To hell with independence – let’s get wealthy!

SHOULD WE BE GOGGLE-EYED  in confusion and concern as we observe the implosion of Labour’s fortunes in Scotland, Wales and now, apparently, in England? Almost certainly, no.

The failure of social democratic Leftism has long been predicted by classical liberals; a big state, managed by politicians who promise a collective aspirational vision created through high-tax redistributions self-immolates on an internal contradiction. Central planning inevitably fails through lack of knowledge; redistribution ceases to create any meaningful change and instead becomes a way to buy votes.

Deficit-bound government emerges that has no real direction, only administrative muddle and waste. Swinneyism and Starmerism fall into a blather of stale hot air. Note too that this is a feature of nearly all developed western nations. France, Germany, Italy, Spain and others are also stumbling with their large, redistributive central states.

And yet many voters continue to demand “where’s my support” while shouting “where’s the beef?”; demanding policies that benefit them personally while simultaneously rejecting the present system of governance and demanding reform. What a mess.

Now, there is a real problem here – how do we persuade voters of the reform that is needed?

Classical liberals observe that government grows because politicians offer solutions to specific group interests and are able to ignore the general interest of all taxpayers because the concentrated costs of serving the former are spread thinly across the latter. In time, the tax burden becomes high enough that no-one is supported; the income-generating economy slows to a stop due to government extraction, while the income-swallowing sector complains there isn’t enough government money. And now, it seems, some are trying to persuade voters that wealth destruction can be managed more competently.

In trying to escape from this lunatic and destructive redistributive merry-go-round, classical liberals face being accused of being anti-democratic “Thatcherites” or “far right” if, to stop this state-centred pilfering, they implement spending constraints that impose “austerity” on special interest groups.

Growth-centred optimists are cast as greedy leeches on the less well-off; based on mad ideas such as that the poor are poor because the rich are rich, that the economy is a fixed pie, and that redistribution is therefore the only moral project worth pursuing. Add to this a confused mixture of labour theory economics and the fantasy that natural resources alone make nations wealthy.

The lunatics in the madhouse spin and gurn these slogans, ensuring that a perennial lack of progress in affluence is always someone else’s fault rather than the product of their own irrational ideas.

all reform now needs to be more radical

There’s a message in this narrative for reformers. Designing reforms cannot simply involve simply saving a bit of cost here, cutting a tax rate there, adjusting a departmental mission, and merging a quango or two.

The financial rot in Scotland has gone far enough, through the SNP’s dedication to becoming an all-encompassing Department of Public Overspending, that all reform now needs to be more radical. The SNP also has fellow travellers in the Greens standing in the wings with a trolley load of totalitarian suggestions ready to control our lives. God forbid if their Holyrood seats again become the only way the SNP can retain control of Scotland’s governance. Your liberty is at stake, as Mr Greer has so ineloquently expressed.

The way out for a reforming political party is to provide direction and a vision. Scots need to be told how to build opportunities and optimism through an emphatic focus on re-forming our statist institutional mindset. Statism, and the institutions and processes it has spawned, must be excised. The people know more about generating success than politicians do.

There are some key guiding principles, which I outline here not as policies, but as foundation stones for communicating where Scotland can go, and how it can get there:

1) Private property matters

Scotland needs “capital deepening”. Whether for a small bakery in Oban, an engineering family firm in Rutherglen or a corporate in Edinburgh, policy must support increasing ownership of more capital tomorrow – for everyone. This includes building skills, ie. human capital.

However, no business should be given special favours or absorbed into central state-sponsored “strategies” that distract from production. Voters need to understand that capital wealth builds future freedoms and opportunities beyond dependence on the central state.

State interferences through tax or regulation denudes private ownership and wealth-building. The principle above should guide all tax and regulatory policy.

2) Prices matter

Never engage in any measure that establishes or mimics price control. All policy must avoid skewing prices. Price controls misallocate capital, labour, resources and entrepreneurial time and effort.

If a price does not suit a social goal, support the struggling payer of the price, don’t skew the incentives of the producer. That way lies shortages and penury.

3) Competition matters

Look for plural, non-state solutions; varying services, priced accordingly; where providers maintain their position alongside other market players. This maximises incentives to innovate and improve.

The “sock puppet” third sector in Scotland, where state-funded entities support state policy goals while being funded by the state, should be disbanded. These organisations should offer their own competing services, earn their own funding, and compete for audiences.

4) Never use targets as promises … use trends

Don’t target a specific set of cuts in public provision. Instead, propose gradual deficit reduction through constraints first on functions, then spending, while tackling waste where possible.

Explain that all state entities engage in mission creep, and do not face losses when failure follows expansion. Institutions must see their remit changed if they are failing.

Use transparency about reducing the size of the state to educate Scots about the destructive nature of politicised spending and centralised power.

5) Don’t try to design Scotland

Let Scots breathe and change their futures through individual and co-operative endeavour.

Use sector self-regulation instead of bureaucratic mandates wherever possible. The costs of self-regulation are borne by producers and balanced naturally through discussion within trade associations. This creates self-limiting systems because costs and benefits are directly understood.

Ensure that any state-centric regulation can only take root if its costs and benefits are fully analysed and made transparent. This should apply particularly to environmental and climate-related issues. Scotland should not embrace a false environmental religion. We cannot resolve environmental problems without making the money to do so.

6) Think global, support free trade

Free trade built Scotland. We remain a global tribe known for fair and honest dealing.

Forget the mercantilist, directive-driven cabal of Brussels. Celebrate instead the value of J M Barrie’s adage that “there are few more impressive sights in the world than a Scotsman on the make”. Get enterprising young Scots on to aeroplanes – selling.

7) Think local, support local interest

Many Scots retain a strong sense of place and belonging. Where possible, allow localism to succeed or fail on its own merits. Don’t fear postcode lotteries if local funding can be structured around transparent and understandable rules.

8) Don’t engage with false notions of “equality”

“Fairness and equality” is a meaningless slogan until it becomes weaponised into enforced equalisation through central fiat and control.

The Scottish left are the progenitors of a long list of totalitarian measures such as “named persons” for monitoring of children, vague stirring-up-hatred laws, minimum alcohol pricing, sugar taxes, mandated heat pumps, bans on internal combustion engines, higher income taxes, and taxes on private schooling

In Ross Greer’s world of green envy, successful earners should apparently be banned from Scotland unless they submit to his definition of “fairness” – namely, what he and his friends in Holyrood decide you deserve to deserve. That comes dangerously close to what can only be described as national socialism.

We should be warned: any Reform executive will have to be on the lookout for pathological hatred and lawfare. As a recent piece by Gareth Roberts in The Spectator put it, the ferocity of the resistance a Reform government would provoke from a progressive establishment that has not lost power in several generations would be genuinely scary. He points out that “progressives have a pathological thirst for a ‘far right’ to fight”.

The left have always been good at negative vituperation. They have invented a threat they like to call “fascism” as a catch-all insult aimed at a vaguely defined enemy; an accusation that increasingly reflects their own policy instincts more than those of their opponents.

Should Scotland ever obtain a Reform majority executive, one measure that might prove necessary is sending the civil service home on day one. Parts of Scotland’s civil service appear intellectually corrupted by the Neverendum and its perpetual administrative demands. The principles and processes of government may need to be rebuilt from scratch.

To hell with independence; let’s all get wealthy instead.

No society in history has discovered a route out of poverty other than a system in which people earn according to what they produce, and in producing generate earnings for others: wealth deepening for all.

As a collective society, we have found ways to support those who cannot produce much, but we must never forget that those who do grasp opportunities to produce much are supporting many others indirectly. This is an economic fact ascribed in Scotland to Adam Smith.

Malcolm Offord’s challenge to Scotland to wake up to opportunity and engage in wealth creation is a blast of fresh air. We should cherish and cheer his optimism. It made Scots famous worldwide – though too often only after they had left their native land.

The left will remain gloomy, festering in the cobwebs and dust of its old-fashioned mirage of a redistributive state, where unicorns prance and preen, enticing voters with a false and empty future.