Julian Brazier: Meet a hidden driver of a bigger state, higher taxes and more regulation. The libertarian movement.

Sir Julian Brazier is a former Defence Minister, and was MP for Canterbury from 1987-2017.

Julian Brazier: Meet a hidden driver of a bigger state, higher taxes and more regulation. The libertarian movement. Screen-Shot-2017-07-17-at-19.50.37-298x300

Julian Brazier: Meet a hidden driver of a bigger state, higher taxes and more regulation. The libertarian movement. Screen-Shot-2017-07-17-at-19.50.37-298x300

In the background to the unhappy struggles in the Conservative Party today is a philosophical clash in which the voices of libertarians are loudest. While (mostly) still supporting the man, their accusation is that the Johnson government has abandoned liberty.

These voices call for much that traditional “small c” conservatives should agree with – a smaller state, lower taxes, less regulation – but their message carries at its heart a deeply unhelpful strand which would be bad for the country, and calamitous for the Party’s prospects of staying in power.

Our most important domestic challenge today is reining back public expenditure so we can lower taxes on struggling families. Government spending is the highest proportion of GDP since the aftermath of the Second World War.

Where I part company from my libertarian friends is that I believe it is time we acknowledged that one of the hidden drivers of runaway public spending is libertarianism itself and its left-wing cousin, the human rights lobby. Both stress freedom and gloss over the responsibilities and consequences which should come with it.

John Stuart Mill formulated the paradox of hedonism: “those only are happy … who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness.”

Similarly, the paradox of liberty is that we can only attain true freedom and a smaller state, if we focus not on selfish individualism but instead on nurturing and rebuilding those natural structures and attitudes which reduce the need for the services of the state. This requires active citizens, robust families, stronger communities and a sense of nationhood. These were themes of the late, great, Sir Roger Scruton.

One of his favourite examples were the American laws which allowed people, in most places, to build freely where they wanted, but then required the American taxpayer to expend huge sums taking roads and power to them. This has created a nightmare of ever-expanding suburbs with social black holes in town centres – and heavy government spending.

.https://www.conservativehome.com/platform/2022/01/julian-brazier-meet-a-hidden-driver-of-a-bigger-state-higher-taxes-and-more-regulation-the-libertarian-movement.html

Julian Brazier: Meet a hidden driver of a bigger state, higher taxes and more regulation. The libertarian movement.

Julian Brazier: Meet a hidden driver of a bigger state, higher taxes and more regulation. The libertarian movement.

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