DO YOUR BUTCHER, BREWER AND BAKER COMPLY?
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Throughout the 5,000 years of recorded history, the one duty governments must fulfil above all others is to protect its citizens from unlawful killing, robbery and violence. Government's basic mandate – and the main source of its legitimacy - is to deter and punish criminals and maintain the rule of law.
Yet recently it was revealed, thanks to the probing of MPs on the Commons Public Accounts Committee, that 1,023 convicted foreign criminals - who should have faced deportation after completing their jail terms - have been released back into British society.
This failing in the Government's primary responsibility to protect its citizens was described by the Home Secretary as a "shocking administrative blunder". But the problem runs deeper than the incompetence of the Prison Service or Immigration and Nationality Directorate. The fault lies with the culture of the current Government.
New Labour spends too much time and money telling us what to do, what to think and how to behave - while reminding us how good and benevolent a government it is. Yet it then spends too little effort, despite endless injections of cash, in getting the basics of good government right.
The Home Office fiasco has exposed a breathtaking hypocrisy at the heart of the Government. The Prime Minister and Charles Clarke moan that journalists, civil rights campaigners and the House of Lords are "out of touch" with ordinary people's fear of crime, warning that they should not get in the way of the latest crackdown on civil liberties like ID cards or detention without trial. At the same time, however, they have failed to even address the issue of rising violent crimes and intimidation.
Indeed, Charles Clarke had the temerity to round on media critics of the government's civil liberties record and describe them as a new "pernicious and even dangerous poison". Oh really? Measures enacted in the name of defending our security have done little to protect us. They have even resulted in consequences entirely contrary to the government's own intentions. Public support for the police, for instance, is now at rock bottom.
This Government's whole strategy seems designed to achieve good headlines. By "appearing to be tough on crime", it thinks, New Labour needn't bother implementing effective policies to actually protect us from crime. Creeping authoritarianism in Britain now comes in many guises. The average Briton, we are told, is photographed 300 times a day once he steps out of his front door. A form granting the right to vote comes with a threat of a £1,000 fine if you don't fill it in - and prison beckons if you don't pay the fine. Slight infringements of driving rules are photographed and fined, while wheel clamping seems to be the one public enterprise that works with clockwork efficiency.
Yet the average Briton cannot rely on the police to protect them from predatory crimes - while the victims of "thought crimes" are treated in a self-justifying way. You have been badly treated if you think you have been badly treated. How you "feel" is all that counts.
In December last year, for instance, a retired couple from Fleetwood Lancashire were questioned by police for 80 minutes because they had displayed potentially homophobic attitudes. In June 2004, however, a woman with gunshot wounds died in Henley-on-Thames while police hesitated over whether to go to her aid. The armed police squad waited a full hour before allowing anyone - including paramedics - to enter the house, despite repeated assurances that the gunman had fled.
The failure to get the basics right stems from an institutional laziness. Everywhere we see the propensity for the state to chose easy targets for expanding its power, while shying away from tasks where its intervention would be more valuable - but inherently more risky. In general the state has a growing preference for prosecuting generally law-abiding citizens, who are an easy target, while failing to bring to justice dangerous and violent offenders, who can be a handful.
The modern British state is not only addicted to bossing around individual citizens. Private companies have to knuckle under to the next Government whim, too. Companies are inundated with regulations on health and safety, employment practices, recruitment and taxation. The situation is about to become even worse.
In the name of promoting cultural diversity, ministers are imposing the concept of "contract compliance" on companies bidding for state- funded work. What this means is that any company seeking a government contract has to prove it has the right ideological credentials. Potential contractors have to demonstrate that they comply with the politically correct values of New Labour.
Clear insight into the authoritarian mentality behind this "contract compliance" is provided by a paper from the Metropolitan Police entitled "Diversity within procurement services". The document explains that suppliers to the Met must fill in employment questionnaires, accept site visits and monitoring and "detail how they apply equal opportunities in their selection of sub-contractors". You would think that the Met had more pressing duties to perform! And the focus on ideology rather than price and quality is anathema to the workings of the market.
Imagine having to buy 1,000 shares in a company through your stockbroker from sellers that mirrored the ethnic diversity of the country. It would be madness. As Adam Smith put it: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interests."
Capitalism works because it is does not discriminate between buyers and sellers on any other basis than price and quality. If I want to buy free range eggs because I object to factory farming, that's fine. I'm free to do what I like with my money. But when public bodies spend taxpayers' money on a basis other than value for money, it sticks in the throat.
Contract compliance is bound to reduce efficiency, with the taxpayer footing the bill and well-heeled diversity consultants cashing in. It will also create a barrier to entry for potential bidders for government contracts. Companies who already have their foot in the door will have a distinct advantage.
New Labour is changing Britain from a nation of shopkeepers to a nation of box tickers. This will have dire consequences for Britain's productivity in the long term. And it is not just ID cards, CCTV and contract compliance that bears the whiff of totalitarianism. The Government and local authorities spend millions of pounds in self-congratulation and self- glorification. We are fast becoming a propaganda state.
Take the expensively-produced and glossy NHS publications that feature happy smiling health workers and happy smiling patients. The reality is the chaos of stressed nursing staff, violent drunks and overflowing waiting areas in A&E on a Saturday night. This disconnect between what the state tells us and how things really are lay behind Stalinist Russia's propaganda of agricultural plenty - when the reality was seven million perishing in the famine of 1932-33.
Government departments, public bodies and local councils expend vast amounts of time and energy not doing their jobs effectively, but on proclaiming how brilliant they are. The government spends £500m a year to advertise itself to us! Local authorities are meant to be cash strapped, but they still manage to waste millions paying marketing wonks to dream up gormless mottos like "Derby does it". Derby does what, exactly?
This sums up the culture of New Labour. Slick presentation is a far surer route to success than a solid record of quiet achievement. Like Big Brother in "1984" the government implores us to love it. Its lavish public spending plans are unwittingly described by the media as generous, while on the rare occasions the Chancellor cuts taxes – it's heralded as a giveaway.
Recently Gordon Brown was photographed amid a group of smiling children in Mozambique as he pledged £8bn over ten years. Yes, our Chancellor has a compassionate side after all. The majority of people accept this uncritically - which implies, good slaves that we are, that the economy now belongs to the government. But Gordon Brown is not a philanthropist like Bill Gates. He is using our money - tax payers' cash - to re-brand his dour image. And generosity has no limits when you're using other peoples' money.
For this Government, understated competence is not on the agenda. We will go on paying the price for its passion for self- glorification and interference in business and our personal lives. Benjamin Franklin, the American statesman who was born three hundred years ago, was right when he said that he who gives up freedom for security will end up with neither.
Be sure to defend your liberties - and wealth - from this onslaught of state propaganda, control, and incompetence.
Brian Durrant
Editor's Note: Brian Durrant is investment director of the Fleet Street Letter, the country's longest-running financial newsletter. Founded in 1938, it continues to show how global events will affect the savings and investments of ordinary investors here in Britain - and what you can do to survive and prosper instead.
Mr. Durrant is a regular contributor to The Daily Reckoning, where a version of this article first appeared.
