New Years Message

Well it looks like as Leader of the Libertarian Party it falls to me to give a rousing missive on the prospects for 2011.

Sorry folks, all am going to be able to offer you is one of 'blood sweat aand tears' variety.

To be a Libertarian in 2009/2010 was easy because with the Brown Terror in place, it was clear who the bad guys were. The Labour Party believe that a big State is a force for good. Whereas most Libertarians believe and know that it is not. Fabianism is legitimised theft of the future. Two unborn generations are going to be saddled with the fallout from Gordon Brown. Yet the nation still did not give the Conservatives the mandate they wanted, only the social democrats and eighty seats stand between us and a continuation of the overt Fabian rule of New Improved Hardline Labour.

Oldham and Saddleworth will revert to type and will return to being a Labour fiefdom. That is why calling an election over the Christmas break was beyond stupid other than to keep the BNP in check.

The Conservatives are promising great things, and believe they have stopped the economic rot. With Business liquidity at a low ebb and the State sector still growing, these promises do not represent a real philosophical change in the relation of the individual vis a vis the State.

The Libertarian Party is therefore going to contract before it starts to expand again. I can live with that, as the active membership of the party are young and committed, time is with us. However It is clear that anybody holding Libertarian views is not going to be flavour of the month with Fabians who advocate violence and civil disobediance in defence of the State.

This morning I read the following-

You cannot count on the Courts to protect you from the whim of the bureaucrats in Russia.

This was in relation to Mikhail Khodorkovsky arrested in 2003, now sentenced again for a further fourteen years.

We are still fortunate that the Courts will still offer some protection to the individual against the bureaucrats, but how much longer will this continue. Therefore it is the duty of the Libertarian Party to expose the Executive remorselessly. Politics is not just about fighting elections in a loaded two party system, politics is about a battle of ideas with your friends and neighbours as allies.

Our current politics is again dividing into a Court Party (Fabian,pro EU, elitist and centralising)and a Country Party ( Individualist, anti EU and devolving), therefore the Libertarian Party needs to forge alliances with anybody who shares our outlook that a centralising State needs to be curbed.

Be open, be courageous, value our hard won liberties.

I look forward to meeting you all at some stage in 2011.

Regards Andrew

Beneath The Smiling Cricketeers

Picking up the Telegraph this morning, I see a big smiley photograph of some chaps in white hugging each other who are on holiday in the sun playing with a bat and ball. Then the BBC intones that Cameron thinks this is a great day for the country that some chaps on holiday in the sun playing with a bat and ball in a great day for the country.

What the 'Leader' failed to comment on as a 'Leader' was the news that 'Tax Freedom Day' has lurched forward to May 30th this year. That is five whole months when you will work as a serf to the State your overlord and receive no reward for your labours.

This is undeniable evidence that the State is still growing. The Cameronian Conservative party has failed to check public spending, every morning another special interest group from the public sector is on the BBC predicting disaster for the country if they are not allowed to carry on sucking at the teat of the state.

Cameron and 'fair and greener' Clegg are indulging in 'bread and circuses' politics whilst watching the State expand like a cancer.

I predict that in thirty years the State papers will show dithering and indecision masked by a desperation to keep rolling out 'good news' as benefits a former PR man.

A Happy Christmas To You All

Whatever your political persuasion the Libertarian Party wishes you all a Happy Christmas and the hopes of a New Year in personal freedom.

If you are a member of the political classes, try not to spend the whole of the holiday dreaming up new ways to 'do something' or find another intiative that creates another raft of officials.

Take a break and give us all a break.

Have a good one

Andrew Withers and the NCC of the Libertarian Party

Never Mind Scapping Cable, Scrap The Whole Department

I am not going to rehearse again in these pages my own particular tussles with the DTI/BERR/BIS that are now entering their fifth year, but needless to say any organisation that refuses to accept that French companies can have foreign shareholders, and refuses to accept that subsidiaries form part of a consolidated balance sheet, you cannot have a logical argument with.

As with Cable yesterday Business,Innovation & Skills makes its mind up first then adjusts reality to fit the decision. Refusal to accept the decision will entail personal bankruptcy for the small businessmen and catastrophic financial consequences for larger enterprises.

Cable in the section I listened to yesterday has a quasi-judicial role at BIS, in what other sphere of justice do you have a 'Judge' declaring war on the applicant or the defendant in a case, and being allowed to keep his job ? The other telling phrase is 'I cannot politicise this issue, because there are legal implications' then proceeded to spew out his bile against Murdoch.

Today, I see that Ed Davey has been recorded as well as his still boss. This is a man who has admitted that he found my particular case 'complicated ' and difficult to understand. The commercial ignorance and overt politicisation of an organisation that is anti business to its very public sector core, whilst professing to be for promoting British Industry is breathtaking.

Free Marketeer Sir Nicholas Ridley, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry back in the 1980s, was one of the first in that office to wonder in public what the DTI was actually for.His solution is to abolish the post. Sadly Ridley died before he could put this into action. 15 years later, new Conservative leader Michael Howard appeared still not to have found the answer.

If the Conservatives are to lay claim to being the party of business, they ought at least to pretend to be interested in the wealth-creating sector. This is one Ministry that should have been reduced or abolished, it should certainly have not been handed over to the Social Democrats whose penchant for regulation matches that of the Labour Party.

There is no point Cameron expecting the Private sector to take up the slack of laying off public sector workers, when the nationalised banks come under BIS and Cable and are just not making vital loans to industry to allow recovery to pick up momentum. BIS is acting as it is some form of third police force, and is indeed allegedly recruiting retired policemen to beef up its activities against business, with the lucrative fines that it entails. One in seven Finance firms are looking to move to Guernsey, Jersey or Switzerland, HSBC is reviewing whether it should be headquartered in London. Not a ringing endorsement of the business environment in Britain. It is Private industry that creates real jobs not fake jobs as under Brown in the public sector.

This is another function that ought to be stripped away from Cable and given to the Treasury if there has to be regulation.

The shambles over tuition fees should be returned to County Councils and away from the Social Democrats centralising instincts.

DTI/BERR/BIS or whatever it is called this week has a terrible history.

The saga of Matrix Churchill where a nod and wink from one part of the DTI as to export licences to Iraq, was not relayed to Customs and excise who prosecuted the Directors, who faced jail. It was only when Alan Clark admitted being 'economical with the actualitie' did the Directors walk free. However the skills and the business had been lost.

Appointing Peter Mandelson over the mega-department that took upon itself the role of ensuring the probity of the business environment was a joke too far. His demands that the Directors of the Phoenix Consortium be investigated by the fraud squad, who politely declined. The skewed report that removed the Labour Party's political interference from the narrative was farcical. Finally he demanded that the Directors be banned 'forever' from being directors on public TV.

This Department has aspirations to direct and run British Industry from a Whitehall Ministry run by just one man. This is Government control of the means of production by another route. Clause four never went away.

The fact that Cameron has allowed Cable to stay in post, where a Tory would have been out on his ear is a testament to the weakness of political resolve in Coalition.

Andrew P Withers

Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, should go, and not be replaced

Vince Cable has shown the frailty of Man.

His prejudices have been laid bare. His vanity. His bias.

Is he exceptionally bad? No, I do not think he is exceptional.

So why do we want to replace Vince Cable with another fallible human who brings a new, different set of prejudices? Was he presumptuous to think that he could have the power he boasted of? I doubt it. The post he held is indeed powerful. All the more reason to abolish it.

If the State aims to protect the public from monopolies, maybe the State should take a long look in the mirror first. Even now, with the "Big Society", it appears to be gearing up to localise and outsouce the State monopoly, not end it through free pluralism.

If the State aims to protect the public from private enterprise, maybe it should look into ways it provides unfair advantage to incumbents, large corporations, limited liability companies or other groups. Vast quantities of regulations, employment law, taxation and red tape are culprits here.

If the State wishes to uphold the Rule of Law, had it not to apply the same laws and due process without fear or favour, namely presumption of innocence? Outlawing a company from action before it commits fraud, misrepresentation or other crimes is wrong.

If the State removed the bias and distortions it has introduced over time, the need for so many regulations, laws, red tape and a Business Secretary will diminish if not cease to be altogether.

The post of Business Secretary is the rock under which a bureaucracy can breed and grow and self-serving, self -justifying frameworks consolidate. Look to why the post exists and look to the root causes, not the immediate. Look to the potential for corruption and worse.

End the post. Unravel the red tape. Strip away distortions. Should a company then break the law, then it should be punished.

Ergo, Ego

Why did this not surprise me ! Vince Cable has a massive ego that believes that 'he can bring down the Government'. The ex Labour Party/SDP/Liberal Democrat sage who predicted seventeen of the the last four recessions has demonstrated the words of Billy Connolly 'anybody who wants to stand for Parliament, should be automatically banned from standing'.

Vince who currently presides over Mandelsonia, a vast sprawling fiefdom called Business, Innovation & Skills created by the Prince of Darkness has succumbed in six short months living in the dizzing heights of Cabinet Office to bouts of hubris and self importance that would not have shamed Mandelson.

With Mandelson at least you could work yourself into a froth of rage at the incompetence,the waste of vast rafts of public money, the self serving money grubbing. With Cable you just get the depressing feeling of what on earth is this man doing there at the top of the tree when British Industry is desperately trying to pull itself out of the biggest hole in our economic history created by his preferred partners in Government, the Mickey Miliband club. Deficit deniers to a man.

The ' Liberal' Democrats are just not Liberal, they believe in fabianism as much as the next socialist. The LD's are an old fashioned Social Democrat party who hi- jacked the word Liberal without understanding what it meant.

I was in a bookshop on Sunday, flicking through 'Decline & Fall' by Chris Mullin, and latched on to his opinion of Nick Clegg' the biggest Charlatan of them all'. No wonder the Social democrats have plummeted to 9%, UKIP have 5% and at least believe in something passionately. The two big hitters of the Social Democrats will dump any promise or any principle to achieve office.

Ask the students.

As a Libertarian Liberal, I do not advocate the creation of any new civil service post, but I am willing to make an exception here. The post that I suggest that we revive is an ancient one. That of the slave that follows the Emperor on his triumph, whispering repeatedly.

'You are but a man, You are but a man, You are but a Man'

UPDATE Things are a foot

You say you want a revolution? I say 'No thanks'

In light of recent events, reading this today made me shudder at what next year might bring, I am not a fan of revolutions, as they get out of hand far too easily and cause unnecessary suffering and even death to ordinary people. Plus they are hardly good for private property and the rule of law! Most of all thought they tend to decrease liberty (the US war of Independence being the most obvious exception)

So when I read Libertarians saying in effect 'bring it on' I have say my view is 'hell no'-mainly because we'd loose. We have seen how easy it is for our ideological opponents (leftists, statists, Fabians, call they what you will) to get tens of thousands of people on the streets waving socialist worker placards and smashing up topshops. We, on the other hand struggle to fill a small pub in London. If it did kick off next year, can you honestly say you'd think we'd get less government?

Too many people had bought the line that everything going down now is due to 'greedy bankers' and taxing the rich would prevent the (minuscule) cuts being made. For us to succeed we need to play a long game, and focus on getting out to real people with the truth about how economics, money and government work. Most of all we need to be saying over and over 'There's no such thing as a free lunch'.
The free market/classical liberal movement had done pretty poorly in the past at getting this message out to people. I believe it should be LPUK's priority to focus on this and build our base, focusing on grassroots networks and getting in a position to supplant the Tories and Lib dems in local councils over the next few years.
It will take time for us to build up momentum (time we may not have), remember how long it took the Fabians to get to the position where they could implement their agenda. Even if it takes us 20 years, is still better than blood on the streets

Video of the day 2

(via)

Oldham East Election January 13th

RT: @BBCPolitics: Writ for Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election to be moved tomorrow - setting a date for the vote of January 13th.

Video of the day

Reason TV interview Taxpayers Alliance director Matthew Elliot on Britain's Burgeoning Tax Revolt.

Tax Day looking better for Americans

© The Strike Productions 2010

The film is out on Tax Day in the US, that's April 15th.

Click through for thoughts on the production so far from Objectivist playwright Richard Gleaves (also of YouTube infamy).

The best way to follow the movie is via the Facebook page titled "Atlas Shrugged The Movie"

New Leadership Challenge

I have had a request from Claire Khaw, BNP member that I should change the Constitution of the Libertarian Party (not within my gift, as I am bound by the consitution as well) to allow her to have dual membership of a far left nationalist authoritarian party and the Libertarian Party. The purpose being to challenge me for the Leadership of the Libertarian Party.

Answers on a post card for the NCC meeting.

A Quiet Revolution

Yesterday evening I was on the 'frontline' of  the end of the failed
fabian experiment in Westminster. The dregs of the student protests were
 still being kettled, Police had helicopters up, tube stations closed
and vans full of back up, yet they still managed to drive a couple of
VIP's into the middle of this maelstrom of heightened emotions.

This morning Boris and Stephenson of the Met were having a discussion
 on Radio 4 about yesterday, was it just me or was Stephenson making a
lot of  threats about how 'tooled up' his men were. Was he seriously
advocating  that the Met start shooting protestors ?

I saw bizarre sights such as 'anarchists' demanding more state subsidy for education. How does that work then ?

Labour created a massive expansion of the State that was built on
nothing more than a bubble, to have 50% of the young 'doing a degree'
was only going to devalue standards and to damage the marketability of
having a degree. There is nothing left that the hard pressed taxpayer
can contribute to a 'bust' state. What we saw on the streets was nothing
 more that demanding money with menaces, and Labour were at the front of
 this egging it on, as usual bearing no responsibility for their
actions.

Meanwhile at the National Liberal Club a quiet revolution was occuring organised by the Cobden Centre. Libertarians, Members of the Adam Smith Institute
 and other representatives of Classical Liberal organisations met for an
 informal social event to make contacts, talk and make futue plans. The
talk was was of  honest money, Mises and Hayek and of course the failing
 Euro experiment.

The keynote speech was by Conservative MP Steve Baker, one of the few 'good guys'.

The Toast was to Cobden's vision of 'Peace and Free Trade'

Fabianism has failed, the Labour party derided Cobden the result is an impoverished nation and war.

For one battered Liberal (not the fake 'Liberal' Democrats) the long
march is now on its second faltering step.

I hope that you will join us in rebuilding 'Liberal' Britain.

Update On The Vince Cable Farago

By agreement with the solicitors acting for the Secretary Of State and subject to confirmation to the wording in the Court Order, the Secretary of State has no jurisdiction over the Libertarian Party.

Therefore I am pleased to finally accept the position of Party Leader

Keynesian Economics Is Wrong

Not that we need convincing but very good regardless.

I also came across these two good pieces from the Cobden centre today. The first an audio interview on the situation in Ireland from an Austrian perspective, and second currency devaluation and economic growth.

Hayek vs Keynes II

Thanks to Andy Janes for alerting me to this one.

Conference summary

As no one else has posted on it yet, though would do a quick summary of Saturday's conference for members who couldn't make it.

As well as Andrew Withers election as party leader, the following officers were elected:

Chairman: Nic Coome
Treasurer: John Watson
Communications Director: Ken Ferguson
Nominating and membership Officer: Simon Fawthrop
Policy Director: Tim Carpenter

SE Branch Officers:
Regional Coordinator: Andy Janes (myself)
Treasurer: Simon Gibbs
Secretary: Rob Waller

Biggest discussion was over the proposal to change the party's name to the Libertarian and Constitution Part. This was rejected, along with a few other amendments to the constitution. We did agree to replacing the post of Communications Director with two posts - a Campaigns Director who would handle the newsletter, leaflet designs and suchlike, and the Online Communications Director who would be in charge of the website.

After that we agreed that the party should support the yes campaign in next year's AV referendum as a slight improvement on the status quo, and to look into a policy on campaigning for the reform of the electoral deposit system. Case in point- we briefly spoke on running a candidate for the London mayoral election until someone pointed out it needs a £10k deposit!

We finished by 3 and then had a few well deserved beers. Overall was a productive day