Tuesday, 31 December 2024

Thoughts on the “Climate and Nature Bill”

 


Earlier this week, I was given a link to a private members’ bill, originally introduced by Alex Sobel MP (Labour Co-op, Leeds Central and Headingley), called the “Climate and Nature Bill.” This had its first reading in Parliament, as far as I can make out, on March 21st, 2024.

Here is the link: [[1]]. This version is, presumably, the one which had the first reading.

Sobel has a history of environmental extremism, see his Wikipedia entry: [[2]]. He retained his seat on July 4th: [[3]].

Some thoughts on the content of the bill:

1)     1(2)(a). It sets a “climate target” apparently based on the Paris agreement, but presumably including subsequent developments too.

2)     1(2)(b). It sets a “nature target” that demands that the UK “halts and reverses its overall contribution to the degradation and loss of nature in the United Kingdom and overseas.” Yet no evidence is provided of any such “contribution” to any “degradation and loss.” Google “nature degradation and loss proofs” and you come up with: Friends of the Earth, a UN report of 6 May 2019, Green Finance Institute and other similarly biased organizations.

And this from an official government blog: [[4]]. Which includes “the commitment by nations to protect 30% of their land and seas for nature, by 2030.” When did we ever vote for that?

3)     1(2)(b)(ii). The “Leaders’ Pledge for Nature” referred to here is outlined by the WWF, in a very activist way, here: [[5]]. 8(1) later says that it is “the agreement of the United Nations Summit on Biodiversity on 28 September 2020.”

4)     I would draw your attention to the list of responsibilities in (2)(3):

a)     Most of all, point (d): “Ensuring the end of the exploration, export and import of fossil fuels by the United Kingdom as rapidly as possible.”

b)     Secondly, point (h)(i), demanding “avoidance,” “limiting,” “restoring” or “offsetting” of “adverse impacts in the United Kingdom and overseas on ecosystems and human health” of “United Kingdom-generated production and consumption of goods and services” and “all related trade, transport and financing.”

This looks to me like an explicit demand, not only to end the use of all fossil fuels, but also to end all economic freedom in the UK. That such a demand could ever become law without at the very least a referendum on the issues is a sad comment on the current state of UK politics.

5)     3(1). Requires “an expert independent body” to establish “a Climate and Nature Assembly… comprising a representative sample of the United Kingdom population.” This looks like an attempt to repeat the saga of the biased “UK Climate Assembly,” about which I wrote here: [[6]].

6)     3(4). The involvement of the CCC does not bode well for the impartiality of such a body. Nor, much, does the involvement of JNCC: [[7]].

7)     (7). Financial Provisions. Hmmm. I wonder why this section is in italics?

8)     Final page. “Supporters” of the bill include Caroline Lucas (Green), Ed Davey (Lib Dem leader), Colum Eastwood (SDLP), Brendan O’Hara (SNP), Peter Bottomley (Tory, no longer in parliament), Stephen Farry (Alliance, no longer in parliament). This nonsense goes all the way through 7 establishment parties.

The bill is due its second reading on January 24th, 2025 [[8]]. Its sponsor is now Roz Savage (Lib Dem, South Cotswolds).

This would seem like an opportunity for Reform UK to make some waves. For example, by inquiring:

1)     Why the UN is being allowed to control UK policies.

2)     Why a private members’ bill is being used to introduce “by the back door” a policy as radical as ending the use of fossil fuels.

3)     Where the specific evidence is of “degradation” that must be “reduced.”

4)     How this policy could possibly be in the interests of the people of the UK in the current economic situation. Or, indeed, at any other time.

Thursday, 26 December 2024

Nolan Principles, busybody fines, and cancelling elections

 


In the last week or so, three tidbits of information have passed across my desk. Each is interesting in itself. But put together, they tell a story. And even, maybe, suggest a small but key part of a strategy towards getting rid of the broken political system we are currently forced to live under, and replacing it by something that can work for ordinary people.

The Nolan Principles

First, I was reminded (hat tip to Dr John Campbell) of the existence and importance of the Nolan Principles. In 1995, a senior UK judge named Michael Nolan, chair of the newly formed Committee on Standards in Public Life, issued, in response to a request from then prime minister John Major, a report entitled “The Seven Principles of Public Life.”

The full 1995 report can be downloaded from here: [[1]]. The original statement of the principles is on page 14 of that report. A brief statement of the principles can be found here: [[2]]. But the wording, having evolved over the intervening almost 30 years, is significantly different from that in the original report. This wording appears to have been introduced in 2014, and since it matches a 2022 version in the Commons Library [[3]], I shall regard the statement at [2] as being the current master.

The preamble says that the principles: “apply to anyone who works as a public office-holder. This includes all those who are elected or appointed to public office, nationally and locally, and all people appointed to work in the Civil Service, local government, the police, courts and probation services, non-departmental public bodies (NDPBs, aka quangos), and in the health, education, social and care services.” It goes on: “All public office-holders are both servants of the public and stewards of public resources. The principles also apply to all those in other sectors delivering public services.”

That covers, in my estimation, pretty much anyone whose job is paid for with taxpayers’ money, and who has any influence at all on government policies or on their implementation or enforcement. We, the people in the UK, should therefore be entitled to expect that everyone in government, including politicians at all levels, civil servants in all government departments, those in NDPBs, police, court staff, and all staff in all the major government service providers and their contractors, will keep strictly to, and always bear in mind, these principles in everything they do in their jobs.

Let us now have a look at what each of the principles says.

Selflessness

1)     “Holders of public office should act solely in terms of the public interest.”

There is a question here: exactly what does “the public interest” mean in the context of democratic government? The usual meaning is “the benefit or well-being of the public.” Here, “the public” is considered both as an aggregate, and as a group of individuals, each of whom must receive benefit or well-being. So, I interpret this principle as requiring holders of public office to act for the benefit of each and every member of the public who pay their wages; not of any particular set of interests, including their own and those of their friends.

And how well do they keep to it? An obvious example of one that didn’t keep to it is former Tory MP Owen Paterson, disgraced for his advocacy for companies to which he himself was a consultant, that led to multi-million-pound government contracts for those companies.

But I see two wider questions as well. One, if a political policy goes against the public interest, or its costs to the public are greater than the benefits to that same public, are not office holders who promote or support that policy in grave danger, at least, of breaking this principle? And two, are not disguising, understating or suppressing the costs of a policy, or overstating its benefits, or failing to do a proper cost-benefit analysis from the point of view of the people affected by it, themselves also violations of the principle? Those who do these things are certainly not behaving as “both servants of the public and stewards of public resources.”

Integrity

2)     “Holders of public office must avoid placing themselves under any obligation to people or organisations that might try inappropriately to influence them in their work. They should not act or take decisions in order to gain financial or other material benefits for themselves, their family, or their friends. They must declare and resolve any interests and relationships.”

Owen Paterson, very obviously, broke this principle too. But there is a wider question to be asked, as well. Over recent decades, politicians have repeatedly taken on obligations to, or ideas from, external parties – most notably, the EU, the UN, the World Economic Forum, and multi-national corporations, such as Big Pharma – that result in policies being imposed on people in the UK, that go against our interests. Such policies include all those that have been imposed on us through EU directives, or through agreements with the UN, including its Sustainable Development Goals, and particularly through its World Health Organization. Today, these policies still include, at least, “net zero,” the extremist approach to air pollution called “clean air,” and the WHO’s “vision zero” road safety scheme.

To make commitments to external parties to impose such policies goes against any idea of democracy, or government of the people by the people. So, are those that have promoted those commitments, and supported those policies, not also violating the integrity principle?

Objectivity

3)     “Holders of public office must act and take decisions impartially, fairly and on merit, using the best evidence and without discrimination or bias.”

Environmental policies, in particular, are set on the basis of political commitments made, without any explicit consent from the people, to external players like the UN and its WHO, not on facts or evidence. And they are set without any regard to their costs, or to the fact that their benefits to the people are highly dubious, if indeed there are any at all. Those that set these policies are clearly violating the Nolan objectivity principle.

But there’s more. In recent decades, successive governments have more and more picked on scapegoats to be punished, without any impartiality or consideration of merits. For example, small businesses were closed down during COVID, while many larger companies and government offices could continue to operate. And I myself have suffered the destruction of my career as a software consultant through a bad tax law called IR35, supported and strengthened by Labour and Tories alike.

Meanwhile, car drivers have been particularly singled out as scapegoats for heavy taxes and fines, with drivers of some new luxury and performance cars about to be hit for more than £5,000 yearly in “vehicle excise duty” from April 2025. And the latest victims of Labour’s schemes of plunder are family businesses, and most of all, farmers.

Accountability

4)     “Holders of public office are accountable to the public for their decisions and actions and must submit themselves to the scrutiny necessary to ensure this.”

Accountability is another word, whose meaning is not as clear as it ought to be. If A is accountable to B, does this mean that B has a legal right to claim recompense from A if A’s actions cause damage to B? If government is A, that certainly isn’t how things work today! Lack of accountability for the “sovereign” is built in, at a fundamental level, to the Westphalian nation state system, under which we are forced to live today.

But the requirement for “scrutiny” suggests at least that the decisions of office holders should be routinely audited, by independent and unbiased parties, for compliance with this and all the other Principles – selflessness, integrity, objectivity, openness, honesty, leadership. And those decisions that fail the test on any of these grounds should not be implemented.

Does such an auditing process happen today? Not a chance.

Openness

5)     “Holders of public office should act and take decisions in an open and transparent manner. Information should not be withheld from the public unless there are clear and lawful reasons for so doing.”

The recent machinations of both Tory and Labour governments are, surely, far from open and transparent. How about the Tories’ 2020 ruse that exempted projects labelled “strategic”, including net zero, from any requirement for cost-benefit analysis? Or Labour’s recent breaking of their manifesto commitment not to raise National Insurance rates?

As for information being withheld… There is an entire industry, both within government and nominally private, whose mission is to prevent truths inconvenient to the establishment narratives from reaching the general public en masse. One example of such a truth is the huge increase in excess deaths since the roll-out of COVID vaccines. Another is that the science behind the climate change narrative, and thus behind net zero, is fundamentally flawed.

Honesty

6)     “Holders of public office should be truthful.”

That politicians routinely lie, is today a truism. Tony Blair’s lies about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction have even given rise to a popular anagram of his name!

But in my view, honesty needs far more than mere truthfulness. It requires also candidness – that is, telling the whole of the relevant truth. It requires straightforwardness – not attempting to mislead, conceal, confuse or obfuscate. And it requires sincerity – that is, the absence of pretence, deceit or hypocrisy.

Do politicians and other office holders today behave with honesty in all its aspects? Don’t make me laugh.

Leadership

7)     “Holders of public office should exhibit these principles in their own behaviour and treat others with respect. They should actively promote and robustly support the principles and challenge poor behaviour wherever it occurs.”

While this is a fine sounding statement, I don’t think it goes nearly far enough. Holders of public office ought always to reflect their stated principles in their own behaviours. They must always practise what they preach. And any kind of hypocrisy is totally unacceptable.

Thus, for example, those that promote, support, make or enforce “net zero” or policies that flow from it, must themselves be seen to live a net zero lifestyle. There must be no flying to (or back from) climate conferences (most of all in private jets), or arriving by helicopter to give speeches on reducing CO2 emissions. Those that want to force others to stop driving cars, or flying in planes, or eating meat, must themselves give up those very conveniences and pleasures. Those, that want to phase out the use of fossil fuels, should themselves stop using fossil fuels, and products made using them, altogether. Yet we’ve never seen Boris Johnson, or Alok Sharma, or Charlie Chump, or Ed Miliband or Keir Starmer, actually wearing the hair shirts they want to force on to others.

Busybody fines

Second, my attention was drawn to two articles in the Guardian. One recent [[4]], the other from the summer of 2023: [[5]]. It seems that some local councils are taking advantage of “public spaces protection orders,” that allow them to create completely arbitrary “busybody offences,” and then fine people for them, to the tune of up to £500. Loitering, falling asleep in public, feeding birds, idling car engines for more than two minutes, and climbing trees are examples of such “offences.”

These arbitrary, capricious fines are made worse by an approach that pays private enforcers on a per-fine basis. And the number of fines has been climbing fast, almost doubling since 2019. More than three-quarters of these fines have been imposed by less than 40 councils.

This is typical of how government in the UK today, at all levels, treats the people it is supposed to be serving. These behaviours are no more than a combination of bullying and legalized plunder. They surely violate selflessness, objectivity and accountability among the Nolan principles, at least. And honesty, too. Moreover, giving enforcers incentives to issue as many fines as possible violates the integrity principle, too. Not to mention violating the leadership principle as well, by failing to treat ordinary people with the respect we deserve.

Local elections

On top of this, there has been talk recently of some county council elections, scheduled for May 1st next year, being postponed for up to a year, or even cancelled altogether.

The ostensible excuse for this seems to be that Labour are carrying on with the Tory government’s schemes of “devolution” and “levelling up.” Now, this is rather curious. Should not among the very first actions of a new government coming into power be to review all projects hanging over from their predecessors, determine whether or not they are working for the people, and scrap or modify them if they are not working? After all, Labour only got power back in July because very many people rejected the Tories. Why, then, have they not already begun a programme of rolling back the worst of the Tory policies?

What is happening in Surrey

I found a description of what seems to have been going on with regard to my local county council, Surrey, here: [[6]]. This appears to be a deal that is being done between national government and the county council, without any public debate, or any consultation with, or involvement of, the people of Surrey. This certainly violates Nolan’s openness principle.

There are all kinds of bad things in there, that Tory-controlled Surrey County Council is already doing or planning to do to us. Such as “active travel schemes, particularly in a rural setting.” “Innovative local proposals to deliver action on climate change and the UK’s net zero targets.” And a quarter of a million pounds of our money for “Local Nature Recovery Strategy.” But climate change “action” goes directly against the interests of the people, by making energy more expensive and its supply less reliable, and so impoverishing us all. And all for no benefit to us, since the claimed “climate crisis” is a total fabrication. Further, it is the people of the area whom a local government is supposed to be benefiting, not something called “nature!”

The document doesn’t mention road safety, but the “vision zero” scheme they are now pushing on us harder and harder (I have seen the “Surrey Roadsafe” patrols twice in the last week, both within a few hundred yards of my home) seems not unlike the “busybody fines” of corrupt local councils. Far from enhancing road safety, the agenda seems to be to give police excuses to enforce ever more harshly (and expensively) on to drivers arbitrary speed limits, that weren’t there even a few years ago.

Here in Godalming and Ash constituency, one of the furthest parts of Surrey from London (and where I also happen to be Reform UK’s interim branch campaigns co-ordinator), local governments ought not to be forcing down our throats policies that we don’t want, and that are not appropriate to our area. Our area is predominantly rural, with the largest towns being around 25,000 people. And what little public transport there is outside the main valleys, is woeful. Many people here cannot live their lives to the full without their cars. Yet the county council are actively using pretexts pushed by the UN and its WHO to harass and impoverish people who are merely trying to go about their daily lives.

This, very clearly, violates the Nolan selflessness principle of acting always in the public interest. Taking on policies being pushed by the UN violates the integrity principle, too. And while “scrutiny” is mentioned in the document, it looks like the kind of top-down scrutiny that will only lead to the bad policies being pushed on to us ever harder and harder. This, too, violates the principle of being honest and truthful. As to leadership, Surrey County Council’s headquarters outside Reigate is very inconvenient to access from distance by any means of transport except car, as this page attests: [[7]]. So much for practising what they preach!

Cancelling elections?

And then, there was this story: “Some local elections may be axed.” [[8]]. The following shows that Labour are using “devolution” as their excuse: [[9]]. This is most interesting in the context of the devolution framework agreement at [6], from last March. In which, clause 43 explicitly says: “Surrey County Council elections will continue to take place on the same cycle, with the next scheduled elections due in May 2025. Subsequent elections will continue to take place every four years thereafter.”

So, it looks as if even the Tories had no intention – or, at least, no stated intention – of cancelling or postponing these elections. This suggests that Labour are, at the very least, failing the Nolan openness and objectivity tests. And it doesn’t take much cynicism to divine that they are failing the selflessness test, too.

We will have to wait and see what happens over the county council elections in general, and in Surrey in particular. But our enemies seem rapidly to be becoming more and more mentally deranged. I am no believer in a god or gods, but I echo Sophocles and other sages of the past: “Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.”

Could we “weaponize” the Nolan Principles as a trigger for a moral revolution?

Now, to strategy. I have for many years taken the view that the Westphalian nation state, the failed political system, designed in the 16th century, that we still live under today, has passed its last-use-by date. Indeed, it had already well passed its sell-by date before the failure of the French Revolution.

I also take the view that, in order to create a political revolution to get rid of the state, and to replace it by something that works for ordinary people, we will need first for very many people to undergo a moral revolution. That moral revolution, if I sense it right, will give ordinary people a far clearer feel for what is right versus what is wrong, as opposed to the current system’s focus on what is deemed by those in power to be legal or illegal.

Now, the Nolan Principles, while highly imperfect and not (in my opinion) nearly strong enough, are rooted in the idea that the behaviour of those in positions of political power must always be right rather than wrong, irrespective of its legality or otherwise. I therefore ask this question. Could it be feasible for those of us, who seek to kick-start the moral revolution that is a necessary precursor of the political revolution we need to restore our rights and freedoms in the UK and other countries of the Anglosphere, to take the Nolan Principles, and turn them into a weapon for moral change for the better?

Despite their shortcomings, the principles have several advantages over a newly crafted system. First, they have been around for very nearly 30 years. Second, if Wikipedia [[10]] can be trusted on the issue, they have “proved influential and are enshrined in codes of conduct across the UK public sector, from schools and government departments to hospitals.” They have been “incorporated into a variety of government-related codes including the Ministerial Code, the Civil Service Code, the Civil Service Management Code, and the House of Lords Code of Conduct.” And “Many local authorities, charities and educational and healthcare bodies adhere to the principles.”

This would suggest, to me at least, that, if these principles have been included in what are in effect contracts signed by government employees and suppliers, there could be a possibility of uncovering particularly egregious examples, such as Boris Johnson’s conduct over Partygate, as having been breaches of contract. With the public sanctions and penalties that would entail. It could even lead to a set of full-scale audits, that would in time push all the dishonest dross out of government positions, and penalize them as they deserve.

How the Nolan principles might in practice be picked up, dusted off and set to work, is of course a question up for debate. The Reform UK party might possibly adopt and publicize them. Other groups, who are opposed to the way in which all the establishment political parties have treated the people of the UK in recent decades, might seek to do the same. It will probably take many disparate groups, not necessarily formally associated, but working together on issues, such as this, on which they agree.

Myself, I would support some further extensions to the principles as currently stated. I would clarify the meaning of “the public interest.” I would like to see more added about the issue of cost-benefit analysis, from the point of view of the people, for government projects. The integrity principle should specifically identify organizations like the EU, UN, WEF and multi-nationals as being within its scope. Routine and random audits should be established to verify compliance with the principles by all those subject to them; and the reports should be made available to the general public. The requirement for truthfulness should be supplemented by requirements for candour, straightforwardness and sincerity. And hypocrisy, of any kind, should be called out for what it is, and the perpetrators shamed.

Thus, perhaps, can we set into motion a general perception among the people, that right behaviours versus wrong is a far more important touchstone than legal versus illegal. And that a whole lot of what successive governments, at all levels, have been and are doing to us, is morally wrong. In particular, I hope that we can bring about a strong reaction against all those in and associated with government, that have lied to us, misled us, deceived us, concealed or obfuscated the truth, or failed to practise what they preach.

That is all I have to say today.


Sunday, 1 December 2024

Thoughts on Ben Habib’s Reform UK resignation video

 

(Neil Lock, Reform UK Godalming and Ash Interim Campaigns, 1 December 2024)

(Neil’s Note: This was written as an internal document for the local Reform UK branch. Of which, as the by-line above shows, I have been elected interim campaigns co-ordinator – not to mention secretary as well! But I feel that the need to understand and to critique why Ben Habib chose to leave Reform UK goes way beyond the faithful of one party).

Here is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP-jcJzGYC0

0:39: “Yes, he [Boris Johnson] committed us to the net zero target.” (As part of the Brexit agreement). This statement appears to be correct:

https://eciu.net/insights/2021/brexit-implications-for-energy-and-climate-change

That was the first I’d heard of this, and I am usually fairly well up in such matters. This was a typically dastardly deed by Johnson.

0:49: “He also committed us to staying in the European Convention of Human Rights.” This also appears to be correct.

The “Contract with You” says nothing about abrogating or re-negotiating any Brexit agreements. Perhaps Nigel’s approach has been pragmatic – first build public support for getting rid of nett zero, the ECHR and everything that goes with them, then highlight the issues in the next general election campaign and build support for abrogating or re-negotiating the treaty.

1:20: “Nigel says that Brexit was done, it’s just that we didn’t take advantage of it.” I haven’t found any hard evidence for this assertion. In May 2023, Nigel did say “Brexit has failed,” which would tend to suggest that Ben’s statement is out of date, at least.

2:00: “Reform UK Limited is a limited company… It has 15 shares, 9 of which are owned by Nigel.” As I recall, those of us who attended the party conference back in September voted to end that structure, and have the party owned by its members. Am I dreaming?

3:33: Richard Tice told Ben Habib that “there would be no deals done with the Tories.” Well, Lee Anderson was one, but the word “the” suggests to me that Richard was rejecting, not deals with individual Tory MPs, but deals with the Tory party as a whole. And rightly so.

5:13: “I realized that it [the party constitution] was a document I had looked at a year and a half before, and rejected.” It seemed pretty decent to me. I wonder if Ben has published his specific criticisms?

5:57: “Well, here we are at the end of November, and actually that conversion [to a company limited by guarantee] hasn’t taken place.” It is stipulated in the constitution that the party is a limited company, but no more is said on what kind of company. It empowers the Board to make Rules on such things. I imagine the conversion ought to be in the hands of the lawyers by now. The wheels of law grind slow. Perhaps Nigel might care to tell us about the progress, and any obstacles he is encountering?

6:18: The constitution… “has not been put to the Electoral Commission for approval.” The original version of the constitution must have been approved when the party first registered as the Brexit party. Whether the latest update has been submitted yet is in the hands of Nigel and Zia.

6:56: “Nigel said he wasn’t against the rapid demographic change… it was the cultural integrity of the United Kingdom that concerned him.” And 7:14: “I don’t see how you can separate them.” I, for one, can separate them. Demographics are about who people are, and where they come from. Culture is about their values, and how they behave.

For me, the real problem with immigration is “legal” immigration, not the boats. And the nub of the problem is that this “legal” immigration has been planned. It looks to me like social engineering by those of all the factions, that are hostile to the culture of the people of the UK.

This is a culture, which is rooted in the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. It is this culture Zia is speaking of, when he talks about “British values.” And it is a culture which I myself have a very high regard for. Thus, I strongly agree with Nigel’s concern about cultural integrity. Though I’m not sure that rapid demographic change is much of a good thing, either. And certainly not when it causes overloading in housing or infrastructure.

7:19: “Nigel said he was not in favour of mass deportations.” If I understand this right:

https://www.gbnews.com/politics/nigel-farage-offers-simple-solution-mass-deportations

(about 21 minutes in) Nigel actually said that mass deportations were politically impossible. That is very different.

8:01:  Ben relates the 20th September incident and Richard Tice’s unfortunate choice of words “that lot” to apply to Tommy Robinson supporters. 8:21: “He regarded them as unpalatable.” Personally, I think they are unpalatable. When Nigel formed the Brexit party and left the Robinson followers and their ilk in charge of the empty shell of UKIP, he attracted quite a number of people (including me) who were not in any way “far right,” but who saw Brexit as an absolute necessity for restoration of any kind of sanity in government. I suspect that the party would lose more members and more votes if it embraced “that lot” than by distancing itself from them.

8:47: “It is about doing the right thing.” Ben makes a lot of noise around this point, but he doesn’t tell us exactly what he means by “the right thing.”

8:53: “Reform seems obsessed with recruiting Tories.” I think the targets for recruitment should be former Tories (and former UKIPpers, too), as well as those whose reaction to the four mainstream parties is “a plague on all their houses.” (I’ve been there, and for a long time, too. My vote for Graham on July 4th was my first vote in a general election since 1987). But they must feel able to align fully with Reform’s goals and policies, and they must disown Tory policies (like “nett zero”) that go against those goals and policies.

9:35: “Surely, there are some good Tories that are worth recruiting. Suella Braverman, for example.” She would certainly not be one of my choices as a “good Tory.” My idea of a good Tory would be someone more like Christopher Chope.

9:44: “Why would you want to open the party up wholesale to defections from the Tory party?” My, cynical, reply to that would be “To help the Tory party along in destroying itself.” Once that is done, we can go after first Labour, then the Lib Dems. There is a secondary potential benefit, that we might get some relatively good ex-Tories.

10:10: “Then we must be a democracy.” I thought that was the point behind the things we are doing here and now – starting up branches, to be controlled by the members. That was why the “gang of four” who constitute the interim branch executive had to be voted on by members at a formal meeting on November 20th.

10:43: “HQ has forbidden the new branches they have set up from having me speak to them.” I’m wondering if they have formally told the branch chairs that? It certainly hasn’t percolated down to me.

11:30: “I can’t resign as a member, because the only members are Richard and Nigel.” This is a rather odd thing to say, considering the constitution has a long section (4) entitled “Party Membership.”

As a more general point, I agree with Doug Hainline’s comment when he says: “We've got to be tolerant of each other. I'm disappointed Mr Habib doesn't seem to understand this. And I wonder to what extent purely personal antagonisms are at the root of his alienation.”

I would also note that Ben Habib was very negative in his response to being removed as deputy leader. Though he must have known that Zia Yusuf coming in was bound to lead to very significant changes like that. I was particularly struck by the comparison with the far more positive response of David Bull, who took the whole thing in his stride, and ended up compering the recent conference, with Nigel calling him a “modern Bob Monkhouse!”


Sunday, 24 November 2024

Storm Michael

As “Storm Bert” has waxed and is waning, I find myself contemplating a political storm which has happened today.

Someone yclept Michael Westwood, four days ago, started a parliamentary petition whose message is very simple:

Call a General Election

I would like there to be another General Election.

I believe the current Labour Government have gone back on the promises they laid out in the lead up to the last election.

I cannot find out any more about who Michael Westwood is, without going through a paywall. Both the Daily Express and the Daily Mail claim to have answers. But both have imposed paywalls since I last visited their sites. That is suggestive.

Anyway, I was signer number 396,595, at 09:42 this morning. And I captured this image ten hours later:


The establishment response will be interesting. Maybe they will play the “war with Russia” card, and subject us to martial law. Maybe they will just ignore our protestations. Maybe they will send police to arrest those of us who signed this petition?

These are, indeed, interesting times.

 

Monday, 11 November 2024

Libertarian London

Neil’s Note: While looking for something else, I re-discovered this missive, which I wrote way back in the autumn of 2010. For some reason, I don’t think I have actually published this one before. While many of my views have moved on since 2010, I am nevertheless publishing it now with just a few minor edits.

With hindsight, I see I was grossly optimistic on the timescales for our fightback against oppression. And I over-estimated how long Silly Lizzie Windsor would live. But things are starting to change now, I think. The rise of Reform UK is one symptom of this. The recent, unexpected re-election of Donald Trump is another. I get a feeling that our enemies’ political paradigm and their credibility are, at last, beginning to fall apart.

* * *

I walk northwards along the Albert Embankment in the September afternoon sun.

It’s 2035. I am over 80 years old now; and I cannot walk quite as fast as I could in my prime. But I can still walk well.

The Ugly Years

I see an empty bench, raised on a small dais like many others along the river bank. I have only been walking ten minutes, but the opportunity of a sit-down is hard to resist.

Across the river, I see an early Victorian monstrosity. It used to be the headquarters, from which the politicals and their hangers-on had ruled over us before the Revolution. I am about level with its south end. And I recall a walk I had done twenty-five years ago, also in September. I had sat, that day, on this very same bench.

2010 had been right in the thick of the Ugly Years. In that time, the politicals and their cohorts had set themselves to control us, to rule over us against our wills. They had made bad laws and intrusive regulations to hem us in, and set traps to catch us out. They had imposed more and more bureaucracy on us in everyday life.

They had schemed to violate our rights and to destroy our civil liberties. They had given police more and more powers. They had spied on us, and recorded our movements. They had treated us as if we were no more than bits of information in a database.

Their financial mis-management had all but destroyed our economy. They had taxed us almost out of existence. They had taken away any chance hard-working people had of ever getting decent pensions. And they had kept on thinking up new excuses to take away even more; green taxes and minimum prices on alcohol, for example.

They had spent the proceeds on things which did us no good whatsoever – like wind farms – and on things that were positively harmful to us, like foreign wars, bloated bureaucracies and spying on us with cameras on every street corner. They had taken away the earnings of productive, honest people, and used them to benefit a corrupt political class and its bureaucratic, enforcement, media and corporate Establishment.

Some of the politicals had been a bit less evil than others, of course. And we had enjoyed, in theory, the protection of the rule of law. But the laws that the politicals had lobbied for and made had become divorced from law. And law had become divorced from its essential purpose, justice.

All this had been accompanied by a torrent of rationalizations. Safety, security, health, recycling, helping the vulnerable, protecting children, fighting terrorism – the politicals never tired of inventing good-sounding excuses for the bad things they did to us.

There was lots of vile propaganda, too. We were a blight and a burden on the planet, we were told. We were bombarded with fear and guilt. Fear of terrorism, fear of overpopulation, fear of runaway climate change. And guilt for being selfish, for damaging our environment, for endangering species, for not doing enough to help the poor and needy, for letting down future generations. Our civilization of economic productivity and trade was not sustainable. We had to change our lifestyles drastically. We had to go “green,” and save the planet. And we had to act NOW!

Of course, anyone with half an ounce of common sense knew, even back then, that this was all hogwash.

Sham Democracy

There seemed to be nothing we could do to get ourselves treated as we deserved, treated as human beings. We had, it was true, something called democracy. It let us vote, every so often, for which political party could claim the limelight for a few years. But the corrupt political parties, and the Establishment that fed off them, had had an unshakeable, vice-like grip on power. And the three main parties, all in on the scam, had ensured that dissenters could never grow powerful enough to challenge them.

A lot of the main parties’ candidates, and so a lot of our so-called representatives, didn’t represent anything other than their own party’s political agenda. They were no more than apparatchiks. So, even if an individual’s vote could have made a difference – which it never had, of course - there was no-one who both had a chance of winning, and was worth voting for.

As a result, for decades many – perhaps even most - of those who voted had done so, not for someone they wanted and respected, but for whichever party they disliked the least. Further, as the politicals’ behaviour towards us became worse and worse, many people began to feel alienated from the system. Those who could began to vote tactically, for whichever party was most likely to unseat the one they hated most. (I recalled, for instance, that I had voted Tory back in ’87, purely from a desire to keep Labour out).

I myself had reached, by the early ‘90s, another level of alienation yet. I had come to think that even a vote for the least of several evils is still a vote for evil. I felt contempt and loathing for politics, and for all the political parties. With only a very few exceptions, I felt no fellowship with, or respect for, anyone that took an active part in politics. So, I became a conscientious non-voter. For, not only would to vote have been to dirty myself in the politicals’ muck. But also, to vote for the party that gained power would have been an act of aggression against all those unjustly harmed by that party’s agenda.

There was worse. The “constitution,” under which we were supposedly governed, had for much of the time allowed the leader of the party in power almost unlimited scope to do to us whatever he or she wanted. Back in the ’70s, Quintin Hogg had called the system an “elective dictatorship”. He had been right.

A few in the Establishment had seemed to have become aware, that many people were unhappy with what was being done to them. So, they aired schemes, like changing the mechanics of voting. But that was just fiddling with trivia. For it totally ignored the real problem – that the entire system was organized for the interests of the political class and their hangers-on, and against the interests of good people.

Oh yes, and on top of all that there was the EU, and the bad laws it spewed out like an erupting volcano. And there was the UN and its agendas. And, in particular, the green agenda that fraudulently sought to destroy our civilization, and to force us back to pre-industrial times.

Brian Haw Square

I walk on along the river. I watch commuter boats whizzing under the bridge ahead. Thanks to the march of technology, they go a lot faster now than they used to.

I turn left on to the bridge. It’s packed with tourists. I hear American and Australian accents; but the majority seem to be Chinese, or Indian, or Malaysian.

I pass the monstrosity. It’s a museum now; a monument to the follies, the evils, and the ultimate demise of politics.

There’s a lot of traffic in the square beyond. For single- or two-seat electric cars are the way many Londoners get around today. So, I take the underpass – it hadn’t been there in ‘10 – to the patch of green in the middle. It’s now called Brian Haw Square, after the peace protester. But all protests are long gone from this spot.

I sit on a bench, and contemplate the Paradigm War. With hindsight it’s easy to ask, why did it take us so long to understand what we needed to do? For it all seems so obvious now.

There had been, for thousands of years of human history, two paradigms, or ways of doing things – an economic way and a political way. And the Paradigm War between the two had reached its crisis point in the early years of the new century.

The Economic Paradigm

The economic paradigm centres on the human individual. In the economic way of doing things, each individual makes himself or herself valuable to others, trades with others, and receives in return his or her deserved rewards.

To make the economic paradigm work in a society, four fundamentals are necessary: responsibility, justice, law and equality.

Responsibility has two aspects. First, each individual is responsible for, at the minimum, trying to be a productive member of the economy. And second, each individual bears responsibility for the effects of his or her actions on others.

The second fundamental is justice – objective justice, or, as I call it, common-sense justice. The idea is, that each individual deserves to be treated as he or she treats others. Those who behave well – honestly, peacefully, productively – deserve to be treated well. And those that behave badly deserve to be treated correspondingly badly.

The economic paradigm, through justice, gives people a strong incentive to behave well towards others. So, it encourages an environment of peace and prosperity. And it supports freedoms and human rights for all individuals. Only one thing may ever override individuals’ rights and freedoms; and that is objective justice.

The third fundamental is the rule of law. The one and only purpose of law, in the economic paradigm, is to implement justice – common-sense justice. Law must start from the premise that no individual deserves, at least in the round and over the long term, to be treated worse than he or she treats others.

For example, those who do not commit aggressions deserve not to suffer aggressions. Thus, law must defend the peaceful against the violent. Those, who do not rob, deserve not to be robbed. Thus, law must defend property rights. And those, who do not defraud, deserve not to be defrauded. Thus, law must defend the honest against the dishonest. Any other kind of “law” is a perversion.

The final fundamental is equality. This is not, as some had seemed to think, equality of outcome, or even equality of opportunity. For equality, in the economic paradigm, is moral equality. What is right for one to do, is right for another to do under similar circumstances, and vice versa. Another way to describe it is as equality before the law.

Some objected to the economic paradigm, saying that it created winners and losers, rich and poor. But this objection was easy to counter. For those who develop their abilities furthest, and put most in to the economy, deserve all the riches they fairly earn. On the other hand, those that are too lazy or too dishonest even to try to contribute to the economy, do not deserve to be anything but poor.

Some, too, made out that the economic paradigm discriminated against the sick, or the injured, or the disabled. But that, also, was easy to counter. With one word – Insurance!

This is all easy stuff, I think. Even a child should be able to work it out for himself or herself. And yet, for so long before and during the Ugly Years, even the most venerable professors seemed to find it hard to think these simple thoughts, and even harder to articulate them.

The Political Paradigm

By contrast, the political paradigm had centred on the political state, with its long history of violence, war, deceit, intimidation and persecution. In the political way of doing things, those with power simply did whatever they thought they could get away with. And not surprisingly, this included lying, thieving and harming innocent people.

The political paradigm shunned the idea of individual responsibility. It sometimes held common criminals responsible for their crimes, to be sure. But those that lobbied for, made and enforced bad political policies that harmed innocent people, were never held responsible for what they had done to those innocent people.

Indeed, two of the guiding principles of political states had, centuries ago, been sovereign immunity and irresponsibility. Briefly put, “The king can do no wrong.” So, state functionaries were not to be held responsible for the effects of their actions. And they could claim immunity from prosecution for what they did.

Of course, the politicals had tried to make out that this wasn’t so any more. They tried to tell us that officials were as accountable as any of the rest of us. But this was obviously a lie. You only needed to look at one example – the murder by police of Jean Charles de Menezes in ’05, and what followed – to see through it.

As to justice, in the political paradigm, justice meant whatever those in power wanted it to mean. That was why politicals and their authoritarian intellectual cohorts had constantly spewed out nonsense ideas like “social justice” and “environmental justice”.

In the political paradigm, the state could, if the rulers decided they needed to (whether the “need” was real or not), override the rights and freedoms of any individual. That in itself was bad enough. But the state could also be manipulated by the rulers for their own interests and those of their cronies. And they could use their power to hurt those they didn’t like. That was why politics always created and increased injustice. And that was why the Ugly Years had been such hell to live through.

In that time, the rule of law had been supplanted by the rule of bad laws. The law mill had been working for decades at ever increasing speed, cranking out laws. Laws to violate our rights and kill our freedoms, laws to bloat the state and its bureaucracy, laws to re-distribute wealth from the politically poor to the politically rich, laws to impose on us political correctness and faddist agendas. And they took away more and more of our earnings to fuel their nefarious schemes.

As to equality, the political paradigm, like the economic, had had its winners and losers. The winners, the politically rich, enjoyed power, and the unearned wealth and status which flowed from it. And the losers – the politically poor, who included virtually all the honest, peaceful, productive people – were shat upon. The political state in those days, I think, could have been summed up in two words; institutionalized inequality.

All Things English

I continue across the square, with Westminster Abbey to my left. It has not changed in twenty-five years; except that its opening hours are now more convenient for the tourists on whom it depends for its income.

People sometimes ask me why, after the Revolution, we allowed such a symbol of the bad old days to stand, and in such a prominent place too. My usual reply is to quote L.P.Hartley: “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”

I take the underpass leading south-west, and turn right, through small streets to the Westminster Arms. All this walking and thinking is thirsty work; I need a beer. The pub is small, dark and crowded. But I manage to find a stool in a relatively quiet corner.

I contemplate the renaissance of the English pub since the Revolution. People, who formerly could not earn enough to afford to go out, now can. With “luxury taxes” like those on alcohol abolished, they can do it surprisingly cheaply too. Our scrapping of drink-driving laws gave village pubs, in particular, a new lease of life. And we reduced alcohol-caused accidents in the process. For, when people are treated as responsible adults, they are more likely to behave as responsible adults. (And if someone did cause a death while driving in an unfit state, the charge could be manslaughter).

We also abolished the smoking ban in pubs. We returned the choice of whether people may smoke in a particular part of a pub to the individual with whom it rightly belongs – the publican.

Other things English have not done so badly, either. English cricket is once again at the pinnacle of the world game. The English breakfast is again seen as what it is, the finest way for any human being to begin any day. And the English common law, which during the Ugly Years had become like a dark, overgrown forest with dangerous predators lurking in it, has been re-planted. We revolutionaries pruned it down to its very roots, and it now flourishes again.

The English language, too, has become even more popular world-wide since the Revolution. It can now, truly, be said to be de wereldtaal.

And there has been a resurgence of traditional English values. To name a few: Individual freedom and independence. The rule of law, and equality before that law. Tolerance, and a sense of justice and fair play. Honour and honesty. Contempt for those that try to take for themselves unearned power or wealth. And, not least, what used to be known as the Protestant work ethic.

The Scots, the Welsh and the Irish, meanwhile, have done their own things. We trade with them in a friendly manner, but none of us interferes in each others’ affairs.

The Libertarians

Refreshed, I cross the road into St. James’s Park, and turn left. At the end, I fork right, towards what is now the Buckingham Palace Hotel. It’s run by some of the younger Windsors, too. It’s a very chic place to stay.

I find a park bench, and think again about the past. Since the late ‘80s, I had been a member of a loose and disparate movement of radicals. We had generally answered to the name “libertarians”; though I myself didn’t much like the word, preferring to think of myself as a true liberal.

Our philosophy was one of individual freedom. But there were as many different approaches to that philosophy as there were individuals in the movement. We had our anarchists, who wanted to abolish the state altogether. We had our minarchists, who wanted a teensy-weensy little state. We had our idealists, who seemed to think they could create liberty by using the democratic process to take over the state. We had those who were basically Enlightenment conservatives. And we had those who, if they had lived a century or so before, would have been Marxists.

We each did what we did, working towards freedom in our own ways and in those areas in which we were most interested. We met every so often, to listen to the ideas of our most prominent intellectuals and activists. And some of us got pleasantly drunk afterwards.

Right Wing, Left Wing, Down Wing

In the days before we understood the Paradigm War, libertarians had tried hard to work for freedom inside the political system. We had not had much success.

In the ‘80s, the conservatives or Tories, the right wing, had seemed our natural allies. They were, like us, anti-communist – remember communism? Many of them supported a fair degree of economic freedom. And some of them seemed to be quite decent chaps, eh what? But it had eventually become plain that they weren’t really on our side.

For, all conservatives’ thinking was backward looking. That is almost the definition of a conservative. The really nasty ones – their thinking thousands of years out of date – believed that might makes right. So, they allowed relative economic freedom, but only so they could build the biggest possible war machine.

The nicest of the conservatives, on the other hand, were only two or three hundred years out of date. They shared our Enlightenment values, and supported economic freedom for its own sake. But conservatives, as we eventually came to see, couldn’t let go of the political paradigm. Even with the best of wills, they couldn’t see past the state to what needed to come next.

So, some of us tried seeking allies on the political left – so-called liberals. After all, most of them were, like us, against aggressive wars, racism, religious intolerance, elitism and abuse of power by officials. Many of them were decent on things like civil liberties and free migration. And they were more open to new ideas than conservatives.

But the left had serious problems as potential allies. They had fallen, almost without exception, for the green agenda and its “humans cause catastrophic global warming” fraud. And they saw inequalities of earnings – even if fully deserved, for example due to better developed skills or greater effort – as a problem to be “rectified”. So, they liked to impose harsh taxes, to seize the earnings of those who honestly earned success. Thus, they became enemies of the economic paradigm. (And they did not seem to understand that, in trying to “rectify” one inequality, they were creating a different, and far greater, inequality!)

Some of us had flirted with the UK Independence Party. For many of us could heartily agree with their core belief – the EU was a menace, and had to be escaped from or otherwise gotten rid of. But they weren’t, short of a revolution, going to get power. And, if they did, they would soon become like the conservatives.

That left – apart from a few fringe loonies - our worst enemies, New Labour and the greens. They formed what I liked to call the down wing. They both wanted to destroy any chance of economic prosperity. And they both wanted to destroy our rights and freedoms too.

To summarize: The political bird had three wings. Right-wingers loved the state and its political paradigm. Left-wingers hated the economic paradigm and prosperity. Down-wingers did both.

No, there was no point at all in trying to ally with anyone inside the political system.

The Paradigm Warriors

I had joined the libertarian movement back when the game had been keeping the ideas of freedom alive in a hostile intellectual climate.  I had stayed in it through the worst of the Ugly Years. During that time, our task had been to invent, and to evaluate, routes to freedom which might prove achievable. And I was still there when the game changed again, and we became Paradigm Warriors.

Taking the long view, the political paradigm had gradually been losing momentum over the centuries. So, every so often, the politicals had felt the need to start a new ruse, to fool or to cow people into supporting their paradigm. That was why absolute monarchy had given way to constitutional monarchy. That was why we had “democracy”; and why it was such a sham. That was why we had suffered nationalism – and the wars it spawned.

That was why we had a bloated, unsustainable welfare state, too. If the welfare system was as good as the politicals claimed, it would have eliminated poverty, wouldn’t it? But it hadn’t. No, the true purpose of the welfare state was to try to fool people into believing that the state was on their side.

That was also why the politicals were so damned active. They liked to make themselves the centre of attention. They kept on doing things to us, hoping that we would notice them and fawn on them. They didn’t seem to realize that what they did to us actually made us angry and disgusted.

That was also why they had foisted on us the green scare agenda. The politicals hoped that people would buy into the scares, accept their measures to “save the planet,” and shower thanks and respect on them. But instead, we saw through the ruse to the lies beneath. So, we came to feel for those that promoted the green agenda, not the respect they craved, but the contempt and hatred that they deserved as fraudsters.

The politicals had come up with ruse after ruse. But they had started to run out of workable ruses. Forward-thinking people had begun to see that the political system was unsustainable; that the state was out of date. And that we might be able to hasten its demise by joining the Paradigm War, on the side of the economic paradigm.

So, as Paradigm Warriors, our job had been threefold. First, to kick the intellectual foundations out from under the political paradigm. Second, to explicate the economic paradigm. And third, to sell it to the many who were – most of them unknowingly – desperate for it.

For, if good people were offered a real choice between the two, deciding between the economic and political paradigms was a no-brainer. Only the corrupt, lazy, aggressive and deceitful – in other words, common criminals and the political class – would choose the political paradigm.

Community? What Community?

One major difference between the two paradigms was that the economic paradigm is bottom-up. In the economic paradigm, individuals simply associate, work and trade together, and then disassociate. There is no need for people to feel a collective identity, beyond the team with whom they are working for the time being.

The political paradigm, on the other hand, was by its nature top-down. So, it required people to feel a permanent collective identity; to feel a part of the state. The politicals, I had noticed, now referred to their state as “the community”. The reason, I presumed, was to try to give us a warm feeling of membership in their political system and their state.

But that idea of community had broken down. It was only a small step from voting for the party you hated least – or not voting at all – to feeling revulsion for the politicals and for their entire system. How, for instance, could any honest, peaceful human being feel any sense of community with those that had started an immoral war in Iraq, on the basis of nothing but a pack of lies? Or with those that had claimed that human activities caused catastrophic change in the climate, with no proof at all, just a load of non-science, propaganda and appeals to authority?

Any community that I could feel a part of, I used to say, would blackball Blair, Brown and Blunkett, and all the rest of New Labour. And most of those in the other parties, too. I knew I was not alone in this thought.

But I went further. I came to understand that those that supported a political policy – any political policy – that harmed innocent people, were assaulting those innocent people. Using politics against good people, I thought, is like mugging them. No; worse. For it perverts law, the very instrument which should defend us good people against the bad ones, into a weapon with which to persecute us. So, I felt for the political muggers and their supporters, not fellowship or community, but anger and hatred. They owe me compensation, I thought; I don’t owe them anything but the contempt they deserve.

With hindsight, it’s obvious that political democracy had always contained the seeds of its own downfall. For politics always led to injustices. And, as the injustices mounted, the victims became angry. Good people lost – as I had - any sense of community with, or obligation to, those that promoted or supported the policies that harmed them. Fellowship is supposed to be a two-way process, we thought. So, unjust politics broke apart the feeling of community, that was necessary to sustain democracy. It destroyed the very sense of “we” that had given the democratic idea its legitimacy in the first place.

A big part of our job as Paradigm Warriors, therefore, had been to bring people to a new and sustainable sense of community. The new community we promoted was the world-wide fellowship of civilized human beings. That is, the community of all those who follow the economic paradigm. And who reject the political paradigm, and all those that use it.

But like the men and women of the Renaissance, we looked not just forward, but back to the best traditions of the past as well. We found it very helpful, that many of the values of our new paradigm were also traditional English values. So English people, along with their new sense of community in civilization, could still feel an Englishness – but an Englishness based on English values and culture, not on politics.

It was also helpful that England – as opposed to Britain - had had no political existence for 300 years. It was, therefore, less of a wrench for English people to adopt the new thinking, than it was for people in many other places.

And that is why the Revolution happened first in England.

The Road to Revolution

Our big chance came when the generation who had been schooled beginning in the late ‘80s and ‘90s – the guinea-pigs for the “national curriculum” – came to sufficient maturity to understand what was going on. They had been subjected since youth to a torrent of brainwash. But many of them had come to know it. Some went further, and consciously resisted it. And soon they came to resent it, and to feel disgust for the politicals that had tried to brainwash them.

Imagine, then, the power which was unleashed during the second decade of the century, when these people, having reached their 20s or early 30s, discovered the ideas which we radical old fogeys – for most of us libertarians by ‘10 were well over 50, some even in their 80s - had struggled so hard and so long to preserve and to explicate for others. And that had been the proximate cause of the Revolution.

Key to dividing friend from foe had been the idea of common-sense justice, which was loved by those of the economic paradigm, and hated by those of the political. Like a mental meat-cleaver, it separated the metaphorical sheep from the goats. For honest, productive, peaceful people naturally want to be treated as they treat others. It’s in their interests! And fraudsters, thieves and the aggressively violent fear it, because common-sense justice will punish them as they deserve.

We had formed an organization that would run candidates for office. It was not a political party. Indeed, it was explicitly against politics and the political paradigm.

Our candidates did not talk about what was “best for Britain,” but about what was “best for you” and “best for good people”. They promoted the economic paradigm – the way forward to a society of peace, justice, freedom, prosperity, honesty and a bright and happy future. They compared and contrasted it with the political paradigm, with its wars, its injustices, its bad laws and unnecessary restrictions, its heavy taxes, its lies and deceit, and its stifling, going-nowhere atmosphere of fear and guilt.

Our candidates asked the question: Who the hell needs politics? They promised the common-sense justice that everyone deserved. They promised that they would never allow peaceful, productive, honest people to suffer for the sake of the violent, or the lazy, or the dishonest, or anyone with a political agenda.

And many good people, who had come to despise the politicals but had never had a chance to do anything about it before, flocked to join us.

Our enemies, of course, at first ignored us, then belittled us, then attacked us (verbally, legally or on occasion physically) and smeared us. But their attacks backfired. Indeed, our enemies scored a series of increasingly spectacular own goals. And people came to see the state for what it was; an outdated, immoral organization. They saw the politicals and the Establishment that fed off them for what they were; criminals and worse.

As discontent mounted, good people had started openly to flout unjust and intrusive laws. There were anti-political protests, and civil disobedience. And there were tax strikes – particularly by small businesses.

There was some violence, much of it started by the police; for many of them took the politicals’ side. The army, though, was another matter. Because of what they had been ordered to do in Afghanistan and Iraq, many of them hated the politicals just as much as we revolutionaries did. So, they were not inclined to intervene on the politicals’ side against the people.

So, in October ’17 – ironically, 100 years to the month after the Bolsheviks had taken over Russia – we suddenly found that we had won.

Mr. Good, Dr. Wood, Mrs. Hood and Mr. Mahmood

When our side took power after the Revolution, we had much to do in a very short time. Four members of our side took the principal roles in implementing the new paradigm. (I use here, not their real names, but nicknames I gave them).

Mr. Good was not only the figurehead, but also the one who held everything together. He was the one who set the tone for what the others did, and kept everyone aware of what was happening. He also personally dealt with the most controversial issues. For example, agreeing to extradite from England to Iraq the instigators of the war there.

Dr. Wood was the financial genius. He reduced the functions of government right down to their core – civil law, criminal law and defence against aggression. And he privatized all services previously provided by the state, which people were voluntarily willing to pay for. The rest of the bureaucrats he sacked, and cancelled their pensions.  Then Dr. Wood wound up the morally and financially bankrupt political state, and distributed its assets among its creditors.

Mrs. Hood represented the people of England to the rest of the world. It was said of her that, if Margaret Thatcher had been a battle-axe, Mrs. Hood was an ironclad. She negotiated the separation from England of the Scots, Welsh and Irish. She told the EU and the UN, in no uncertain terms, where they could go. She opened the borders of England to anyone prepared to commit to the economic paradigm. And she negotiated trade and friendship deals with other countries, including many in or formerly in the EU. She gained a reputation for being utterly hard, but also utterly fair.

Mr. Mahmood was responsible for justice within England. He was the one who led the repeal of all the unjust and intrusive laws, and the pruning of the English common law down to its roots. He reformed the police. And he had – among much else - the cameras taken down, and the databases scrapped.

Mr. Good and his friends set in motion, too, a plan to bring objective, common-sense justice to every individual in England. That included retrospective justice. We made every one of the politicals and their hangers-on take full, individual responsibility for the bad things they had done to innocent people. We made them pay reparations to all those they had damaged through wars, re-distributory or confiscatory taxes, stifling regulations, unjust laws, bureaucratic waste, corruption or harassment, or police harassment or brutality. And we punished them in addition, as harshly as they deserved. We didn’t show them any more compassion than they had shown towards us. For common-sense justice doesn’t pull its punches.

But equally, common-sense justice is not vindictive. Once they had fully compensated all those they had harmed, had taken the punishment that was due to them, and had committed themselves to the economic paradigm, then even ex-politicians could be re-admitted to society. But not, of course, until they had paid their dues in full.

The Orange Peelians

I get up and walk along the north side of the park, towards Trafalgar Square. Back in ‘10, I had not been able to do that, because the pope was visiting and was planned to pass by some time later. Police – hundreds of them - had cordoned off the area and were stopping people from crossing the roads. I had to leave St. James’s Park the same way I had come in. I felt corralled like an animal; and I wasn’t the only one complaining. It was typical of how we were treated in the Ugly Years – deprived of our basic right to walk peacefully around London, for no better reason than that some silly old German bishop had come to harangue us about not celebrating the winter solstice properly.

But today in 2035, I reflect, the police are very different. After the Revolution, we had sacked the entire police force, and re-hired only those who were prepared to commit to doing the job properly. We made them keep to principles similar to the ones laid down in the 19th century by Sir Robert Peel. And we changed their uniforms to bright orange jackets. So, many people now call them the Orange Peelians.

Police no longer enforce laws, as they did before the Revolution, for the sake of enforcing laws. Instead, they are a resource to support peace and justice. Our cities and suburbs are a lot quieter too, because police today will be prosecuted if they use sirens without good reason.

I walk through the arch, and reach the south end of Trafalgar Square. It’s still called Trafalgar Square, and it’s once again a Mecca for pigeons. I remember, with a smile, hearing Mr. Good decline the offer of having his statue on one of the plinths.

I turn right down Whitehall for a little way, to go to the Silver Cross, where I had had my second pub stop back in ‘10. It’s still a pub, but it’s now called “The Trafalgar”.

Results of Revolution

I think of some of the changes which have happened since the Revolution. There are no taxes any more. Courts, police and what few prisons and what little military defence are still necessary, are all financed by allowing the English pound – which is otherwise tied to a basket of commodities – to be inflated at 1½% per year. All other services formerly provided by the state have been privatized. And the welfare of those, who through no fault of their own cannot support themselves, has become a matter for insurance. Or, in extreme emergency, charity.

Oh, the happiness of not paying taxes! For, when you paid for a good or service in the Ugly Years, you knew that you were also paying for the politically rich and the bad things they did to you. But today, when you pay for a good or a service, you know that none of what you are paying goes towards wars. None of it goes towards political policies designed to harm innocents. None of it goes to an authoritarian intellectual class. None of it goes on propaganda. None of it goes on bureaucracies. None of it goes on spying on people. Oh, the happiness of not paying taxes!

Even better, if someone does start behaving badly, it is easy to take sanctions against them, without needing to use law or police. For, if you don’t like the way they behave, you don’t have to do business with them!

But perhaps the biggest change brought about by the Revolution was a change in the climate – the mental climate. The fear and guilt, that had characterized the Ugly Years, was very soon gone. Instead, we had a new rationality and a new optimism. We human beings – regardless of race or geographical origin – were going to fulfil our potential. Yes, we were damn well going to do what was right and natural for us to do! We were going to take control of our planet.

And we, the English, were going to do what we could to spread the economic paradigm and the new sense of confidence world-wide.

Not surprisingly, very soon after the Revolution, investment began to flood into England. And shortly, that investment was physically followed by many of the investors. So, London became once again the financial capital of the world. And things got so much better so quickly, that the Revolution of ’17 in England became the model for the rest of the world to follow.

With the Revolution, there came also a new honesty in public life. With the political paradigm destroyed, it was now in everyone’s interest to be honest. Propaganda became a thing of the past, too. For most people today have fully functional bullshit meters. The young have learned from us old fogeys!

There is, once again, an English parliament. For new situations arise; therefore, it’s impossible to have the rule of law and justice, without having at least some kind of legislative. But the parliament has no full-time members or employees. It meets, emergencies excepted, for at most two weeks each year. And it meets in a purpose-built facility in Milton Keynes, which for the rest of the year is a hotel and conference centre.

As to the constitution, we allowed the incumbent to complete her term, but monarchical power was going to end there. She made it to 100 – just – and so it was in ‘26 that the English monarchy ended. King William V’s post is now entirely ceremonial, and he earns his living as a tourist attraction.

The word “Britain” is now used only in the one sense, as “a group of islands in the western North Sea”. And “Europe” is a dirty word. The continent is now, as it ever was, called “The Continent”.

And the EU is no more. As the Revolution went world-wide, our local friends simply sacked all the EU bureaucrats in their countries, and wound up the EU’s institutions. The same happened to the UN, too.

Today in 2035, we the honest, productive human beings of England enjoy the liberty, justice, peace and prosperity we have earned. Our victory in the Paradigm War, and the consequent Revolution of ‘17, have given us what we deserve. Life today isn’t perfect, of course – it never will be. But it’s one heck of a lot better than the Ugly Years.

And we are trying some exciting ideas on the justice front. We are currently trialling Hans-Hermann Hoppe’s idea of “private law societies”. If it works, it will make the provision of justice totally independent of geographical boundaries. And so, will make it all but impossible for anyone ever to try to resurrect the state.

Why Did They Do What They Did?

I turn left out of the pub, then left again into Whitehall Place, to pass the National Liberal Club. It was there that we libertarians had held many of our meetings. It was there, in a tiny oasis of radicalism in the heart of Establishment London, that the intellectual seeds of the Revolution had been sown.

As I climb the steps to the footbridge over the river, I contemplate the question: Why? Why did the politicals behave as they did? And why did they bombard us with so much fear and guilt?

Maybe, I think, I have an answer. When the politicals said “we’re a burden on the planet,” were they actually admitting that they were a burden on the planet? When they said “our way of life is not sustainable,” did they really mean that they knew their way of life, their political paradigm, was not sustainable? When they told us “We must change our lifestyles,” did they really mean that they had to change their lifestyles, to forfeit their unearned privileges? When they hyped fears of climate change, was what they really feared change in the mental climate? Did they sense, with fear, the coming Revolution?

And when they accused us of endangering species, did they really mean that they feared their own species – the political species – was endangered? Did they, perhaps, feel their own unfitness for the new world? Did their fears stem from a visceral sense that they, their state and their paradigm were doomed?

Well, I think with a smile, politics, the state and the political paradigm are now all extinguished. And good riddance.

Across The Tame’s

I continue across the footbridge over the Thames. It’s an in joke, among us Paradigm Warriors who remain, to lengthen the “a” and pronounce the name of the river as “Tame’s”. This refers, of course, to Chris Tame, one of the first leaders of our movement in England. Dying in ‘06, he never saw the Revolution he did so much groundwork for. But he is not forgotten.

I look to my right, and see that the London Eye is still there. Just to the left of it, there is now another wheel, like an Enterprise wheel, but much bigger. It’s called the London Revolution. It whirls its passengers round fast – no, very fast, about 90 mph – then takes them upside-down into the air. It gets bigger queues than the Eye.

It’s starting to go dark. And I already know that the Italian restaurant hard by Waterloo station, where I had eaten at the end of that walk all those years ago in 2010, is still in business. It’s time, I think, for dinner.