#12 Troubles in Paradises
Bust-ups galore, free speech in freefall, Chinese power grabs and believing in the future again
Welcome to the twelfth instalment of the Liberal Digest. In America, cutter-in-chief Elon Musk left the government and sniped blew up at Republicans for supporting the ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’, while President Trump signed an Executive Order banning citizens of twelve countries from entering the US. Closer to home, Zia Yousuf departed as the Chairman of Reform after rows about the burka ban, and Hamit Coskun was found guilty of a ‘religiously aggravated public order offence’, raising concerns from free speech advocates.
In this week’s edition: pensions protectionism, budget pressures, dwindling democracy and free speech in peril.
Did we miss something? Let us know.
Stop the Press!
Best op eds, interviews, news and analysis of the week in the old-school media
Robert Jenrick asserts that free speech must not be sacrificed to appease Islamists:
“This is the rebirth of a blasphemy law, smuggled in through the back door. Seventeen years after Parliament abolished blasphemy against Christianity, the Crown Prosecution Service and the courts have brought it back for Islam.”
Nick Williams rails against claims that the Government’s Planning and Infrastructure Bill is a nature sellout:
“The truth is that our current framework for protecting habitats has been in place for decades but has failed to prevent nature loss. This is because we approach conservation in the least effective way possible, with tens of thousands of individual site-by-site protections. Ecological science is clear that this is outdated. Modern conservation strategies recognise the necessity of interconnectivity and scale for supporting complex ecosystems.”
Henry Oliver urges Labour to genuinely commit to the abundance agenda:
“We need this attitude shift in Britain. And fast. Apparently a lot of people in Labour are reading Abundance. And yet the government is planning to control where pensions are invested “for the benefit of the economy.” America has the abundance movement. We have central planning for pension schemes. It will lead to lower returns, disincentivising savings. It’s also deeply illiberal. Instead of building roads the government thinks it can plan my pension from Whitehall. Get real!”
Dan Neidle bangs the drum for corporate tax simplification:
“[I]t’s sobering to look at the Tax Foundation’s international rankings of corporate tax competitiveness and see the UK ranked 28th out of 38 OECD countries. Italy (24th place) and Greece (17th) can now giggle at the inadequacies of our tax system. The likes of Denmark (14th place) and Sweden (6th) are far ahead. How can this be? The culprit isn’t tax rates. It’s tax complexity.”
Philip Patrick asks in CapX, is it time to abolish Holyrood?:
“Abused, ridiculed or ignored, 21 years on from its inception, Holyrood has utterly failed in its aims. It was meant to bring democracy closer to the people, but seems more remote than Westminster; it was intended to improve local services, then the opposite has happened. And as for ending the divisiveness of nationalism, well…”
Sam Ashworth-Hayes argues that as the West spirals towards bankruptcy, if we can’t cut spending democratically, it may be imposed on us:
“The incentives given to today’s politicians are to spend to win today’s votes. Unless voters today are altruistic about future generations – and when the population is ageing because fewer people have children, their motive to be so is greatly reduced – then you can end up in the sort of unsustainable spiral Britain and America have found themselves in. By 2055, the US national debt is expected to be 156pc of GDP, and deficits around 7pc. In Britain, it’s for 130pc of GDP, and a deficit of 9pc. Project that out to 2073, and debt hits 274pc of GDP, with the deficit a healthy 21pc of national income.”
BBC: Zia Yusuf resigns as Reform UK chairman
The Times: Labour MPs back Rachel Reeves over budget cuts
City A.M.: ‘Never again’: Shadow Chancellor apologises for Truss’ mini-budget
The Guardian: Peers vote to defy government over copyright threat from AI
BBC: Growing number of MPs changing their mind on assisted dying
Stacks of Freedom
Highlights from our fellow Substackers
Archie Hall critiques plans for pension protectionism:
As does Alex Chalmers…:
Jeremy Driver analyses opinion polling on Scottish attitudes to nuclear power:
Connor O’Brien warns that America’s ability to retain talent is waning:
While David J. Bier explains why the US is denying record numbers of would-be students from entering the country:
Wonk World
Ideas and analysis from the think tanks, academia and other clever sorts
David Lawrence and Pedro Serôdio set out why demand suppression won’t fix the cost of living:
“Britain is suffering a cost of living crisis because we have a supply-side crisis: we do not produce enough low-cost and reliable energy, and we do not have enough homes in the right places. The very best fiscal and monetary management cannot overcome the increasing constraints that we have placed on ourselves by restricting production in those places where demand is greatest.”
Geoff Mulgan published an essay outlining how governments should actually approach efficiency drives:
DOGE’s actions appear so far to have achieved no net short-term savings and may lead to very high longer-term costs for the US. The questions it asks are good ones: how can governments reduce waste, inefficiency and unnecessary bureaucracy. But the answers have been poorly thought out and implemented. DOGE looks more like theatre than engineering, a costly piece of political positioning in the name of ‘dismantling the administrative state’.
Hear Hear
Podcasts for weekend listening
Marian Tupy sits down with Tyler Cowen to discuss the relationship between freedom and progress, and whether classical liberalism is equipped to meet today’s political challenges:
Jason Crawford explains the history of human progress, why we’ve stalled, and how we can believe in the future again:
Posting to Policy
Best of social media this week
Maxwell Tabarrok: Rent control that works
Elon Musk: Big, Ugly Bill
Matt Yglesias: Board game brainwashing
Further Afield
Interesting stuff from around the world
The Economist explains Elon Musk’s failure in government:
“In reality, Mr Musk achieved little of what he promised. Having pledged to save $2trn in federal spending, he eviscerated foreign aid and sent tens of thousands of workers packing. But foreign aid and even federal salaries make up only a small share of government spending. By DOGE’s own dubious accounting, $175bn of savings were made. According to Treasury figures, spending overall in fact continued to rise. Despite tearing through the government’s most sensitive data systems Mr Musk’s young engineers also failed to uncover much fraud.”
Chilling ABC piece on how China is using AI to erase the history of the Tiananmen Square massacre:
“One of the documents, a 2022 training manual for censors working for Douyin directly referenced the world-famous Tank Man image, labelling it a "subversive picture". The document also said that any visual metaphor resembling the sequence of one man facing four tanks — even "one banana and four apples in a line" — could be instantly flagged by an algorithm designed to pick up references to the massacre, especially during the first week of June. And when an uploaded video gains traction or matches sensitive patterns, it enters a "traffic pool" and may be escalated through four levels of human checks.”
The Guardian covered Mexico’s recent judicial elections which have been criticised as democratic backsliding:
“Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum has defended the country’s unprecedented judicial elections after just 13% of Mexicans turned out to vote, a record low in a federal election. Roughly 2,600 posts, from local magistrates to supreme court justices, were up for grabs on Sunday, as an entire judicial system was put to the vote for the first time in the world.”
Financial Times: Tesla’s market value suffers biggest one-day drop after Trump-Musk spat
AP: Nawrocki’s win turns Poland toward nationalism and casts doubt on Tusk’s centrist government
Sky News: South Korea: Liberal opposition candidate Lee Jae-myung wins snap presidential election
Graph of the Week
Via the International Energy Agency