Of course Grammar Schools should not be banned. It simply isn’t the proper role of the State to ban any type of school, with the exception of terrorist training camps, but to presume that overturning the ban on Grammars is enough to unwed the British education system from its current mediocrity is foolish at best. What is needed is genuine school choice and this is how it can be done:

1. Make all schools Independent schools.

Yep. All of them. Yes, I’m serious.

2. Each Child’s Parent/Guardian get a state-funded “debit card” that can be used to pay for educational services. 

This includes school fees, tutors, special needs tuition. The lot. It gets topped up every year. Disabled kids, or kids with special needs get extra.

3. Stop worrying and learn to love a genuine market in Education.

This is the type of system that they’re trying to bring in Nevada. Massive American public schools mean the needs of disabled or special needs kids just get drowned out and parents are lobbying for this system in order to get a more bespoke education for their children. Only a system which embraces market forces can provide something other than a one size fits all education system. Comprehensives were a backward step, not because they’re mediocre, but because they eradicated the little choice and plurality the working classes had. Independent schools are not good because they’re richer, they’re good because if they’re not, no one would choose to send their kids to them. Choice is what’s key.

The problem I have with Grammar schools is that they ensure bright children get a great education, but less able students get thrown on the scrap heap of under-expectation. In reality we should be advocating a system that delivers every child educational excellence (even the thick ones) and only a market can deliver that type of plurality. My ‘Debit Card School Choice’ System effectively creates a free market for schooling, but it also delivers a measure of equality by giving poorer children equal access to the market.

Right now, pushy middle class parents monopolise homes in good school catchment areas edging the children of poorer parents out. The type and quality of education should not depend on arbitrary geography. My system harnesses the sharp elbows of the middle classes to make all schools good. If parents want to pay extra for a more expensive school – let them. The goal should be to make all schools so excellent that parents don’t need to buy a house in a different area, or pretend to be Catholic, or to spend thousands on tutors, to get their kids into a good school. All schools can be, and should be, good!

Sara is a journalist, art apprentice, and neo-decadent poet. Follow her on Twitter: @Sayde_Scarlett

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Since the Referendum, I have been dismayed at seeing angry posts on social media lamenting the loss of subsidies from the European Union. One of the reasons I voted for leaving the EU is because of the Common Agricultural Policy and, for me, it’s demise remains one of the most compelling reasons for dismantling of the EU.

The CAP represents the worst of EU excesses. A hangover from the second World War, the CAP is now redundant and unnecessary, yet persists because of the greed of enfranchised special interest groups. Specifically, because of the way the French elect their President, and the (over-) influence of the French President in the EU, it is politically unthinkable for anyone seeking that position to consider abolishing the subsidies.

The groups that get subsidies are those who are able to lobby for them. Subsidies go to whomever is rich enough to hire lobbyists. In the case of farmers, that means rich European farmers getting money which gives them an unfair advantage over their otherwise worthy competitors in Africa and Asia. All kinds of subsidies are a triumph of the rich and enfranchised over the poor and disenfranchised.

I can think of few things more immoral than making food more expensive for poor people, and in turn, giving tax payer money to rich, enfranchised group at the expense of poor, disenfranchised groups. You can imagine my horror at the suggestion that the loss of subsidies are in any way a bad thing. The availability of such subsidies are what made the EU a rent-seekers wet dream.

Subsidies are always bad and always immoral. Subsidies are a triumph of the rich and enfranchised over the poor and disenfranchised. I am proud that Britain will no longer be a part of the EU’s disastrous policy of subsidising rich farmers at the expense of poor farmers. Any political body that takes money from the poor and gives it to the rich, is one I am proud not to be a part of!

Sara is a journalist, art apprentice, and neo-decadent poet. Follow her on Twitter: @Sayde_Scarlett

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The Liberal Democrats are relatively good civil libertarians, but when it comes to lifestyle freedoms one wonders how widely a party can interpret the word ‘Liberal.’ There is no branch of Liberal thought that can comfortably justify the high levels of nanny-statism we experience in the United Kingdom. Disappointingly the party that calls itself ‘Liberal’ is now one of the nanny-state’s greatest cheerleaders. After joining the Liberal Democrats in 2008 (I was young. So very, very young…) I very soon realised that the Lib Dems are not a political party – they are a small clique where ‘Liberal’ is a just term for everything they like regardless of the word’s definition.

The notion that the state should generally not impede the lifestyle freedom of individuals is an idea that Liberal (with a capital ‘L’) thinkers, such as John Stuart Mill, can comfortably lay claim to. This tradition of thought was woven into the Liberal Party of old to some significant degree albeit not without caveats and exceptions. The Liberal Democrats, however, have abandoned this notion almost entirely. Just skim Liberal Dem Voice op-eds over the last few years and you’ll find members happy to promote: the Sugar Tax, Plain Packaging, the Prohibition of Drugs (in its entirety – no, really. All drugs.), Minimum Alcohol Pricing, and much, much more.

By evacuating this political ground so spectacularly, the Liberal Democrats did a number of things. Firstly, they became less distinctive from New Labour. They lost any claim they had to being an ‘anti-authoritarian’ party. This also opened up a massive unguarded front on which their enemies could attack them. By creating confusion about what the ‘Liberal’ in Liberal Democrat was referring to, no one did more to weaken the Liberal Democrats own brand that the Liberal Democrats. More crucially, by departing from this particular piece of political ground, the Liberal Democrats left it open to be assumed by another political party. Enter UKIP.

It is a boon to outsider parties to be considered ‘anti-authoritarian.’ By championing lifestyle freedoms on the side, UKIP hoovered up support from people who had been neglected by the three “LibLabCon” parties. It strengthened UKIP brand as the true outsider party and allowed UKIP to plausibly deny being a one issue party. To micromanage the intimate lifestyle choices of the electorate is to talk down to the electorate. This is not the main reason people are voting for UKIP, it is, however, why UKIP is so immune to scandal. In contrast, the Liberal Democrat’s seemingly endless capacity for sanctimony amplifies their own indiscretions when they inevitably occur.

By transforming into lifestyle paternalists, the Lib Dems willingly ceded political land that was undisputedly theirs. It was from this political land that UKIP broadened their own support base and strengthened their brand. Much of UKIP’s wider policy remains underdeveloped and strikes me as very ‘Little England’, but by seizing what should have been policy mainstays of the Liberals, they coloured themselves as rebels. This has only been further reinforced by Nigel Farage’s earnest pint drinking/fag smoking image. When I was a Lib Dem, I remember many discussions about why people who described themselves as ‘liberals’ didn’t automatically vote or identify as Liberal Democrats. For those of us outside the clique, the definition still applies.

Sara is a journalist, art apprentice, and neo-decadent poet. Follow her on Twitter: @Sayde_Scarlett

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In this recent post by Ben Harris, he aptly describes a insidious culture in which after a problem is identified “something must done” regardless of what that something is. To object to what is being done is tantamount to sanctioning the existence of the problem or denying the problem exists. This is exactly the type of thinking that creates bad policy, and once that policy is enacted and the consequences of the policy are shown to be harmful, the policy persists rather than being repealed. Often the reason bad policy stays in place is because of an emotional attachment to what the policy ‘means’ rather than what the policy ‘does.’ This type of thinking has lead to some of the worst of British policy making and I wanted to highlight a few of the most entrenched examples.

Foreign Aid – There is almost nil empirical evidence of the effectiveness of Foreign Aid. There is a great swathe of evidence demonstrating its misuse. Yet still, it not only persists, but is a popular policy because to suggest removing it is tantamount to advocating the continuation of third world poverty. What this policy means is more important than what it actually does for the third world poor.

The NHS – Are there more effective health care systems? Yes, most of the developed European countries have a better health care system now. Furthermore, the other ‘Beveridge’ models in Europe, like the NHS, underperform the ‘Bismarckian’ models by a significant degree.  Not only do ‘Bismarckian’ models provide better health care, they provide it in a universal sense. The NHS can be charitably described as a second rate health care system. Yet, in face of this empirical evidence, the NHS still maintains cult-like support. It is as though its supporters think that the only options are ‘the American system,’ or ‘wanting poor people to die’ (something that someone actually said to me) – this is not ignorance; it is denial.

Comprehensive Schools – Whenever some social commentator wants to highlight inequality in education, somewhat inevitably the focus is always on how to make private schools more like comprehensives. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Private schools do exactly what the people paying for them e.g. the parents, want them to. Why get rid of the only part of the education system that is working exactly as it should for the people who pay for it? Comprehensives mean equality, so that trumps all objective measures of how they perform. The fact that they are largely inferior to private schools, and radically unequal owning to the fact that rich parents monopolise housing in good school catchment areas, becomes completely irrelevant. Damn the children who have to go to them, some policy maker somewhere means well.

The Greenbelt – The Greenbelt is one of the most appalling policies ever enacted. It is the reason for the housing crisis right now. Yet, despite a chronic undersupply of housing, and the fact that less than 10 per cent of England is ‘developed’ (some of that is gardens and parks), the Greenbelt is championed as an environmental necessity, else we all succumb to the dark satanic mills. Considering how little of England is developed, support for the Greenbelt is irrational. I would be horrified if they paved over the New Forest or Snowdonia National Park, but a field adjacent to the M25 is just not the same thing. It’s a policy based on a misconception rather than reality. How inhumane do you have to be to prefer that people go homeless rather than build on a ordinary green field? It’s actually barbaric but, hey, England’s green and pleasant lands…

Drug Prohibition – I don’t do drugs, I don’t like drugs, I don’t want anybody anywhere to be addicted to drugs. Yet, I still support the decriminalisation of drugs. I am so tired of people characterising my policy position as tantamount to an endorsement of people ruining their lives with drugs. Supporting drug prohibition means you disapprove of drugs. Good for you… The empirical evidence shows that drug prohibition makes it no harder to get drugs, but instead gives the whip hand of an entire market over to the drug traffickers and has serious knock on consequences for rule of law. This applies to most ‘sin taxes’ and ‘sindustry’ regulation, but, hey, ones moral disapproval is all that matters, right? Nope.

What all these policies have in common is a strong emotional appeal and a profound paucity of empirical evidence demonstrating their superiority or effectiveness. All these policies enjoy huge popularity for emotional rather than rational reasons, but as the effects of these policies show, meaning well is not quite the same as doing good. They are the perfect policies for a shallow, empty virtue-signalling culture in denial about the consequences of their actions. The reason I would get rid of all the aforementioned policies, as well as a great many more, is because I do care about the poor, the sick, the under-educated, the homeless, and the addicted, and I don’t care about how good your intentions are.

Sara is a journalist, art apprentice, and neo-decadent poet. Follow her on Twitter: @Sayde_Scarlett

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Last weekend I enjoyed ‘Our Queen At Ninety’ on ITV, and in a time when many are calling a constitutional monarchy ‘out of date,’ I think it’s worth exploring what value the monarchy still holds.

I would argue that the monarchy has survived and continues to be useful because having a politically neutral, ceremonial head of State, who is not simultaneously the head of the executive branch of Government, is a stabilising and healthy part of our constitution as it subordinates the role of elected politicians.

The Monarch is above the Prime Minister. It is right and good that the Prime Minister is not the head of the British state. It makes the office of Prime Minister more obviously one of public servitude in a way that the office of the American President does not seem to be.

In the UK, because the Queen and her extended family cut ribbons, elected politicians don’t. In the United States, executive decisions are made by unelected members of the President’s Administration whilst the President carries out ceremonial commitments. Aside from the democratic deficit that creates, it is important that politicians don’t forget that they are public servants. Taking politicians away from their service and making them cut ribbons turns them into VIPs. This seems to advance a sense of grandiosity and hubris in politicians who already need no encouragement.

There is a cult-like reverence around anyone who holds power. People like powerful people for no reason other than because they have power. I’m glad the UK focuses most of that energy on a politically neutral head of state rather than any politician. Wrapping the ceremonial trappings of a head of state with the powers of the executive branch removes a check of executive power.

In 2008, Cato Institute scholar, Gene Healy, wrote a book called ‘The Cult of The Presidency’ documenting the serious abuses of executive power by the Presidency. If the USA did not have a written document specifically limiting government power, the Constitution, this aggrandisement of the head of executive power could have made the American government bigger and the office of President more autocratic. All the worst ever politicians have tried to make themselves cult leaders because it makes them untouchable.

In the ‘Our Queen at Ninety’ programme it mentioned that the Queen had seen no less than twelve American Presidents come and go. Whether you like her or loathe her, it feels like the Queen has been around for an age. It is healthy for politicians to have a reminder that they are transient, public servants just around to do a job, and can be replaced easily whilst the show goes on without them.

Politicians are divisive and usually, the more effective they are, the more divisive they are. The monarchy has undeniably been a unifying and stabilising influence on the United Kingdom and has helped shape the British identity. This is useful because it means divisive politicians can only divide up to a point, with the Monarchy acting as a rallying point for healing division and emphasising a common status as British subjects.

For these reasons, merging the head of state with the head of the executive branch of government would be unwise. I can easily see how this role being carried out by a celebrity family is considered anachronistic. If the monarchy is ever replaced, however, it should be replaced with an elected, ceremonial, and politically neutral head of state for the sake of the subordination of overarching elected politicians.

Sara is a journalist, art apprentice, and neo-decadent poet. Follow her on Twitter: @Sayde_Scarlett

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