After the Conservative Party’s local election win in Britain last week, Janet Daley asks: what next?
The answer, she writes, involves reframing the debate. Gordon Brown (and liberals here in the US) want to say that the choice before us is
between a party (his) that believes in "doing things" - taking people out of poverty, unlocking talent, etc, etc - and one that would prefer to "walk away" and leave people to get on with it.
No, no, no. Conservatives have got to insist on a different debate. Government can’t take people out of poverty, except in a temporary way.
[T]he state cannot "lift" people out of poverty (except in the most temporary sense), only people themselves can do that; that government cannot unlock talent, it can only get out of its way; that the surest way to keep the number of helpless and incompetent to an absolute minimum is to reduce dependency on the state as much as possible.
On the contrary, “caring for people means allowing them to take responsibility.” Because if you don’t let people take responsibility you turn them into political vegetables. That is fine for vegetables. But for people it is wrong.
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