Triumph of the Fussbuckets: how liberal conservatism died

Government is directed towards invented fears, keeping us safe in protected boxes where dangerous pleasures aren't allowed and a gentle state coddles us from cradle to grave.

It was with a sense of gloom that I read the 2023 King’s Speech. As always with these occasions there were no surprises but it struck me that, in Britain definitely and to a great extent across the developed world, we are witnessing the slow death of liberalism as a political force. For American readers and those infected with their modern characterisation of ‘liberal’, let me be clear that by liberalism I mean the tradition that began in the 18th century with Hume and Smith, a set of ideas that sees freedom to speak, to exchange, to travel, to assemble and to worship as the essential components, set within a rule of law that protects property as well as these freedoms, for the betterment of the human condition.

The purpose of government, in the liberal world, is to enable and protect those freedoms, to protect people’s life and property, and to facilitate society in catching those who fall on hard times. Liberalism, therefore, is an idea that sees regulation as a barrier to human improvement, that dislikes the fussbucket, worrywart and busybody, and which believes that left to their own devices people will, through the pursuit of their selfish interests, make everyone’s lives better.

The King’s Speech was the antithesis of this worldview. Rather than measures to remove constraints on people’s liberties, we are presented with a collection of pettifogging new rules, unnecessary regulators and new, direct restrictions on personal choice. Other than a slight liberalisation of rules on drilling for oil and gas, the government’s programme only has any ambition in seeking measures to make us less free - controls on who can own a football club, bans on pedal cabs in London, and rules that mean adults will not be allowed to make the choice to use tobacco.

Liberalism has not been electorally popular for a long while but, despite this, its ideas were consistently recognised as the best response to the challenges facing society especially when we consider economics. How anyone can look at the last 250 years of tworld history and fail to recognise that liberal economics was - still is - the most effective means to get economic growth and, through that, the betterment of the human condition. Before liberalism all but a tiny part of humanity lived and died in abject poverty - everywhere. The impact of free trade, free exchange and free speech was plain to see within a few decades of Adam Smith publishing The Wealth of Nations. Even Karl Marx recognised the success of liberal economics although he believed it to be a house of cards. Yet today theMarxists still, despite the contrary evidence, hope that the cards will collapse in a heap of revolution. Worse, we see a new generation of isolationists who reject the central truth of Smith’s work and argue for managed trade, controlled exchange and limited speech.

Since there is little hope of salvation for the Marxists, it is this latter group I want to address. These are those who adopt terms like ‘neoliberalism’ to describe the post-WWII period of more open trade, who reject the idea that international agreements on trade and tariffs benefit all of humanity, and who argue for protectionism for strategic industries (typically farming, energy and heavy manufacturing). Such people are also advocates of a cultural closing as well as an economic closing - our culture is so fragile that it must be preserved by the exclusion of external cultural influences. And, increasingly, that people’s lives and choices must be regulated so as to protect them from themselves.

Parts of this ‘know nothing’ agenda have always featured in the politics of conservatism and the right. Once ‘left liberalism’ was wholly absorbed by progressive socialism (albeit retaining the tag ‘liberal’ over in America), conservative parties became uneasy marriages between mercantilists and free-traders, between licensing and liberty. The experience of fascism - a creed very much founded on perceptions of national weakness and cultural threats - led conservatives after the defeat of Nazism, to lean towards liberal politics. The glory years of post-WWII conservative leadership under Reagan and Thatcher were positioned firmly in the world of liberal, internationalist economics - expanding trade, controlling trade unions and monopoly businesses, denationalising industries and promoting property ownership as the foundation of a free society. Next to this age of hope and ambition, today’s conservatives seem fearful and narrow-minded. Above all, today’s conservatives seem to have forgotten how Ronald Reagan told us the most terrifying words in the language - ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help’.

Conservatism is not about the unnecessary regulation of industry, yet the current government proposes to have a new national regulator for one of Britain’s most successful export industries - football. All because one or two of the businesses within that hugely successful industry have failed. Meanwhile the new fearful conservatism calls for subsidy, protection and intervention in industries like farming and steel making that aren’t viable because of planning and energy policies - setting bad policy in stone and making everything more expensive. All this is the very opposite of Disraeli’s statement of the Conservative Party’s mission - ‘to improve the condition of the people’.

Conservatism is not about fussbucketry, yet the current government proposes to introduce a gradual ban on smoking tobacco. Today, thanks in no small part to the success of electronic cigarettes, there are fewer and fewer smokers. Nobody takes out and lights up a cigarette unaware of the health risks. Yet, almost uniquely among health risks, our government and public health authorities believe when it comes to smoking that it isn’t ‘your body, your choice’ but ‘our body, our NHS’. This fussbucketry is made even worse by a plan to further restrict and control the successful and safe alternative to smoking, electronic cigarettes. These actions do not make life better for ordinary men and women, they restrict their choices and stigmatise their pleasures.

With proposals like bans on airlines charging for ‘extras’ and on pedal cabs in London, we see the government responding to noisy campaigners and lobby groups rather than to what consumers want the government to do. All the ban on extras will do is make air travel more expensive and pedal cabs in London’s West End may rip off tourists but that’s a deal between grown ups that doesn’t require licencing - especially when the licenced cab in London is so obscenely expensive.

There is no good to be had looking elsewhere for a political offer that is genuinely liberal - the offer that drove the most successful period of conservative-led government in the 1980s. Labour remains infected with Corbyn’s unpleasant progressive socialism while its leadership, like the Conservative leadership, believes firmly that the only way to better the condition of the people is by the actions of government. We have a party with the word ‘liberal’ in its name but the days of the Orange Book are long gone, Nick Clegg is working for Facebook, and the Party he left behind is now the mouthpiece for the guilty rich, the epitome of ‘I’m alright Jack’ politics where ordinary men and women must sacrifice their betterment for the sake of the planet and the protection of house prices. Some will, no doubt, point me to other parties, usually with a name beginning with the prefix ‘re-’ but these all seem to be run by noisy grifters and, if anything, are a distillation of the fearful and reactionary conservatism of culture wars and everything being ‘woke’.

Liberalism made us rich but politics is rejecting its principles - free trade, free exchange, free speech - in favour of a closed, narrow, regulated world where people are told to be fearful of business, fearful of foreigners, fearful of pleasure, and fearful of neighbours. All of government is directed towards these fears. Not as heroes freeing people by slaying these scary monsters but rather as watchmen and guards keeping us safe in protected boxes where dangerous pleasures aren't allowed and a gentle state coddles us from cradle to grave.

I want to vote for a party that has the values of British conservatism. That recognises the significance of great institutions like the Commonwealth and the monarchy. And which remains committed to the mission of making lives better for ordinary men and women. To do this last thing we need the money for better infrastructure, to make it possible for them to own more than a handful of dirt, and to deliver health, education and security. For us to have these things and for us to protect these institutions, we need to conserve the things that make this possible - free trade, free exchange and free speech. We don’t need new rules and new regulations designed as responses to imaginary fears and crazed moral panics, we need an open and free society where people don’t need permission to trade, where the right to build on land you own isn’t removed by pettifogging councillors and where people can choose the pleasures they enjoy without grim-faced nannying fussbuckets trying to stop them.

I guess I won’t get this option.