Is it really this bad?

The great changes are not those associated with the replacement of one or other set of people by another.

Rather they come when an Idea Dies.

In this case we seem to be seeing the utter discrediting of the Idea that by increasing massively state spending and state busybody-ness on all fronts, things will necessarily improve.

Of course, some people still – against all reason – think that the answer is to increase state spending:

Britain’s social crisis demands more public spending, not less; as the country falls into recession, more intervention is needed, not less. A small state and low taxes will not cure the ills that are daily increasing public alarm. Only a strong state can.

How many core errors can one cram into 43 words?

Why do more taxes = a stronger state? What exactly makes a state ‘strong’?

Is not bamboo strong in its own way, but yet light and far more flexible than heavy steel?

Why does anyone now think that civil servants dreaming up one more intrusive scheme after another can know enough and be wise enough to outperform the rational decisions made by millions of people just getting on with it?

What are the transaction costs associated with giving them ever more taxpayers money? Try driving down the A420 in Oxfordshire and see the stupid proliferation/duplication of road signs. Before that try parking in an Oxford centre public car park, which takes ever higher parking fees running to thousands of pounds a day, yet is dirty and unkempt.

Or go to the EC Commission buildings in Brussels and see the vast banners fluttering down tall buildings welcoming Slovenia into the Eurozone, and proclaiming the EU’s Anti-Torture policies.

Money taken at some cost from taxpayers and tipped into the pockets of a few PR firms able to pick their way through the EU bureaucracy to win these handsome contracts.

There is a decadence in all this mis-government at so many levels simultaneously, a deep creeping bland corruption in the idea that people can not be trusted and that things only improve if More Government takes More Decisions.

And New Labour under Blair/Brown alike have led the way, like cartoon characters marching straight out beyond the edge of a cliff into thin air before staring horrified at the abyss yawning beneath them.

Then plunging.

Down.

John Kampfner is worried:

But my straw poll suggests the numbers thinking of quitting Labour benches may be unprecedented. They know that something terrible is afoot: the collapse of centre-Left politics, not only in Britain but across Europe.

Crime; meet Punishment.