Liberal Vision

Courageous 27 vote in national interest

Today’s tuition fee vote is a milestone for the Liberal Democrat party. It is the first time the party has had to seriously consider the wisdom of a policy designed for permanent opposition from the perspective of government. Twenty-seven of the fifty-five present and able to vote decided to vote in the national interest for a policy that was well-designed, fair, and should ensure sustained quality in the higher education for the many, not the few. They should be congratulated.

We cannot attribute exact motives to the twenty-one who voted against and seven that abstained, there is no coherent support for a single alternative proposition and most rely on either borrowing from unborn children, or damaging jobs and growth with higher taxes. But we can reasonably assume many had an eye to local tactical concerns or found breaking the pledge difficult and put career or conscience before country.

The student protesters, or rather the minority who turn up for a rumble not a grumble, once again, have damaged the opposition case. Assaulting horses, vandalising property and endangering peaceful protesters by putting them in harms way. Aaron Porter of the National Union of Students I feel would have been wise to call for a mass silent protest to highlight those excluded by higher fees. Both a more compelling way to make his point, and as a way of marginalising the extremists.

The change in policy is not secure yet, the House of Lords may well demand further concessions and prove a target for a new pledge campaign. But this vote was an important hurdle and the party needs to rally round and move on.

Nudge Dredd

Professor Richard Thaler, Chief Justice of the Nudge movement sweeping politics, is back in Brit-Cit this week to advise the government on using his analysis of irrational behaviour to design non-coercive policies that encourage individual choices for longer, healthier and better lives. A philosophy he calls libertarian paternalism.

Underlying libertarian paternalism is a truth, that all of us frequently make ‘bad’ choices that do not extend, improve or enhance our lives; and a conceit that the state is always good at knowing what the best choices might be, that they are good at nudges to help us get there, and the nudges do more good than harm.

In the first part some ‘good’ decisions (by Thaler’s criteria) are obvious or evidence-based. Don’t smoke, drink in moderation, eat a balanced diet and do some exercise. Others are entirely subjective or moral choices. Be a player or a priest, experiment with soft drugs, go to church, and so on. Others have unclear implications with risks both ways. Play sports with a high risk of serious injury, let your kids watch commercials, cycle to work. Other choices like giving to charity may be bad for you and good for society.

What outcomes the state judges is good, with what priority, and what choices lead to those outcomes is largely a matter of politics. It is not obvious though there needs to be a political consensus on right and wrong in any electoral cycle, or that the ‘state’ view should be a monopoly. Liberal scepticism of monopoly should apply to edicts of certainty, whatever their source. And where good choices are clear, there are usually many more actors than the state involved in saying so, leaving it unclear why the state should expend treasure as one more voice. Is there any reason at all for example why GB plc is running five a day commercials alongside all the other exhortations to eat better?

Who is better at nudges, the private or public sector? I’m not sure there is a sensible answer to that question, or at least not a short one. Private companies looking for the next dollar can encourage bad choices, but equally can make good choices much easier through lifestyle marketing. Government marketing and opt-in/opt-out laws can make a difference, but when the government gets it wrong, for example with stakeholder pensions and nannying on trivia like stand-by buttons, the cost is large.

The wider libertarian movement suspicion though that nudges increase the scope of government to interfere in private decisions rather than make it less coercive is a reasonable worry. Are opt-out organ donor schemes a nudge or coercion? Is compelling companies to plain package cigarettes a nudge or heavy-handed regulation? What about all the perverse nudges and incentives to make bad choices in the welfare system?

In brief nudge policies are a broadly welcome alternative to some types of government intervention. They might be used to ‘nudge’ some politicians away from the jackboots to the nanny-shawl in the political dressy-up box; or leave it alone entirely. But there is a risk in the hands of Mega-government and protean Nudge Dredd politicians helping us for our own good, that what you actually get is something like

“you want choice citizen, I am the choice, prepare to be nudged”

Red storm rising?

David Hall-Matthews of the Social Liberal Forum raised an interesting point on Lib Dem Voice this week. Have the ‘left’ of the party “become the mainstream”?

His evidence for the shift is the result of the internal party elections, which, as with last year showed greater success for explicitly left candidates like Evan Harris than moderates and aspirational liberals. Tim Farron (left) beat Susan Kramer (moderate) for the Presidency, and across the committees the people’s front of Judea dominate the Judean people’s front.

It one sense he’s clearly right. I’m not sure though that it means what he thinks it means, or it’s all good news for his side.

In any coalition between the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives the opposition to the government within the party is predominantly going to come from the left. Either those who still regard us as some kind of annex for a grand realignment plan, or just those for whom liberal democrat politics is about opposition for the sake of opposition. If you want to send Nick Clegg a message of disapproval, voting for this year’s Miliband-tendency is pretty low risk.

It’s also the case that Nick Clegg is not Tony Blair, and Danny Alexander is not Peter Mandelson. Party management from the leadership has been notably absent. Where New Labour took on their internal critics and crushed them in a series of internal battles for control, Nick has been, well… liberal…

What David has identified is two fingers politely raised to a Leader who is looking the other way.

The issue there I suspect, is that if the internal committees of the party actually mattered, Nick would not be quite so relaxed. The Federal Executive is a case in point. Technically it is the governing body of the party. In reality all serious political decisions are taken by the MPs, all operational ones by Cowley Street. It has a serious role scrutinising those decisions in the manner of a Council committee, but on almost every occasion it has had the power tested, it has proved rather keener to ask the Leader and Chief Executive for direction than rock the boat.

Their one big power is to appoint and sack the Chief Executive, but even that is devolved to a Finance and Administration committee, and the real test of a CEO is whether or not they have the confidence of the Leader.

The Federal Policy Committee technically steers party policy to Conference for approval, and is responsible for how policy is developed. Technically Conference votes are sovereign in deciding what policy is. In reality the FPC is one voice amongst many, and significantly less well resourced than an average-sized think tank. The selectorate who choose the committees and get to vote at conference represent activism not liberal opinion or even the membership of the party. No serious politician would regard that group as having the right to be sovereign over their political decisions, they are primarily accountable to their constituents for their campaign promises and votes in Parliament.

What both conference and the FPC have in spades is influence. It is a story if the FPC or Conference shoot down a leadership proposal.

But it a power best used infrequently and wisely. And this is where David may not get what he wants.

The more the FPC behaves like an anti-government faction, or impractical left-wing ideas shop, the more likely it is it will be ignored.

A key test for example will be what the committee recommend to conference in respect of our tuition fees policy for the next election, and what conference decides. One does not need the foresight of a deceased German octopus to predict that a left-leaning FPC will leave the policy unchanged or back a graduate tax and the Conference will wave it through. Government MPs will ignore it, those planning to vote against will stick it on their leaflets. Overall the party will look confused.

Tim Farron is likely to spend the next two to four years as President planning the Leadership bid that he is crystal clear he does not want. This will involve walking a tight-rope between constructive opposition and sabotage. He will become one of Ed Miliband’s sternest critics whilst agreeing with almost everything he says. He will be effusive in his praise of Nick Clegg whilst disagreeing with almost every decision he takes. He may occasionally stick-up for the Leadership at Conference to show willing whilst privately supporting attempts to get anti-government motions passed via caucuses like the SLF. He and Nick are real friends, but they are both also ambitious politicians.

The win for the left is not in this Parliament and internal elections, it is if and when Tim gets his shot at the big job.

Betting against that after the narrow result between Nick and Chris, and Ed Miliband’s success against New Labour, would be unwise. It is further not at all clear at the moment who would be the opposition. David Laws is brooding in his cave, Jeremy Browne has too marginal a seat, Vince Cable will be too old, Julia Goldsworthy is not in Parliament, and Sarah Teather has not fully recovered her internal reputation since the removal of Charles Kennedy.

Most ministers will struggle to build the kind of party-love available to a candidate outside the coalition. Chris Huhne is plausible, but given he ran on the left-wing ticket last time he would have to perform some quite canny shifts to build a new platform. Danny Alexander oddly looks rather like the compromise candidate who might emerge in the middle, but is untested and has always shone as a loyal number two. He’d be much more likely to back the candidate he thought would win than stand himself. It is though insanely early in the Parliament and the rise of Tim Farron is a plausible scenario not a forecast.

Another plausible scenario is that the left overplay their hand and provoke the friends of Nick into taking the party more seriously. Moving to one member one vote, or registered supporters being allowed to vote for the leader would undermine the committeeariat. Tough change to deliver. It requires a Conference vote. But events might deliver the right circumstances to make the party more democratic and reflective of liberal Britain.

The other key shift  is that the balance in the membership is likely to shift to the right to reflect support for the Coalition whilst more liberal socialists go back to Labour. The economy should recover by 2015 without a collapse of public services. The party might just win the balance of power again in a closely fought election, AV or no AV.

So that Alexander premiership, or even a decade or more of Clegg (sorry Miriam) are both entirely possible. Evan’s vision of a party obsessed with increasing spending, state control through councils, and endless redistribution schemes “distinctive, radical, and progressive” is far from assured.

Tories push Orwellian “Intercept Modernisation Programme”

GUEST POST: Alex Deane of Big Brother Watch warns of the continuing IMP. Are the Tories burying news of this “surveillance state” mechanism?

You may have seen that the appalling “Intercept Modernisation Programme” is to continue. Buried in the recently released Strategic Defence and Security Review, the Government plans to introduce

This comes despite the Conservative Party’s recent pledge to reverse the rise of the surveillance state.

If you can bear it, do please have a look at that last link. It’s remarkable that they’ve left the paper on the Party website; perhaps the thinking (and I say this as a Tory) is that everyone’s so concerned with the spending review that nobody will notice the rank hypocrisy?

And as readers of LV will know all too well, this can’t be blamed on the formation of the Coalition. The Liberal Democrats are (or hitherto have been) admirably sound on the issue and the Coalition Agreement promised to “end the storage of internet and email records without good reason.”

Couple this with the disgusting u-turn on the Summary Care Record, despite similarly clear and concrete promises, and a troubling picture emerges; it is fascinating and dreadful to see the speed of bureaucratic capture, the reversion to bureaucratic authoritarianism on show – intrusions are piling up so fast that my extended essay published last week is already out of date.

The IMP will allow the security services and the police to spy on the activities of everyone using a phone or the internet. Every communications provider will be obliged to store details of your communications for at least a year and obliged in due course to surrender them up to the authorities. The authorities will be able to track every phone call, email, text message and website visit made by the public on the absurd pretext that it will help to tackle crime or terrorism.

Just see how the surveillance state is being reversed, eh?

10:10′s imploding campaign

I’m not a huge fan of the 10:10 campaign at the best of times, a green movement to get individuals and organisations to commit to cutting their carbon emissions by 10% by the end of 2010, smacking as it does of a sort of naive optimism about the power of targets, coupled with an undertone of collectivised bullying. Their latest, now withdrawn, campaign “No Pressure“, written by Richard Curtis, however goes beyond parody:

The content involves four mini-skits of authority figures discussing their commitment, or lack of, to the goals of the campaign, concluding with those not participating, including children, being graphically blown up by pressing a red button, thereby reducing carbon emissions the hard way… geddit? All the humour of Hamas mixed with the advertising genius of Strand cigarettes.

It’s as though the creative team got together and tried to work out the most extreme parody possibly of the environmental movement, and make it into a clever joke. In doing so though they appear to have made a video for 10:10′s opponents rather than the movement itself.

The main problem is that in extremis the anti-carbon movement does across as a rather unnerving cult. There is an Armageddon narrative, a sense of futility that it is already too late, baffling measurement systems that tend to rule all human activity sinful, required rituals, shared acts of adherence, the trading of indulgences, a hierarchy of saints and priests promoting it all, and an attitude to non-believers that ranges from pity to hatred. Further with depopulation as a perfectly logical way to reduce emissions, associating the 10:10 campaign by implication with highly coercive population control ideologies, or rare acts of eco-terrorism is surely unwise?

Green liberalism I like to feel is more pragmatic and market-based. The balance of evidence appears to suggest global warming is a real if hard to quantify risk, and even if the Day After Tomorrow is nothing more than bad movie, a world of clean air seems generally desirable for a host of other reasons as well. Of all the things fossil fuels can be used for burning them is perhaps the least interesting.

Further, and crucially, the solution to carbon emissions will eventually be technological not ideological. Most personal efforts to show willing will in the long-run make no meaningful difference. What will drive change is invention, which in turn will be driven by economic growth and the price of carbon. Similarly population growth is best limited through prosperity, when children are expensive, people have fewer children.

Other efforts to speed up the process of change through regulation, targets, prohibition, incentives, nudges and so on  are not ineffective, if they were there would be no debate, but of questionable efficiency, and don’t tend to buck the market in the long-run.

Spanish and German solar incentives for example did stimulate domestic industry, but did not prevent most manufacturing migrating to China, or in the Spanish case an ugly boom and bust with a terrible bang for their carbon buck. Prohibition of incandescent light-bulbs though clearly stops people buying these bulbs and has encouraged alternatives. It is less clear there that waiting for a global carbon price to incentivise such change would have been effective.

And there are a huge number of other debates from energy efficiency to methods of generation and transport. 10:10 though is a footnote in this. It is largely a gathering point for the already committed and their lobbying activities encourage empty promises rather than sustainable change. If they used their network and goodwill to raise money for scientific research, and seed capital for green entrepreneurs rather than dodgy videos and hectoring they might do more good.