I had such high hopes after the landslide election of 1997, now 12-years later if feels like we’ve wasted almost every one of those years – perhaps we should have read this quote from 1949.

The main lesson which the true liberal must learn from the success of the socialists is that it was their courage to be Utopian which gained them the support of the intellectuals and therefore an influence on public opinion which is daily making possible what only recently seemed utterly remote. Those who have concerned themselves exclusively with what seemed practicable in the existing state of opinion have constantly found that even this had rapidly become politically impossible as the result of changes in a public opinion which they have done nothing to guide. Friedrich A. Hayek.

Maybe then we wouldn’t have used all those focus groups and spent all that time sucking up to the likes of Rupert Murdoch.

Hat Tip: Duncan’s Economic Blog.