Welcome to the Brian Micklethwait Archive. We are slowly adding writings to this site. For progress on this see the news section.

  • What about all those fatcat landowners in the cabinet, guzzling farm subsidies? What of all the lawyers on the Conservative back benches, running the tightest state enforced closed shop there is, and of the upper-class unions and their restrictive practices generally? What of the protectionist manoevres indulged in by the big corporations that pay the Conservatives’ election expenses?

    Getting To The Political Parties
    1985

  • If a Philistine is someone who despises a square of canvas painted to look like the bottom of a rubbish skip, then I glory in the title.

    Against Art Subsidies
    1983

  • Do we need “Europe” to get a “single market”? Hardly. Two traders need not share the same government in order to trade with each other. All that is needed is for both their governments to refrain from meddling. If all the governments in a particular region merely allow their citizens to trade with whomever they like, then a “single market” will be the inevitable and highly desirable result.

    The End of the Cold War and the New European and British Disuinionism
    1995

  • No matter how “extreme” is the opinion I may read in a pamphlet or magazine, I am never, so to speak, at its mercy. I can stop reading it at any moment, and so in the meantime I need not feel threatened or even discomforted by it.

    How to Win the Libertarian Argument
    1990

  • Historically, it is capitalism which has rescued the poor and unfortunate from their plight, insofar as anything ever has, not charity.

    Against Charity: Charity, Favours, Trade and the Welfare State
    1992

Archives

Latest Update

Political Parties in 1985

After something of a hiatus, a new Libertarian Alliance pamphlet is added.

In Getting to the Political Parties, Brian analyses how libertarian ideas are spreading within the Conservative Party and the SDP in 1985. He reminds us that a Conservative government is far from a free-market one:

What about all those fatcat landowners in the cabinet, guzzling farm subsidies? What of all the lawyers on the Conservative back benches, running the tightest state enforced closed shop there is, and of the upper-class unions and their restrictive practices generally? What of the protectionist manoevres indulged in by the big corporations that pay the Conservatives’ election expenses?

And points out that perhaps there is political gain to be made from pointing this out.

[The SDP] should attack the present government by saying: they talk about the free market, but we’ll do it. Conservative rhetoric has its virtues, but the reality of the Conservative Party makes it incapable of living up this rhetoric. We’ll do something they’ll never do; we’ll apply the free market to them!

Highlight

In this video, Steve Baker MP recounts how Brian introduced him to books about freedom.

Elsewhere

Here is a collection of other places on the internet where you may find writings by Brian.

Video