The Swiss Example

What is the most striking difference between Britain and Switzerland? We are a much more highly politicised society than they are. Few people in Switzerland know who the members of their government are, and it is doubtful whether a majority can remember the name of the President. Nobody outside Switzerland knows anything about the Swiss government, nor does it matter that one should. The cantons operate their separate systems with a good deal of independence of each other. They compete to make themselves attractive to their citizens by keeping their taxes low, and they do not try to win elections by putting taxes and expenditure up. They treat their citizens as their customers. They do not charge significant taxes on capital; estate duties are below 10% in most if not all cantons, and capital gains are free of tax. Swiss society is genuinely capitalist, with private family wealth growing generation by generation.

The Swiss believe that their own prosperity has three pillars. They were neutral in two world wars; they never experienced the socialist attack on capital which crippled countries such as Sweden and Britain, and which overburdened Germany and France; and they enjoy the freedom of not belonging to a bureaucratic and centralised system. Of course they also enjoy the benefits of free trade with the European Community, as the EC does with them. Fifty years after the Second World War, Britain is earning 49 centimes to the Swiss franc. Who can doubt which nation took the correct post-war path to stability and prosperity?

When one examines the Swiss example, one can see the virtues of independence. The independence of the cantons has prevented the creation of an oppressive centralised state, taxing its citizens in order to bribe its voters. Personal independence has been strengthened by the accumulation of family capital, with the high savings that are required. National independence has permitted the Swiss to avoid many, if not all, of the mistakes made by larger European countries. Local democracy has proved more responsive than national democracy to public opinion. Politics has been kept in its right place, and politicians in theirs.