Liberal Vision

Gordon Brown: Long Time No Speak

‘Hey stranger! What you have you been up to? I’ve heard you made an important speech on Scotland’s constitutional future today’.

Gordon Brown replied:

“In the last few years I have had time on my hands, time to reflect, courtesy of the British people, and I want to put the positive, principled, forward-looking case for a strong Scottish Parliament inside a strong United Kingdom.“

Ask any best man and they will tell you it can take a long time to prepare a quality speech, including the tricky opening icebreaker, but Gordon’s life has been far from hectic of late. As revealed by Guido Fawkes back in February, Gordon Brown went TWELVE MONTHS without speaking in parliament.

With his ample preparation time, his speech on preserving the political marriage between Scotland and the UK ought to be something special.

I’ve not seen the full-text his speech but from the snippets I’ve heard from various news outlets, it appears to be the usual mixture of Nat-bashing, sentimentality and platitudes. In other words, exactly the same speech Gordon Brown has made on the Union over the past two decades.

Boredom is often a key reason for divorce.

There is still no economic liberalism (despite Mrs T’s efforts)

Is it safe to go on Twitter yet? Has the 24/7 reporting of the death of an octogenarian ceased? I’m sure the whole population of the UK, including the late Prime Minister’s most ardent supporters, have reached Thatcherisation point. But amongst the litany of tributes and critiques, a lot of the comments surrounding the Government of Margaret Thatcher are clouded in myth. Both left and right share in the mythology of Thatcher as some sort of economically liberal Boudicca who challenged the prevailing economic orthodoxy and shrank the size of the state. If anything, Margaret Thatcher was insufficiently liberal.

The Mythology of Left and Right

In the spring of 1986, Jo Grimond penned an article for the IEA entitled ‘Still No Economic Liberalism’ in which he argued:

“Statism, though dented, remains the dominant political and economic philosophy in the UK…we live in a corporate state in which the organisation has become more important than the individual. Government takes a higher proportion of the national income than ever…The flood of legislation and government expenditure is out of control…So we who hoped for radical measures must be disappointed by acts and omissions.”

Whilst there were many positive liberalising measures such as privatisation, curbing the over-wielding power of trade unions, her signing of the Single European Act, the sale of council houses (MT was initially sceptical about this measure and was persuaded of its merits by the decidedly ‘wet’ Peter Walker), statism did indeed remain dominant:

• Government expenditure rose throughout her premiership, standing at 41.5% of GDP in 1991-92. In his book Paradoxes of Power, Alfred Sherman, a former adviser, aptly named the Thatcher period as an ‘interlude’, with the post-war consensus largely remaining intact: “we are back to where we started”.
• State monoliths like the NHS were safe in her hands – spending on health increased 32% in real terms.
• In the aforementioned article, Grimond lamented the lack of choice in education and social services. For all the talk of radicalism, there were no moves toward education vouchers advocated by Liberals such as Arthur Seldon, Professor Alan Peacock and John Pardoe MP.

In many ways, Margaret Thatcher was a pragmatic conservative. Heath’s 1970 Manifesto was far more orientated toward the free market than Thatcher’s in 1979 and for someone who was so set against ‘consensus’, her first Cabinet looks remarkably conciliatory with its balance of ‘wets’ and ‘dries’. Moreover, the doctrine that became known as ‘Thatcherism’ owed more to Conservatives like Enoch Powell (who questioned if Thatcher actually understood monetarism) and Keith Joseph than liberals like Hayek. Margaret Thatcher allegedly slammed a copy of The Constitution of Liberty on the table proclaiming ‘This is what we believe!’ but there is precious little evidence of Hayekian thinking making its way into policy, especially in monetary terms [The Denationalisation of Money anyone?]. Presumably she skipped ‘Why I am not a Conservative.’

For all the bluster of many supposedly ‘economically liberal’ Thatcherites, liberalisation certainly did not extend to sexuality or race. Today, many self-proclaimed Thatcherites will rail against state spending whilst championing wasteful defence spending and Château Lafite options like Trident. Then as now, they lack consistency.

Economic Liberalism Beyond Thatcher

“The disappointing record of the Government has quite wrongly been seen as discrediting these [economically liberal] doctrines. There is a feeling that liberal political economy has been tried and failed. That is not true.”

Grimond’s words in 1986 were as true then as they are now: in 2013, there is ‘Still No Economic Liberalism’. Contrary to popular perception, public expenditure is rising not falling: like with Thatcher, we are merely controlling the rate in which it is rising. Despite the birth of free schools, there is still insufficient freedom and choice in many public services.

As David Laws wrote in the too often misunderstood ‘Orange Book’, Liberal Democrats need to reclaim economic liberalism (the Conservatives merely embraced the language and some of its substance) and our Liberal heritage. The likes of the Jeremy Browne and Liberal Reform fighting for a genuine four-cornered liberalism offer me hope of a more liberal future.

In Defence of David Ward

There’s been an ongoing furore over remarks made by Lib Dem MP David Ward on “the Jews.” As the Commentator reports, he hasn’t really shown much remorse and has kept on digging.

I would like to offer a belated defence of Mr Ward: at least he’s not as bad as Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi.*

Evidence has recently emerged on Youtube of Morsi describing Jews as “bloodsuckers” and “descendants of apes and pigs” during his time as an opposition MP. Morsi now claims he was quoted out of context – he was referring to Israelis, okay!?! – a similarly lame excuse to that offered by apologists of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over his pledge to ‘wipe Israel off the map’.

Alongside Morsi’s seizure of powers and other repressive measures, all the triumphalism surrounding the so-called Arab Spring – including utopian drivel that Facebook and Twitter somehow spurred on social revolutionaries – looks incredibly naive from the perspective of February 2013.

(*It could also be that Morsi is more up-front and honest…)

Votes at 16 won’t have young people flocking back to the Lib Dems

Over on his blog, Stephen Williams MP has revealed he will once again attempt to lower the voting age to 16 for UK elections and referenda.

Williams makes some valid points about its successful operation elsewhere, on the maturity of young adults and their political awareness through organisations like the UK Youth Parliament. But whilst votes at 16 has been a longstanding aspiration of the Liberal Democrats, it could be perceived as a desperate attempt to reconnect with the younger demographic following their u-turn on tuition fees.

Many remarked alterations to the franchise for the Scottish Independence Referendum was an attempt to gerrymander the vote (subsequent polling has shown this would backfire) and for Nationalists to cynically curry favour with young people.

Indeed, where had the sudden desire to ‘empower’ and ‘enfranchise’ [insert meaningless buzzword here] young people come from? After all, the SNP effectively deemed them as too infantile to understand the obvious health consequences of smoking cigarettes by upping the purchasing age from 16 to 18 and then sought to increase the purchasing age for booze from 18 to 21. One Nationalist MSP even ludicrously proposed a curfew on young drivers under 25 (good on LYS for taking them to task).

One would expect liberal voices to challenge  such liberty eroding moves yet in his article Stephen Williams said,

“There are good health reasons for controlling access to alcohol and tobacco.”

Hold on. You can be deemed mature enough to participate in an election and understand the main policy debates including, one assumes, health policy, yet be too immature to fully understand the consequences of smoking fags or drinking lager? It seems hypocritical to confer rights on one hand whilst restricting them on the other. If they are young adults, we should allow them to exercise personal responsibility. I believe young people have the capacity to make sensible and informed decisions about their own life but it is puzzling that some advocates of votes at 16 don’t seem to agree.

Votes at 16 won’t help the Lib Dems suddenly re-engage with young people. I’m not inherently against the idea of extending the franchise but we should look at the rights of young people in their totality rather than an à la carte approach. Within the confines of a blog post, I tentatively suggest:

• Allowing young adults to make their own decisions about how they lead their life. In response to a YouGov poll last year, only 17% of 18-24 year olds believed politicians and civil servants were well-equipped to make personal decisions on their behalf. They reject the Nanny State; so liberate them from it
• Don’t return to opportunistic and unaffordable pledges aimed at students like scrapping tuition fees
• Instil a little intergenerational equity into policy and share the burden of cuts
• Challenge negative perceptions surrounding young people on issues such as anti-social behaviour and binge drinking
• But most of all, inspire them. The age-old liberal values of personal freedom, civil liberties, peace and internationalism sound pretty appealing to young ears.

Ed Miliband’s Latest Immigration Pledge

Ed Miliband today called for immigrants lacking proficiency in English to be barred from certain public sector jobs. The Labour leader said, “if we are going to build One Nation, our goal should be that everyone in Britain should know how to speak English.”

My first reaction to his speech wasn’t to question Labour’s record on immigration or analyse any key policy changes but rather to recall former Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott’s sustained assault on the English language:

“We are now taking proper, putting the amount of resources and investment to move what we call extreme conditions which must now regard as normal.”

“I undressed 450 students yesterday with Ed Miliband and Eddie Izzard and I did 300 last night.”

“The green belt is a Labour achievement, and we mean to build on it.”

Luckily for the people of Humberside during the PCC elections, they managed to stop the indigenous Lord Prescott attaining a “publicly- funded, public-facing job” via the ballot box.