Has the Left stopped thinking? This was the question a group of speakers, including your columnist, was invited to debate at Canary Wharf on Wednesday, at Reuters. The global news-gathering organisation is one of the sponsors of the annual Orwell Prize for political writing, and the judges were announcing their shortlists for 2008.
World stock prices, electronically displayed, chased each other around the 100-metre strap girdling the building. Into this capitalist lair the speakers from the Left had come to defend their thinking. The defence did not cohere. Few who attended the debate could have departed with a stirring case for the politics of the Left ringing in their ears. The shade of George Orwell will have heard the trumpet give a most uncertain sound.
Citing the achievements of a Labour government, one speaker began with firework safety legislation. Another mentioned the Jubilee line on the London Underground, on which he had arrived (but which was in fact built by the Tories). There was talk about the “Third Sector” and the prospects of farming out the State's social duties to little platoons of mums and charities and grassroots community organisations. A once-great political idea was disintegrating into a welter of crèche initiatives and well-intentioned wittering about small-picture communitarianism and self-help groups in Glasgow.
This is not what Marx, Engels, Lenin or even Attlee were all about. Nor, for that matter, is it what Disraeli, Salisbury, Churchill or even Thatcher were about. And I think I diagnosed the problem: a problem for the Right too, and for British Tories as much as for new Labour. All sides have suffered a slow but disabling collapse of confidence in the ability of central government to do things, to mend things, to start things or to run things properly. Nobody seems to believe in the State any more.
I do. My message to the Left is keep the faith, baby. My message to the Right is beware the siren calls of laissez faire and localism. People need governing. People need governments, strong governments. People need certainty. People need consistency. People need constraining, inspiring, harnessing and directing, and they need it done with the clarity and command that central government alone can offer. In a thousand places, from the strategic heights to the nooks and crannies of everyday life, there arise necessities to which the answer must be that only government can do this.
Only government could have put Canary Wharf itself on to the map. A Conservative government, as it happens, in which a presiding genius was Michael Heseltine. Contrary to the instincts of some in his party, and sometimes Margaret Thatcher herself, Mr Heseltine believed in intervention. “I'll intervene,” he told a Tory conference 16 years ago as President of the Board of Trade, “before breakfast, before lunch, before tea and before dinner. And I'll get up the next morning and I'll start all over again.”
Only government now can get Crossrail built to link Canary Wharf properly into an east-west route across the metropolis, and end the daily misery of hundreds of thousands of Central Line commuters in London. Private industry may do the actual construction of mass-transit public transport links, but government alone can knock heads together to initiate. The same is true of roads.
Only government can get decent healthcare for those who are poor and chronically sick. Government may hire the private sector to deliver it, but the private sector, alone and unrewarded, will not choose such business. Only government can underwrite and arrange free and universal schooling for children - by whatever mechanism, public or private, it is provided.
Only government can protect us abroad, and police us at home. Only governments can force the pace on climate change. Only government can frame, amend and administer the law. Only government, and its legislation, can defend the interests of the generality against the appetites of individuals: who but government can create a national park, guarantee a green belt, or hold back the march of a million breeze-block bungalows across the countryside?
From this great argument, the dispute about central versus local decision-making is but a sideshow, and it would be intellectually dishonest of any of our three main parties to pretend that decentralisation could be a central plank of any manifesto worthy of the name. Nobody seriously thinks all administration can be run from Whitehall, and nobody seriously thinks local government could run everything. The balance may be shifted a little this way or that but always remembering that localities and communities - cities, towns, neighbourhoods, villages and parishes - have selfish interests of their own to advance, often in competition with the general good; and there are huge disparities of wealth and power between them. Only government can settle these.
Only government can apply a framework of standards, rights, benefits and duties consistently across the country, regardless of postal code. My fellow commentator Simon Jenkins is quite wrong to hold up the achievements of 19th-century Birmingham or Manchester as exemplars of the benefits of decentralisation. England's great cities and boroughs gathered power from a confused miscellany of smaller institutions and individuals, focused it and gave it muscle for the general good. They make the case for, not against, centralisation. What Birmingham built from a score of smaller power centres Britain can build from a score of Birminghams.
Finally, only government can redistribute wealth and power among citizens. Nobody believes in absolute equality, and nobody believes in removing all help from the weakest. A balance between these extremes must be struck; where and how you strike that balance is the oldest and biggest question of all in politics - eternal, pivotal, absolutely central - and only government can strike it.
When I was young the household gods of my developing political philosophy, men such as Friedrich Hayek, Alfred Sherman and Keith Joseph, were in many ways anti-state; and to push back the demands of the State then was a noble cause. But look at the great challenges as they appear in spring 2008: the environment, national and global; the regulation of banking; fair trade; malaria and HIV-Aids; congestion; immigration; asylum ...what has anti-statism to say about any of this? I cannot remember a time when the ideas of Hayek, Joseph, Sherman et al seemed more distant to the anxieties of the hour.
The market must be the engine of our economics and therefore our politics. That argument is over. But now another starts. What about the accelerator, the brakes, the gearing, the emissions control? Left, Right, or elsewhere, this must be your province. And at its centre stands, and must always stand, government: the potential for good or ill, wisdom or folly, of the State.
Governments can do great things. Governments can do good. Keep the faith, Mr Orwell.
I simply believe in Enlightened Despotism by Oligarchs. If the rulers are rich enough, they should have no need to acquire more; & if they are also enlightened , they will seek to improve the lot of humankind, etc.
Ian cheese, London, UK
Matthew Paris, as ever, hits the spot precisely. Of course there are those who will disagree with both sides of his argument. The balance between local and national is however in my view indisputable, with perhaps the balance slightly in favour of the local, the parish form of government as being closest to that of the people and their ultimate needs, if a bit, at times, as Matthew implies, a bit parochial. I myself may be a bit biased in my view of the importance of the local; our own small Parish Meeting , and others like it, shows a perfect illustration of how the grass roots form of local democracy, where everyone is part of the Parish meeting without the intervention of parish councillors, everyone has a say, everyone has a vote, really does work. Small democratic operations such as Parish meeting, the backbone of local democracy,is simply the Swiss Canton system in British clothes. Long may it survive and prosper.
Professor John Herbert, Bakewell, Derbyshire
Perhaps they should stop banning things, and give us all a chance to breathe once again.
DavidL, Worthing, UK
"As democracy seeks to have the individual matter, capitalism seeks the relinqushment of individual franchise"
I am aghast at how anyone can make the above statement and take himself seriously. In what way does democracy seek to have the individual matter? Democracy has no interest whatsoever in the individual. Libertarianism seeks to have the individual matter. Socialism is the ideology which seeks the " relinqushment of individual franchise" as the history of the 20th century so evidently and tragically bears witness.
Steve, Birmingham,
The force of your article is somewhat weakened by your obvious interest in this subject of your employment prospects. I still think that the best form of government is a minimum government, though what is a minimum government is a moot point. True, the government is there to provide laws, coordinate, and make provision where private resources are inadequate, but since people have different ideas on the appropriate content and approach, the least government offends the least people. The least government keeps costs to a minimum, and it also enables the proper or preferred directions for government to proceed to be more easily identified. Furthermore, in conditions of excessive government you are likely to get underqualified people eager to show the world how things should be done, in the pretence of the general good but in fact to distinguish themselves.
A fact that should be borne in mind is that today there are far more qualified and intelligent people outside government than within it, a contrast to comparatively recent times, and this point suggests that decentralisation is not only appropriate but likely to be more efficient.
Henry Percy, London, UK
The State used to be more obvious as an advocate for the people. Under Labour and the Tories the State has become more clearly the tool of the market and business interests. Unfortuantely, democracy has within itself the seeds of its own destruction.
A open democratic society allows institutions that are antagonistic to democracy to exist. The philosophy of Smith and its contemporary manifestation as free market capitalism shows this point to be true. As democracy seeks to have the individual matter, capitalism seeks the relinqushment of individual franchise.
Democracy would demand that the State champion the people before the interests of business. The relationship between democracy and capitalism has reached its zenith and is found lacking the necessary qualities to stay wedded.
Let us therefore undetake a divorce from this unhallowed union and seek an economy that reflects a true democracy.
John, Christchurch,
I would suggest that people need governments and governing for the reasons Matthew Parris states. Perhaps our dissatisfaction with this idea is based upon recent governments that lack 'political principles', clear policies and strong leadership.
We, as voters, give the government our mandate in the General Election for whatever reason. It maybe that we vote our MP's in too easily to form the Government. We seem to accept such woolly manifesto's and nebulous speeches. Instead we should not vote for any political party unless they have convinced us that they have clear policies, that we agree with, and seem the best way forward. We should question carefully, and in detail, the manifesto; and once elected keep the politicians to it. Perhaps it is our lack of control, questioning and making them accountable that allows them to do as they please.
Roger, Shrewsbury, U.K.
The citation of Crossrail as a great government achievement only shows the shallowness of this argument. Why should the general taxpayer cough up for a line to unite Maidenhead and Romford? The point is that some people who live to the west of London are bored with the Metropolitan line to take them to the City. Move elsewhere!
I for one am not among the people who need to be "governed" i.e told wher 40% of my money should be directed.
Robert Hirst, West Sussex,
The basic government service should be provision of the following:
1. National defence
2. A legal system to uphold property rights and defend the individual - this includes consumer protection regulation.
3. A simple bureaucracy to issue passports, birth certificates, etc.
Given this very simple framework, the invisible hand can and will distribute resources effectively.
The Pru will take care of my pension and health insurance for far less than I pay in NI. The pro-rated proportion of my taxes that goes to education far exceeds the cost of basic private schooling in my town. Etc, etc.
The trouble with government interference is the complete lack of accountability and the 'moral hazard' it brings to the market place. Want to complain about your hospital? Good luck finding who's in charge. Want to play a very dangerous sport? Fine - your own recklessness won't stop society picking up your medical bill.
Smith gave us the invisible hand - Government gave us invisible handcuffs.
V Bowerman, York, England,
The problem is there is a prevailing view that the markets should be allowed to do its work, unfettered. Until it fails then the same people beg for government intervention, to save banks and stabilise the stock market. Hypocrites.
DAVE, LONDON,
Matthew Parris, I want to send your comment to several places in the USA, to wake up those people over there. What you have said is so true, especially "Only government can get decent healthcare for those that are poor and chronically sick...." and
"only government can defend the interests of the generality against the appetites of individuals" and "only government can apply of standards, rights, benefits and duties consistently across the country. . ."
Clearly most of those above who have commented have got no problems of poverty or illness, and so are happy to be left alone, untaxed, of course.
Mary M, Oxford
Mary Meagher, Oxford,
The major public sector problem today is that the civil service is less expert and less well-run than the average Council. Not an easy problem to solve in an institution that has never valued Porfessional qualifications.
Government that stops inconsiderated people smoking where I am eating and leaving unlicensed vehilces in my street helps me to be free. Amongst the oldest functions of the state is to define and enforce the boundary between crime and business and it is vitally needed.
Alan Ji, Forest Gate, LONDON.,
In the US if a man arrives at your door and says "Hello I'm from the Government and I'm here to help you!" most folk would run the other way. Folk are cynical and suspicious about what a government can actually do, so do it themselves.
Despite the size of their government its take from the population is relatively small.
Over here, we believe, childishly, that a government knows how to spend our own money and do things better than we can do them ourselves. A civil servant with no subject expertise suddenly is more competent to judge anything ranging from medicine to soldiering.
Its about time someone stood up and said they were going to reduce government. Fat chance!
Danny, Manchester, UK
While I agree with most of what Matthew says can I refer him to an earlier article written to tell us that politicians are where they are to be interested in, and to pursue, politics.Government,if I remember him, is in part administrration,of less interest to those we elect.
No one can seriously disagree with the part Government has,for the better,to play in national life though it does require a degree of competence that has been lacking for many a year.
Those that have control of government have the ability to actuate policy and their dread initiatives - that is the meat and drink of their world, while incompetence in the application of these is what us folk see and understand as government.
As an example Brown's tax credits,a reasonable idea to redistribute wealth ,have brought misery to many thousands through the hamfisted incompetence of their application.
Government is as government does and at present the whole enterprse is not fit for purpose.
robert everitt, wolverhampton,
I usually look forward to Parris' column, as he usually talks good sense, but I completely disagree with him this week
Look us our incumbent bunch of incompetents, attempting to turn our country into the Soviet State of the UK. Is this what you want? A "tax and waste" organisation who think they know better than us? We've lost the real democracy - we elect you to uphold the things that we believe in.
Sorry, you're living in the past.The world has moved on.
Please get better soon.
Phil, Chelmsford, Essex
Governments can do good. However the problem now is the lack of any kind of guiding philosophy to tell them what to do. Since the tail end of Thatcherism, when ideology went mad and gave us the poll tax and the demented rail privatisation, ideology has been in retreat, to the point where we now have none. New Labour started with a philosophy of sorts (keep the market economy but spend more on public services), but now that has run its course, has no ideas. Cameron seems to have nothing to say whatsoever, having seemingly accepted both the Thatcherite economic reforms and New Labours commitment to publicly funded services. He occasionally hints at local solutions without the slightest hint of how they might be accountable, but on the other hand screams "something must be done" at every problem, normally promising spending he can't fund.
The result is government thinking tackling "middle-class drinking" as a top priority.
Nick, France,
Mr Parris, you are - unusually - fighting a battle that does not need fighting. The state in the UK does over 40% of everything that is done, and no-one in politics is suggesting reducing that to any significant degree. That the state has failed in much of this seems, to me, to be obvious. The state runs a fraudulent pensions scheme, poor quality health provision and inadequate schools. If you want to resist proposals to roll back the state then, fine, make your case. I think it would be a misguided one. But why not wait until someone in politics actually makes that case? No-one is doing so, even at the theoretical level that some were doing in the 1970s.
Quentin Langley, Woking, UK
"People need governing. People need governments, strong governments. People need certainty. People need consistency. People need constraining, inspiring, harnessing and directing, and they need it done with the clarity and command that central government alone can offer."
What utter tosh. People do not need governing or directing by either local or central government. Both as described are largely 20th Century constructs and such centralalised government has consistently been proved an abject failure throughout that century. It is time to move on from this dogma; people should be left free to live their lives without constant interference from incompetent civil servants and politicians.
HC, London,
You have a point but I can't escape the feeling that the people currently governing us don't even like us very much, let alone care what we think. No good can come of that.
Neil McF, Southampton, England
On the one hand you have Bucks, that, according to a recent poll is the best place to live, or you have Cheshire, which used to be a nice place to live. Bucks, depicted today as some sort of forest kingdom not unknown to Gandalf and the Ents. While Cheshire is the M6, Vale Royal and at the forefront of the North West Regional Assemblies beauty contest with the West Midlands evocation of European rule. Parris enumerates the purposes and the competences of the Government while Cheshire displays the actuality. Bucks is now transformed into a Tory stronghold, somewhere that will soon be visited by the Parliamentarians who somehow neglected to change the place in its supposedly radical self-image. I cannot tell you how beautiful Cheshire use to be or what a cherished place it was to one individual from the industrial heartlands. Now it is distribution sheds and twee estates, it is the piecemeal destruction of nature that can only be denied when it is so gradual. But we are nature too.
Malcolm Turner, Alsager, England
"Only government can...."
Yes, but can you trust it to do what it claims & proposes.
The bigger the government the more spectacular the failure.
BP Vallance, LEFKIMMI, Greece
Completely disagree. Statists can show small islands of public achievement but they are surrounded by oceans of maladministration and tyranny. Localism as a stop on the road to libertarianism is the best way forward. Our problems are caused by socialist know-everythings who haven't the faintest conception of the value of the liberty of the individual and who insist on making up rules for everyone according to their own prejudices. They arrogate to themselves the provision of the infrastructure of what they consider an advanced economy (public health, defence etc.) disregarding the notion that the problems that needed solutions never existed except in their own mildewed philosophy.
Steve, Birmingham,
If they governed the country more and the people less, then we might make a little progress. The nanny state is crushing us all.
Why is the country going to the dogs? Easy. Too much government and not enough individual choice. We are no longer regarded as "the people" by our political leaders. We are guinea pigs and they are running the experiments. And yet, we elect them to do this?
The state has never worked for me. We must all work for the state.
Lenin would be pleased with us.
Keith, Bath,
This is an excellent article! The greatest social developments in British history were engineered and run by central government - even Thatcher realised that in order to push through her radical program she needed to use central government. I'd bet good money that had New Labour used the machinery of the state to push through its reforms rather than throwing money at public services and hoping the private sector will do the rest they'd have had a lot greater success.
This doesn't mean, of course, that localism and the private sector don't have a role. What it does mean is that politicians shouldn't jump to the conclusion that all central government does is bad and all that local communities does is good. A balance needs to be struck and clearly some tasks should be left to the state rather than unaccountable private firms or under-resourced local bodies.
Matt, Sheffield,
The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help’.
- Ronald Reagan
Tom Welsh, Basingstoke,
Canary Wharf may have owed something to politicians but the real tin-opener was the earlier St. Katherine Dock redevelpment, led and managed by a certain Peter Drew for Taylor Woodrow.
Like many other large changes there was a single - usually forgotten - man, or woman,- at the core of that initial enterprise.
I am proud to have known Peter and to have had this slight opportunity to celebrate his singular but fertilising achievement.
John Raven, Brussels, Belgium
Perhaps one point to make here concerns the UK's arcane planning laws.
It's nigh on impossible to DO ANYTHING without offending one hoity toity hothead. Why dither for seven years 'having a public enquiry', wasting millions of our tax pounds pandering to some self-righteous gasbag whose life will undoubtedly be inconvenienced for the greater good?
Presumably, because this country has a long and dishonorable tradition of refusing to pay a proper price for making people up sticks.
The French know how to build new railways: pay a good price for the land, then JFDI.
Now JFDI a law changing planning laws FOR MAJOR INTERGENERATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS, so that once all the studies have been done, the bloody thing gets built before we're all dead and half the lifetime of market opportunity has disappeared into lawyers, consultants and gasbags' pockets.......
Rhys Jaggar, Leeds, UK
This is rubbish, just as stupid as the smoking ban, what next ban anything remotely fun whatsoever....
Seems like this whole country is heading down the proverbial toilet, what with the political correctness rubbish.
We need an immigration policy like australia, and we need to say goodbye to the eu, they are dragging us down with this human rights rubbish.
Example, a murderer sentenced to life imprisonment..... What rights should they have, NONE is the answer, yet this anally retentative government feeds them and provides a better quality of life than those who work for a living.
On radio 2 the other day they were saying britain treats immigrants the worst.... rubbish it seems like any muppet can come to dover and say he'll get killed if he returns home, so the state gives free homes, cash etc etc to people who dont deserve a bloody thing.
This country sucks, so do the laws, so do the ministers and government officials....
Leave britain alone!!!
Phil, Ramsgate, UK
The problem with all of these know-nothings who have been infected with the libertarian virus is that they don't want the state to do anything when it affects their momentary whims or impinges on their disregard for basic rules. But when it comes to all the essentials required to keep a modern, advanced economy running (transport infrastructure, public health, the environment, defence, etc. etc), what, precisely, is the solution that they are offering?
Robert C, London,
Brown's problem is that his intervention is always the wrong kind.. He won't intervene whilst the City cheerfully flogs off all our industry and refuses to invest in creating new companies or whilst the banks were colluding with the builders to force up house prices. On the strategically important issues he's been impotent..... On the nit picking interfering issues he's been like a bad rash.
DickW, Aberdeenshire, Scotland
Up to a point you're right. What is it that makes GB's government problematic? Massive OVER-centralisation. It is not the state per se that is the problem or the solution. It is the distribution of the responsibilities. & more local government in the towns and districts is only a part of the solution. I live in Germany where regional government works. It is enjoying an increasingly good result in France too since introduced in the 1980s. I am also a Conservative so no fan of big government, just better, more responsive government. England needs regional government to take on "classic" domestic government areas of health, education, much of transport etc. Then the really big problems Matthew P mentions towards the end of the article can be properly focussed on by Whitehall and Westminster. Incidentally, this would also solve the West Lothian question.
Guy Rowlands, Freiburg, Germany
"People need governing."
I think no, thank you very much.
Government should effectively do the job it's been paid for by the people.
Instead, they keep telling people what to do and how to behave.
Smoke or not, drink or not, etc etc.
Spying on people.
And then telling them more how to behave.
Stop "governing" us and start doing their job, that's all.
Mike, London,
As always MP is on target, governments should govern, our democracy is based on electing a group to do just that. Since Thatcher no government has done the job properly ( I am no Tory)
Blair had a massive mandate and wasted it, Brown is so desperate to find a way back he will swing and sway. The country needs clear direction and action, not the wishy washy pandering to minorities, Nimbys and tree huggers. For me it would be preferably to the left but better onward and upward than rotting in a welter indescision and procrastination while GB fails.
mike gee, bournemouth, uk
Never thought I would disagree with Mathew Parris, but do on this occasion.
Yes we need Governments to oversee the main arteries of our society, be they roads, rails or some form of social support mechanism. But all Governments, particularly the administration form the last ten years, have become unacceptably intrusive in our day-to-day lives. I am sure, what the bulk of our population wants, is less Government; it’s almost as if Governments have become self-perpetuating and nosey, simply justify their very existence. I mean, why to Governments have to have “fresh ideas†all the time, as expounded by political columnists – if something is working, why do they have to tinker with it and try to make it better; if it’s working leave it along. Juts imagine how small Governments would be, it their role, was just to keep things ticking along.
Peter Hodge, Lagos, Nigeria
For the past few weeks on any commercial radio station there has been a torrent of advertisements, (in a slot of 8 adverts 7 were government sponsored) throughout the day. My car will be crushed by the DVLA, How to complain (OFT) Get a job with social services, I can choose which hospital. how to get in touch with my local PSO (pretend bobby - who I am told thinks of me as a customer !!) and on and on it goes youguv this an youguv that, what it all costs I cannot imagine. Then we get Hampshire County Council advertising "Hampshire Life" a magazine by Hants County Council ! We are paying more and more for people in non esssential jobs, government and local councils should have the axe swung at them.
Wills, Soton, UK
Governments, like Army Generals, cannot win a battle,but they can certainly lose one.
The trouble arises because Parliament itself is failing.
We are approaching the worst of all worlds at Westminister.
Just take a look at the Cabient, it is frightening low on talent, made worse by lack of ordinadry work a day expeience.
Your task, Matthew, should be to single out the truly talented, or experienced, or both and show us plebs that such an animal can still be found.
That would restore the prestige of Parliament, and in so doing ,automatically curb Downing Street and its environs.
Peter Bolt, Redditch, UK
"The State works"
Matthew, you submitted this a few days early. April the first isn't until next week.
Kevin, Hants, UK
No. I do not exist to be harnessed, constrained, channelled or inspired by Government. I am me and I exist for myself and whoever else I choose. I want Government to leave me alone.
Kay Tie, York,
"People need governments, strong governments. People need certainty. People need consistency. People need constraining, inspiring, harnessing and directing, and they need it done with the clarity and command that central government alone can offer."
No. I do not need some faceless government bureaucrat to run my life for me. Government must not 'constrain',or 'harness' because this sounds to me like the governmnet curbing individual liberty. I do not need 'directing' by government, for I will not surrender the responsibility of looking after myself to government - just leave me alone. Finally, the day I look to government to 'inspire' me is the day I die.
It's this kind of thinking that government is the solution to all our problems that makes me want to emigrate (after finishing university). Government is not the solution to our problems. Government is the problem (whether local or central).
Alastair MAckay, London, UK
Matthew, time you took a long holiday.
Mike, Sydney,
"Governments can do great things. Governments can do good." Indeed they can Matthew. Sometimes. The problem is that governments have become stupidly and ridiculously expensive. However, to say that only government can do certain useful things, is to be chained to a single line of thought. There are always, always, always alternatives in any situation, no matter what it is. Alternatives that could be far more effective, and could save billions. The hard bit is looking for them.
Jim Gerrard, Berwick on Tweed, GB