Supermac won't help the Tories

The Many Lives of State Capacity

There’s a common dream behind much commentary of the past decade, its avatars are varied: often its Lee Kuan Yew, often it involves China, sometimes it is Nixon, sometimes it is Salazar and sometimes it is Charles DeGaulle but the emotional substance is consistent; it wants  ‘muscular’ rule without, ideally, embracing social powerlifting, it aspires towards a transcendence of the Left by condemning its libertine values and the Right which it must characterise as enthral to Free Market Liberals for the sake of its own picturesqueness.