Ideology versus reality

There is a point at which our idea of how the world works and how we think it could work comes up against how it does work. This is where ideology meets reality.

Some people think it would be nice if all children were to receive an education of equal quality, even if standards had to dip somewhat to bring this about. It might take central control of standards to achieve this, given that existing schools and teachers vary in quality. The state might have to set and enforce the standards.

In the real world parents want their children to have the best education they can, and strive to obtain this. They seek quality for their children, not equality. In pursuit of an equal education for all, the state would have to restrict choice to achieve equality. In their imagination, all schools should be the same, so choice would not matter. If two products are identical, there is nothing to choose between them, and parents would be allocated a place at the nearest identikit school to where they live.

This does not happen because schools will never be equal, and parents will vie to secure the best they can for their children. They will opt, if they can, for schools with better teachers and a better academic record. It is human nature that parents seek to achieve the best they can for their children, and it takes more than a ministerial edict to change human nature.

One might be ideologically committed to a future in which the high earners and achievers pay huge taxes so that their money can be redistributed to lower earners and achievers, or to those with no earnings or achievements at all. In the real world, however, the top-end earners resent their funds being taken and seek to minimize the degree to which they can be. If taxes are above what they consider tolerable, they decide to earn less, to put their funds into non-taxable slots, or in the ultimate, to move into a lower tax administration abroad.

The recent UK budget and its effects illustrate this. High earners are not prepared to have their gains made abroad be subject to high UK taxes, so they are moving. The Adam Smith Institute research showed that since that budget, one millionaire has left the UK every 45 minutes. This means that the extra tax will cost the Treasury money, rather than augmenting its coffers. Reality has bumped up against ideology, and there was a clear winner between the two.

Proponents of high taxes deplore the fact that people can flee their jurisdiction, and advocate an international tax system from which there is no escape. It will not happen. There will be jurisdictions which gain by having attractive tax rates, and money will flow there.

The difference between Conservatism and other ideologies is that Conservatism seeks no ideology at all. It wants change to happen spontaneously instead of being imposed. It is bottom-up rather than top-down. It devotes its piecemeal social engineering to helping those who lose from change. It does not know what state may emerge from change, but it wants it rooted in the real world instead of one imagined by ideologists.

In the clash between the two, it is always reality that wins over ideology, but millions can suffer in vain attempts to prevent that happening.