Dr Eamonn Butler is director of the Adam Smith Institute and author of The Rotten State of Britain, which is published on Tuesday by Gibson Square Books. The book offers a damning account of what the successive Labour Governments have done to Britain over the last twelve years and here he looks in particular at the perils of the state having accrued increasingly draconian powers.
How did we get into such a state? We’re spied on by the world’s biggest array of CCTV cameras. We’re bullied by the world’s most expensive police force, who are quite willing to arrest us for dropping an apple core. We seize the assets of our best friend in Europe – Iceland – under anti-terrorism law. Nannying officials say we can’t feed our dogs grapes or give our kids a sip of wine. The average worker has to save 60 years to get the same pension that an MP clocks up in just 13. The government’s total liabilities are three times the national income. The IMF says we’re the country least well placed to survive the downturn, not the best, as Gordon Brown insists.
Strikes, stagflation, even snow – it’s like the 1970s all over again. It took Mrs Thatcher to pull us out of that mire. Unfortunately, Gordon Brown seems to have bought us a return ticket.
We can’t blame the international economy, or terrorism, for the state we’re in. As I explain in my new book, The Rotten State of Britain, it’s rooted deep in the psychology of New Labour.
Traditionally, governments accepted that they were only temporary custodians of power. And that their power was circumscribed – by Parliament, the civil service, the courts, local governments, and even the media. They tried to work within those constraints. Mrs Thatcher got extremely annoyed when these institutions stood in her way. Not always, but for the most part, even the Iron Lady accepted their constitutional right to do so.
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