BBC Radio 4 aired a fascinating debate about the meaning of “right wing” this evening.
I would like to add my thoughts to the debate:
Right wing and Conservativism are, as I think all the contributors agreed, defined by the fundamental belief that individuals are better at spending their own money than is the state. This inevitably leads to low taxes and privatisation and liberalisation of markets. I believe the ultimate liberalisation of the market, however, is determined not only by the bravery of the policy makers and the perceived efficiency of the incumbent system, but also by how much the social conservativism is involved.
And this is where I disagreed with Norman Tebbit. The family is generally considered to be the best environment in which to bring up a child, and I don’t think many people would disagree, but family in an of itself is not the solution to all society’s ills. I vehemently do not believe that family is the central basis for our civilisation.
Telling people what to do, censoring videos and computer games and worrying about “what ifs” should all be banished from responsible government. A truly free people can only exist in a country where I can safely walk down the road wearing a T-shirt which says “Bollocks to Blair”; where I can heckle a government minister; and, God forbid, protest in Parliament Square. A free country is one where prisoners are people who have been convicted of something — not suspected of something by an ‘intelligence’ service that doesn’t deserve the name (because there are WMD in Iraq and ’suicide bomber’ electricians should be shot even if they’re unarmed).
I’ve had two conversations in the last two days which tell me I am not entirely in tune with the general public on this, but I think I am right and I will relay the two cases now. First was seat belts. I think that it is entirely wrong for the government to tell me to wear a seat belt — it is my own life that I am risking and no-one else’s. Of course it is sensible to wear one, in fact it’s obviously stupid not to, but that’s my right — to be stupid.
The second is violence in computer games. Apparently the next Splinter Cell game has a realistic scene at the beginning where you, as a spy, have to shoot an innocent man in order to show your loyalty to the terrorists you are trying to infiltrate. In the context of the game’s story, this has to happen and, rightly, the game will likely be rated as unsuitable for children. But I was told that the game might fall into the hands of children and so should be banned.
Frankly, I find this apalling. That adults may supply a child with this or any other vicious computer game should never be a consideration when considering censorship. I believe in age ratings, they protect children from things that they needn’t know about or experience. As the age ratings can be enforced I believe that an 18 certificate should be able to depict whatever it likes (so long as it is depiction and not real and illegal).
So right wing is about economics. Free people make better decisions about how to spend their money than does Gordon Sell-the-nation’s-gold Brown.
The debate about Financial Services also has a lot of relevance to this. There’s a lot of hoo-har about the misselling of endowments and other financial products at the moment especially since some of the companies that had famously not restricted sales complaints have recently introduced time limits.
But the fault isn’t with individual IFAs or even with customers, it is with the government telling people not to make the most important decision of their economic life, but instead to defer it to a commission incentivised stranger! A Conservative government should stop the regulation and government endorsement of financial advisers and make clear, publicly, that the responsibility to choose the right product is the customer’s. Let’s bring buyer-beware back into all realms.
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