Tim Montgomerie

Capitalism’s true enemies

The far left can’t win without the aid of callous, complacent conservatism

issue 22 August 2015

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[/audioplayer]Friends of capitalism feared that the events since 2007 — the financial collapses, bailouts, deficits and austerity — would produce a massive swing to the left, but it hasn’t happened. Voters have consistently chosen sensible, middle-of-the-road parties that undertook to steady the ship rather than sail in completely different directions. In reacting to the biggest crisis to engulf the free enterprise system for decades we’ve learnt that the spirit of the anti-capitalists is willing but their flesh is weak — and also that they’re simply aren’t enough of them. They can’t even read the books that they buy. Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time did have the dubious honour of being the most unread book of recent times but then came Thomas Piketty; the French economist and unlikely rock-star thinker of the global equality movement.

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