If Boris Johnson turns his back on Thatcherism
For the staunchest supporters of a liberal Brexit, the latest economic policy moves chosen by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Chancellor of the Exchequer Sunak sound somewhat worrying. If on the one hand the London government is showing that it cares more about civil liberties than ours, by refusing the obligation of the Green Pass , on the side of economic freedoms there are many mistakes that are being made.
The current Tories government has in fact decided to increase the tax burden on workers and businesses to finance a further increase in healthcare spending, justified by the dark times of the Covid emergency. Granted the negative reaction of the liberal press, first of all the Daily Telegraph : “ Highest taxes since the war ”, is the opening title of September 8th. A wave of indignation and disapproval for the new social democratic line of the Tories , who seem to have forgotten the teachings of Margaret Thatcher, has indeed started from the Telegraph .
As the Telegraph editorial team writes, rather than increasing the tax burden, the government could have found the resources to support the National Health Service by reducing other areas of expenditure:
"The current tax increases are a choice, not a necessity. The ongoing additional spending caused by the pandemic could have been covered by reducing spending in other areas ".
Curiously, the UK just exited the EU finds itself taking a path that seems to resemble that of many European chancelleries. A sort of " moral outrage ", as stated by the director of the Institute of Economic Affairs Mark Littlewood.
It is useless to deny that the prime minister has looked at the new electoral basin potentially up for grabs for the Tories. As the last elections have already shown, the Conservatives have broken through some " red walls ", territories formerly the prerogative of Labor. The new majority electorate is now wary of the free market, pro-Brexit and opposed to the wave of progressivism coming from the United States. If the latter two inclinations may be understandable from a liberal point of view, the former is a bitter disappointment.
In the homeland of Adam Smith, the real political realignment that has been going on for some time now seems to have been completed. After decades of Thatcherism's influence, British politics seem to have abandoned its liberal bias. What is worrying is that this new statist course will come from the Tories .
One wonders why the internal opposition to the majority party, or those irreducible Thatcherites, do not raise their voices more. One wonders what future Brexit will have without the prerequisites of a free economy, having an openly statist opposition in Westminster and a majority abandoning its low tax and less spending positions .
If Johnson thinks, as he recently hinted, that he even wants to surpass Thatcher in his stay in Downing Street, he risks having to revise his plans for the future, having already betrayed one of the foundations of his election manifesto, as well as a cornerstone of the Right. across the Channel.
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This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/se-boris-johnson-volta-le-spalle-al-thatcherismo/ on Tue, 14 Sep 2021 03:44:00 +0000.