Over the past three weeks, all major UK political parties have set out what they would do with the reins of state power. With Conservative Party Conference now finished and this year’s party conference season wrapped up, Jilan Shah considers a question that is too often ignored in British politics: what are the boundaries of legitimate government authority, and where should the limits of state power be set?
In a political debate today on the scale of government, you’ll hear endless arguments from both sides. So how can we evaluate which side has more merit: Should the government be larger or smaller? Should it intervene more or step back?
We need to start with a more fundamental question: What is the state actually for? Before we can argue over how big the government should be, we have to establish what gives it legitimate authority in the first place.
What do most people actually want in their lives?
I believe that what most people want out of life is remarkably simple:
Food on the table - the peace of mind that comes from knowing where your next meal is coming from
Secure place to live - a home that offers shelter, stability and a foundation to raise a family
Good health - physical and mental vitality to enjoy living and care for those around us
Meaningful relationships - lasting bonds with friends and family
Strong communities - belonging to networks that add richness to everyday life
Safety and security - knowing that you, your property and the fruits of your labour are safe and secure
We could say in summary that this is simply prosperity or, as Aristotle called it, “the good life” - a life of dignity and human flourishing.
What is the best way to achieve this good life or human flourishing?
Scan that list again, and one thing stands out: none of this is possible without safety and security.
You can not plan for the future, build a home, raise a family or look after your health if you are constantly living in fear. Security isn’t just a nice item on a long menu. Security is the foundation upon which all aspects of human flourishing rest.
Crucially, however, we must be clear about what genuine security means. Legitimate security is protection from coercion, plunder, violence, and arbitrary control by others. It is not, and cannot be, protection from the natural risks of life, such as illness, misfortune, or the negative consequences of our own bad choices. Falling ill or making a poor decision are natural features of the human condition. When the state attempts to eliminate natural risk, it must control human behaviour, stripping away personal agency in a futile quest to engineer a risk-free world.
Where does legitimate authority come from?
This is precisely where the concept of government comes in. At its core, government is simply a mutual association. It is an agreement among individuals to pool their inherent, personal right of self-defence into a shared system of law and justice.
French philosopher Frédéric Bastiat captured this brilliantly in The Law:
“If every person has the right to defend - even by force - their person, their liberty and their property, then it follows that a group of individuals have the right to organise and support a common force to protect these rights constantly.”
Bastiat’s insights reveal both the origin and the strict limits of state power. The state has no magical, special rights or powers of its own. It derives its authority entirely from the individuals who created it.
Because no single person has the moral right to plunder their neighbour, micro-manage their family, or dictate how they live, a group of individuals acting in the capacity of ‘the government’ can’t suddenly grant themselves that right either.
We intuitively understand this when it comes to personal freedoms. A 51% majority vote cannot make it morally right to silence a minority, outlaw a religion, or dictate who someone is allowed to love. If an action is an unjust violation of an individual’s liberty when done by one person, multiplying that action by millions of voters doesn’t transform it into a legitimate authority.
Democracy is a vital tool for choosing who administers the law, but it does not have the power to redefine basic human rights. And so the legitimate function of the law is strictly defensive: to protect person, liberty and property.
Where modern politics strays: protection vs. paternalism
This brings us to the core split in modern politics. The state’s legitimate job is to protect the conditions that make the good life possible by protecting people from physical violence, theft, and coercion, but not attempting to manufacture the good life itself or insulating individuals from reality.
When the government crosses from protection into paternalism, it turns Bastiat’s principle upside down. As we explored in Is a free and prosperous society compatible with welfare entitlements?, the moment a state-managed safety net becomes an institutional entitlement, it ceases to be a static floor. It transforms into an open-ended political prize driven by a one-way ratchet where politicians compete by offering broader benefits.
Can a Free and Prosperous Society Survive an Expansive Welfare State?
Jilan Shah considers a profound and too-often ignored question: whether an expansive welfare state is even compatible with a free and prosperous democracy.
Paternalism rests on a quiet arrogance; the belief that the politicians and bureaucrats know how to run your life better than you do. It assumes that central planners can manage and guarantee human flourishing better than free individuals can.
Trying to understand the desire for paternalism - and why it fails
The desire for an active state comes from the fact that there are many uncertainties in life. One could lose their means of earning a living, be it a job loss or illness or disability. It is entirely human to want a safety net where someone, somewhere, guarantees that things will be okay. Paternalism promises comfort in exchange for control.
The problem is not the intention. It is that the trade does not work. When government attempts to guarantee outcomes, it must use coercion to do so. It must take from some to give to others, and dictate to both how they must live.
Bastiat saw this trap as early as 1848. In The State, he called the state “the great fictional entity by which everyone endeavours to live at the expense of everyone else.” The state produces nothing of its own; every benefit it hands out was first taken from someone. Once people forget that, every group has a reason to lobby for its share, and the ratchet keeps turning.
In the process, it weakens the very institutions - family, mutual aid, voluntary community, enterprise - that actually produce resilience. Worse still, by trying to do everything, the state fails at its primary job. The result is plain to see: record welfare spending paired with rising crime, mounting judicial backlogs, and failing basic public services. We end up with less security, not more, and we lose freedom in the bargain.
So a government cannot legislate meaningful relationships or strong communities - those only grow through voluntary human connection. Nor can it create true prosperity and wealth by decree; it can only redistribute what free individuals have already produced.
Worst of all, when the state takes over the responsibilities of daily life, it quietly strips away personal agency. It replaces voluntary cooperation with legal force, turning self-reliant citizens into permanent dependents and clients of the state.
If we want a society where people truly thrive, we must maintain a clear distinction: the state exists to keep us safe from coercion so that we have the freedom and dignity to build the good life - not to run our lives for us.
Pillars of a legitimate state
If the state’s authority is strictly derived from the individual’s right to self-defence, then it follows that its scope is naturally limited. Government isn’t a Swiss Army knife for every social friction, nor is it society’s moral conscience. It is a specialised tool built for a specific job: protecting individuals from coercion, theft, and violence.
In practice, that narrow mandate rests on three pillars.
Pillar 1: External defence
First, protecting the people from foreign aggression, invasion, or coercion.
Domestic liberty means very little if your society is exposed to conquest or dictation by external powers who don’t respect individual rights. Pooling resources for a military tasked strictly with defending the realm, its borders, and its sovereignty is a clear and direct extension of the individual’s right to self-defence.
The key word here is defence. A legitimate military exists to protect peace and freedom at home, not to engage in foreign social engineering, nation-building, or global military intervention.
Pillar 2: Internal justice and the rule of law
Second, keeping domestic peace through an objective, impartial legal system. This requires a police force to prevent or respond to criminal acts (violence, fraud, theft, and coercion) and an independent judiciary to enforce contracts and settle disputes.
In a free society, the Rule of Law means two specific things:
Equal protection: The law applies equally to everyone—citizens, politicians, and bureaucrats alike. No individual or group receives special legal privileges or exemptions.
Negative prohibition: The law exists to prohibit harmful actions against others, not to mandate virtuous behaviour. It tells people what they must not do (e.g., do not steal, do not assault), rather than micro-managing what they must do.
When courts enforce contracts and penalise harm objectively, people can interact, trade, and co-operate with confidence, knowing that disputes will be settled by reason and established law rather than force or political influence.
Pillar 3: Property rights and free exchange
Third, securing property rights, including the freedom to make contracts and trade freely.
Property rights are not an arbitrary social convention or a privilege granted by politicians; they are an extension of personal liberty. To own property is simply to retain the fruits of your own labour, time, and talent. If the state fails to secure property rights, or if it arbitrarily seizes property through over-regulation or excessive taxation, it strips away the incentive for individuals to work, invest, build, and save.
Critics often ask: without state intervention, who builds the roads, protects the environment, or provides basic infrastructure?
A free society does not ignore collective needs; it just changes how they are met. Throughout history, infrastructure, standards, and community resources have emerged organically through private enterprise, local civic trusts, and voluntary associations without requiring state monopolies. When the state takes over these functions, it transforms neutral public goods into politically allocated favours, diluting property rights and stifling innovation in the process.
The principle of restraint: Rules of the road vs. the destination
Together, these three pillars define a state that acts like the rules of the road.
Traffic laws, speed limits, and road signs exist to prevent crashes and allow everyone to travel safely. They do not dictate where you are going, what car you must drive, who your passengers should be. The rules apply equally to every driver, ensuring maximum freedom for all.
The moment the government steps beyond these three pillars - moving from protecting rights to directing outcomes - it ceases to be an impartial umpire. It becomes an active player - a driver attempting to steer every car on the road, inevitably bringing traffic to a standstill and causing the very collisions it was meant to prevent.
Would an impartial observer call our modern government structure legitimate?
If we accept that a legitimate state has a strictly defensive role - protecting our life, liberty and property - then we face a sobering reality: much of what the modern state does today sits well outside its authority.
We have gradually traded away personal agency, community self-reliance, and long-term prosperity for the promise of state-guaranteed comfort. But an overextended state inevitably fails at both jobs - it neglects its core duties of protection and justice while micromanaging the details of our everyday lives. We see this in the very pertinent present debate over national defence, where core protection is underfunded while state welfare entitlements continue to expand.
Our Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, recently stated during a PMQs, “We do everything to support our national security, but it can’t come at the expense of social security”
This captures the central challenge of the modern state: when government expands its role into broad social engineering, its foundational duty of national security is forced to compete for priority rather than standing as the essential baseline.
Reclaiming a free society doesn’t start with electing “better leaders” to manage a broken system. It starts with a cultural shift. It requires us to stop looking to government as the primary answer to every human problem, and to rebuild the muscles of personal responsibility, family, and voluntary community.
Before supporting any new law, spending proposal, or government initiative, we ought to ask one fundamental question: Is this a legitimate exercise of collective self-defence to protect people from force or fraud or is it another attempt to use political force to dictate how others live? If it is the latter, it belongs to civil society, not the state.
Jilan Shah is an insurance and Reinsurance professional in the London Market with a keen interest in individual liberty, free markets and sound money.
End all taxation and that will limit the power that governments have over us.