Every Thursday evening, BBC television hosts its weekly political roundtable show. The rotating panel includes members of parliament, journalists, and other public figures.
Moderated by a veteran journalist, David Dimbleby, they discuss whatever is making the news that week.
But this Thursday, we received unusually clear insight into the thinking of the British left. It came from Susie Boniface, a respected columnist for the left-wing tabloid newspaper The Mirror.
The topic was whether British government employees deserve a raise. The Labour Party opposition is proposing higher wages for the public sector, but the U.K. still has a significant deficit, and Brexit negotiations mean that economic confidence is low. Correspondingly, the ruling Conservative government is reluctant to commit to new spending.
Boniface, however, was clear. All public sector workers are true heroes. She called on Britons to stop “demonizing the people who administer our pensions, who sort out our roundabouts, who provide the nursing, who keep us safe with the police force, who make sure our houses don’t all burn to the ground and go back in and pull us out when they do, and stop saying that they are the reason we are in all this problem.”
Two immediate points are raised here.
First, note how Boniface doesn’t mention the military (the British Left hates the military and believes that soldiers are idiots with guns).
Second, it says much that Boniface blurs the line of value between those who “sort out roundabouts” (British traffic circles) and firefighters. The risk is neither comparable, nor is the social value of the two jobs. I would add nurses as an extra-value public job, but my mother was a nurse in Britain’s national health service, so I’m biased! Regardless, the simple takeaway here is Boniface’s assertion that government employees are naturally and inherently productive. It explains why the Left accepts bloated government staffing and expenditures. They truly believe that the bloat will have a positive impact on society. High taxes are inevitable when pursuing nirvana.
But what Boniface said next was priceless.
“The public sector,” she explained, “is what stops us from just being a group of individuals who live on a rock in the north sea. The public sector, doing things for other people, is what makes us a society. Without them, we’re just feral.”
Think on those words: Without the public sector, we’re just feral.
Welcome to animal farm.
Of course, there’s nothing surprising here. What’s surprising is simply how honest Boniface is being. Because this is what many on the intellectual left think.
They truly believe that healthy societies require great machinations of state power. That community, family, faith, and friendship are nothing without those who “sort out roundabouts.” It’s a tragic but telling indictment on their ideology. At its purest level, this ideology is one that does not trust individuals. Unless, that it is, the individuals are true servants of the government faith.
In turn, it also explains why socialism so often gravitates into authoritarianism and fosters human misery.
And it reminds us of something else.
Absent the checks of conservatives, the Left would expand government power without restraint.
