The country that possesses these essential building blocks of liberalism will succeed; the country without them will – eventually – face disaster. To put it simply, if your property can be arbitrarily confiscated by the wife of the president, or by his son-in-law, then you won’t start a business in that country and you won’t invest. If you can lose a contract unfairly to some politician’s chum, then you won’t bother to put your money there. And if there is no way that politician can be democratically removed, then corruption will increase, and inefficiency will increase, and the people will suffer, and poverty will grow.
I don’t want to put too fine a point on it, Vladimir, but there are some countries where capitalism is believed to be in the hands of oligarchs and cronies, where journalists are shot, and where “liberal values” are derided, and where according to the Russian statistics agency Rosstat, a third of the country cannot afford to buy more than two pairs of shoes per year; where 12 per cent of the population still has to rely on an outdoor toilet, and where real incomes have declined for each of the past five years.Now many of you will see parallels between the EU and Putin's Russia; the political and economic corruption, the anti-democracy, a per capita GDP substantially lower than the UK's, ailing economy and sclerotic growth. I don't believe the parallels are accidental. A want of democracy coupled with an authoritarian and didactic central State kills growth and innovation and does a disservice to citizens.
Point made.
