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February 2025
Capitalism has a fissure that corporations can never cement up.
Conservatism is moving to counteract the disdain of supranationalism by allowing nations to act in their own interests. It is travel that it must also temper as conservatism conserves much more than it goes back to, especially to golden times that never existed.
A full flight conservatism will not be born until it conserves the interests of individuals ahead of corporations at all junctures - it does not matter whether they be rich or poor individuals - then it will occupy defensible space.
When it is about to take flight, artistic movements will presage it. We largely need to sit and watch for them.
Meanwhile smaller nations, at times freed from other excesses, may sometimes feel the tyranny of the corporation. Neither the administrative state nor the corporation is their friend till the fissure is filled.
STILLED POLITICAL LIFE
Reviewed by ANDRE BEAUMONT
At first it may seem unusual to make political commentary in a review dedicated to women's art (which is also why it is in the In The Ether section and not the Art Shows section) but it is still apposite.
Contemporaneously with the publication of this review the Labour party publishes proposals for constitutional reform [sourced from Gordon Brown]. Some of its proposals are to give more powers to local authorities. However, these are institutions so run down by centralised power that they are near defunct and frequently distrusted. [Going back to viable old ways [1] is nigh on impossible and the 2024 Labour government has not been able to propose more than to centralise regionally.] It is very hard to revive the weakest plants in your garden to compete with the strong ones. The civil service will find ways to keep existing local authorities down. New institutions are needed or centralisation has to be accepted as the de facto reality.
In short order the Conservative party has had three female prime ministers, the first prime minister of the age of individuals and a curent prime minister who can draw strongly from a broad cultural background.
The Labour party is a reactionary party with an ideology from the 19th century. The kind of internal discussion which will lead to the abolition of centralised housebuilding targets, which Labour opposes, is not possibly within Labour. It is fissured and suppresses dissent.
For as long as knowing New Hall - in other words since being a student - I have been in favour of abolishing capital taxation on individuals as a way of reducing the number of people who are poor in a society. It is the only way that individuals can be empowered to compete on equal terms in the enterprise space with corporate power and corporate advantages.
It is all the more important now we have entered the age of the individual. In the G7 we have recently had three leaders who have been individuals first and foremost, not legacy party men - Emmanuel Macron, Donald Trump and Boris Johnson.
Entrepreneurship in Britain is now financed almost exclusively by the City, City-related institutions like Cambridge venture capitalists, foreign wealth funds and government. Whatever the government does on constitutional reform it scarcely dents this new reality which I am willing to accept, except on the taxation front where I think change is possible, on quite different capital reserving policies for banks so that they will lend to individuals, and on different competition policy.
Business likes competition because it knows where it stands. If it is to be reliant on the handouts and whims of government - as agriculture is destined to be - it will not know where it stands and will reduce investment. As a whole it will relish many more individuals being successful.
I have known many women with independent power or influence - because they had personal capital - but few that had it solely because of their income. Independent suits women. I would rather there were more and fewer poor people. Liz Truss, one of the women prime ministers, got this right: there has been too much emphasis on redistribution.