People who own things rarely vote to abolish ownership

The Case for Capitalism: CPS panel: 5 Sep 26, Birmingham NEC

Credit: Stuart Mitchell

Why has capitalism lost the argument with the young?

Because they have never been allowed in. Capitalism did not fail them. They were never offerred it

A system where a young couple on decent wages cannot buy a house, cannot save against inflation, and watches asset holders grow rich on planning scarcity is not capitalism. It is a rigged market defended in capitalism’s name.

So a generation has looked at what it was told was capitalism and drew the obvious conclusion. If this is the market, the market is not for me. And of course they are right.

You do not win them back with pamphlets. You win them back with the title deed to a flat. People who own things rarely vote to abolish ownership.

Why do politicians champion growth and flinch from delivering it?

Because growth in principle costs nothing and growth in practice always costs somebody. A house built annoys a neighbour. A regulation cut annoys a lobby. A tax cut annoys the Treasury. Providing surplus housing cuts profits on property for the already rich.

The political class has spent thirty years discovering that the losers from reform are organised and the winners have yet to be born. So with an eye on the next election, they give speeches about growth and issue directions against it.

Every part of the system beneath them shares the same bias. Every incentive in Whitehall rewards caution and punishes permission.

What would a genuinely pro-enterprise agenda look like, and where would Reform start?

Start with energy, because it is the underpins everything. Cheap energy is industrial policy, and we are running the most expensive in the developed world by choice.

Then planning. Not tinkering, permission. Build the houses, build the grid, build the reservoirs, build the labs, and yes, build the data centres.

Then the small trader. Raise the thresholds, simplify the taxes, call off the regulators. The self-employed plumber is capitalism, far more than any FTSE board will ever be.

And tell the truth about the difference between being pro-market and pro-business. Big business loves regulation. It drowns the competition at a price incumbents can afford. Reform must be for the challengers, not the cartel.

The moral case, to voters who feel capitalism has not delivered

Do not lecture them. They are right. On housing, on wages, on the chance to build wealth, the deal has been broken. Concede it, then blame the culprit correctly. Not markets themselves, but the rationing and manipulation of them.

The moral case for capitalism is not efficiency. It is that free exchange treats people as adults. It lets an ordinary family accumulate something to hand on, and handing something on is the deepest instinct we have.

Every alternative ends with somebody else’s son deciding what your son may have.

Is the case being lost by default?

Yes, and this panel’s question is the evidence. The Left makes its case morning and night, in every classroom and on every feed, badly but constantly. Our side mumbles about GDP once a quarter.

Capitalism’s defenders became managers and stopped being missionaries. The argument was not lost. It was left on the field.

So the answer to the question is the panel itself.

Make the case.

In plain words.

To young people.

Without apology.

Attach it to the things they actually want.

A home, a wage that keeps its value, a stake.

Give the coming generation a stake in the country and they will defend it, because it will be theirs.