A Perfect Fit?

Jon Lansman writes:

Douglas Carswell is a principled man. On that most of us agree, even if we don’t agree with most of his principles.

But how appealing are his principles, and his emphasis on small government in particular, to the working class voters we are in danger of losing to UKIP?

How would Carswell’s great solution of “iDemocracy” which would empower “activist consumers” to opt out of the state appeal to those whom academics characterise as “left behind” by social changes – including the atomised world of the internet?

Douglas Carswell is a man about whom even his great admirer, Charles Moore, said “many of his colleagues regard him as a lunatic.”

Fortunately he has clearly set out his stall in a book, The End of Politics and the birth of iDemocracy, of which Dominic Lawson said: “as a revolutionary text, Carswell’s is right up there with the Communist Manifesto.”

And fortunately for me, Daniel Finkelstein has neatly summarised in The Times the policy prescriptions contained within it:

1. There should be a shift in taxes, cutting those paid by the rich and increasing those paid by the middle class and the poor. We shouldn’t be taking the lowest paid out of tax. “Once every household faces a similar-size bill for all that government, the question of whether we still need it all will sit centre stage.”
2. Income tax should be replaced by taxes on consumption and property that are not progressive.
3. The government was wrong to step in and save ordinary depositors’ cash when the Royal Bank of Scotland was about to shut cash machines. It shouldn’t do that again.
4. The government should have cut more spending in this parliament and should cut faster in future. We should do this a great deal more quickly so that we can begin to pay back debt.
5. Reducing how much we pay out in state pensions, which are future liabilities, is an essential part of reducing our debt.
6. Interest rates have been too low and should be raised.
7. The NHS should be privatised. The government shouldn’t run healthcare. Everyone should be allowed to opt out. People should have their own health accounts.
8. This should also happen in education. Schools should be run much more like supermarkets.
9. The education budget should be halved.
10. The welfare budget should be halved.

So more cuts, lower taxes for the rich and higher for those “left behind” by ‘growth’, lower pensions, higher interest rates, an end to the NHS and state education as we know it, and all those small savers whose banks were saved from collapse by Labour should have lost their cash.

That’ll go down well.