We should do the same with much of the administration. The Foreign Office, much of the Home Office, the Commission for Racial Equality, or whatever it is now called, anything to do with health and safety and planning and child protection”€”I mean much of the public sector”€”these should be shut down.

If at the end of your first month in power, we have not shut down half of the state, we are failing. If we have shut down half the state, we have made a step in the right direction and are ready for still further cuts.

Let me emphasize that the purpose of these cuts would not be to save money for the taxpayers or lift an immense weight of bureaucracy from their backs”€”though they would do this. The purpose is to destroy the ruling class before it can destroy us. We must tear up the web of power and personal connections that make these people effective as an opposition to radical change. If we do this, we shall face no more clamor than if we moved slowly and halfheartedly.

One obvious sign of success will be when depensioned enemies like Neil Kinnock and Peter Mandelson are seen serving on the cheese counter in Sainsbury.

Turning, however, to formally private business, much of this currently supports the ruling-class project and is little more than the economic wing of the ruling class. We should respond to this by removing privileges like limited liability and forcing all business to internalize their transaction costs. Big business must be ruthlessly stripped of its privileges and made to sink or swim in fully liberated markets.

Following from this, however, we should leave large areas of the welfare state alone. It is regrettable, but most people in this country do like the idea of healthcare free at the point of use, and of free education, and of pensions and unemployment benefit. These must go in the long term. But they must be retained in the short term to maintain electoral support. Their cost and methods of provision should be examined. But cutting welfare provision would be politically unwise in the early days of our revolution….

I have not touched on the constitutional arrangements of a restored England. But I must tell you that these will often need to be different from those we have lost, and that organizations like Traditional Britain still celebrate. We shall need to create new structures of power and new safeguards against abuse of that power. The new order of things will restore the spirit of the old but cannot be a simple recreation.

Now, one final warning. What I recommend is a revolution”€”perhaps a counterrevolution, but still a radical break with the present order of things. The problem with all such recommendations is that the extent of present evils is greatly magnified, and the risks of change are minimized. It may be, however, that there is some hidden wisdom in the present order of things that we have overlooked. Or it may be that what we have is the least of available evils. I do not think this is the case. But I feel obliged to mention it. Conservatives, after all, should not wish to copy the mistakes of the French revolutionaries.

(This is a transcript of a speech by Sean Gabb at a conference held by the Traditional Britain Group on October 20 in London. An MP3 recording of the speech can be found HERE.)

Image of the Houses of Parliament courtesy of Shutterstock