#138 – Steve Baker – The Structural Failure of Government

Labour took treasury advice to cut winter fuel payments from better off pensioners. It's a right and sensible thing to do, obviously needed to be cut, but it was announced during a Tory leadership contest, yet another one. So the easy thing was done, which was to stand with the pensioners against this unjust cut and the stupidity of it. It was a great moment for the conservative party to say, finally, the Labour Party's willing to live modestly in the real world. Of course, we support this cut to spending. The conservative party and reform should support every cut to spending, and they should oppose every rise to taxation. And if there was a a exception at all to that, it would be in the fundamental state like defense and criminal justice. You know, really, taking winter fuel payments from better off pensioners is only the beginning of what needs to be done. And the fact that both reform and the conservatives failed to rise to that moment makes me agree with you that there is not currently a political party offering a platform to the public which would save the nation. This show is brought to you by my lead sponsor, Ayran, the AI cloud for the next big thing. Ayran builds and operates next generation data centers and delivers cutting edge GPU infrastructure all powered by renewable energy. Now if you need access to scalable GPU clusters or are simply curious about who is powering the future of AI, check out iron.com to learn more, which is iren.com. Yeah. The first person to come on Hang on. One important thing. Does my hair look alright? Your hair is great, man. We're gonna leave that, Ed. Yes. You're the first person to come on the show three times, Steve. Well, I'm honored indeed. I mean, what an honor. Next time I'm feeling blue and undervalued I will remember that I've been on your podcast three times. Wow we like having you here. Steve why is the country not working anymore? What is going on? This is the end of an enormous period of managerialism. Yes. I mean, at the end of the second World War, people voted for massive increases in state power. It really worried Churchill. He'd issued his cabinet, the road to to Serfdom, by Hayek. The Road to Serfdom, of course, warned that The UK was going down the road, which Germany had gone down. Hayek meant it when he wrote it. But, of course, everyone thought it was ridiculous and didn't believe it. Churchill lost the election after after the second world war. The public voted for a lot more managerialism in their lives. Oh, so I love the literature of that period. There was a book called The Managerial Revolution by a reformed American Trotskyite called Burnham and he said that the New Deal, American, the American New Deal, British interventionism, fascism, socialism, communism all basically had at their roots the same phenomenon …