The Conservatives now have a real fight on their hands. After 1979, as champions of free-market capitalism, they seemed to embody the ruling ideology of the age. One best-selling book even called Labour leaders Blair and Brown the ‘sons of Thatcher’. Now the Labour party speaks openly of socialism and has a shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, who lists his recreations in Who’s Who as ‘fermenting the overthrow of capitalism’. It’s no idle threat; in his conference speech he advocated a ‘strategic investment board’ comprising the Chancellor, the Secretary of State for Business and the Governor of the Bank of England to ‘co-ordinate the promotion of investment, employment and real wages’.
The Conservatives appear to have lost the ability to defend freedom. Philip Hammond was content to make some mocking remarks about returning to what he called the chaos of the 1970s and proceeded to put in a good word for ‘market discipline’.
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