Polly Toynbee - finally - notes the problem with politics

There’s a version of the world in which those wise people in government - That Man in Whitehall Who Knows Best - survey the realm and decide upon what should happen. What should be done, who will pay for it, how they will, who will go and do the thing and who will benefit. Then we all wake up from the fever dream and it all actually works as Polly Toynbee says it does:

The BBC is always in the right’s firing line, with the unpopular licence fee a useful weapon. That makes it crucial for the forthcoming review of its charter to find fairer alternatives to this poll tax. It should be adapted to people’s means but not left unprotected to general taxation, where the BBC would sink under other budget priorities. Its enemies hate the BBC with the same venom they detest the NHS, as publicly owned and popular social endeavours.

We cannot trust politics to maintain spending upon those things that are truly necessary. Because there are always other things that buy more votes more immediately - sorry, higher political priorities. Therefore we cannot use day to day politics as a method of allocating the nation’s resources.

Now, whether the BBC is one of those things we’ll leave aside*. But the logic is there. Polly is insisting that we cannot leave this thing she deems good to basic and daily politics because it will not get money allocated to it in basic and daily politics.

We agree with this logic, obviously. For it’s the logic of water privatisation. It was theoretically possible that government could and would allocate as much capital to the state owned water companies as was necessary. Even, the societally optimal amount. The observation was that it did not. Further, there was no way that it would allocate enough to significantly upgrade the system as was becoming necessary. Necessary as a function of rising environmental consciousness, rising living standards and looming European Union insistences.

So, privatise the companies, the dedicated income stream is the customer bills and government couldn’t siphon off returns, nor insist upon not investing in order to pay train drivers. Investment leapt - as predicted - and despite what everyone seems to think they know the water system is vastly, hugely, cleaner than it was. We cannot leave the things that must be done to politics for their funding because there’s always some other vote to be bought - sorry, will o’ the wisp to be chased.

But there we have it from the left-liberal oracle herself, Polly Toynbee. Some to many things are far too important to be dealt with by politics therefore we require less politics - and more not-politics - in the way things are run. We agree.

Tim Worstall

*We’ll admit to being taken by the suggestion by the famed internet commentator, Dearieme, to simply ship a share certificate to each and every licence payer with a note “This is yours. Do as you wish”.