A Time for Choosing. Again.
Labour's policy of discrimination in pursuit of some concept of equity is injustice exemplified. It shows this is a time for choosing again the path of freedom and flourishing.
In a speech last week for Fighting for a Free Future, Lord David Frost set out the challenges we face and said,
“What we need to do is clear. It’s almost everything.”
We will publish his speech in full very soon, but it reminded me of two things. One was Reagan’s brilliant 1964 speech, A Time for Choosing, which transformed his career at a time when people still knew what they were losing. The other was that when Reagan was President and Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, we seemed to know what was worth fighting for in a way we seem now to have forgotten.
The Berlin Wall fell1, Communism ended, and the Cold War drew to a close. And yet somehow the socialists seem to have won: I read today Labour draws up equality law revamp that ‘will impose socialism’ on Britain.
Under the plans, public sector bodies will have a new “socio-economic duty” imposed on them, meaning that all decisions they make must strive to reduce inequality in society.
This is injustice exemplified. In a free society, we ought to be treated equally before the law, not discriminated against to meet a conception of just outcomes held by someone in authority, trampling over human choice, agency and action.
This debate was recently the study of our Book Club when we read Nozick’s critique of Rawls theory of justice, which defines the contemporary Left. Unfortunately, the Conservatives were as guilty, introducing the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012, which I stridently opposed. So why is treating people unequally the consensus?
When I joined the Royal Air Force in the 1980s, we thought we were defending a civilisation built on individual liberty, equal treatment under the law and national democratic self‑government. Today, the governing establishment scarcely believes in those foundations.
Once again, we can choose freedom, prosperity and happiness, or we shall have tyranny, poverty and misery. This could not matter more.
