𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

It was generally said in my household when I was growing up that “there is nothing new under the sun”. Never have truer words been spoken than now. Every generation seems to like to think it is the custodian of a gilded age in which patterns of the past are broken irrevocably and a new and special understanding of our lot has been born. The truth is that there has been no “end of history” for human frailty, ambition, greed, avarice or kindness. Human nature never changes. To be flawed is to be human, perfection is for the divine.

Which brings me to the state of the world, its leaders, our small corner of the globe and our polyglot Parliamentarians. We live in a dangerous world. Like a cornered animal, President Putin is lashing out in his pursuit of past glories and power. A cornered animal with nuclear weapons.

President Xi of China has presided over a remarkable resurgence of China’s greatness, harnessing the strength generated by a more open market than existed under Mao and using the economic benefits to sure up his dictatorship in a model more akin to National Socialism than collectivist Marxism.

Meanwhile Iran continues its brand of religious totalitarianism that would be recognisable in a medieval world.

There are many other nations that would crush our way of life, our democracy, free speech, the rule of law and free markets, given the opportunity.

One-hundred years ago Pax Britannica still set the global system and held sway over a quarter of the globe. It is now long gone and its successor Pax Americana is now under threat.

What is absolutely true under the sun is that, in order to be secure, it is necessary to be wealthy, resourceful and strong-willed. In the words of the US President Eisenhower, it is important to speak softly but also to carry a big stick.

Those of the woke liberal/left in Britain appear to be of an overwhelmingly naive disposition. The daylight robbery of the gifting of the Chagos islands and paying for the privilege is as encouraging to our enemies as was the Danegeld of the early medieval era.

It didn’t keep the Vikings at bay, they came back for more and more. It advertised weakness and bullies swarm to weakness – witness Argentina.

The delusion that state control and the public sector can boost productivity, economic growth and wealth creation is a dangerous fiction that could only be perpetrated by politicians – red, green or yellow – whose parties are devoid of people who have been in business, let alone run or created one.

The importance of this should not be underestimated. Wealth creation is essential if the people of our country are to enjoy its fruits. But it is also essential for law and order, national security, even national survival.

Romantic nonsense such as the determination to reach national Net Zero at all costs, destroying industry, exporting: jobs, production and wealth to foreign powers such as China. It is predicated on maintaining the fiction that this helps global climate change when clearly Chinese fossil fuel production continues apace.

It puts the UK at risk for a tiny percentage of global emissions. As such it is an assault on the British people that amounts to a betrayal of our nation.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham offers no evidence of grasping these modern realities and instead seems obsessed with the past, accusing Margaret Thatcher of creating our present ills and suggesting Brexit added to these.

And yet he seems not to recognise that there is nothing new under the sun when it comes to human behaviour and the exercise of power. This is the fool’s paradise he’s constructed and in which he lives.

But, as the Russians and the Chinese discovered, capitalism is the engine of wealth creation by virtue of being a superior method of the allocation of resources. They have exercised what we seem to have forgotten while we profess our shame over the Industrial Revolution Britain created.

If we are to preserve our way of life it is essential that the state create an enterprise-friendly environment in which entrepreneurialism can flourish, innovation can create growth and, through creative disruption, spawn wealth. The winners will pick themselves and undoubtedly there will be losers, but we will all be better off and more secure as a consequence.

John Longworth is an entrepreneur, businessman, former MEP and Chairman of the Independent Business Network of family businesses.