Angela Eagle and Imran Ahmed’s new book “The New Serfdom“, a 400-page hatchet job on the great liberal thinker Friedrich Hayek, is being lauded with praise in Labour circles, most effusively from Nick Cohen. Guido must come to Hayek’s defence in the face of their rewriting of history.
The New Serfdom is a reminder that, even as the relatively moderate challenger to Corbyn, Eagle is still a liberty-hating socialist who opposes free markets and fundamentally values the state over the freedom of the individual. Even Ed Miliband’s office warned that Ahmed was “dangerously left-wing” when he became a Shadow Cabinet adviser. Their book condemns the “veneration of markets”, the “infiltration of marketisation” into the public sector, capitalism’s promotion of competition, the “toxic culture” of admiring those who succeed, and calls for a Labour government to create an “empowered state… pursuing a reinvigorated democratic socialism”. It wants to sweep back Thatcher’s trade union reforms, regulate the food and drink industry to the hilt and put taxes through the roof. It offers a depressing view of Britain today, talking the country down as “divided and resentful”, dismisses capitalist liberal democracy as a “con”, calls Hayek a “liar” with “extreme views” who inspired Thatcher and her “successor” Trump, and claims Brexit is evidence of “the extreme right on the march”. According to the respected academic Chris Hanretty, Eagle’s Wallasley seat voted 53% to Leave…
The history of the last century comprehensively proved correct Hayek’s central assertion that socialism morphs into totalitarianism. He was proved right when the Keynesian post-war consensus collapsed and Thatcher used his ideas – “this is what we believe” – to turn the economy around. The New Serfdom is an unashamedly socialist critique of the last forty years of British political life, and so is as dangerous and wrong as you would expect. The key question for Eagle and Ahmed: if they truly believe in their socialist vision for Britain, why did they try to stop Corbyn becoming Prime Minister?
