I hate namedroppers, as I was saying to Her Majesty the Queen the other day when she was up for the hauf-empty Parly do. But I have to drop the name of Hardeep Singh Kohli, the broadcaster, writer, wit, actor, all round renaissance man. I first remember Hardeep as a renaissance boy, I coached him at rugby when he was in primary school. A fine player he was too, although I always felt he thought too much to be a really good player. My late father used to say “I have too good an imagination” which meant he could see risks and potential tragedy well in advance of the fact . What was needed for primary school rugger was the proverbial “stroang back an’ a saft heid”. HSK was too clever by half for that.

Anyway , back at the present. Hardeep is one of my Facebook Friends, and today he cast out a challenge : is there a viable alternative to the free market? Can we find a way of usurping the current system and reclaiming the means of production?

This was meant as a lighthearted fuse to cause a discussion, but its timing was exquisite. I have been pondering on politics recently , and indeed had cause to answer the question as to what are my political leanings. To which I answered along the lines of the older I get the more left wing I become.

Now, you are reading from a man who has consciously and perennially avoided party-political loyalty or stances. At worst, I have said a pox on all your houses. At best, you can see that decent men and women are to be found in all parties and none. Self-employed lawyers tend to have a recessive independence ( I mean personal , not national) gene, and are less likely to hitch themselves to a party machine where some party drone might force them to toe a line that is anathema. Thus has it been with me.

But as you can imagine, doing the kind of work I and many of you do, we have an underlying backbone of justice. In my blogger-in-law the boy Dailly, it is not so much under the skin as worn like a kiss-me-quick straw boater for all to see. I am always in awe of him , whether he be fighting mass repossessions, doing his damnedest to stamp out dampness in housing, encouraging justice in the heart of Africa. But even I have had my moments, and one cannot help making judgments about perceived injustices in many aspects of modern life and modern lives, based on what I see in the office and in court.

And the longer I go on, the more I can see what should be done. The answer to rampant consumerism and waste of resources? More discipline on those who offend. The remedy for vandalism, liter and anti-social behaviour? Public shaming on the internet and tv, posters, public stocks. Penalty for overweening greed and financial impropriety? Strip the greedy and give to the needy. Not bothering to get a job? Force them to work.

You could see a constant theme running through this as being sacrifice or at least behaviour modification for the general good. Mrs Thatcher may have said, but not really meant, there is no such thing as society, but the truth is that there is little else. No man in an island, and no matter how soft is the sand on which our legal institutions are built ( see my last blog), what else is there to do but co-operate with each other?

Ok, so I have conceded that as I get older, I get more intolerant, more decisive, more socially conscious. I admit to a degree of self-interest, but as has been said, we do not bequeath our environment to our offspring, we borrow it from them. I do not wish to see my children having to try to compete in a world of naked and corrosive ( literally when we read the carbon-belching stats) capitalism.
I rather think the word I am stretching for is Marxism, or at least communism. From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs – with the addendum Get up off your Fat arse , Pick up that litter and Get a Job. It might even be socialism, but it is so long since I heard that word used in public, I have almost forgotten what it means

But I will tell you the one pothole in the whole revolutionary road. It is people. As we have seen time after time in government large and small, you give him a uniform and he thinks he’s Hitler. Cooncillors clad in a little brief authority, educational tsars fascistically denying academic pupils’ aspirations by pretending that some wee fellow who would make a cracking plumber has to study Spanish, but in reality equipping him for little more than BGT. Health and Safety gurus who want to wrap us all in cotton wool to starve profit and demonise legitimate risk. On and on.

So the problem with Marxism is, well, Stalin and all the little Stalins. When you set one man over another, it always ends in tears. For sure you need one thing we don’t have – a rock-solid written constitution that avoids the PC pitfalls of the Human Rights legislation as a start. But fundamentally, before anything is written or done, you need Men and Women for Others – that’s the description and prescription that my Jesuit teachers said was the vocation of all of us - public and selfless service in the greater good. My patron saint St. Aloysius Gonzaga died of plague in his early twenties having given up vast family wealth and power to minister to the poor and sick. And without needing a second home or a duck hut, or £4 for dogfood.

No-one requires much convincing that it’s a revolution we need for sure, but one starting in men’s hearts. Then we can get the discipline, the management of our shared planet, the mutual respect and dignity of one man to another. The right people ruling in the right way. And then my left wing can help me fly.