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on the Psychoactive substances bill

America has a law called the “Federal Analogue Act” which attempts to do what the Conservatives are planning to do with the Psychoactive substances bill in the Queen’s speech. It didn’t work in the ‘States, and it won’t work here. It’s vague: What does “substantially similar” mean. How can you prove it’s for human consumption? As a result, it’s hardly been used. 

Worse than it being pointless, what it is trying to do is dangerous.

“Designer drugs” are dangerous: they’re untested, the side-effects are unknown and the metabolism is often slow. People have died, because they don’t know how, or how much to take of any substance, which may be highly toxic. Why then do people take them? Because they can’t get the stimulant, Cocaine; relaxant, Marijuana or the Halucinogenic, LSD or Psilocybin they want, and these “designer drugs” are “legal” and therefore thought by users to be safer than the “killer drugs” that have been banned.
People have been told “drugs kill”. But we know what the lethal doses are for LSD, Psilocybin, THC and Cocaine hydrochloride. There isn’t one. (It’s about 6 litres for water, and about 300ml for Alcohol by comparison). These compounds aren’t “safe”, and have deleterious effects on physical and mental health, especially with long-term use. But their dangers are a known quantity, just like they are for alcohol. People have been smoking Marijuana, and eating hallucinogenic fungi for millennia. These, really should be considered no different to alcohol. Chewing Coca leaves is a prophylactic against altitude sickness, and a stimulant effect a bit stronger than coffee and are legal in much of South America. So why are they banned here? 
Habit.
And the prohibition of stimulants and psychoactive substances has led to exactly the same death and carnage that prohibition of alcohol did in the USA. A business of enormous profitability has been gifted to criminals. Billions have been spend interdicting supply rather than taxing use and profits from the recreational drug business. This is stupid.
And now, any Chemistry graduate can synthesise novel chemicals, and sell them as “plant food”, and people will try to take them to get high. This only happens because reasonably safe compounds are banned, and the ban enforced with all the power the law affords.
This habit is INSANE, and it’s only supported because the scientific literature is focussed on how to make the drug war work, rather than on working out what and why drugs do what they do, and what to do about it when people take them. All “experts” are from the Law Enforcement/Medical prohibition complex. Banning more substances is just a regulatory whack-a-mole with cis/trans isomers, making matters WORSE not better.
Instead of assuming all drug use is bad, accept that people have always, and always will, like to get off their tits from time to time. Sure, tax the products, like alcohol and tobacco, through the nose if necessary to cover policing costs, quality control and healthcare. Most people will treat Marijuana like they do Merlot: something pleasant to have at the end of the day. Cocaine: A bit like they do Tequila: Something to put rocket-fuel into a night out. A few will become dangerously hooked, as they do right now with alcohol.
My guess is that were recreational narcotics legal, there would be more Marijuana and Cocaine use, and less Alcohol and Heroin. LSD and Magic Mushrooms are not seriously habit forming. They weren’t a problem when Psilocybins cubensis could be bought openly in Camden head shops pre 2005, and they won’t be a problem after they’re made legal again. The harms from all drugs would probably go down thanks to a safer supply chain, and the tax revenue would help the Government balance the books. All those drug-warriors in the police could be re-deployed to something socially useful, like enforcing parking offences or stopping littering.
No country to liberalise drugs laws has seen any major problems, despite heroic efforts of the bansturbationists to manufacture evidence to the contrary. Yet the major problem with prohibition: an illegal and unregulated supply chain remains in place. Imagine the good that could be done were the criminals, and their profits removed from the business.
You want to stop dangerous “designer drugs”? Legalise and regulate the relatively safe stuff that’s currently banned.
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On bad Left-Wing Arguments

Elections are won by the side that can reach out beyond their core supporters and persuade a plurality of voters that theirs are the best policies. What is striking at the moment, is how completely the left have failed to understand their opponents’ beliefs and motivations. For this, I blame the echo-chamber of social media, and I think lefties are far, far more prone to this running down idealogical rabbit-holes than their opponents. Anyone debating lefties on Twitter will very quickly find utter incomprehension that anyone could think like that, and then get blocked. Labour is using social media to talk to itself, and therefore gets stuck with some really, really bad ideas.

I was arguing with a left-wing activist last night and I was put in mind of this great post from Fifty Shades of Dave. For her it was simply inconceivable that anyone could object to high marginal tax-rates on “the rich”, as soon as they had “enough”. “Enough” in this context was enough for a small flat. Taking more and objecting to paying eye-watering taxes in this world view was immoral, and utterly, incomprehensibly greedy. I tried to explain that someone on the higher rate tax was by no-means “rich”, that a 40% income paid at some point by nearly half of the population, and that going higher, on the additional rate tax-payers, didn’t raise much money. There was no acceptance that perhaps, if you’re going to levy a tax, the opinions of those who might actually have to pay it, are relevant. But to no avail. This moral view of taxation, and the view that the high-paid are simply immoral is deeply entrenched on the left.
The problem for the left create for themselves with this world-view is this: Poor people do not desire, or even expect to remain poor. For most “young families” “poverty” as defined in relative terms by the left is a phase. You’re poor when you’re setting up home and building a career. Poverty for me was a phase. It was for my parents, and indeed my Grandparents. Money was a struggle. And then for most, it ceases to be as debts are paid off, and income rises. By your middle age, you’re no-longer struggling for money. You’ve worked hard, and you can enjoy the fruits of your labours. If that’s a nice car, a bigger house or simply not worrying about having another pina colada on holiday, it’s no matter. Most people who’ve worked hard and paid their taxes, see these comforts as the just deserts of ‘knuckling down’.
Labour’s rhetoric during the election campaign instead thought of poverty as a Caste. Poor people who’re totally dependent upon the state for their very survival, who lack any agency to better their condition. And this world-view can only come from the Milibands of the world, who’re born into money, and for whom concern for the (abstract concept of) the poor is a form of value signalling. The only poor they’ve met are wheeled in by party activists for photo-ops. They are completely out of touch. in this they’re supported by professional farmers of the poor, whose interests are best served by keeping their flock servile and dependent.
But the poor, by and large, do not resent the successful middle aged plumber/businessman in a nice car. Especially if that person is a neighbour who represents a route by which the apprentice plumber can get to the comforts of a decent income, and the self-respect that comes from hard work. Labour was telling these people that they were too stupid to make it. That they were without hope without state help. And that if they did “make it” they were selfish and wicked, and would have it taxed off them. David Cameron is no less out of Touch of the poor than Miliband, but unlike Miliband Cameron is not pretending to be something he’s not, and much as Miliband would like it to be otherwise, the people don’t really hate and fear the Toffs as much as Labour think they ought. Indeed people often would quite like to BE a toff one day.
The left assume the poor will always remain poor and so would always support punitive taxation on “the rich” because only 20% of the population pay higher rate tax. But nearly 50% do AT SOME POINT IN THEIR LIVES” and even more aspire to. Fewer will get to the £100,000 62% marginal rate, but a good many would like to. Very, very few Tories utter the word “scrounger”, the Newspaper which uses that word most, is the Guardian, whose columnists put the word into Tories’ mouths, a comforting straw man, the right-wing ogre who hates poor people and wants to hurt them. And because they’re arguing, to applause from social media, against a figment of their own fevered imaginations, they’re ignored.
High marginal rates of taxation simply don’t raise much money. Yet this is now the moral shibboleth of the left, but this signals the hostility to “aspiration” that is crippling the labour party. No-one aspires to a better life on benefits, yet this appears to be the left’s offer to the poor. Tony Blair was relaxed about people getting filthy rich. Life on benefits is supposed to be a bit crap and limiting. If it wasn’t, there’d be little incentive to work. Now it is the Tories who’re saying “here’s the route out of poverty, we’ll smooth the road, and get out of your way”. Millions of new jobs, admittedly some crap, means millions of people, some of whom formerly existed on benefits, now have a wage. And that some of these wages are topped up by in-work benefits is a feature, not a bug of “making work pay” through the Universal Credit. There are no longer any people facing marginal tax/benefit withdrawal rates over 100%. There were in 2010. And wages rise through people’s lifetimes. People know this, it seems the Labour party don’t.
People didn’t vote Tories because they hated poor people, or the NHS, or were stupidly voting against their interests, as the great wail of pain and confusion from the left on Social media would have it, but because the Labour offer to people was utterly ghastly. Labour’s offer consisted of rich, Oxbridge people saying “Have some more benefits, you worthless pleb, you’ll never make it. And if you don’t like it, you’re evil, and we’ll tax you.” Is it any wonder Labour lost? David Cameron may not have successfully reached far beyond his base, but at least he’s trying. 
Just as Tony Blair had to smash it into Labour’s thick skull that nationalisation of the means of production was a bad idea to win an election, the next Labour Prime Minister will not come into office threatening anyone with a 50p tax. 
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On First Past the Post

The purpose of democracy is not to conduct a tribal headcount, but to allow the people to chuck the rotters out from time to time. Does anyone think 1979 or 1997 didn’t accurately reflect the country’s desire for a change?

No electoral system is perfect. List PR gives parties an accurate number of seats to their vote share, but then forces them to govern according to the necessity of coalition-building, not their principles or manifestos. It also insulates those grandees who make it to the top of the list, ensuring no Portillo/Balls moments when a top flight MP feels the wrath of the electorate. It is important to decapitate a senior MP from time to time “pour encouager les autres”. Under proportional representation, patronage of party elites to put people in order on the list, distincentivises individual MPs from exercising their conscience in the legislature. We’d have fewer rebellions, and a stronger executive. List PR is what a political obsessive who identifies wholly and completely with his party thinks a “fair” system, but it has negative effects on the behaviour of MPs and concentrates power in a few hands who exist completely away from democratic oversight. I feel about list proportional representation the same way I think about the UK joining the Euro. I’d stop it, any way I can, for the  system is wholly toxic. I don’t want a PR Lords.

I want PR to go away, and never be spoken of again. Likewise “top-up” regional lists and so forth are fart-arsing about to please political wonks, to little benefit and create two classes of MPs.

On the other hand, First past the post gives a local MP a chance to build a personal following. His or Her standing may be enhanced by selective rebellions against the party whip on certain issues. MPs with a conscience and principles are respected by the electorate. An MP who is caught doing something the electorate don’t like, like Neil Hamilton in Tatton, will be out on their ear, safe seat or no. On the other hand, a diligent and thoughtful MP who works hard, like Nick Clegg can buck the trend of a national wipe-out for their party.

Under first past the post we vote for PEOPLE not PARTIES. It’s noticeable that the thoughtful, consistent, intellectual, honest and hard-working Douglas Carswell got re-elected relatively comfortably, but the opportunistic Judas, Mark Reckless was out on his ear. The voters of Rochester and Strood spoke. Likewise the voters of South Thanet decided that they’d rather not send Nigel Farage to represent them in parliament. This isn’t about UKIP, as Douglas Carswell showed, but about Nigel. I have voted Labour in the past. Yes, me, voting Labour, when I lived in Vauxhall, I was pleased to vote for Kate Hoey in 2001, as she’s anti-Euro and pro-Fox hunting (though definitely unsound on Cycling).  This is a strength of First Past the Post.

I’ll say it again: Voting isn’t a tribal headcount, because most people don’t think like we political obsessives. They think about the government they want, what’s happening in their constituency. You’re a socialist, but Labour can’t win here? Might as well vote Green to send a message, or Liberal Democrat to keep the Tories out. You’re a thick, bigoted Moron? You vote UKIP whether or not they can win, and you’re rightfully ignored. You don’t think the Labour leader is up to the Job? You vote for the candidate most likely to beat the Labour guy, whoever you notionally support. In an electorate of forty million or so these choices usually deliver a result that delivers an executive with a clear mandate. To imagine everyone would vote the same way under different systems is absurd.

The result is a system that sets the bar very high to secure representation. UKIP, mostly failed to meet the required standard, and suffered at the hands of tactical voting. Where it looked like they’d win, the people coalesced around the candidate most likely to beat them. That is a valid democratic choice – the electorate expressing its will clearly that while there are 4m people who like the Toxic yahoos. There are probably 8m people who’d move heaven and earth to keep UKIP away from power. Lots of people can like you. But you also have to have lots of people to not HATE you too. And where the candidate wasn’t obviously a bigoted git who looked like a shaved chimpanzee in a suit who’s just ranting Farage’s morning brain-fart, Clacton, UKIP won comfortably. There’s a lesson there.

Would the country really be better off with 83 grunting ignoramuses from UKIP in coalition, demanding David Cameron send the navy to Machine-gun migrants in the Mediterranean (which they’d in any case already demanded be sent to… um… Nepal) and the RAF to bomb the Strasbourg parliament? What purpose would a dozen hippies from the Green party, demanding the immediate closure of Nuclear power stations, and the shrinking of the UK economy serve apart from to make the business of Government more difficult.

There is a case for some electoral reform, but it’s not strong. Multi-member constituencies (I favour the counties sending 1 to 10 MPs to parliament depending upon population). AV or STV have their adherents, but these systems may serve to exacerbate the swings in a big move, and deliver even more overwhelming majorities to a single party or give overwhelming over-representation to everyone’s second choice. I’m not clear this is any better than the system we have now.

The First Past the Post system isn’t broken, and certainly no worse than any other. Landslides like 1983 and 1997 are rare. Yet the government changes when the mood of the country changes. The people aren’t clamouring for a change to the system, the losing parties are. But the rules are the same for everyone. The losers should just work harder in their target seats and shut up.

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The Euro Referendum, Scots Nationalism and Tory Wars

I went drinking with a nest of pinkos at the weekend (the collective noun for lefties is “nest”, everyone knows this). What struck me is their constant refrains: “Tories should want Scotland to become independent”, and “Tories will implode with over the referendum”. The Tories ossified in their minds in the same way one’s music taste does somewhere between leaving school and getting a mortgage, in our cases some time around the turn of the millennium. Very few people in the media on the left understand the Conservative party or the Conservative mentality.

The Conservative party is an ancient, many-headed beast. It does contain English nationalists, but these are a small minority. The vast majority of Conservatives would take another 20 years of opposition rather than see the Union break up. As it is, for now, Labour has been slain in Scotland. The Tories have as much Westminster representation north of the Border as Labour or Liberal Democrats. This leaves an opening. 15% of Scots voted for the “hated” Tories, and the party came second in a dozen seats. As a major party of Government, I suspect the “hatred” is more media habit, than real. There is a good chance of a comeback in Scotland – remember the Party was once as dominant in Scotland as the SNP is now. No political hegemony lasts forever, especially it seems in Scotland, and the SNPs will be no different. Expect there to be one remaining ranty Scots Nat holding a Glasgow seat in following the 2040 election as some other party sweeps all before it. Securing the long-term future of the Union, however will be David Cameron’s main project as Prime Minister.

Which brings us to what commentators are confidently saying will be the centrepiece of this parliament – the EU referendum. Next to the Union, the EU referendum is now a trifle for the PM. Let’s be clear. There is absolutely no way ‘out’ will win. It’s major cheerleaders are too toxic. When the leadership of Labour, Tory, SNP, Plaid etc, as well as almost every major businessman, sports people, celebrities, The Sun, The Times, The Mirror, The Guardian and just about anyone else who matters lines up saying ‘in’ and UKIP with a handful of the Tory awkward squad and the Daily Express are for ‘out’, the public will notice. The vote will be 2:1 for ‘in’. For this not to be the case, UKIP, and the Tory right needs to lead a remarkable, energetic and subtle campaign nationwide, starting now. Yeah. Right.

So the result is a foregone conclusion. The nest of Pinkos assume the awkward squad will then all chuck their toys out of the pram. The fact is, for most of the Tory party, Europe is no longer a burning issue. We’d all go man the barricades should it look like we join the Euro, but we won that argument pretty comprehensively. We are not Euro enthusiasts, and look at Brussels with scepticism, relishing every opportunity to slap interfering eurocrats down. But we’re mostly grumpily in favour of staying in the project because ultimately the Tory party is the party of business.

So here is an opportunity for a Conservative prime minister to go to Brussels from a position of strength, and demand concessions. And we will get them. There is no way the EU felt the need to negotiate while it looked like the last Labour leader, Edmund Mili-something (I’ve already forgotten), was going to be PM. But now they need to consider a Generous offer – Germany cannot afford Brexit and Merkel will ensure enough is given to ensure the UK remains Germany’s bulwark against French economic dirigisme.

The point is, everyone’s already made up their minds how they’re going to react. The few headbangers will headbang about it being a “betrayal”, whatever Cameron brings back. They will be few in number. Half a dozen at most. There will be a large contingent who’ll take up the opportunity to campaign for ‘out’ but take great care to do so without being disloyal to the PM. The rest will slide in line behind the Prime Minister, hailing a great transfer of powers back to Westminster by an all-conquering leader. (Whether this is the case, is irrelevant). There will be few doing so enthusiastically, and a great continuum of gritted teeth lining up behind the PM. But Cameron has won an election. And that, for now, means his authority over his party is absolute. That is why he wants to accelerate the negotiation – get the major hurdle out of the way early.

The Tory party has made its peace with its Euro differences. The referendum has been delivered. The Euro “bastards” are not going to do to Cameron what they did to Major, however much the Labour party, nests of my pinko drinking buddies and the Media will be trying to replay greatest hits of the ’90s.

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An Election Result

Few expected a Tory majority until the Exit poll. I didn’t dare hope until about 2am.

In Eastern England, a Region with a bigger population than Scotland, The Tories’ hegemony is greater than that of the SNP’s in Scotland, yet no-one is going to give these voters the indulgence which will be afforded to the SNP. Here, The Tories secured 50% of the vote, and all but one MP. The one non Tory MP was a Tory until less than a year ago. The Labour party lost ground everywhere, except London.

15% of Scots voted Tory, equivalent to the national UKIP share. No-one is talking about their “disenfranchisement”. There are now as many Tory MPs in Scotland as there are Labour or Liberal Democrats. The Tories advanced in Wales and devastated the Liberal Democrats in the South-West.
Looking at a map, Labour is reduced to inner London, Birmingham, Newcastle, Cardiff, Liverpool and Leeds. Scotland is monochrome SNP, and the rest of Great Britain is Tory Blue. The Tories’ closest allies, the Ulster Unionists did twice as well as expected in Northern Ireland. 
So. What happens next?
First of all, elections are won by parties with the positive vision for the country. The SNP has a vision of Scotland that resonates with Scots, if not with reality. That 8% deficit limits how “full” their fiscal autonomy can be. I can take Sturgeon at her word, that independence remains off the cards for the time being.
Labour on the other hand, spent the election campaign telling the country it was broke, divided, poor, unequal and some vision of victorian workhouse hell, lorded over by a “rich” elite. Given that inequality fell and “the rich” are paying more tax than ever before over the past 5 years, this clearly didn’t ring true. The Tory message: let us finish the job, resonated with England outside the big cities.
The economy is largely sorted. The coalition undid much of the glue Labour poured into the labour market. The self-employed who paid tax on earnings in 2013/14 paid more than expected. Their earnings will accelerate, and the deficit will close faster than expected. I expect there will be more money for Cameron’s second term. 
Cameron’s biggest challenge will therefore be constitutional. What to do with Scotland, giving the SNP as much of their demands as possible, without alienating England. His job is to come up with a lasting constitutional settlement. Constitutional settlements tend to be more lasting and stable when done under Tory governments, as unlike labour’s devolution in the 90’s there’s less short-term gerrymandering for party advantage. This will involve house of Lords reform, though I would regret this. The mountain of cant spoken about English Votes for English Laws comes from people who’ve got used to imposing the will of the Celts on the English, who’ve long voted solidly Tory. It’s likely there will be a more Federal UK. The community of the Isles is being tested more strenuously than at any point since Irish independence.
There will be a lot of nonsense spoken about the upcoming EU referendum, set for 2015. UKIPpers will not believe Cameron will deliver it. They can be ignored. The fact is, the UK will vote by 2:1 to stay in. Cameron will walk tall having secured an unexpected majority. The Eurocrats will have to give something for Cameron to take back, and Merkel has already said what’s on offer. 
Whatever the offer is, it will be derided by UKIP because free movement of people is a red line that will not be on offer. And quite rightly so. The crucial reaction will be the Tory right. Will they ‘rebel’ and make Cameron’s life a misery like the post 1992 “bastards”. My guess however is that Cameron has answered his Tory critic’s main charge: that he couldn’t win an election. This will mean this election has more in common with 1979 – the first majority after a period of unstable minority, than 1992, an unexpected victory by the fag-end of an administration. 
Labour, for its part, must find a narrative after a period of re-building. They must work out what they are for. If they can make peace with business, and more importantly, markets, then they can come back. Social democracy has a future in the UK, but not Socialism red in tooth and claw. Miliband was in this regard, a last hold-out in the jungle, still fighting after the total victory of Thatcher. Whatever happens, such is the scale of their defeat, especially in Scotland, the next labour PM will probably be beholden to the SNP for any majority.
This is the Second or third time the Tories have destroyed the Liberal party, and absorbed its supporters into the broad Conservative church. Perhaps the Tories should make an offer: Fight elections as the Conservative, Liberal and Unionist party? The liberal democrats had the naive belief that somehow being right, for example on Land taxation by council tax revaluation and extending the number of bands, will somehow translate into votes. There is a place for such a party, and I hope they come back. But this will be a generational project. 
Each of these issues will be the subject of a post in the future. We live in interesting times. Cameron has an enormous, difficult and delicate job. He can be the man who either presides over the destruction of the UK, or go down in history as the man who built the lasting constitutional settlement. He’s been underestimated by most. He has an enormous responsibility. But I am optimistic he’s up to the job. After all, he’s been quietly right, calmly ignoring his critics, and content to let his record speak for itself despite the hysteria of lesser characters. He’s steady under fire, to the point of insouciance. I like that in a leader.
Cameron is now proven winner. Holding the coalition together was a remarkable political feat, for which Nick Clegg deserves enormous credit too. And like Napoleon’s generals, Cameron’s lucky. So Far.
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Election Prediction

I think the bottles of port, beers and cases of wine I’ve bet with twitter correspondents, friends and colleagues are going to bankrupt me if Labour win, and give me alcoholic liver disease if the Tories do. So, hot on the heels of my correctly predicting the outcome of the Scottish Referendum, AND the EU elections; I, the UK’s own Nate Silver using little more than reading, wishful thinking and guesswork am going to tell you what’s going to happen over the next 36 hours.

David Cameron will still be Prime minister, probably with help from DUP, and the remaining Liberal Democrats. The alternative, Prime Minister Miliband is too grotesque to contemplate. Tories will probably be quite comfortably the largest party; here’s why:

  1. Miliband is obviously a helpless, flailing git. In the privacy of the polling booth, this will matter, leading to
  2. The usual Tory out-performance of their polling, and labour underperformance of theirs.
  3. The polls are currently showing a small Tory lead.
  4. The polls may well be wrong, on a scale not seen since 1992, because the polling methodology hasn’t been tested with the rise of UKIP, the collapse of the Lib-Dems and the rise of the SNP.
  5. Labour will do a bit better than polling suggests in Scotland, as will Tories (but to little avail in seats)
  6. Liberal Democrats will retain 25 seats
  7. UKIP will have 3: Clacton, Thurrock and one other. Neither Mark Reckless in Rochester, nor Farage in South Thannet will be MPs on May 8th.
That is my prediction with my sensible trousers on. But I think a small Tory majority is possible. That this is wishful thinking cannot be discounted, but the polls have so many moving parts in this election, methodologies are likely to be strained. In particular, spiral of silence adjustments to take into account the ‘Shy Tory’ effect have been getting larger. Yet Tories ALWAYS seem to outperform. In addition, the late swing seen in 92 may just be even later this time.
I would like the Coalition to continue. But I’ll settle for a Tory majority and consider emigration should the emetic Mr. Miliband be Prime Minister.
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The Tory Party Wants to Win Again.

Even the awkward squad have been silent. There is no dissent from the back-benches and Cameron’s gaffe – that he will not serve a third term – meaning there will be a leadership contest at some point in the next parliament, is being described as “a disaster”. And it isn’t good news for the Tories: it’s certainly and own goal and an unforced error from the Prime Minister. But it has made Cameron, quite a lot more popular than Miliband, the subject of discussion. I am not sure this is a wholly bad thing. Labour are so inept, they considered running with “vote Cameron, get Boris” as if replacing the most popular party leader with the country’s most popular politician and current mayor of London would be a disaster for the Conservatives.

one reason the Tories will win

Given the Tories discipline, and they wheeled out some pretty solid performances yesterday from even those named as potential successors, dismissing it as “a politician answering a question” is a successful line to take. And this was repeated by journalists on the news; Even Alastair Campbell struggled. The Tories defence gained traction, and so I think this will be less damaging than it could have been.

This incident though also goes to show what’s wrong with our “political class”, and it’s not the politicians. It’s not they unrepresentative. Women are selected in roughly the proportion they put themselves forward, ethnic minorities are only slightly under-represented and may be about the same proportion as in the general population after the next election, and not only sitting for “diverse” seats. MPs are middle class, but is it surprising that the working class, who seem to despise education, aren’t producing many men and women of ideas to sit in parliament?

You have people stating as fact parliament is too “male, pale and stale“. ‘Middle-class’ is a term of abuse and the lie that politics is unrepresentative is constantly repeated. The people doing this are the media. To the kind of “young people” that turn up on the media, anyone in a suit is “middle-class” who “doesn’t understand” what young people experience. It’s nonsense of course, but the media feed it.

What do you want? Parliament filled with semi-educated failures who’re representative only of utter grockles? Parliamentarians chosen by gender and race, but utterly compliant to the whim of the executive? This is Labour’s way. Because it seems ensuring diversity of appearance ensures a monoculture of political ideas. Worse you get risible Children like Red Princes Will Straw and Euan Blair or Princess Emily Benn who said

“I represent the ward I was born in, which is y’know more important than where you come from…“

…While the cameras were rolling. She’s 25, and is being wheeled out to demonstrate their commitment to youth issues. By which labour mean tuition fees. Which they introduced. I am sure having Great Granddad, Granddad and Father all Labour MPs had absolutely no bearing on her selection.

“Judge me,on my ideas“

…I look forward to it. The Tories have always been less ethnically diverse but a broader church of ideas, and so harder to lead.

But they want it bad this time. The hatchet has been buried. The awkward squad are satisfied they will get their deepest desire: the EU referendum, and are working for it. Cameron has unified the ununifiable behind him, for a couple more years at least.

As for the election? The polls are neck and neck to a slight Tory lead. And the campaign proper has not yet begun. Labour are going to be near wiped out in Scotland, and have Ed Miliband “in Charge”. When the broad mass of the electorate have a good look at him, they will say “urgh”. Labour MPs openly call their leader a “fucking knob“. UKIP are slipping, 18% a few months ago, nearer 14% now. Plenty of their supporters won’t bother, or will vote Tory to keep Labour out. Thanks to the Scots, the national Labour inbuilt advantage is no more. A ten point move during a campaign is common. And there really is only one way it can go….

There will be a Tory majority.

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On Osborne’s Inheritance Tax Cut

Back in 2007, I wrote

there is a very simple solution to the problem, which prevents middle Britain being hit by a tax that is designed to punish the very rich: first homes should not qualify for IHT (subject to caveats such as time occupied and value to prevent abuse – you couldn’t have everyone buying mansions to die in to avoid tax)

…which is more or less what George Osborne appears to be proposing. However I didn’t consider it a priority then, and I don’t think it a priority now.


There will be lots of guff about how “insane” cutting this tax is. It’s not insane. Inheritance tax is deeply unfair, unpleasant and resented. It’s falls hardest on those who’ve not prepared for death. And it has come after big cuts to income taxes, so I’m reasonably content.
The main problem with the UK economy is for people to see property as an investment, not as consumption. This encourages people to see their homes as their main asset, and care deeply about how much it’s worth. People oppose dilution of their assets. This is why any and all development – new houses – are opposed so viciously by “the community”.

The problem isn’t inheritance tax, it’s the tendency of old people to hang around in the big family homes long after their family has flown the nest. And their family, when they come to produce grandchildren cannot have a family home because they’re all owned by the baby-boomers. Children are being brought up in flats while granny lives in the big house. And Granny’s in rude health. By the time the house gets passed on, it will be to people well on the way to being grandparents themselves.


Rather than cut inheritance tax on homes, it would make more sense to abolish stamp duty, and make the housing market more liquid. Encourage granny to downsize as soon as little Jonny and Camilla have left for university, with increases to property taxes like council tax offsetting cuts to other income taxes. Granny should take the equity in the house, and invest it in productive assets for her retirement, or use it to help Jonny or Camilla  buy a house for their families.

Above all, we need more houses. And cutting inheritance tax on houses doesn’t help more of them get built. I never oppose a tax cut. And I dislike inheritance tax because it is unfair. From 2007 again 

It is essentially a voluntary tax and is often described as a tax on the unlucky and the unwise. Businesses are exempt as are farms. Potentially exempt transfers can usually see to the rest, and the threshold at £285,000 [now £325,000 – transferrable] is generous. The problem is that it hits unexpected deaths harder than quiet passings in old age. Consider this: A family loses both parents in a car crash and the tax-man – as a direct result – also takes the family home. That’s not on.

I’d want to see stamp duty go, or see more income tax cuts before I cut inheritance tax. After all, Inhertiance tax is, for most people, entirely voluntary, so long as they trust their children, and don’t die unexpectedly. I see why the chancellor is doing this – UKIP have pledged to abolish inheritance tax completely and inheritance tax is wildly unpopular, even amongst people who are unlikely to pay it. This is a policy aimed squarely at the Daily Mail reader and there’s an election very shortly.

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What Libertarians can learn from Antonio Gramsci and Why they Should Join the Tories.

I describe myself as a Libertarian, mainly because the traditional labels of ‘left’ and ‘right’ don’t fully fit. As P.J. O’Rourke remarked “Turn right at Economics, Take a left at sex and drugs, straight ahead to paradise“*. The right are largely economically liberal, but socially authoritarian, and the left, the opposite. And this varies by time and place, influenced by history. Swedish neo-nazis for example are strongly in favour of that kingdom’s generous welfare state. But I don’t want to ‘smash the state’. Shrink it, gradually, for sure. But I don’t want a revolution. Nor do I see much fundamentally wrong with representative democracy.

Libertarians too often have an intellectual jump-off point at their state-free utopia. This isn’t libertarianism, but anarchism, but these anarcho-capitalists hurl abuse at any libertarian whose ideas include working with existing institutions: not “real” libertarianism. There’s no coherent plan to get from a state which takes 50% of GDP and thinks it reasonable to control the font on cigarette packets, or the contents of Children’s lunch-boxes, to one where the state keeps to its reasonable functions. Thus libertarianism is a philosophy for spotty herberts, ranting in pubs, mainly to each other. And the An-caps are to blame.

Unless your intellectual jump-off point is our society and government, complete with problems, here and now, you will be ignored. This is why Labour was out of power for nearly two decades until they abandoned their marxist fantasy. The Tories fell into the trap of imagining an Elysium somewhere around 1953, which saw them out of power while Gordon Brown laid waste the economy. The party that wins power is the one with a clear solution to the problems of the country now, and an optimistic vision for the future sufficient to encourage people to vote.

The problems faced by the UK government are a deficit requiring spending cuts, and preventing tax-cuts. A population which appears to be obsessed by immigration (especially in the kind of places where there is little). This means the solutions are extraordinarily unpopular, as the left hate spending cuts, as the right thinks not giving tax-cuts is tantamount to socialism. Social liberalism, gay marriage for example seems to have brought out the right-authoritarians out in full-scale culture war. Immigrants are the first casualty, as they seek their fantasy ’50s Britain.

Despite extraordinarily difficult political headwinds, the coalition’s doing a good job. Taxes have even been cut, especially on the low-paid. In-work benefits are about the same or more generous, increasing the returns to work, and out of work benefits have been frozen or squeezed. This tax-cut, and benefit rise has been largely responsible for the missed deficit targets. But the effect has been profound. Added to the incentive effects, supply-side reforms, mainly making it easier to fire, and less costly to employ, have seen something of a jobs miracle. Despite a weak economy, millions have found work, and the coalition has mostly achieved this by increasing incentives to the out of work, and by reducing obstacles to jobs being provided. Even the jobs miracle is grotesquely unpopular. Ranty rigties and “libertarians” bemoan the increased in-work benefits bill. The left are having a right old froth about “zero-hours” contracts or the rise in self-under-employment.

But everywhere you look, the coalition’s been shrinking the state’s influence over economic life, and seen a flourishing of private sector economic activity. State headcount, the bean-counters and box-tickers of Gordon Brown’s expensive client state, has been pared back to pre-1997 levels. The debate about the deficit has been comprehensively won – even Labour has abandoned its punk-keynsianism in rhetoric at least.

Ranty twitter libertarians often ask how I can stomach being a Conservative. It’s simple. They do a good job in day-to-day government, and they do shrink the state overall. It is true Conservatives are not libertarians. The clue is in the name. But they are fellow-travellers, at least as far as they want to go, and especially so in matters economic. The Cameroons are also reasonably socially liberal. They do want to get the state out of the bedroom, and pursue a more reasonable set of drug laws. The Tory party has lost its ranty, EU-obsessed authoritarians to UKIP, who, one suspects, mostly hate the EU because it prevents bringing back hanging. And the Tory party looks a whole lot better without them.

Libertarians should offer a vision of a freer, richer, stronger UK, starting with the rich, free and strong UK we have now. We should do so by infiltrating the existing parties and making arguments for policies that work mainly by freeing people from state dependency and control. Citizens’ Basic Income, protections to civil liberties, freedom of expression and association. If there were more libertarians making the arguments rather than stomping off in great huffs like David Davis, or Douglas Carswell, we might get somewhere.

But Libertarians are too selfish, immature and self-centred to compromise. We do have the answers. Libertarianism is right, good and helpful to people. But we are absolutely rubbish at making the arguments to those who matter because we couch the arguments in such absolutist terms. Libertarians need to get their shoulders to the wheel of debate, instead of standing at the sidelines shouting incoherent abuse to people trying to come up with solutions to problems faced by people in the here and now. Otherwise we leave policy-making in the here and now to Gramscian marxists who’ve already completed their long-march through the institutions.

Libertarians should join the Conservative party. Not because the Conservative party fully agrees with us, but because it should.

*if anyone can find the source for, or correct me on this quote, I’d be grateful.

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Government and Mazlow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Life, even after a few years of falling wages, is pretty good in the west. Whatever the idiots of the left tell you, you need to pretty comprehensively screw your life up to be homeless in any developed western economy. Some people fall through the net, but they’re exceptions who’re often on the streets because they reject help. Starvation in the west, is almost always a result of mental illness, not want. This is why shroud waving about ‘the bedroom tax’ has fallen flat. It’s just contrary to what people can see with their own eyes.

So, unlike almost every society preceding it, the west delivers all the physiological needs of food and water to all of its people, with near 100% reliability. Most do a pretty good job of providing affordable healthcare too.

With the bare necessities of life secure, a place to live is fairly high on the list of requirements. And very, very few people have nowhere to live. Some fall through the cracks, and for too many it’s far too expensive to live reasonably near work. We build too few houses, and prices are too high for sure. But that’s a problem soluble within the present system. Unlike many economies on earth, however almost everyone in the west has access to a secure house.

Other elements in ‘security’ are amply provided by western societies. We enjoy secure property rights. Few of us die of violence. There is justice, imperfect to be sure, but there is a reliable dispute resolution process. We can travel freely, and seek to do business worldwide, and assume contracts are honoured. Regulations ensure our homes and workplaces are safe. None of these are perfect, but by with centuries of problem-solving, things get better, in fits and starts.

This is the bread and butter of politics. The steady, patient accumulation of good ideas, and the abandonment of bad ones. Free market, democratic capitalism has delivered material wealth unimaginable to our forebears, and will continue to develop improvements, and hopefully find ways to distribute them better. Regulation, and robust institutions to enforce them, are necessary, in part so people don’t have to re-invent the wheel every time they innovate. What works – from hard hats on building sites to banking capital adequacy is a reasonable function of government. And it’s pretty dull. Much of this is supranational trade regulation, outsourced to bodies like the WTO and EU to enable bigger, and therefore more efficient markets. Too much regulation, of course strangles the golden goose. But that too is tested world wide and locally. Bad ideas like marking-to-market are abandoned, good ideas which seem to work, spread. This is only possible because people are allowed to question our rulers.

From Magna Carta in 1215 (and similar ideas in the Islamic world at about the same time) which put rulers under law, imperfectly, and with many retrograde steps, the idea that Government should obtain their people’s consent gained traction. And because people are good at solving problems, the societies which governed by consent, and which broadened the stake in society, were far more successful than the autocracies with which they competed. We free people have seen off big, bad ideas: The divine right of kings, Bonapartism, religious absolutism, slavery, fascism, communism and we’re having another competition with religious absolutism now, but no-one thinks seriously that Radical Islamists pose any existential threat to western democracies.

We, broadly if not universally, won. And if the Koreans or Japanese have caught up, it is by taking up our good ideas and applying them to their society. They now compete to generate the new ideas which help society improve. As more and more countries join us on the technological frontier – the former soviet Eastern Europe is catching up fast, as is China, and so more and more of humanity’s creative endeavour will be applied to solving problems, creating solutions we can all share.

In politics, it’s tempting for politicians to rubbish others’ ideas and try to sell theirs as revolutionary. But because we’ve defeated all the really, really bad ideas, we’re now arguing about ever smaller and smaller problems. This, in turn makes politicians look small and petty. We’re no longer arguing about how to organise society, we’re arguing about distributing success. This requires managers, not leaders. And so turnouts fall worldwide and people shift from parties of government to single-issue pressure groups. We hanker for the old, simple, black and white questions were WE could broadly persuade ourselves that WE were on the side of Angels, and THEY were the bad guys. And if you grew up with the cold war, in the democratic west, we were the ones outside the wall, asking the others to tear it down. And now, the Green movement is on the side of the planet against big, bad business, which is destroying the planet. Or UKIP blaming everything on the EU and the LIBLABCON Westminster clique.

Feeling part of something, especially AGAINST something self-evidently wicked, is more important in many ways than material and economic security. These are the social, love and esteem layers of Mazlow’s Hierarchies of need. British elections in the 1980s were in part between those who sympathised with the communists, and those who identified with America. Parties were mass movements, and satisfying as a result. In success, politicians lost something to define themselves against, even as they maintain the forms of adversarial debate. When you’re discussing potential nuclear holocaust, or how to defeat fascism, this is fine. But if you’re trying to present £11 a week  off benefits as existential crisis, or a small change in tax-rates as a return to communism (guilty as charged…) you just look ridiculous.

While this was manageable during a long rise in living standards, it rapidly became less so when the great recession hit. Having got used to success, governments spent and spent to fund promises of ever greater services, and ever greater consumption. And eventually the money ran out. Insurgent parties then moved into the void across the world – UKIP, the Tea Party, Front National and others. Some more responsible than others, but each coming with their own comforting ‘Them and Us’ narrative.

Ultimately I think these parties, should they ever be confronted with the realities of Government will either end up looking exactly like the parties they claim to oppose, be absorbed by them, or will implode under the weight of their internal contradictions. The upper levels of the hierarchy of needs are not really deliverable by politicians. All they can do is promise to manage the ever shrinking portion of economies needed to deliver safety, security and possibly health to the people. It used to require the productive efforts of 95% of humanity just to provide food, a task delivered in the west by just 1% now.

People want to be listened to, as an inevitable consequence of having enough to eat and a place to eat it. But everyone wants something different. So we require a new politics, one that enables and facilitates, rather than seeking to impose a one-size fits all approach. Formal government needs to shrink, sharing, as David Cameron used to say in the good times, the proceeds of growth between tax-cuts and better services. This will leave people to seek the social, love and esteem without government interference, and with an ever-shrinking burden of taxation. You want freedom. Free people from want, let them feel secure, then watch our creative talents take man to the stars.

Yes, we (unfairly) despise politicians, because they have solved the major problems of life, and continue to do so. The answer isn’t to return to them-and-us politics, but with smaller questions; Instead we must take more questions out of the politicians’ purview. Their job is largely done, and they can recede, to be the people to whom we outsource the bin collections and sewage regulation. What they do is important. But it is now unglamourous.

One day perhaps we will give no more thought to the Government that delivers health services, organises some redistribution, funds education services and defends the realm than we do to the remarkable supply-chain that delivers our bread. Libertarianism will not come from destroying government, but by building on its successes something vaster and grander, and more satisfying to the people who live in it than any Government or bureaucrat could possibly imagine. Let us not despise democratic government, but reduce it over the next few centuries to the status of the monarchy in the UK now, a useful, decorative relic which doesn’t get in the way much, while the free people get on with delivering what people actually want from each other.

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