The Death of Classical Liberalism

From the latest speech by David Cameron, head of the UK's "Conservative" Party:

"It's been a great week.

This week we've shown we are back in the centre ground of British politics.

A stable economy.

Fighting crime.

Backing the NHS and our state schools.

Childcare and flexible working.

Improving our environment and quality of life.

Those are people's priorities - those are our priorities today.



Conservatives, converting a disused church into a community centre.

That's our idea - social responsibility - in action.


For us, that Britain is based on the idea of social responsibility.

That means a Britain where instead of always turning to the state for the answers…

…we turn to each other and ask: what more can we do together to solve this problem?



Right, let's talk about tax.

Everyone in this hall, me included, knows that a low tax economy is a strong economy.

But some people want me to flash up some pie in the sky tax cuts to show what we stand for.

Let me tell you straight.

That is not substance.

And that is not what we stand for.

Do you know what I think?

I think that when some people talk about substance, what they mean is they want the old policies back.

Well they're not coming back.

We're not going back.


As George Osborne said in that brilliant speech yesterday…

…we believe in sound money and stability always comes first.



We need to strengthen our pensions system.

Deregulate our employers and wealth-creators.

Invest in education, skills, the potential of our people.

Build a modern transport system.

And we need to do more to promote British trade and investment.

In this age of globalisation and fierce international competition from India, China, Brazil…

…we cannot afford to sit back.

We have to fly the flag for British business.




As our economy grows, one of the most important calls on the proceeds of that growth is the NHS.

The NHS is vitally important to every family in this country.

It certainly is to my family.

I believe that the creation of the NHS is one of the greatest achievements of the 20th century.

It is founded on the noble but simple ideal that no person should ever have to worry about their healthcare.

But it's about more than that.

The NHS is an expression of our values as a nation.

It is a symbol of collective will, of social solidarity.

That is why the British people, of all political parties and of none, are so proud of it, and so attached to it.

I have always believed this."

There were a few paragraphs about terrorism and foreign policy later in the speech, which you can read here if you have the stomach for it.

And as highlighted in the italics mine passage above, social responsibility not of the individual, but in communitarianism. From what I gather from this speech (these are the Tories, mind you, not Labour or the Lib Dems) is that the individual, in the birthplace of classical liberalism, the UK, has simply ceased to exist.

There's some mush about lower tax rates (although pointedly NOT Thatcherism!), a call to patriotism in the name of British business (in order for it to create more tax revenue), but most of all a pledge of ideological fealty to universal health care, not even as a right, but as an ethos, today's overarching value in the United Kingdom.


Turning empty churches into community centers? Health care as one of the highest achievements of Western Civilization? Flexible working hours? Mass transit? We fought the Nazis for this?