I noted this in the Guardian this morning. It reflects one of my opinions on the European election result:
Intellectually, [Conservatism] certainly seems barely alive. A sense of entropy hangs over the rightwing thinktanks that used to show conservative governments how to change society. These institutions have grown old together: the American Enterprise Institute was founded in 1938, the Institute of Economic Affairs in 1955, the Heritage Foundation in 1973, the Centre for Policy Studies in 1974, the Adam Smith Institute in 1977. Despite all the setbacks for their free-market project — the financial crisis, the diminishing returns of capitalism for most people, the collapse of such once-lauded examples of outsourcing and deregulation as Enron and Carillion, the failures of privatised services ranging from trains to probation — the thinktanks' answer to every problem has remained essentially unchanged: lower taxes, less regulation, smaller government.
I would have liked to have written that paragraph before the Guardian got to it, but the importance is the point it makes. Let's leave aside the populist right for a moment: what passes for policy there is too often anyone's guess, and the Brexit Party has made a virtue of having none. The mainstream Right is the issue here. And it is bereft of ideas.
Privatisation is failing. It does not need a policy of renationalisation to put it to death. Those services once privatised will return to state control over time by a process of re-assimilation if the right regulation is applied because properly regulated natural monopolies naturally belong under state control.
Out-sourcing is dead. No one can now believe otherwise.
Low tax is discredited, along with tax havens. People want the services states supply and understand that tax is the consequence (and yes, that comment is wholly MMT consistent).
And as for low regulation? Was there ever an appetite for it? Really?
The collapse of the Conservatives last week was, of course in no small part due to May and Brexit. But there was more to it than that. The Tories collapsed because they have nothing left to offer. They have no ideas to legislate. There is no economic policy that drives them any more. Austerity, which was always a belief system, is over. And morally they are bankrupt. The Windrush debacle and Universal Credit have proved that.
The day of the Right has gone. Long live the Green New Deal. Right now it is the only narrative the Left have. Thankfully it's quite a good one, so long as you realise it requires international cooperation, which is the antithesis of Brexit. The paradigm is shifting, I suggest.
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[…] I am being optimistic is something for time to tell. But I cannot see a Tory recovery when the Tory ethos is dead. And right now those who have fled Labour have done so for a reason, or rather, reasons. They want […]
Surely the reason for the Tories collapse is not so much that they have nothing left to offer but they have not delivered what they promised. For example, from the apparent ‘fall’ in unemployment that has not delivered the higher wages promised which are still below pre-financial crises levels, the cuts to corporation tax that have not delivered the promised increase in investment even though the tax is paid on profits after any investment is made [so a falsehood anyway] and the public expenditure cuts which have not delivered a leaner and fitter country but the disintegration of the social fabric with increased poverty, crime and the loss or decline of public service provision.
I think those would all be worth adding in
It’s not just Brexit that they have failed to deliver…
Brexit was impossible to deliver without a overwhelming majority in Parliament to test the negotiation metal of the EU. Poor Theresa gave it her best shot but it was a slow car crash and a complete waste of everyone’s time
Taking a pragmatic overview of the current ‘state of affairs’ I’d say we in the UK are still a very long way from being able to celebrate the death of this failed Neo-liberal ideology and the birth of the GND as a national policy. The immediate future will see the Tories electing a neo-Thatcherite or at least someone who will ‘accommodate’ the Brexit result, propped up by their pals in most of the MSM. Even if a Labour government were to be elected it certainly won’t have the majority needed to implement a radical change in macro-economic policy. I sense the Dems may be better placed in the US. In the meantime ….. who knows?
I don’t disagree with you
I fully admit I am being an optimist
But I see hope
I’m impressed by your optimism Richard but I can’t see the neoliberals giving up just because the Tory party is floundering. Only last week The Economist front page and lead articles extolled “the great jobs boom” brought about by labour market reform, reduced trade union power and collective bargaining, and reduced welfare benefits. In the same issue they also say that the Government should be no more concerned with maintaining a national steel industry than with maintaining a celebrity-run chain of Italian restaurants because there is a perfectly good global market in steel.
Politics might be in turmoil but Thatcherism is alive and well. Although its voters might not understand it, Farage’s new vehicle will pursue Thatcherism on steroids and push the Tories further to the right. The Libdems are still firmly neoliberal and in all honesty, so are the majority of the voters – I am an almost lone voice amongst the people I talk to when I try to explain why austerity is wrong, and the concepts of MMT and GND. I always hate to live up to my pseudonym but I can’t see that we’re heading in anything like the right direction.
Keep talking
It’s the only way to build the new narrative
I also liked this paragraph.
“[D]uring the 90s, instead of pondering Thatcherism’s unintended consequences, many British conservatives, like their American counterparts, had switched their attention to a scapegoat. The European Union, like Clinton, was pro-business, hardly a fundamental threat to free-market conservatism, and the European single market had been partly Thatcher’s creation. But like the Clinton presidency, the EU was a rival power centre, and also provocative to conservatives in other ways: it saw politics as about compromise rather than conviction, and was relatively liberal in its social and cultural values. As a new enemy for conservatives, it proved irresistible.”
US Republicans and the UK Tories both needed enemies. In one case, the enemy was internal, as it were, and in the other external. The point of course is that conservatism seems to need enemies, even if they are completely concocted, as in the case of Bill Clinton — for he was effectively not much different from them.
All I can say is that it isn’t over yet.
Neo-lib Toryism has NEVER needed any intellectual basis to exist since I have been aware of it. Its just one value loaded statement after the other that appeals to certain kind of person.
Tories – the cannibalistic zombies that they are – are very hard to eradicate. Forgive me but I will wait until a GE wipe out before I allow myself to think what you are thinking.
The Tories (those in the main party and the new BREXIT arm) will still point the finger at other sources of blame and too many will fall for it.
It’s feet firmly planted on the ground time for me as the Left/progressives might still not get its act together and miss open goal.
This from the Guardian is a very good read indeed;
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/28/a-zombie-party-the-deepening-crisis-of-conservatism
I agree