Polly Toynbee Tells Us Why Government Isn’t The Way To Run The Country

Not that Polly Toynbee will realise this of course but she’s just told us why government, politics, isn’t the way to run the or a country. Sure, we’ve the Hayekian point that no one can ever know enough, in detail and in time, to be able to actually run something as complex as the interactions of 66 million people. But over and above that we’ve the incentives and desires of those who would be doing the running.

Yes, obviously, this is about the Tories and Brexit:

If May does get her deal, the fractious cabinet hardly needs Boris Johnson’s call for “mutiny”. This ship of fools running and ruining the country will calculate their personal advantage, as, inexplicably, most vie for the poisoned cup of leadership. But if they do grudgingly nod it through, what then?

This was true of Brown and Blair duelling over their sofas. Of Brezhnev and Mikoyan who didn’t see the need for elections. Stalin was known to rather vie for that poisoned cup. Galba was only one of four who imbibed from it that one year.

This is simply what politics is, the struggle for position and power among politicians. Anything that happens to us the populace is by chance and a by product. Which is, of course, why politics and government aren’t the way to run a country. Because everything is determined by that struggle for position and power and nowt at all to do with us or what happens to us.

But then try to get Polly Toynbee to understand the implication of her own analysis. Might as well try to get a politician to stop pissing away our money in the pursuit of their own position.