Your applying your own bias rather than knowledge of the facts on the ground.
Your irrational hate-boner against sensible economic policies doesn't consitute "facts on the ground", nor does a decent understanding of economics constitute a bias (merely an advantage).
a) The comparison isn't for an extremely corrupt and parasitical Tory party with Blair - who was basically a Thatcher-lite - or Corbyn - who was very hard left. Its more with pre-1979 leaders on either side of the divide, the Health's and Callaghan's and their predecessors. There was no need for Britain, relatively much weaker than in its 1850 version to return to a version of the same dead end other than personal greed and short sighted interests.
Imagine thinking Tony Blair is "Thatcher lite". That's like thinking Bill Clinton is "Reagan lite". A position usually only embraced by the crowds at international socialist gatherings. In other words: not a view entertained by functioning humans.
But more importantly: trying to pretend that Thatcher or Blair or anyone in this whole period should be compared to pre-1979 figures relies wholly on (guess what)
ignoring the facts on the ground. Such as the fact that post-war policies (quasi-communist ones, for a while) had driven Britain to the edge of ruin-- something that had caused Thatcher to emerge in the first place. (Of course, all the economic illiterates blamed everything wrong in the '80s on her, when the reality is that she was too
moderate in addressing the underlying problems. Her policies were painful, but in the way that cutting away gangrenous flesh is painful. The problem is that she was actually a 'soft doctor', who balked at cutting away
enough. So the flesh-rot remained; and remains to this day.)
All in all, you show a tendency to idolise the idiots who cause the festering wounds, and to then heap all blame on the surgeons who cut away the diseased flesh. That's never going to be a helpful method. Perhaps you
would fit in with the coming "Caesarists", though. Probably too brutal and bloody for your liking, but as I outlined, I'm pretty sure our civilisation's specific iteration of that faction will hate free trade and the mercantile spirit--
almost as much as you do.
(Thankfully, every Caesar is followed by an Augustus; the most committed surgeon of them all, who doesn't stop cutting until all the rot is gone.)
b) In ~1850 Britain was the most advanced economy in the world. Inertia keep things going well for a while but the stupidity of the government regime, especially under the Liberal Party for the 1st ~60 years steadily undermined this. Without government support - such as tariffs or realistic education systems - as in most other developed states Britain increasingly dropped behind. It wasn't in the interest of owners or the fiscal section to invest in British industries in the face of subsidized competition. A classic example was the steel industry where faced with such an unbalanced playing field existing stock - in which capital had already been invested - was run into the ground and the workforce squeezed as much as possible rather than big spending on new more modern and efficient plants.
Lets be clear. There was no way Britain would maintain a position as workshop of the world because as Disraeli said and history showed the rest of the world wouldn't allow it. However it could have had a much stronger position with a more rational and responsible policy. Larger states such as the US and a unified and centralised German were always likely to overtake us in absolute terms but we could have had a qualitative equivalence per capita with them by say 1914.
You describe the empire that arose out of the chaos of the Napoleonic wars and boomed economically. The empire that conquered a quarter of the planet. The political, economic and military superpower of the age. The naval leader so well-positioned that it could out-produce Germany by three-to-one without major upset, while the German effort
ruined the German economy. You decribe all this, and you imagine that it constitutes a
failure.
I know that you hate free trade, because you seem to imagine it's the devil and that we need the government to save us-- but do step beyond this impulse for a moment, and grasp that the reason Britain so utterly outcompeted France was that Britain swerved towards free trade, whereas France was stuck in doomed mercantillism. When the Laki eruption destroyed crops across Europe, Britain was well-positioned to import food from elsewhere. France faced shortages, and then famine. That's why there was a
French revolution, not an
English one.
(And later on, Britain still opted for free trade, whereas Napoleon dicked about with his continental system. I wonder how that went for him...?)
You don't even realise this, because you have to blame everything on the liberals, but the truth is: they only consolidated a pre-existing trend. A glorious trend. A bountiful trend. One that brought prosperity and stability, and allowed Britain to shove all rivals off the map. The so-called Great Game? Russia
lost that. The French? Turned into little
bitches after Fashoda.
The policies that you imagine were so terrible were the ones that allowed Britain to basically
win the nineteenth century.
And you know what--
You live in a strange world if you think Britain's economic and technological position in 1914-30 relative to its primary rivals was better than it was in 1950.
--Britain could have won the
twentieth century, too! By doing the opposite of what you think. Because what you handily ignore in your screed is that the period starting with 1914 had some
pretty important stuff happen. And in the course of that, Britain butchered its young male population for no good reason, and pissed away its own empire. They could have kept it. They could have kept it
all. Everything that had been built up by the people you thanklessly dismiss. Everything that was then torn down by people you no doubt idolise.
The Americans have some reason to be grateful, though. You ideologically descend from a long line of self-immolators, whose previous generations have ensured that when the universal empire does come, it'll be an
American empire. Had it not been for the works of your fore-bears, it could have been very different.
And here you are among the throngs of the
Fellachen that populate the ruins of a better world, shouting at the statues of the men who once
built that world, and blaming all your woes on them-- not even knowing (or simply not
wishing to know) that all the ruination that came to it was wrought by
your ideological kinsmen.
...The bottom line, however, is that none of your partisan bias
matters. The fact that you're fixated on "those evil Tories!!!" only illustrates how irrelevant your position is in the greater scheme of things. As I explained: the struggle of the age is one of the establishment (for which the main political parties are merely different "front-offices") and a populist movement thriving on mass discontent (which is by definition oriented against the elites of
all established parties, and if it co-opts one of them, it'll be by evicting its elite wholly).
The populists (or 'radicals', if you will) win that struggle every time. And in the event, we'll see them oppose globalism and enact protectionism. You might even like them, economically. Although I get the impression that you're not one for public executions, so I think you won't like the through-line of their revanchist politics as a whole. But not to fret, because no matter how far it takes things, Caesarism never lasts,
either. It's not the
answer to Modernity; merely its last howl.
The true answer comes thereafter, with the Principate. Which, in the case of the West, will feature all the things I get the impression you might dislike. Traditionalist mores, a tendency towards religious universalism, abolition of democracy (and of the appeal to the masses altogether), considerable socio-cultural stratification, very small and primarily local government, an intense hatred of fiduciary currency and corresponding dedication to a gold standard, and a return to unfettered trade (with
most of the world, at least).
That's the nature of the Principate. It'll last for a good few centuries, and even millennia later, it'll be seen as the golden age of our civilisation.
I've mentioned this before, but when Augustus was an old man, and close to his dying day, he travelled by ship along the coast, on his way South. And on the journey, his ship was passed by a merchant vessel from Alexandria. When the merchants saw whose ship it was, they greeted him almost as worshippers. This was not needed by any means; but here was the man who had made the sea safe by eradicating piracy; who had lowered their taxes and fostered commerce by his decrees. And they called out to him: "
Through you we live, through you we sail, through you we enjoy our freedom and prosperity!"
That's the sort of future I hope we too will enjoy. It is made through enacting the precise policies that you seemingly imagine to be detrimental. But they have been the policies of the wise for thousands of years, and they always will be. No matter how many generations of fools seek to ruin the work of the wise, we find that good sense always returns in the end.
