What is the curse of oil? Why does it fall on some countries and not others? The answer is simple: when the income passes to states or governments it will either be consumed in activities that would not be required by a freely choosing population or malinvested in capital that provides activities that are not required, which is equivalent to consumption but over a longer timescale.

When it passes to private hands part will be consumed immediately to deliver immediate benefit, and part, in many circumstances the larger part, will be invested in such a way as to create energy consuming operations in that country (and elsewhere) that produce wealth, in other words it will be invested to provide something required by human individuals, and thus a return on that investment.
Oil is no curse, any more than coal is or was to Britain. It depends crucially on where the income flows and how it is spent.

We land
Or so it seems to us, autocthonous
And proteinaceous mushrooms,
And then we die.

My expanding universe,
Extending family,
Contracts to one room,
One short view of the garden
(No man’s longer).

No thick roof hides us from
Our sun’s neutrinos,
No monkey’s coat of dullness
Long wards off knowledge;
A single drip’s a soaking.

The hills are fitness contours,
And now you too have felt
Today’s indifferent landslip,

Or seen the mists which promise rain.

It is one of the fundamental lessons of broad literary reading and of historical study that the human mind has been much the same over time and geography. Careful reflection on what we can discern of the mind of an ancient author, and allowing for the projection we inevitably make of our own mind into that of another, there are broad similarities. Indeed, the reality of projection, which I am so far from denying that I emphasize it, is indeed a proof this suggestion. The fact is that we are able to project ourselves into the writings of even a distant period without much torsion or neglect of the kind that we must enter into when, for example, creating cartoon narratives of talking animals or vegetables or vehicles. That is in itself rather remarkable. If the human mind had changed very significantly it would simply not be true.

Indeed, it seems possible to me that the brain may have an approximate maximum level of informational complexity, consisting of the evolved structure and the information it acquires, and that this accounts for our intuition that there has been little or no change in the mind over history, or indeed between pre-technological (and pre-literate) peoples and our own time. We certainly represent the world in different ways, and as a consequence are much more successful at manipulating the world, for these mental representations are much more accurate and adequate to our purposes, and in that sense they certainly can be termed more complex.

But the difference in the brain itself is, all told, not that great, and most of the variation in complexity that we observe is accounted for in the representations and other structures external to the mind, and the greatest barrier to understanding a person in distant period is the lack of such clutter.

If any one doubts that the sly brilliance and sideways glancing insight of Bernard Mandeville's books has left them, even at this date, three hundred years after their publication, uncomfortably warm to the touch, they should read Skidelsky and Skidelsky's treatment in their rigoristic and sincerely puritan tract, How Much is Enough? (Allen Lane: London, 2012). (In case you are wondering, the answer is 'Whenever the Saved cry Stop!')

Mandeville, one of the finest naturalistic observers of human behaviour ever to have graced our language is dismissed in one line as a 'scribbler', and then in the next crowned with thorns as the 'Machiavelli of economics'. When a book harbours such conflicting views we can be sure that a nerve has been touched; and Bernard Mandeville MD knew of all the most sensitive spots in the hypochondriacal well-wisher, with the consequence that the pained reaction is strong beyond concealment; Mandeville is bad, bad, bad in both ways, a hack, a part-time writer of doggerel (actually capable Hudibrastics; but economists and philosophers cannot be expected to know such things), and he's wicked too, an eponymous Devil of a man, a cavalier and satirical malcontent, perhaps a Satanist, certainly a cynic.

And yet, as S&S themselves allow, for they are decent souls in spite of being an economic Lord's Day Observance Society, Mandeville is to his great honour and extensive credit, a thinker who takes and considers men and women as they are and not as finger-waggers would have them be.

Nevertheless, S&S ignore his views, as perhaps they must; for if Mandeville is right (and he is) then their recommendation for placing limits on consumption would not only make all mankind virtuous by curbing the boundless flight of a hook-billed psyche whose wings though viewless are forged by nature not the angels, but would also, in the same sermonising breath, make it grindingly poor, with even the humblest desires unfulfilled. If you are 'for honesty', and S&S most certainly are, then you must be 'for acorns' too. However, Skidelsky and Skidelsky say you may have a certain number of grams of quite nice cake. That is mistaken. Acorns it is, and Dr Mandeville retains his position.

Commentators more or less sympathetic to the Conservatives are dismissing UKIP grumbles about electoral reform by suggesting that the First Past the Post does in fact reflect the country and that in the face of failure to secure more than one seat the party will now melt away. On the latter point they may, in part, be right. The dissapointment will be intense, especially for those who had not voted for some time and were drawn out of seclusion by the promise of making a difference. Such people may, perhaps, retreat into despair once more; and who can blame them? But the effect on the core of the party's nearly 4 million voters has the potential of galvanising them, and giving them a new sense of purpose. They now see that it is possible to collect a vote of national scale, and to deny the Conservative party a resounding victory. This will be attractive both to those who see UKIP's as a potential parliamentary force, and to those who think the party's role is to put pressure on the Conservatives to alter their policies. The latter group have every reason to congratulate themselves; they have pushed the Conservatives into much more robust positions on a whole range of issues, made it difficult for the leadership to ignore the backbenchers, and have reason to expect further success as Tory analysts seek ways of attracting, say, half the UKIP vote, without disaffecting the 11 million that they already have.

But the most important effect of the UKIP vote is independent of any immediate political consequences, and relates to the drift of public opinion and its long term effect on changes to law and constitutional practise, as described by Dicey in relation to the Nineteenth Century. The public can now see three parties, one of the right, two of the left, that have polled 7.4 million votes but are represented by only 10 MPs. This will not produce concrete proposals for electoral reform in the short or even medium term, but it is certain to contribute to a current of public opinion already in motion. As we know from the history of the late Eighteenth the whole of Ninteenth and the early part of the 20th Century, steady pressure for electoral reform eventually delivered universal suffrage.

Indeed, those who defend First Past the Post are in a similar position to those who resisted reform during that period, and some of the arguments are similar, namely that the existing system produces stable government, and does, in spite of its apparent oddities, produce governments and even parliaments that represent the mood the country. These points had substantial merit in the past and they have merit now, and they will be recognised even by those who nonetheless conclude that there is something in need of reform. But it is doubtful if such pragmatic arguments can save the reputation of a system where large numbers of votes go almost unrepresented in parliament, while sectarian interests such as the separatist Scottish Nationalist Party can gain 56 of the 59 the seats in Scotland with only 1.5m votes (which is less than half of the Scottish electorate, and about 2% of the population of the United Kingdom).

First Past the Post is on the way out; it won't go soon, but it will go, just as the electoral system of the 18th Century did, and it will go for the same reason, a gradual loss of credibility. Even those who see practical advantages in the status quo should understand that inflexible adherence to a system in which there is steadily waning confidence may result in social and political instability. It is often forgotten that England in 1817 was regarded by skilled observers as dangerously volatile, and Castlereagh took the remarkable step of suspending Habeas Corpus. This was recognised as undesirable, but simply thought to be necessary. We are a long way from such a situation, but there should be no doubt in anybody's mind that forces such as those we are considering here have major disruptive potential when frustrated.

It should also be recognised, on the basis of 19th Century experience, that even prudent and delays to reform intended to better reflect the political opinions and interests of individuals create the conditions in which collectivism can flourish, and ultimately, in the course of prosecuting its agenda, severely restrict human freedom. This is to be avoided.

Labour's performance in the election is much poorer than I expected, partly because I didn't see through the faulty opinion polls, as to my knowledge some campaigners on the ground most certainly did; but also because the anti-Scotch vote in England seems to have benefitted the Conservatives (and perhaps UKIP) rather than, as I believed likely, the Labour party. I do not understand the reasons for this, but am willing to grant that it might be that the increasingly collectivist rhetoric produced by the Conservative party (the detoxification strategy) succeeded in offering a guilt-free home to English partriotism. In which case the rebranding must be accounted a partial success.

But the character of Labour's disaster, and it is most certainly that, is not immediately apparent from the seats won, and it is to the number of votes cast, which tells a very different story, that we must turn. The following table lists these figures for 2010 and 2015 and then calculates the difference and the ratio of the two numbers:

Both Conservative and Labour received more votes in 2015 than in 2010, but viewed as a multiple of the number of votes cast in 2010 neither party achieved any dramatic increase in 2015. That said, Labour did receive 740,000 more votes. Clearly, Miliband failed to break through; but there is no case for suggesting that the public turned their back on him, except in Scotland where they clearly did; indeed, when approximate allowance is made for the offsetting effects of the Scottish catastrophe, it would seem that Miliband did in fact mobilise significant numbers of extra votes in England. Doubtless this is what underlay much Labour confidence during the campaign.

More obvious and perhaps still more significant are the collapse of the Liberal Democratic vote (-4m); a surge in the UKIP vote (+3m); and a surge in the Green Vote (+900,000).

The collapse in the Liberal Democratic vote is the most striking of all. Even if we assume that the lost 4 million account for all of the increase in the Conservative, Labour, SNP and Green Party votes, there are still over 1 million missing voters, and I find it difficult to believe that many of these voted UKIP. It would seem that Miliband can reasonably be criticised for not attracting these disillusioned LibDems, indeed for actively repelling them with a harshly European-style ideological socialism, evident more in his tone than the literal sense of his announcements, rather rather than the blander well-wishing variety that is traditional in the United Kingdom and certainly drives the Liberal Democrats.

The increases in the SNP and the Green votes are of course both important, but I don't think that Labour's managers can actually be blamed for either of these problems. The rise of intense Scottish Nationalism is a phenomenon that no party has succeeded in addressing, and to which there can be no easy answer. Only a vigorous, practically religious, supranational collectivism would have had any chance, but the only version open to any party was the much less potent Unionism against which the SNP is already in successful rebellion. In any case, supranational collectivism is comparatively weak in the face of nationalism since it appeals only to the vanity of the electorate rather than their pride and self-interest.

With regard to the Greens, it is arguable that Miliband could have tried to make his party appear still more concerned about the environment and opposed to economic growth, but only at the risk of looking absurd in the eyes of some its staunchest supporters. In fact, it is notable that climate change has been almost absent from the election campaign, perhaps confirming suspicions that our anxieties are largely centred on the human sphere; "L'enfer, c'est les autres".

Of all the results, though, it is that of UKIP, which has most relevance to an understanding of the significance of this election, and an also to an evaluation of Mr Cameron's performance. About 3.9 million votes were cast for UKIP, equivalent to a striking 1/3 of the total number cast for Mr Cameron's Conservative party. Furthermore, UKIP's number is an increase of nearly 3 million on 2010.

The electoral counterfactual that should be troubling Conservative party strategists is the scenario in which these voters or at least a quarter of them voted for Mr Cameron and delivered an overwhelming victory rather than the slight though welcome because very surprising majority that has made him Prime Minister once more. Nigel Farage's achievement is to have mobilised a larger number of converts than any other party, and to have done so in the teeth of considerable media opposition, and in spite of fairly aggressive Conservative attempts to bag the game that UKIP were stirring up.

The fact that UKIP's astonishing political creativity has been rewarded with only one seat is bound to cause considerable dismay in that party, and could result in this newly assembled and undisciplined cohort disbanding in disgust. But it might equally cause sufficient anger and general embarrassment to increase pressure for major electoral reform. If we divide the number of votes cast by the number of seats, we find that the three largest parties in parliament have votes per seat ratios in the low tens of thousands: SNP, 26,000; Conservative, 34,000; Labour 40,000. By contrast the Green Party's one MP represents over 1 million voters, and UKIP's Mr Carswell must take his seat in the House of Commons knowing that he is the sole voice in that assembly for 3.9 million people. This is not symptomatic of a democracy in sound health.

Systems in equilibrium are remarkable. – We know of none, for the concept is purely theoretical and without empirical support. Indeed, it can only be generated by taking a view of an observed system that is arbitrarily truncated fore and aft. All known systems are open and dynamic; energy was transferred to them, and is leaking from them. As Heraclitus says, everything flows, everything changes. At the most general level, this is the distinction between the theological worldview and that of the naturalist. The believer maintains the hope that there is, somewhere, an equilibrium to which we can ultimately return. The naturalist sees no evidence of such a thing.

It is this hope for stable equilibrium that marks out the green world view as fundamentally religious. From stabilising the climate to the steady state economy we see ghosts of a longing for equilibrium. The socialist world view is the same. And of course there are many other instances across the political spectrum; nostalgia for the past, seen as a stable system, arbitrarily truncated fore and aft, a longing for an authority capable of maintaining a stable hierarchy, a fear of the astonishing and indeed terrifying dynamics of competitive commercial societies.

Perhaps it is simpler to see many religious and political views as driven in large part by the pursuit of an equilibrium state 'suggesting', as Lewis observed of the arts, 'perfect conditions for one organism' ("Inferior Religions", 1917), and this is curiously true of both individualist and collectivist approaches alike, since both are driven by individual preferences, for all that collectivists say to the contrary.
In other words, these systems offer the subject a suspension of hostilities, man and world, man and man, and this is so agreeable a prospect that we are willing to contemplate the most extreme difficulties in the achievement.

The Labour Party may do surprisingly well in the forthcoming general election. Indeed, the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) threat may actually benefit Labour south of Tweed by releasing an English nationalist reaction that can only find guilt-free expression if combined with collectivism.

English nationalism differs from the Celtic variety in having no ethnic component – the 'true-born Englishman' has been a joke for several hundred years. Indeed, it is almost entirely cultural, but this makes it a weak binding force; tea and marmite is no match for blut und boden, and cultural nationalism is very easily dissolved by historical criticism which can reveal, for example, that fish and chips are a recent import from Europe. But the longing for nationalism remains, and while this urge has achieved partial expression in UKIP, it is not flourishing, largely because it is in that party combined with an inconsistent and compromised individualism, as you would expect of cultural nationalism, and thus produces deep sensations of selfishness and consequent guilt, all of which results in self-repression. It is no accident that UKIP has had to wrap itself in the bizarre sweet-paper yellow-purple colour code and a currency symbol, of Roman origins, rather than the pigments and structure of the Union flag or the St George’s cross.

Needless to say, English nationalism has for some time been unable to find an outlet in the Labour party because the leadership has presented an increasingly internationalised version of socialism (see the Guardian, passim). This represents a break with the Attlee/Bevin position, which leaned heavily towards the national version (though so camouflaged as to break up its outlines, as was inevitable post 1945), and indeed explains to a degree the increasing gulf, present at the origins of the party of course, between the parliamentary and intellectual element of the party, which is theoretical and abstracted from real populations, and its base membership and support, which is practical and intensely conscious of regional identity.

But if this cultural nationalism finds a cause in resentment of the SNP, and a convenient and guilt-free vehicle by matching and perhaps exceeding Sturgeon’s ‘progressive’ claims, the situation changes. In other words, the electorate can express its nationalism without guilt if covered and propelled by collectivist rhetoric, towards which it has in any case a very strong leaning. Once in combination the effect could be mutually reinforcing and exothermic. I think in many cases an anti-Scottish reaction in England will express itself as a confident vote for Labour. Miliband will not be sympathetic to such feelings, but he will nonetheless benefit from them, and may have to collaborate in order to manage what could become a powerful element in his party's character. In other words, the Labour party, already very far left, may be forced into a much stronger nationalist position by the English anger of its voters. This seems unlikely to last (it is cultural nationalism, after all, and will blow away in a strong wind), but it will have vigour so long as it can define itself in opposition to a Scottish threat, and the SNP is trying to make that fault line permanent.

Wrapped in her castle of stone and bristling thorn
One fortunate girl slept through the dark till dawn
Brought love, a noble lover and a waking kiss,
Company, talk, and better far than this.

Her sister’s tale, sadder, real and grey,
Is never sung, though lived through every day;
No wish nor chance, of sleep, no star to guide
Or steed to bear her whither she would ride.

Lightless, restless, the whittling knife, her friend,
Counselled fierce combat or a tragedy’s end.

A flesh-fly, just breakfasted, looked over from his leaf,
And, knowing the world, took pity on her grief.

“Lady”, he said, “though you must pass these hours alone
Awake, aware, fearful, dull to the very bone
Think not but that your lover, though no lord,
Loves you as much as soul can well afford,
And will cut his way through these dark bowers,
To bring you both much lighter, happier hours.”

“Oh fly”, she said, “you know not how I long!”

“Oh Lady”, he replied, “plate glass is strong,
And hours have I spent, vainly striving
To be out again, winging and wiving,
Beating my head against its glacial wall
And hearing close by dear Musca’s plaintive call,
Seeing her trembling limbs, her gleaming wings
And in her rainbow eyes a million things,
The sky, the flowers, a rotting dump of dung,
And on the butcher’s slab a fresh-cut lung.

Oh tell me not of crueller, sharper pangs
Than pining for blood and lacking for diamond fangs.”

He paused, and shuffled his many shoeless feet,
She smiled, and thought of other cuts of meat.

So fly and lady talked the hours away
And talk so still, and must until the day
When Clod shall come at last with map and horse
Love in his heart, and a clear, fixed course.

Dicey's superb Law and Public Opinion refers to several varieties: public opinion, legislative opinion, and legal opinion; but he makes no extended reference, perhaps no reference at all, to that which is almost the most significant in our own time, namely executive opinion.

In Dicey's period, of course, employees of the state, including the armed services, were a small part of the total working population, and a smaller fraction still of the entire population. Now, the civil service alone, counting local authority employees, is vast, and when we further remember that many employees of private companies are predominantly engaged on public service contracts or within industries that are reliant on policies forcing purchase upon the consumer through levies (National Grid, insurance, the law...), we can see a very large part of the working population is indirectly or directly employed by the state.

Most remarkable, perhaps, about this swollen public sector, is that in spite of being non-net taxpayers, they are permitted to vote in both local and general elections, and that hardly anyone thinks this is odd. Indeed, it would seem to most that it would be wholly unreasonable to disenfranchise these people. But is it?; and can we go still further?

Pensioners on the state are only dubiously entitled, from this perspective, and recipients of benefits not at all. But a very large part of the population is actually already such a beneficiary; one thinks, for example, of child benefit, NHS services, or, even, the personal allowance. In fact, there is no need to worry about these details, for from the perspective of the civil servant the entire economy not engrossed by the state is seen as "tax expenditure", that is income and wealth that is foregone by the state and allowed to private individuals. Indeed, the grounding assumption in the informal political economy of our time is that the national income is, in its fundamentals, a public property, the distribution of which is one of the functions of government, if not the principle function.

In other words, we are reverting or have already reverted to a thoroughly archaic political view, namely that the Crown has possession of quite literally all, even the bodies of the citizens, and distributes largesse as a means of rewarding service; but with the variation, perhaps a very fragile one, that the ultimate beneficiary of the state is the the citizen; I say fragile since the citizen has very little power to enforce this view or to express disagreement with the wisdom of the state's dispensation.

This is so deep a reversion in public attitudes to property and income that it seems unlikely to be turned around by anything other than a major shock or, more likely, a steady shift in imperceptible increments, so small that at the time they are scarcely perceptible at all even to contemporaries. Some insight with regard to this movement, if it is ever to happen, might be found in the gradual transitions observed in the prehistorical past as tribal societies became primitive monarchies, and these monarchies eventually weakened and private property rights were granted (or re-granted) and came to be characteristic of a modernised society. Insofar as I understand this process it seems extremely slow and even erratic, with transformations simultaneously in both directions, for example a strengthening of the property rights of urban dwellers while those of rural wage earners might weaken.

The important question, then, is whether there is any indication that we might be moving away from the current view on property. I see no sign at all, and if anything think the tide has a little further to go in the current direction before it turns.