house prices than through the 9 to 5 slog. Homes also are a necessity in creating stable families.

As for the second point: encouraging strong ties to family and place, I believe there is a tension in Conservative thinking. The tension comes from the two largest strands in modern Conservatism, that between economic liberalization and social conservatism. For example, conservative politicians all over the globe preach the benefits of two parent families bringing up their kids with love and devotion but those same politicians want both parents out working every available hour in the pursuit of profit and economic growth. Every hour at the grindstone is one less with the sprogs nurturing them into responsible adults.

Norman Tebbit famously exhorted the jobless to ‘get on yer bike’ and look for work. But for many finding work may mean uprooting and leaving town for distant places where their line of work is more available. This geographical mobility of labour (free movement of labour being one of the key planks of economic liberalism) surely disrupts stable family and community life. I myself remember my childhood where my Dad worked in such disparate locations as Plymouth, Manchester and Dublin to get the work he was qualified to do. The poor man not only got on his bike, but cycled it within an inch of its life. While it was necessary to put money on the table, it obviously made bringing up a young family much harder; and not all families would survive under this strain.

Conservatives are only just beginning to think through this tension. The work of Ian Duncan Smith’s Centre for Social Justice and David Cameron’s leadership has finally begun to think how to redress the balance in conservatism away from Margaret Thatcher’s ‘There is no such a thing as society’ economic liberalism without undoing the great and necessary gains that her premiership had. As the sermon came to an end, I realized that take out the references to God, and Schulter’s manifesto differs little from Cameron’s crusade to mend our broken society, or George W. Bush’s ‘compassionate conservatism’.

What does this mean in policy terms. David Cameron has already talked of restoring tax breaks for married couples and those with children. Dr. Schulter goes further and points to some policies from Singapore. Tax breaks for homes shared with elderly parents, and lesser breaks for those who live within 5km of their elderly parents. With an ageing population set to put greater pressure on elderly care and the health service, encouraging families to act as a welfare unit for the old as well as young is surely sensible. He also points to the John Lewis partnership which will relocate its employees to any store in the country if they wish to be near their families.

No doubt there are many other policy implications which could have great benefits to our society. In future I hope to look past turbulent priests and anti-abortion, anti-gay bible-bashers to see that religion and its adherents have much to give in ideas, time and compassion to build stronger families, safer and more stable communities and a more humane society.

Over at the Adam Smith Institute Blog, Madsen Pirie has been writing a series of common errors. In one sentence he puts a common argument one might encounter, like “Big business only cares about profits.” The blog post then consists of 300-or-so words that systematically demolish the argument.

Pirie’s books in the past have attacked logical fallacies one may encounter, but with this blog series - at 21 and counting - Pirie’s clinical logic takes on a more practical side. The posts read as a veritable tool kit for demolishing the arguments put foward by our anti-libertarian colleagues.

There is a need for this kind of how-to guide: I’m sure all of us have been in a situation where an argument has seemed so flimsy yet we’ve not had the key to disarming it to hand. With this new series of blog posts - and rumour of a book in the offing - I think we can be assured of easier victories in these little arguments!

With the recent European Reform Treaty, it is topical to consider the nature of, and the justification for the European Union. The central point to make here is that whatever justification for the EU that is given, it is either false or not worth it. Indeed, the EU is detrimental to the prosperity of many countries in the world.

The primary reason for the creation of a pan-European economic and, subsequently political, organisation was to ensure greater integration, especially between France and Germany, in order to ensure that war would never again divide the continent. In this respect, if the EU has done anything at all to help, it has been entirely successful. However, would anyone argue that there is still work to be done? Are the Gauls and Aryans primed and ready to battle it out for supremacy as soon as the mystical shroud of political federation, as provided by the EU, is lifted? This may seem trite, but there is a serious point: since even before the creation of a European Community, its work has been done. War between France and Germany was not made obsolete by a form of coalition in the 1950s, but by the destruction and inhumanity of World War Two. As such, Europhiles have always sought new and elaborate justifications for the EU, almost all of which are false.

Rather than repeat thousands of other articles on the same subject and list the different justifications propounded in support of the EU only to refute them, I shall look at one function of the EU and the associated argument in favour of its existence. This is to re-distribute wealth through development aid from wealthier European nations to those that are less developed and to open up their trade markets in order to raise their GDP and living standards. One can argue that Britain itself benefited from this very principle when it was the sick man of Europe before the economic reforms of Margaret Thatcher. However, this great benefit of the EU is undermined by the nature of the Union itself, thereby eradicating any intrinsic benefit derived from redistribution. These problems are: global issues, immigration, and centralisation.

Through the EU, we deal only with the problems on our small continent. In contrast, it is beyond our Eurocentric world that the majority of unacceptable crises can be found. Of course, one can argue that the EU can function as an effective aid organisation to the world. However, this is not possible when the EU implements protectionist economic sanctions. The EU is an oppressive economic bloc, limiting free trade (as well as the scope for fair trade) in order to maintain its economic dominance at the expense of developing world economies. For example, every year the EU destroys tonnes of food in order to keep prices high. Moreover, market competition from outside the EU is restricted. It is only through trade (be it free, fair or otherwise) that individual producers and countries can hope to gain the wealth necessary to prosper.

What is more, when we look at the free movement of people within Europe, we see that aid within the EU is similarly undermined. This is because immigration within the EU removes the population needed for economic growth from the countries that seek development. Those in favour of immigration in Britain tend to point to the (supposed) vast economic benefit migrants bring to our shores. However, paradoxically, are we not being selfish when we call for more immigrants? This is because it impedes growth in the countries these people are leaving. Instead, we privilege our own prosperity above that of other people in the world. As such, those left behind are also left behind in terms of living standards and the opportunity in order to improve their quality of life compared with those living in Britain.

The centralised and authoritarian nature of the EU also undermines the development aid given to less economically developed member states. This is because the terms of this aid is dictated by the western European countries that dominate the EU through majority voting. In this way, the historical and cultural development of the country receiving aid is neglected, and, effectively, suppressed. As such, the benefit of that development aid is undermined. For example, a policy that suits the British economy, dominated by the private sector, may not be suitably implemented on the continent where the social economy is more prevalent. The best initiatives have to take the historical and cultural milieu of a nation into account. This cannot be achieved at a pan-European level.

In conclusion, the European Union’s aim to help development in less economically developed member states is admirable and justifiable. However, the framework within which it is conducted does not work. First, it undermines global development through economic restrictions. Second, development within the EU is undermined by free immigration. And third, derived from its centralised and authoritarian nature, the terms of aid to other countries is dictated by the major European powers, which may not suit the historical and cultural development of the recipient country. As such, one may wonder whether this noble aim of the EU is worth it considering the adverse consequences.

Of course, there are many other arguments in favour of the EU. Examples include better trade between European countries, regulatory consistency, and a political power to counteract the hegemony of the United States of America. However, these arguments seem to suffer from the same problem as that given above: they fail to justify the creation of an additional and cripplingly expensive layer of bureaucracy, whose aims are undermined by its very nature. However, that is for another article to discuss.

I would like to start a new “internet meme”. The topic today is “Modern Myths”. What popular myths do you know? What things do many people take for granted, but are actually false?

1. Full employment/zero unemployment is achievable.
It isn’t. The market never clears instantly, so there will always be a natural rate of unemployment. Of course we should aim to reduce unemployment as much as possible, but I recently found out that some people believed zero unemployment was achievable.

2. Growth is possible without job losses.
It isn’t. There is nothing bad about people losing jobs (except for them, in the short run), because ultimately they can do other things, the economy becomes more efficient, more wealth is produced and everyone is better off.
But I used to think that of course it would be better if growth could be achieved without job losses.
I read recently a very simple argument that growth is not even possible without job losses. For growth to occur, labour has to become more productive. Therefore, a company will be able to do the same work with fewer people. Therefore, job losses.

3. Genetically modified food is bad. “Natural” means good.
I do not quite understand the opposition to genetically modified food. For some reason, people think that “natural” or “organic” means good and “artificial” means bad. Of course there is no link: there are plenty of natural poisons, and natural foods which are bad for you. There are plenty of foods with added chemicals which are fine. Perhaps it is because people do not understand that all food, whether “natural” or “unnatural”, is made of chemicals, which can be isolated and are identical whether grown naturally or synthesised in a lab.
People campaign against GM food trials on the grounds that it could escape and grow in the wild (”contamination”). But this begging the question: it is not contamination unless the food is bad in the first place. Why would it be? Genomes, whether natural or altered in a lab, are fundamentally the same. What is the problem?

The issue of fair trade arouses many emotions. However, for all the good it does, many of its successes are mediocre in comparison with what could be achieved by allowing free markets.

Fair trade is very cheap and relatively easy to implement. This is because its aim is relatively simple: to provide a ‘fair wage’ to third world producers. Admittedly, the phrase ‘fair wage’ can arouse suspicion, but, in general, this is a sensible estimate based on standard prices in the place or region the products are being imported from.

A good example of fair trade at work is with coffee; especially considering that many coffee companies now proudly proclaim that they only use fair trade products. A fair wage for the average coffee plantation and its workers is approximately double the price for each bag of coffee beans. To the average coffee shop consumer, this works out at about an extra penny on each cup of coffee. Although this probably seems suspect, when one considers the number of coffee beans in a bag, and the number used in the average cup of coffee, one can appreciate that this figure is correct.

As a result, we can see that fair trade is very cheap for the average consumer, and relatively easy to implement. However, it is legitimate to ask two questions: (1) Is this really the best solution we can provide to help third world producers; and (2) Does the implementation of economic controls maximise the potential economic benefits? The answer to both questions is no.

If we want to provide producers with the best possible opportunity to maximise their economic potential, it is necessary to provide them with free trade, not fair trade. It is a sad fact, but we do not live in the capitalist world that those on the Left blame for many of the world’s problems. The prime example is, of course, the European Union. Its range of protectionist measures, epitomised by the Common Agricultural Policy, undermines the global markets, not to mention ripping off the consumer. Every year, hundreds of tons of food is destroyed in order to keep prices artificially high. At the same time, market competition from outside the EU is restricted. Is it then any wonder that third world consumers do not have the opportunity to earn a decent wage?

Ultimately, fair trade is part of the problem rather than the solution. This is because it seeks to use the same type of protectionist measures that makes it necessary in the first place to provide producers with a decent standard of living. Free trade can ensure that producers get the proper price for their products. If this proves to be too low, the producers can then change their economic activity to meet the needs of the consumer.

As it is, even if producers receive a ‘fair wage’ through fair trade, it does not maximise their potential income, and does not guarantee useful economic activity. What is more, because of the nature of fair trade, it legitimates and provides added precedent for the protectionist economic policy of various countries, and institutions like EU. It is ironic that it is these protectionist policies that make fair trade necessary to ensure a decent wage for third world producers. How can we stand by and let this sort of social injustice continue by failing to allow free markets? It is time that we acknowledged that it is time to dispose of fair trade in favour of real free trade.