England: Dead End of Liberalism?

Modern Britain is, I shall argue here, the victim of orthodox liberalism carried to extremes. I use “liberalism” to connote economic doctrines idealizing laissez-faire and the free market together with political doctrines of maximum freedom under law and minimal government. Self-advancement and pursuit of private interests from a basis of equality of opportunity is the ideal of this liberalism, which has long been the dominant ideology in England—though it denies having the status of ideology and aspires to that of truth. Some 200 years of liberal democracy have created a system of elitist “private politics” bolstered by a bureaucratic system of representation that makes grass-roots participation nearly impossib...