Steve Baker: We Need A British Milei – But Farage Isn't The Answer
7 min read
Steve Baker might be out of Parliament but he’s more determined than ever to foment the free-market revolution he believes is needed to save the UK from disaster. Tom Scotson hears his plans
Steve Baker spent 14 years as a Conservative MP and served under three separate prime ministers. He would probably be the first to admit he was a pebble in the shoe of every Tory leader.
Baker helped reshape Britain’s relationship with the EU as the head of the European Research Group, leading three rebellions through WhatsApp broadcast channels – something he believes will never be replicated.
Meanwhile, as deputy chair of the Covid Recovery Group, he opposed strict lockdown measures and vaccine passports legislated for under Boris Johnson (the ex-prime minister was forced to reverse the latter policy).
The 54-year-old libertarian tells The House he entered politics to vote against unjust wars, tame Labour’s “outrageous” response to terrorism, secure a referendum on EU membership and, crucially, reform the country’s monetary system.
It is this last quest that burns most fiercely now, and, having lost his seat in 2024, he is liberated from the shackles of Westminster politics. He is officially launching Fighting for a Free Future, a new vehicle to find Britain’s answer to Javier Milei, the Argentinian president taking a chainsaw to statism. The free-marketeers’ poster boy may be in trouble – at the time of writing, his project in Argentina is close to collapse and needs bailing out – but Baker thinks the UK needs someone similar and has found help from an unlikely quarter.
“So, a friend of mine, I’m amazed to find… is a Hollywood director and script writer, and he’s agreed that he will, in principle, help train think tanks to tell better stories,” he says, without disclosing the identity of this maestro of narrative.
In Baker’s telling of the story, Britain and much of the West has driven itself to the precipice of a financial meltdown. The value of the pound as well as the dollar has collapsed since 1971, he explains, after President Richard Nixon severed the last link to the gold standard.
He adds that if you allow the value of a currency to collapse, you get “profoundly unjust” social processes. In essence, if you print money, it causes more pounds to chase fewer goods, increasing the cost of produce in an economy and hiking inflation.
“The problem is that when exchange is taking place in a market, it relies on money holding its value. If the value of money is changing and shifting, and somebody is getting the benefit of new money first, before prices have been bid up by inflation, that means that there’s injustice being created,” he says.
So, who’s going to carry the standard into battle with the market-polluters? In an interview, Kemi Badenoch said the Argentinian president’s agenda would serve as a template for her own premiership. Baker, however, has his doubts.
Asked who is the best party to channel the free market right, he responds: “I don’t know, and I’m ashamed almost to say that because I’m still a Conservative Party member.
“The project is non-partisan. I’m interested in creating the conditions within which a British Milei can do what needs to be done in the UK,” he says. “Sweep aside planning law, sort out the health service so that it actually works and we can get high-quality care that we can afford to pay for.”
He adds: “To me, the shortest route to a British Milei is to elect Kemi Badenoch prime minister. I would absolutely love it if Kemi was the British Milei. She said she wants to be.
“There is a bit of a problem that she said she wants to be, but the Conservative Party also failed to back cutting winter fuel payment from better-off pensioners.”
He notes the party’s policy was decided during a leadership contest, complaining: “Somebody took a decision. They took the lazy, easy political decision of standing with pensioners because they vote for us. And this is how we get in a mess!”
I think Nigel Farage is far closer to Trump than Milei
The Conservative Party is falling behind Reform in most nationwide polls, and even placed fourth behind the Liberal Democrats in a recent MRP. The western world’s oldest political party is facing the real prospect of extinction, while its more culturally conservative sibling in Reform UK is on course to replace it. Nigel Farage, against all odds, could be the next prime minister. Does Baker see the UK being closer to electing a Trumpian-style leader than a libertarian?
“Oh, definitely, yes,” Baker says. “I think Nigel Farage is far closer to Trump than Milei… Nigel is a brilliant, brilliant campaigner. But people keep asking me to go to Reform. The answer is ‘no’. And they say, ‘Why?’. I say, ‘Well, because I know Nigel Farage too well.’
“It’s not like we’re close friends, but I’ve just watched him closely and occasionally had contact with him again. There’s a lot to admire in him. It’s quite possible we often agree on things. But I don’t like his style, and I can’t abide this resort to expediency.”
Despite being a fierce libertarian, he agrees with Farage that the government must embrace practical politics and reduce inward migration as close to zero as possible.
“The practical reality of politics today is that immigration needs to be slammed down as close to zero as is feasible; kept there for some years until the public consensus changes. And I don’t just mean illegal migration – I mean legal too... If we don’t do that, the public backlash will be unbearable.”
“In Wycombe, where 20 per cent of the public are British Asians, five per cent are Caribbean people, and they need to bring family in for visits and to marry or whatever. That’s a very punishing policy. But to take the national interest as a whole, it’s just got to be carried through.”
He acknowledges that libertarians “don’t really believe in borders” but adds a caveat: that even scholars such as Ludwig von Mises “knew you couldn’t import people into your society who profoundly disagreed with the principles on which it was organised”.
While many young people are attracted to Reform, many more are increasingly attracted to left-wing parties and socialism as an ideal. As of 2024, YouGov polling found 51 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds viewing socialism favourably compared to 25 per cent who had a positive opinion of capitalism.
“I’m desperately concerned that young people find socialism attractive, but you can see why they would, because they’ve been told that they live in a free-market world, when actually it’s a hugely interventionist world,” he says.
Baker adds that the UK has not had limited government regulation for many generations. He cites the problem of the water industry, a “hideous hybrid” minutely regulated by the state.
“Throughout history, the actual record of socialism has always been misery and starvation, shortages, human rights abuses, even mass murder, again and again and again. And people always say, ‘Oh, that wasn’t real socialism’. Why do they say that? Because, naively, they’ve persuaded themselves of that because socialism aims at utopia. Anything other than utopia isn’t really socialism.”
Baker’s raison d’être is to find competent and charismatic individuals to upend the economic managerialist consensus in Britain. So, does he see himself returning to frontline politics?
“I will do it,” he says, as his voice begins to crack. “But it’ll cost me dear if I do have to. And I really don’t want to have to. I would prefer if Kemi did it.”
