Liberal Vision

Nick Clegg sets out his vision

This Monday, Nick Clegg set out his vision for British society. As someone who has argued that Clegg has been weaving a liberal narrative from liberalism’s rich tradition, it is interesting to see Clegg draw these strands together.

Clegg distinguishes the socialist, conservative and liberal views of society. He argues that socialists, or social democrats, believe in a ‘good society’. Conservatives want a ‘big society’ and liberals promote an ‘open society’.

He makes it clear that there is some overlap for liberals with a ‘big society’ as both conservatives and liberals are sceptical of State power. There are also differences, which is why Clegg is a member of the Liberal Democrats and not a Conservative.

There is very little in the speech that nods to any overlap with Labour’s ‘good society’ bar that both parties see themselves as progressives. On this point, he makes it clear that Labour’s progressive agenda is based on a fixed blueprint. Having a set view is not, according to Clegg, compatible with an ‘open society’.

Clegg makes it clear that his liberalism is about people. As far as he is concerned the other two competing traditions put their faith in the State or non-State institutions.

The speech also covers some policy. Clegg’s interest in taxing unearned wealth fits with a party that has long had a fan base for land value taxation.

He ends the speech quoting Karl Popper.

The party now has to flesh out these ideas on social mobility, dispersed political power, transparency, a fair distribution of wealth and property and an internationalist outlook.

The challenge after that is to build an electoral base who support an ‘open society.’

Ever Closer Union?

The Liberal Democrat leadership had intended to fight the next general election on the basis that they had taken tough decisions and those decisions had paid off. The view was that by 2013 the economy would have turned around and voters who were angry with the party would forgive them by 2015.

After the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement it looks as though this strategy is no longer tenable. Danny Alexander made clear on Newsnight that he believes the party will go into the election arguing for more cuts to public expenditure in order to deal with a structural deficit that will not have been entirely dealt with. This is because in government, the party is committed to the plan set out by the Conservative Chancellor, George Osborne.

It is true that Ed Miliband has said that the Labour party needs to think hard about how it can deliver its social justice agenda while dealing with a difficult economic situation. If the leader of the opposition is making the case for continued cuts, it is not surprising that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury is too.

However, Alexander’s statement has already caused concern for some in the party.

That is not surprising given that Alexander’s comments have profound implications for the party.

If the good times had arrived by 2015, it might have been easier for the Liberal Democrats to distance themselves from their coalition partners. Now they will enter the election standing on a record of austerity with more austerity to come. The party will say that things would have been worse if the country had had a majority Conservative government. Whether the voters will make that distinction is open to question. Both parties will not only sound awfully similar as they fight for every vote they can get they will, apparently, be fighting on the same policy regarding cuts.

By now, the reader will have realised that this post is not about the ever closer union of Europe.

The fate of the Liberal Democrats will depend on the electorate’s verdict. It will be very difficult for the party to enter into coalition with Labour given the current political atmosphere. For those in the party who wold prefer that outcome, they need either Labour or the Conservatives to win outright and for the Lib Dems to have time to regroup and develop a different political agenda that will differentiate the party from its years in power. Then they need another election that produces a hung parliament.

If the 2015 result leads to five more years of a blue and yellow administration the parties will start to be seen as natural allies.

The upside of all this is that the party continues to govern and implement its policies. The downside is that it could lose its identity. The electoral consequences would then be bleak.

Assuming Lib Dem members would rather see the party carry on governing but not lose their identity in an ever closer union with the Conservatives, they need to ensure that the party offers a set of clear liberal policies. If people understand what the party stands for, that it is implementing some of these policies in government and that its vision for the future is consistent with the past, the party will stand a better chance of electoral success.

Crucially, it needs to be positive in government while being separate. It can’t appear as simply complaining about the Tories. It has to work with them in order to ensure its policies are successful.

It is not going to be easy. The public are rightly worried about the economy and what will happen in the next few years. Being in government is a great responsibility. A wrong decision can impact on many people. The party will need to think long and hard about the policies it puts forward.

A liberal manifesto for 2015

As Liberal Vision has of late focused on the here and now, perhaps it is time to turn to the vision.

The Liberal Democrats have much to think about between now and the general election. One important element, that can easily get subsumed by being in government, is to develop a manifesto that tells voters what liberalism looks like in the 21st century. Of course, one can argue about what liberalism means. Assuming that the reader broadly accepts the aims of this site, (individual liberty, limited government and a free market) what sort of policies would maximise these?

The party has talked a lot about deregulation. Vince Cable, Secretary of State at BIS, has argued for the abolition of what was the DTI and committed the coalition government to a one in, one out rule for regulation. Deregulation is only part of the story. The party needs to think about lowering barriers to entry for new businesses and ensuring markets are as open as possible.

On limiting government it has policies in place that would bring in checks and balances through constitutional reform. It might want to review these policies given that some have already been introduced. Does it need to make revisions to what has been done or develop a new approach?

Finally, but by no means least, we come to Individual liberty. Policies that put the individual in control of the public services they receive, policies that remove obstacles to plurality in public services and generally increase diversity in how we run things can only add to individual liberty.

No doubt there will be a lot of debate about how you achieve all this but the first step towards producing a liberal manifesto in 2015 is to make clear that it is liberalism that is the lode star.

The consequences of unintended consequences

Policy makers often refer to the potential of unintended consequences when debating new legislation or regulation. Politicians from all political parties seem to realise that whatever you do something will then happen that is unexpected.

If we start to think about policy through the prism of the unintended, then our recent political history makes a lot more sense. Someone comes up with a brilliant solution to a problem, a majority back it, it is enacted and a little later a new problem pops up because of the solution to the first problem. A new solution then needs to be developed to deal with this unintended consequence.

There are different ways to respond to this.

Governments could try and gather together the best brains in order to ensure that every possible outcome is worked out. Arguably, this approach is already being done and yet we still seem to be unable to avoid problems coming from solutions.

Another option is to accept that this is simply part of political life. There will always be unintended consequences so one might as well be stoical about it and just find a new solution.

One of the issues is that policy changes can impact on a lot of people. If that impact is negative it will take a lot of resource to solve the problem. Not only that, but ethically one might ask what right do policy makers have to affect people’s lives in this way?

There is another path to take. If you step back and let people work out the solutions by relying on the wisdom of the crowd, you are likely to arrive at solutions that everyone thinks are workable. This is because ways of doing things emerge through co-operation and experimentation. Another way to describe this is spontaneous order.

The other advantage is that when lots of people try different things and one experiment has negative effects it is not going to impact on everyone, just the ones who are engaged with that particular solution.

The great thing about this approach is that policy makers don’t need to rush off and come up with a framework that enables this activity. We already have one: the free market. And where we think the market isn’t appropriate we can always disperse power to people.

President Tim rebukes the Miliband Tendency

When writing about the rise of Tim Farron last month, we made the following prediction:

“He will become one of Ed Miliband’s sternest critics whilst agreeing with almost everything he says.”

So we are pleased to see Tim’s reaction to Miliband’s latest attempt to split the party as follows:

‘Labour spent years “sucking up to Rupert Murdoch and George Bush – why would any progressive even give them a second glance?”‘

Meanwhile as if to answer Tim’s question, Richard Grayson, a self-appointed victim of the party’s desire to practice pluralism, is not so much coquettishly glancing, as giving the Labour party a throaty snog under the Mistletoe by joining Liam Byrne in a co-operative policy review.

This is a mistake for both parties.

For Labour it makes it less not more likely that they will get useful input from serious Liberal Democrats. Grayson is something of a monomaniac on the social justice agenda, finds compromise hard, and his solutions gravitate towards the impractical. Others on the social liberal left who might like to work with Labour from time to time through the usual route of think tanks will not necessarily warm to Grayson as their champion or his official channel as as a filter.

Meanwhile much of the ‘Orange Book’ agenda, reaching socially liberal outcomes through market mechanisms, is straight out of the New Labour playbook. The Miliband Tendency might well remember New Labour as the people who won elections, and still have sizable support in the Party. Elevating Grayson may well encourage more Labour moderates like Alan Milburn and Frank Field to work with the Coalition.

For Grayson it will marginalise him in both organisations. Few warm to overt treachery, and there is a world of difference between constructive criticism on serious points of policy disagreement, and openly seeking to undermine your Leader. For those who might agree with Grayson often on policy, like President Tim, it puts them in the disagreeable position of disowning him or looking disloyal.

Within Labour tribal loyalty has an even higher value, defectors and collaborators may be welcomed in public, but are often derided in private. The ‘for-us’ or ‘against-us’ mentality finds it hard to work with others, other than in the Machiavellian sense of using them as means to ends. Labour’s interest in Grayson is purely in the electoral calculus of how much damage he can do the Liberal Democrats, not his ideas.

Grayson in June described the Liberal Democrats as “unideological, under-factionalised and leadership-loyal”. Forming an ideological faction of one to disprove the latter is not his finest moment.