Our scribe engages in some blue on red animus with a fellow hack

The Financial Times. The Economist. Swift would be prepared to hazard a bet that, if asked, the general populace - most of whom would rather take up skydiving than read either - would guess that these were organs proudly upholding the values of free markets, free trade, and capitalism. 

Unfortunately not so. Swift can claim to be an expert here, as he has subscriptions to both, dating back more years than he can count. Neither newspaper (as The Economist, which is very obviously a magazine, infuriatingly likes to call itself) has nowadays anything more than a passing acquaintance with the values of von Mises, Hayek, Popper or Friedman. The Economist is essentially the house organ of the élite remainers, a sort of Ed Davey with a brain, going so far as to revel in the destruction of the British fishing industry facilitated by Sir Keir’s fatuous ‘reset’.

The FT can be considered worse. The paper fell into the hands of people who are little more than socialists a decade ago and has stayed there. Swift’s teeth-grinding moment each morning - as regular as a bowel movement but a good deal less enjoyable - is reading Stephen Bush’s daily politics update. Bush seems a nice enough chap, despite adding a very pretentious cultural postscript to his Westminster vaporings, presumably to demonstrate that he is a true modern renaissance man. But his column appears to have been dictated every morning by Morgan McSweeney or Pat McFadden (the driving forces behind poor old Keir, the roi fainéant of the gang), and frankly Swift can read press releases from Labour HQ all by himself.

Dear readers, Swift knows that you are thinking that the scribblings of an obscure political writer (no jokes, please) are of little moment. And you’d be right. But the failure of the publication itself to uphold economic liberalism does matter, ditto the milquetoast pap regularly served up by the Economist. As we watch through our fingers at a flailing Conservative Party, and Reform espousing what are essentially old Labour policies on benefits and old Conservative ones on tax - unsupported by any credible fiscal plans - we desperately need publications with these illustrious histories to be clear, authoritative, and above all tough-minded on issues such as the growth of public debt, the overweening power of the state, and the role of capitalism in delivering national prosperity. It is time they went back to their roots and did so.