Like many members of the Lib Dems I’ve been spending the past couple of weeks trying to make up my mind about the new political paradigm we find ourselves in. Richard Grayson’s excellent article in The New Statesman has articulated many of the concerns and aspirations I have for the future of the party. Would be interested to get a sense of what the readers of this blog think about the article so feel free to leave comments below.
It’s a really good article! I guess I would describe myself as being 5/8 Social Liberal and have quite some enthusiasm for the coalition. I don’t give much of a toss about the inevitable VAT rise which I feel would have been higher under Labour. However I might take to the streets in protest if I thought the poorest and most vulnerable in society were being beat up on rather than being given new wings and new hope.
Richard Grayson seems to paint two pictures for me. One being the nightmare scenario of a split in ‘the’ party of Liberalism between ‘social’ and so-called ‘economic’ (or Orange Book) Liberals. This, far from marking out a liberal centre-left and liberal centre-right two party state would, I believe, be the end of the great British tradition of broad-based holistic Liberalism.
The other scenario is that of the Lib Dems becoming a more likely and reliable appendage to a more defined Labour centre-left party.
Neither of these seem desirable to me!
The election campaign was quite poor (many missed opportunities to consolidate support) and the simple fact of the matter is that if we had won more seats then we would have had more influence on any possible coalition.
We might currently be at 12, 13 or 16% in the polls, but we did also see 28, 30 and 34% only months ago. We either stick together and go for gold, or we’re lost and lonely apart!
We need to raise our voice, we need to celebrate the ‘steps’ we achieve in coalition, but we must also raise up on high our ‘destination’ values and aims as a party of Liberalism.
And as 5/8 Social Liberal and SLF member I am somewhat embarrassed that the last article was over a month ago at a time when we should be studiously debating how we achieve social justice, freedom from poverty, ignorance and conformity, in times of austerity. How do we give people their wings, at a time of national cut backs?
I’d rather eat my own toenails than join Labour after all they’ve done during the last 13 years but Grayson is right that we do have to develop our policies to ensure that we present a programme that has improving the situation of the poorest and extending civil liberties at its heart. I don’t believe you can do the first and shrink the size of the State in the ways that are being mooted. The Coalition has some major wins but I’m very uneasy about what we’re hearing about the welfare state. I would not expect many Lib Dems to be comfortable with the way benefit claimants have been stigmatised in the last few days and fewer still with the Housing Benefit proposed changes.
Quite a good article, though I think Richard Grayson has a slightly too rosy view of the effectiveness of local government (even without it’s current emasculation by Whitehall). After all, we all surely agree that Parliament can make the wrong decision sometimes, so it should follow that councils can also make the wrong decision (if hopefully less often).
Free schools are an impeccably social liberal (but not social democratic or socialist) policy*, so he should have chosen another issue to describe his feared split between a small-state leadership and social liberal membership. In passing, I would like to say that Nick Clegg’s speech is well worth a read. The free school idea was cautiously well-received at the Lib Dem manifesto conference he made the speech at (it was the first major Lib Dem event I’d been to so I remember it well), and I think it’s a shame that it was quietly squashed somewhere within the party hierarchy.
I agree with Caron that the latest government spin against benefit claimants is distasteful (especially that “bounty hunter” idea of Cameron’s, which even got onto Swedish radio). As Jennie Rigg pointed out in an excellent blog post, the state loses far more to tax evasion (i.e. criminals just like benefit fraudsters, who at least have the excuse that the system is horrendously complicated and that they do rather need the money). But this is one area where the Tories are providing all of the atmosphere rather than the Lib Dems.
I agree that we need to retake the interwar and post-WW2 heritage of seeking to broaden ownership of more than houses (a point Mr Grayson is right to bring up). But free markets (particularly those for goods and services) are not quite so bad as he thinks. For example, far from working ever longer hours in order to acquire more “stuff” British workers have actually been working less and less since 1979: see Table 2, page 2 of this pdf.
*In short, my argument is that free schools are a recognition that different children are happiest and learn best in different schools, so it is natural that parents should be able to choose between schools and that NGOs should be able to run schools. This is social liberal because social liberalism is about giving people the capabilities that they need to have a free and healthy life (as argued by Amartya Sen and J. S. Mill). It is not about social engineering or trying to make people “good” or “equal” by some arbitrary standard, which is what socialism is about. And if social liberals are so keen on devolving power, why not devolve it to parents as well as councillors?
Just subscribing to the blog
And sorry for the length of my comment, it was an interesting article and I felt I couldn’t just leave my comment at a few lines…
Another comment on Richard Grayson’s article (for the rest see my comment, currently in moderation):
He describes the Clegg-Huhne leadership contest as “policy light” and not indicating any change in direction for the party. But I clearly remember Chris Huhne taking left wing positions (e.g. proposing that councils should be able to ban supermarkets from opening) and also being much more critical of Trident than Clegg was at the time. And his set-piece speeches impressed me with his insight into liberalism as an idea.
Thanks everyone for the really good comments. Interesting to see this as well today http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/remember-whose-side-youre-on-clegg-warned-by-allies-2059351.html