With yesterday’s publication of the government’s White Paper on public health, nannyish Tories are seeking to mobilise the full machinery of ‘municipal socialism’.
I choose my words carefully. The conservative party has always had deeply authoritarian and nannyish tendencies. Rarely trusting in personal responsibility and the freedom of individuals to chose to do the right things in such areas as personal lifestyle choices, Conservatives have always been champions of big government across so-called ‘public health’. What makes this White Paper so worrying is the Conservative Party’s mobilisation of municipal socialism.
Properly conceived, municipal socialism as a movement dates back to the 1870’s, when politicians such as Joseph Chamberlain sought to have local government take gas and water supplies in to public ownership not to mention the politicisation such areas as parks and sanitation. In a quest to bring tax funded services ever closer to the lives of people, municipal socialism and local government are particularly powerful tools in the hands of social engineers.
While this White Paper talks loosely about local decisions, local people, and tries to deport the gentile atmospherics of “nudging” people to do what the political class currently believe to be the right thing, the measures it contains amount to a tyrannical busy-bodies charter.
For at it’s heart the terrifying prospect it contains is the conjuncture of puritanical Tory nannyism with the bloated machinery of local municipality. Not only will this initially carry a price tag of £4 billion but in the long-term it’s outpourings will attempt to gain a stranglehold on so many of our remaining pleasures.
While I make no comment on the health issues surrounding smoking, I am very concerned about 
