View this post on the web at [link removed]

What’s your earliest political memory? I can remember accompanying my parents to vote during the 2005 general election. I also recall my father pointing at the telly when George W Bush was on, telling me “That’s the most important man in the world”, just as he swapped places with Tony Blair. I also used to tell Gordon Brown off for selling all our gold whenever I saw him on Newsround. But I’m not sure I’d grasped what politics was. It was a cast of characters: villains to be booed, heroes to be cheered.
Among the latter, the late Ann Widdecombe was a leading light, if only because of Strictly Come Dancing. In 2010, shortly after David Cameron become Prime Minister and in the shadow of the financial crisis and expenses scandal, Widdecombe managed to make herself the most popular politician in Britain by being hurled around the dancefloor once a week. Just as the causes in which she espoused and believed seem to be becoming ever more unfashionable in the Cameroon glow – Catholic social conservatism, opposition to the extension of gay rights, the reintroduction of the death penalty and even Euroscepticism – she made herself loved by being resolutely herself. Those now tediously decrying her now are very much in the minority.
To say her death – subject to a murder investigation – is a tragedy is stating the obvious. So to is the crude, but not inaccurate, point that it overshadowed the other major news story to come out of Reform-world last week: Nigel Farage’s rage quit by-election in Clacton. Less ‘the people vs the establishment’, more Farage versus the Sunday Times, the Standards Committee and a comedy writer pratting about in a bin.
The primary focus of Economic Affairs is economics, the clue very much being in the name. But since politics is the vessel through which the ideas of this august think-tank must be channelled, we are forced to muddy our hands with the subject from time to time. Plus, it strikes me that there is an essential lesson for Farage to learn from the late Widdecombe about the benefits of being true to one’s character.
Economic Affairs is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts daily, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
When Widdecombe was serving under [ [link removed] ] Michael Howard in the Home Office in the 1990s, Farage was pottering about in UKIP, a fringe political figure. Today – and even with a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it ‘Burnham Bounce’ – he is closer than ever to being Prime Minister. He is the most likely candidate to lead a right-wing government after the next election, even if Kemi Badenoch continues to win herself more admirers.
The brief hopes that Labour would channel the spirit of Roger Douglas [ [link removed] ] and implement the supply-side reforms the Tories never could has long since been extinguished. The Liberal Democrats so far from classical liberalism that they could be done by trading standards, Farage is therefore, almost be default, the best hope that free-marketeers have of seeing their ideas implemented any time soon. This is not an endorsement, but a statement of fact. If any representative of Team Badenoch, the Labour Growth Group or Ed Davey’s Yellow Peril wish to write for Economic Affairs disproving this, I will accept their submissions with alacrity.
Until that day, it’s Farage in the driving seat. Historically, this wouldn’t have been too greatof a cause for alarm for free-marketeers. A boyhood fan of Margaret Thatcher and Enoch Powell, Farage’s politics were long a combination of the best bits of our Director General and Head of Lifestyle Economics – free-market Euroscepticism from the saloon bar - with a little more of an enthusiasm for immigration control.
But since Reform began topping the polls, Farage seems to have lost his way a little, dabbling with nationalising the water and steel industries and repealing the two-child benefit cap. This was Burnham-before-time, not Maggie 2.0 - the exact opposite to what Britain needs if we are to shake off stagnation and our spending addiction.
Fortunately, Farage has got quiet on big spending in recent months. The addition of Robert Jenrick to Reform’s standard seems to have put the breaks on any more outlandish attempts to woo Labour voters with their own money. Policy wonks will also be heartened by the growing number of Reform advisers papably sensible [ [link removed] ] on economic matters. Nonetheless, there is a palpable sense that Farage has drifted away from his comfort zone. This by-election is a colossal self-indulgence, but one designed to get the Reform leader back on the campaign trail and back in the spotlight, where he is at his happiest. Which brings us back to Widdicombe, and her great example.
As Farage paid his respects to her at the weekend, he might have been struck by those qualities of personality and principle mentioned above. If he wants to enjoy leading Reform again – and if he is going to make a success of being in in Number 10, should be eventually reach the end of the long and winding road to Downing Street – he should return to those views that he has held close to along his long career.
Prove that that Thatcherite and Powellite flame still burns, and that he still understands that free markets and free people are the prerequisites for prosperity. Prove that he hasn’t gone wobbly, while appealing to an audience beyond Clacton Pier. Prove he is worthy of history’s allotted burden, that a policy brain lingers behind the pint glass, and that he is in politics for more than the adoration of his fans.
Economic Affairs would be happy to take an article – or any other Reformer who wishes to prove the party is classically liberal at heart. As per XTC [ [link removed] ], ‘We’re only making plans for Nigel/We only want what’s best for him’. In a strictly non-partisan sense, of course.
What we’re reading
Get in the Binface. In his Sunday Telegraph column, our Director General has been arguing [ [link removed] ] that Count Binface’s starring role in the Clacton by-election is not a harmless joke and a signal of a deeper malaise in our politics. Elections are treated as entertainments rather than serious contests over policy. We have a political environment in which spectacle overshadows substance, with the ‘comedy’ candidate’s promises not far away from what real parties are offering.
Social valueless. For The Critic, Emmanuel Igwe has suggested [ [link removed] ] that ‘social value’ requirements in public procurement have departed from their original purposes, leaving government contracts more expensive and less competitive. Igwe suggests the metric they deploy – such as diversity initiatives or encouragement of volunteering – are speculative and difficult to measure and favour larger firms that can afford specialist bid-writing. Scrapping them is a must.
Yippee for a LVT? Fresh from handing Gary Stevenson’s bottom to him, Dan Neidle has praised [ [link removed] ] Andy Burnham for providing support for a land value tax (LVT). With a hat-tap to the IEA, Neidle argued that replacing the UK’s current property taxes with a LVT would create a fairer and more economically efficient tax system. Existing taxes discourage investment; an LVT, he suggests, could raise the same revenue without the same growth-destroying side effects.
An Amster-damn good idea. Over at Works in Progress, Virginia Postrel has made the case [ [link removed] ] that Amsterdam’s pioneering fire service was not the result of a single invention, but of combining technological innovation with effective public administration. In the seventeenth-century, brothers Jan and Nicolaas van der Heyden combined improved fire engines with a comprehensive civic system of district fire companies, alarm networks, financial incentives and clear regulations.
Reparations racket. Across the Pond for the National Review, Wilfred Reilly has argued [ [link removed] ] that recent demands by African government for reparations from Western nations for colonialism and slavery overlooks Africa’s own historic involvement in the slavery – a global institution that predated European colonialism. Assigning blame for slavery solely to modern Western states is historically selective and follows the failure of Africa nations to acknowledge their own complicity.
Thanks for reading Economic Affairs! Spread the word.

Unsubscribe [link removed]?