Please see my latest wire as Brexit diarist for The New York Sun, ‘Will Thatcher’s Ghost Haunt Mrs. May?’:
What an irony that Prime Minister Theresa May’s crisis over Brexit is coming to a head on the 28th anniversary, to-day, of the fall from power of Margaret Thatcher. If only the Iron Lady were alive today.She was challenged for leadership in November 1990 by fellow Tory Michael Heseltine. His perfidy fell short of toppling her outright, but Mrs. Thatcher failed to secure the margin needed to survive the vote. So a further vote of confidence became necessary. After consulting colleagues, Mrs. Thatcher concluded she lacked the support to see off the second round.
What was Mrs. Thatcher’s political sin that turned her caucus against her? Obstinacy in the face of growing resistance to a poll tax that levied rates regardless of one’s ability to pay was the catalyst for her removal, say opponents, who did not lack for self-justification.
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Addendum. Though I remain sympathetic to Edmund Burke’s sentiments expressed to the electors of Bristol in 1774 — ‘that a politician betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices [his judgement] to your opinion’ — Public Choice Theory has heightened my suspicions of politicians and government officials who claim to have skills and knowledge of which the general public is deprived.
As Adam Smith observed in The Wealth of Nations, no one person enjoys the breadth and depth of knowledge required to direct the whole economic programme of a nation (cited in my New York Sun wire). F.A. Hayek explored this theme in his Nobel Prize for Economics acceptance speech in 1974, ‘The Pretense of Knowledge’.
Public Choice also questions the conventional wisdom that private individuals are self-interested, whereas public officials are directed by the best interests of the commonweal. Does this mean that public actors never consider their own interests when making political decisions?
Finally, with respect to Brexit and Britain’s efforts to leave the trade apparatus imposed by the European Union: economics teaches that the best option available, based on the division of labour and the law of comparative advantage, is free trade. While there is much discussion of Britain securing free trade deals with the global community, it is far more likely that ‘managed’ trade agreements will be secured — still a better option than what the EU presents. Nevertheless, it suggests that the UK Government, in a paternalistic fashion, does not trust its business community to strike out on its own, unsupervised. But as Ludwig von Mises wrote, ‘If one rejects laissez faire on account of man’s fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reasons also reject every kind of government action.’
Thus it is with Theresa May’s draft Withdrawal Agreement with the EU. The document not only insinuates that Government officials must protect British citizens from their own worst instincts for freedom, but it abrogates the 2016 referendum that voted to restore lost liberties and UK sovereignty.
Does anybody now question why Britons feel more secure in their own opinions over the wisdom of their elected representatives? Those same Government officials who run roughshod over the rule of law and trample in the mud the traditions of British parliamentary democracy?
My thanks to editor Seth Lipsky of The New York Sun.
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