New Labour – the New Puritans?
David Green, 16 November 2004
The Government thinks we eat too much, drink too much and smoke too much, and it’s going to use the full weight of the law to put a stop to any further irresponsibility. But a consistent puritan would want gambling stopped too, and yet the Government wants us to gamble more. This inconsistency helps us to see more clearly the motivation of New Labour.
Two rival views of society currently contend for support. One derives from our liberal heritage and sees society as made up of individuals who are moral agents, capable of judging right from wrong, the wise from the foolish, and making mistakes and learning from them. The role of government is to frame laws to give individuals the chance to use their talents as each believes best.
New Labour’s view is very different. Society is made up of individuals who are primarily members of the workforce. Their chief role is to create output that can be taxed. When New Labour’s New-Puritan streak runs into economic realities, economism triumphs. If we smoke, drink and eat too much we make ourselves too ill to work and, to make matters worse, it costs the Government money to make us well again. But gambling is fine, because the Government will be able to tax us more.
The ultimate inspiration behind the Government’s plans for public health is not moral, it is the desire to increase its own power. It wants fit workers who can increase output to add to Treasury revenue. It does not want morally responsible individuals capable of judging for themselves what’s best, based on the available evidence and in the light of public discussion.
Acton famously pointed out that the realm of compulsion and the realm of conscience were mutually exclusive spheres. This Government leaves too little room for the realm of conscience.
It is one thing to make choices for oneself, another to dictate what others may and may not do, or to have to live with the restrictions others impose.
No amount of ‘democratic’ process can hide the fact that individual freedom is reduced when nanny decides she knows best and legislates accordingly.
We all have to rub along together, and the more tolerant we are of each other, the more freedom we will have to pursue our own ends in our own ways. Unfortunately, nanny is not tolerant.
Nanny likes to do things for and to people, whether they want it or not, without regard to law or property, which she will change and take at will. So it is she confiscated the hospitals and trust funds to make the bureaucratic monster which is the NHS.
It is then a bit rich to find nanny using the NHS – created and maintained through compulsion – as an excuse to justify the imposition on us of even more prohibitions and injunctions, and to deem the use of the NHS by those whom she disapproves, a privilege.
Where is the end of it?
Most individuals who are moral agents, capable of judging right from wrong, the wise from the foolish, and making mistakes and learning from them do not want the pubs open 24 hours a day or giant casinos in every town etc etc. Does our liberal heritage dictate that their views should be ignored? And why do those who object to public policies on these issues as illegitimate interference by the nanny state expect the agencies of the state such as the health service to be available to save them from the consequences of their own choices?
The Government’s little room for the realm of conscience is a cell.