‘Tax is theft': it's time the Tories remembered that eternal truth
Suppose I were to force my way into your home and help myself to half your possessions. I hope everyone can see that my behaviour would be wrong.
Does it become right when I get to call myself 'the government', and to label my confiscation 'tax'? Even in a democracy, I surely need a good reason to violate the rules of morality by which everyone else is expected to live.
That, in a nutshell, is the case for libertarianism. Supporters of limited government want the state to be bound, to the greatest possible extent, by the same norms as the rest of us. Government intervention should be a last rather than a first resort. In what has become the global libertarian motto: 'Don't hurt people, don't take their stuff.'
Critics on both sides scoff at the idea that there is a moral basis to libertarianism. Leftists think it is a cover for greed and selfishness. Rightists, or at least Trumpians and National Conservatives, dismiss it as the creed of rootless cosmopolitans. But all it really is is the application to official bodies of the ethical precepts we learn at nursery school. Treat other people considerately, don't take things that aren't yours, tell the truth, try not to get into fights.
There was a time when mothers would tell their children to 'be civil': an apt word, recalling that decency, politeness and respect are attributes of citizenship, conditions for a happy and harmonious society.
Those mums were channelling David Hume, who wrote of 'the three fundamental laws of nature, that of the stability of possession, of its transference by consent, and of the performance of promises'.
Hume in turn was drawing on centuries of classical, Biblical, Islamic and Eastern philosophy. In all these traditions, alongside the Golden Rule, he found its less ambitious but more feasible twin, the Silver Rule.
The Golden Rule tells us to treat others as we would like to be treated. The trouble is that, for most of us, this is rarely achievable. I might walk past a beautiful house and wish it were mine, but that doesn't make me post my own keys through its letterbox.
For those of us who are not saints, the Silver Rule, being negative in its conception, has the advantage of practicability. Confucius phrased it as 'Do not impose on others what you yourself do not want'. Quite. Don't hurt people, don't take their stuff.
There is a Talmudic story of an impatient gentile who asks a rabbi to teach him the entirety of the Torah while standing on one leg. The rabbi sends him away crossly, so the gentile makes the same demand of another rabbi, who happens to be the famously wise Hillel. Hillel tells him: 'That which is hateful to you, do not do unto your fellow. That is the whole Torah; the rest is commentary.'
If you feel I am labouring the point, it is because I sense the tide running against us. The world is in a bossy, censorious, authoritarian mood, and has been since the lockdowns. The individualist philosophy that stretches back through Hume via John Locke to St Paul and Lao Tzu is losing ground, despite its monumental contributions to peace and prosperity.
The Great Realignment, predicted two decades ago by Dr Steve Davies of the Institute of Economic Affairs, has happened. The old divide, which pitted classical liberals and capitalists against interventionists and socialists, has been replaced by a new one, one that divides patriots from globalists or (from the opposite perspective) bigots from believers in universal rights.
'There is no more Left and Right,' said Marine Le Pen at the last French presidential election. 'The real cleavage is between patriots and globalists.'
Her opponent, Emmanuel Macron, did not dispute her framing: 'The new political split is between those who are afraid of globalisation and those who see globalisation as an opportunity.'
This is uncomfortable for those of us who support national independence and cultural traditionalism as well as free contract and personal autonomy, a combination that did not seem strange to Margaret Thatcher or to Enoch Powell or, come to that, to Edmund Burke, the grandfather of Anglophone conservatism.
For a long time, our opponents came overwhelmingly from the Left. They believed that patriotism was a form of false consciousness, a way to distract oppressed groups. Proletarians in different countries supposedly had more in common with each other than with the capitalists who happened to share their nationalities. Workers of the world should unite.
Now, though, the critics tend to be professed anti-socialists, often idealistic and patriotic young men, convinced that classical liberalism places international interests over local loyalties, and that its exponents are soulless corporatists who feel at home only in Brussels or Davos.
'You know what a globalist is, right?' Donald Trump asked a rally in 2018. 'You know what a globalist is? A globalist is a person that wants the globe to do well, frankly, not caring about our country so much.'
I spend a lot of time with classical liberals, and I have honestly never come across anyone who matches that caricature. We believe in free trade and open competition, not because we have elevated it into a dogma that stands above the national interest, but because it is the national interest. Countries with limited governments do better than countries with bloated governments. They are less corrupt, wealthier, happier and usually more equal. That our creed enriches the globe too is a happy bonus.
I can't think of a better way to define our national interest than the net interest of the people in our nation. And that is best advanced if our government is circumscribed and limited. Every intervention that politicians make – every regulation, every tariff, every subsidy – privileges a particular group, usually one with political connections, over the general population. I'd call that the opposite of the national interest.
'One of the criticisms that I get from the Right is that I am insufficiently committed to the capital-M Market,' says J D Vance, arguing that markets should be a tool, not an objective in themselves.
But who are these people who elevate the capital-M Market? Who are these demented ideologues who stalk Vance's imagination? You won't find them among the think-tankers of Tufton Street, who support markets precisely because they see them as a tool, a means to the end of greater national prosperity.
The real ideologues are those who believe that governments, so inept at building cars, running airlines or installing telephones, suddenly become wise and disinterested when it comes to deciding which companies to subsidise or to shield from competition.
Britain, of all countries, should understand that competition and free trade are a supreme expression of patriotism. It was these ideas that elevated us above the run of nations, turning us into the wealthiest country on Earth – a position we held until others copied our formula, thereby enriching themselves and incidentally enriching us, since prosperous neighbours are customers before they are competitors.
Is the electorate, mired in post-lockdown stagnation, ready to hear such a message? Will voters prefer candidates who tell the truth about our public finances, and who argue for cuts, over those who claim that we can keep spending as long as we are compassionate enough?
Not yet, perhaps. Hence Reform UK's shift away from classical liberalism and towards the nationalisation of selected industries and the maintenance of generous benefits.
Yet we can see the storm gathering overhead. When the money runs out, so do people's illusions. There may yet be a reward for a grown-up party, a party prepared to stand apart from the high-spending, welfarist consensus. Even if that position does not attract 50 per cent support plus one, it will attract a lot more than 18 per cent support, which is where the Conservatives are currently polling.
In any case, it is the right thing to do – right both economically and morally. Perhaps, in time, it will come to be right politically, too.
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