If a homeless man can stand on his own feet, so can a whole country

If you think all homeless people are self-pitying, think again. I have been sleeping rough for months, but I’m not a whining Leftie. I regard myself as a philosopher and a free-thinker. I can best describe my views as “organic, non-partisan, non-conformist”. Oddly enough, it’s mainly Lefties who seem to have a problem with that.

I do my best to approach things objectively, without dogma, and without the echo-chamber of reaffirmation. Maybe that helps me see through the little deceits that people often leave unquestioned.

Plato argues in The Republic that, in order to build a proper Utopia, it will be necessary to depict the gods as virtuous, regardless of what Homer and the other authors may have actually written about them. Hence censorship and deception are requisites for instilling virtue: “The lie in the words is in certain cases useful and not hateful.” This has become to be known as Plato’s “Noble Lie”.

Modern politics is full of these “noble lies”. Consider, as just one example, the gender pay gap – that is, the theory that women earn less than men because of systematic prejudice and sexism. This isn’t just a partisan opinion; it’s official doctrine. The White House website in the US states as fact that a woman earns 79 cents to a man’s dollar because of discrimination.

In fact, there are many other variables that explain the pay-gap. For example, the fact that men, on average, work more overtime on the same jobs as women. Women are three times more likely than men to be part-time workers. One in seven men is a part-time worker, compared with three in seven women. This is important because part-time work on average attracts lower hourly rates.

Women regularly tell pollsters that they want to balance work and family life, and pick jobs accordingly. But it’s not politically correct to admit that this might affect salaries. Even less politically correct are the polls in which women say they prefer working for male bosses.

It’s not just that Lefties disagree with these views; it’s that they don’t want to allow them. Try voicing them and see how people react: not by challenging your opinions, but by challenging your decency.

Public policy is, in effect, based on a falsehood. Whether it’s Nicola Sturgeon insisting on 50-50 ministerial appointments in Scotland or the EU’s Equal Treatment Directive, politicians act on the basis of what they want human beings to be, not what we are.

The EU is founded on “noble lies”, which is why so many of its policies run against human nature. One reason I backed the campaign for Britain to leave the EU – I spent seven hours one day chalking out passages from Why Vote Leave in Trafalgar Square – is that I want my country to realise her full potential and embrace global markets. So many EU laws are contrary to free-market economics. They involve more money and resources being wasted on authoritarian legislation, political correctness, increases in state power.

But, as I say, being homeless doesn’t make me a self-pitying socialist. I am now working in London and trying to improve my situation by my own efforts. I’m not looking to the state for handouts. I’m saving to start a market stall.

Brussels claims to be acting for ordinary people, but ordinary people know better. I used to be a construction worker in Edinburgh, but a combination of factors, including mass immigration from the EU, pushed me to move to London for work. This wasn’t because bourgeois capitalists were keeping the workers down, as Marxists teach. It was because the wages and benefits offered to EU migrants made it less attractive to employ British workers.

While sleeping rough, I’ve met a lot of people who have been demotivated and defeated by our welfare system, and the same phenomenon can be seen within whole countries. Look at the way Greece was ruined by years of handouts from the EU. If a man should aim to stand on his own feet, so should a nation.