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I was never particularly interested in politics growing up. My father was an active social democrat, and I remember him jumping up and down with excitement when the SDP was formed, as David Owen, Roy Jenkins, and Shirley Williams broke away from the Labour Party.

Even as a student, I never got interested beyond having a feeling that something wasn’t right. I felt I should be left-wing - that that was the right thing to be, but I never felt particularly engaged, only alienated. My vague understanding of political ideology was that Stalin and the Bolsheviks were far left and Hitler and the Nazis were far right - I didn’t realise Nazi meant national socialist back then - but that far left and far right were actually quite close in philosophy. Horseshoe theory, basically.

It seemed actual far right was something that didn’t really exist in the UK. There was Oswald Mosley, but he was a bit of a laughing stock, and the National Front was tiny and ineffectual.

In my mid-to-late 30s, as a result of studying gold, sound money and limited government, I discovered libertarianism. For the first time, here was a political philosophy that resonated with me. Government is inherently incompetent, inefficient and inequitable. The more it does, the worse things seem to get. The less it does, the better. “A multiplicity of individual decisions,” to quote John Cowperthwaite, former Governor of Hong Kong, “will produce a better and wiser result than a single decision by a Government or by a board with its inevitably limited knowledge of the myriad factors involved, and its inflexibility.”

It always amazes me that somebody who advocates peace, free trade, less government, and, in the case of anarchism and anarcho-capitalism, no government at all, can be sectioned off with Nazis and labelled far right. Far right involves more government not less.

To say far-right libertarian, as the Guardian did the other day to describe Argentina’s new president Javier Milei, is surely oxymoronic. Or maybe just plain moronic.

At best it’s lazy and ignorant. At worst it’s the stuff of smearing and straw men, and wilfully dishonest. I used to think it’s the former. Now most of the time I realise it’s the latter.

I am proud to have written the Libertarian National Anthem, which distils libertarian philosophy. The lyrics read:

Arise libertarians above totalitariansOur guide is the mighty invisible hand.Reject state controllers, collectors, patrollers.Our choices are better than government plans.

Taxation is a form of theft.Free markets and free trade are best.Free speech, free movement, free minds and free choice.Our actions are all voluntary,Not coerced or compulsory.War we abhor, socialism does not work.

No debt or inflation, no stealth confiscation,No pigs in the trough at the gravy to drink,No state education to brainwash our nation,No experts dictate what to do, what to think.

We scorn your fiat currency.Gold and bitcoin is our money.We own ourselves and we live and let live.We take responsibility.Life, love and liberty.Leave us alone, let a thousand flowers bloom.

How is any of that far right?

(If you want to watch the video of the above, which I heartily recommend, it is here).

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