The Plan.

I finally got round to buying a copy of The Plan and started reading it last night. I had an idea of a fair amount of what it would be about from reading other blogs, not least Daniel Hannan's in The Telegraph, so I've not come across anything disagreeable or surprising so far apart from wondering what the pair of them are doing in the Conservative party. Oh, and not sharing their misplaced admiration for the USA which, strangely for a country founded on a desire for liberty, seems to have become very authoritarian and getting more so despite some of the things (recalls, elected sheriffs, elected second chamber, etc) that Hannan and Carswell admire. Don't get me wrong, I admire the same things and have a lot of respect for the Yanks for coming up with it. I'm just saying that on their own they don't guarantee a small government keeping out of the lives of it's citizens as much as possible. I don't know if Hannan and Carswell propose an updated Bill Of Rights as an answer to this, but the American example shows that the wording is absolutely crucial if you want to prevent some court in a hundred years or so from twisting the intent of a clause to empower the state instead of ensuring freedom of the citizens. I'll probably finish The Plan this evening and see what they have to say about it.

Sadly I think the drag factor of the enormous state dependent population in the UK - those millions caught in the benefits trap, the millions more who are outright welfare junkies who prefer state handouts, and the millions and millions of people working in the public sector who see the big state as their job security - is going to be very hard to overcome. I'd seriously consider persuading the missus to move back to the UK if there was some sort of electoral miracle and it did happen, but these ideas take time to spread and gain popularity. Has the UK got that much time left before it's finally swallowed by Europe or implodes on its own? It'd be nice to be wrong but I wonder if change on the scale proposed by Hannan and Carswell or by the Libertarian Party is even possible without the destruction, probably self inflicted, of most of the UK's state mechanism as a pre-condition. The only way I can see it happening is if one major western nation goes tits up in a big way and serves as a wake up call to the others. I've said before that I think it's Australia's best bet, although authoritarianism here is mostly of the low level irritating kind with a few outrageous things thrown in as opposed to the UK's apparent attempt to turn itself into Airstrip One. The question becomes which country will be the warning to the others. Hmmm. Well, put it this way, I've more or less bet that it won't be Australia, but as for the UK... I just hope it won't be but I'm not optimistic.