The pursuit of happiness

23 May 2007

Boris Johnson issues a clarion call against the new Puritanism of the coming Brown era, in which risk, pleasure, bunking off, poetry and all forms of play will be imperilled

That is essentially because he and his Brownites are Puritans, posers who turn up in suits when the dress is white tie. They dislike ornament, or anything that looks as though it might be lovely in itself and for no other purpose. They hate anything that looks like frivolity and pleasure, and that is why they have spent such huge sums, over the last ten years, trying to trammel and constrain the rest of the population. The Puritan mind likes control, and conformity, and rigid adherence to codes, and it likes wherever possible to substitute its own discretion for the judgment of individuals.

That is why Gordon Brown’s Whitehall — and who shall deny that for the last ten years he has squatted like a vast octopus over government? — has criminalised courses of human conduct at twice the rate of previous administrations, with 3,000 new offences, all of which must in theory be policed and punished if the law is not to be held in contempt. It is not just the obvious attacks on discretionary activities such as hunting, smoking, snacking, smacking, etc. This government is constantly on the sniff for anything that looks cavalier, or freebooting, or risk-taking, and of the hundreds of examples of Puritan bossiness I have noticed in the last year I would cite with especial plangency last week’s ghastly and draconian plan to tell cyclists they must keep to their cycle lanes or face fines.

The road is ours, Gordon, and don’t you tell us what to do. And stuff your laws on booster seats for 11-year-olds, and to hell with your ludicrous plans for Home Information Packs, a system by which the vendor must pay an official to confirm to the buyer the evidence of his own senses that yes, that is a garage, and yes, that is a tree in the front garden. As for the ID-card plan, my strong advice to the incoming Prime Minister is to can it before he faces a jacquerie of protesters objecting to the cost to the taxpayer and themselves.