The British individual is the champion.
That’s what I always believed - free markets, individualism.
We’re a democracy and it’s the individuals that matter.
It’s part of our national story - the greatest stories that define us.
Even our national myths celebrate the lone hero - St George who killed the dragon.
The wealth of the country is built by individual businesses, entrepreneurs, ships and hero’s - the free market.
Even in WW2 it was the individual ships that saved the army from getting massacred at Dunkirk.
We champion British individualism, despite the state, and all too often - the individual victims of the incompetent state.
But this is a myth.
I believed in individualism, then living in China and the UAE changed my mind, and helped me see British individualism for what it is - built on a foundation of state capacity.
Dunkirk was actually a coordinated state operation dressed up afterwards as a spontaneous individualist miracle
This very British individualism was only made possible by a powerful, competent state.
Individualism isn't the opposite of state power, it's the fruit of it - you only get to be a free individual once a competent state has built the conditions (security, law, infrastructure) that let individuals flourish.
Not to start with the Norman invasion in 1066 that centralised power.
The industrial policy, the coordinated power that built the infrastructure - the Royal Navy itself.
The individualism was built on a powerful coordinated state, and a sacrifice of those before us, for Christian - less individualistic community values.
Markets don’t exist in nature - they require enforceable contracts, courts, secure property, a currency people trust.
The Bank of England (1694) and the financial revolution.
Victorian public health and infrastructure
Thatcher's anti-state privatisation was a reaction to the incompetent state - it delivered economic growth but it is now actively damaging the very freedom it promised.
We look at the excesses of over-powerful states of the 21st century and we say - that is not us.
So we constrain the power of the state with vetos, planning and outsourcing which hollows out capacity further.
We argue now - between a larger or smaller state, assuming that a state is inherently incompetent compared to the private market.
But that is not what built Britain.
A competent state - not its size, is what matters, and when it’s competent, the size takes care of itself.
There are cracks in the foundation of our freedom.
We need a powerful and competent state, which requires individual sacrifice and duty.
Freedom is something we enjoy and earn and is not automatic if we are not competent.