Just in case you are interested in that sort of thing...link

This was a question I found myself posing in a comment to a posting put up by Andy Wood over on Transport Blog.

The point is that (what with us living in a democracy and all) I see no reason why libertarian ideas should fail. After all, at least one of my claims for a libertarian world is that it would make everyone better off. Or, at least, almost everyone (he says calling to mind some of the more useless recent public appointments).

I know there were a whole bunch of economists in the 1970s who came up with public choice theory to explain just this. And perhaps it's about time I got round to finding out what they actually said. But in the absence of such effort-based knowledge here are a few ideas of my own.

Maybe it's because libertarian ideas are abstract ones and people aren't very good at abstracts. Maybe statist ideas are easier to understand. Well, if that is true and libertarian ideas are best seen rather than heard then maybe we should be seeking to massively increase the amount of devolution in this country. Maybe if local councils and other institutions had much more autonomy they would be prepared to experiment and, if they did so, maybe some of the ideas they would experiment with would be libertarian ones leading to a better world.

Maybe I shouldn't be so gloomy. Maybe we are winning the battle, it's just that it takes a long time. The Thatcher/Reagan (hell, you could even add in Lange/Mulroney/Hawke) Revolution put a broken rail in the path of the Socialist express. It was only partly successful - sure, people stopped believing in state ownership but they started to believe in state regulation with a vengeance - but it was a start.

Maybe it is just a case of keeping going.

Maybe it's that our arguments aren't that good. I often find it deeply disappointing (even in the area of debate, transport, I know well) that bad ideas so often go unchallenged or only challenged half-heartedly. Maybe, we just have to up our game a bit.

Of course, it could be that we are wrong. Surely not.

Nah, it's got to be those shape-shifting reptiles.

devolve centralise on the sly
insensitive the truth
insulting the truth
invest money waste money
looking at a range of options working out what we can get away with
modernise make worse
reform change the words but do nothing
shake up see reform
target miss but hit someone else hard. As in "We will target crime"
tighten up invent some more forms to fill in
tsar someone with all the responsibility but none of the power. Takes the blame when things (inevitably) go wrong (thanks to Brian for this one)
we will create a tsar we haven't a clue

Readers are invited to think up a few of their own

I have recently been watching the Alan Clark Diaries on BBC2. Ho hum, a watchable programme on the BBC. Who would have thought that?

The thing that struck me about both the most recent episode and the one before that was how much work was involved. Clark (as played by John Hurt) was knackered. On a permanent basis. Life had ceased to be fun and he had become the prisoner of his civil servants: "men working 18 hours a day for the destruction of the British character" as I think he put it.

Although I am sceptical about government I do accept that if large parts of it are to be dismantled then someone has to be doing the dismantlinng. I sometimes imagine myself in that role. So, how would I go about avoiding Alan Clark's fate? Here's my plan:

1. State your aims. "My aim is to reduce the role of the state and expand the powers of the individual." Gives people something to work for. Means they know what they are supposed to be doing - even if they don't agree with it.

2. Be practical: "This cannot be done all at once. Therefore, I am looking for policies that will a) succeed and b) be seen to succeed."

3. Be realistic: "I am only good for 10 hours a week. That includes visits and time in parliament. Oh, and boxes. You will have to work around that. If that means things get delayed - tough."

4. Stop them in their tracks: "For everything that goes into my box there must be a note stating why it is my business and how we might change things so it will cease to be my business." That should give them something to think about. It will also make them think twice before putting anything into your box.

5. Don't let the media run your life. Keep your blog up to date.

Libertarians like me tend to be rather sniffy about democracy, though usually rather reticent on what might replace it. We tend to reckon that the reasons it fails so badly is that whilst in the free market people are making lots of decisions all the time, in a democracy people have to make one decision affecting all sorts of things once every four or five years.

So, one is inclined to wonder about Your Party which is about to be launched:

It will ballot members online in order to come up with a popular manifesto. Candidates will be strictly bound by that manifesto.

And there will be a separate ballot for each issue and the policy will last no more than a year.

In other words (potentially) lots of decisions and not all at once.

Daniel Finkelstein chooses the 1974-76 Wilson regime:

Doctors' Plots, eh? What was it that Marx said about history repeating itself as farce?

...things will be different:

David Farrer outlines his first day as First Minister

Brit Prime Minister, Tony Blair, could end up heading up a Conservative-dominated government. That's the shock prediction of The Edge's Iain Murray. He believes that the war against Iraq will lead to a Labour split. He said: "Blair's party will probably split three ways. Leadership challenges in the Labour party are very difficult to arrange, and in the meantime he will survive with the support of the Conservatives."

In a move that has split New Labour from top to bottom, Health Secretary, Alan Milburn has suggested in the Times, that if the government doesn't get its act together the Tories could actually win the next election. Commenting on the story, senior analyst, Stephen Pollard said: "The piece was astonishing not simply for its policy implications, which are in themselves enormous. It was also a not-even-thinly-veiled attack on Gordon Brown, and pinpointed the real battle lines within the government -- that between the "transformers" (of whom Mr. Milburn is a leading example) and the "consolidators" (who are led by Mr. Brown)."

The news that the Cabinet is split down the middle in the war over public services follows hard on the heels of another split over environment policy - this time with Michael Meacher against everyone else.