Why Fighting for a Free Future?
Parliament and party politics are failing to deal with the serious problems we all face.
The UK and the contemporary West face an accumulating triad of crises: economic, social and political. The symptoms are increasingly plain. Housing has become unaffordable for a generation; real wages have stagnated or declined for many; and public services are in perpetual decline despite soaring taxes.
These are not isolated or accidental developments, nor are they merely the result of poor short-term decisions. They are products of a long-standing institutional order now unravelling: social democracy, founded on managerialism and ultimately financed for over 50 years by chronically easy money.
The old classically liberal order based on free enterprise, constitutionalism, and limited government was eclipsed by this paradigm that places faith in the omnipotence of the state. That paradigm is now visibly failing. But a new one will not emerge automatically.
To secure the transition, a new strategy is required – one rooted in intellectual rigour, behavioural insight, and practical action. We must be prepared to challenge received wisdom, not from a place of cynicism but from constructive dissent, often collaborating with adversaries without seeking complete consensus.
Our challenge is to procure this paradigm shift swiftly, before the breakdown of the old order produces something worse than gridlock: authoritarianism, scapegoating and collapse. The clock is ticking. The implication of the last Government Actuary’s Department review of the Great Britain National Insurance Fund is that the UK will effectively default on its welfare spending commitments, including those related to pensions, in 2043-44. This projection of the default of the welfare state in less than 20 years is supported by the modelling done by think tanks like the Adam Smith Institute.
The that this default, and the political and economic consequences that come with it, will occur in just 10 years.
The collapse of the welfare state is serious, but it does not even account for the broader landscape: a paralysed planning system, historic tax highs, declining productivity, and a persistent fiscal gap. Despite all of this, the OBR’s September 2024 Fiscal Risks and Sustainability Report still projects government spending continuing to rise well above revenues.
This all means we have less than 20 years to secure this paradigm shift and save the UK. The challenge is great, but we can do it.
This project, Fighting For A Free Future, is my contribution to that practical and ideological challenge. It has three strands:
The Fighting for a Free Future with Steve Baker Substack. This lifts the veil on how Westminster operates and illustrates how to defeat the obstacles to serious and lasting free market policy reform. Policy must be informed by a robust grasp of ideas. I aim for this to be a digital forum for thought leadership with contributions from the wider FFF team and leading policy experts in the UK, alongside, hosting debates on policy divisions that exist within our movement - all with a focus on explaining, dissecting, defending, and promoting free market and liberty-oriented policies and principles,
The Fighting for a Free Future Book Club and educational programmes, led by me and supported by leading think tanks, help interested young people who are early in their careers in politics, economics, academia, and the media to grapple with the ideas of liberty and the principles of a free society, equipping them with the confidence and knowledge to champion the free market,
The Fighting for a Free Future Community of like-minded think tanks and activists. Utilising strategies developed during my years in Parliament, FFF Community brings together leading freedom-minded institutions and a curated community of politically engaged figures to amplify one another’s voices in the cause of fighting for a free future. It is about ideas applied and not party politics.
A flourishing free society on a just and sustainable basis will not come from party political knockabout. It will come from a widespread and serious diagnosis of the problems we face, their causes and the proper solutions to secure the futures of everyone. That requires good ideas to be spread and understood. That is what Fighting for a Free Future is about. If you would like to understand more about the project, please contact our Director, Harry Richer, at harry@stevebaker.info.
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