Liberal Vision

Thoughts on UKIP

The rapid rise of the UKIP vote and collapse of the LD vote does, I think, put the relative value of narrative and campaign tactics into sharp relief. Does anyone, for example, think UKIP activists out-worked or out-delivered the LDs in the last four years? Or even came close to doing so? I think not…

Similarly some of the big historic Liberal Democrat by-election wins begin to look more about capturing the protest Zeitgeist than out-leafleting opponents.

Competing for a better Capitalism

What do rich people have that poor people don’t? I imagine that ‘money’ is the first answer that comes into your mind. Well, yes, but let’s break this down. What does money give you? It gives you choice.

Farmers began co-ops in the mid-19th century because they were being sold expensive, rotten food by private food sellers. Because co-ops were providing better produce at cheaper rates, other private food sellers had to up their game. Farming co-ops weren’t non-profits; they were a different type of capitalism. The free-market doesn’t just mean the consumer wins because they have a choice of products to buy; they have a choice between outlets which are structured differently. Different forms of capitalism compete to create better capitalism.

At the time of the financial crisis, I remember seeing very little analysis about how the Co-operative Bank fared in comparison to it’s shareholder counterparts (although, to be fair, the Co-operative bank is not a true democratic co-operative).  If we had a greater mix of co-operative banks and shareheld banks, with co-operative banks being perceived as being more ethical – the theory goes that a greater amount of customers choosing to bank cooperatively would signal to the shareheld banks that they wanted more ethical banking. The shareheld banks would have to get more ethical in order to compete. On the other hand, if a greater number of consumers perceived the shareheld banks as more efficient/cheaper, the co-operative banks would have to get more efficient/cheaper in order to compete. Thus, the pendulum would swing, increasing the efficiency, cheapness and the ethical credentials of banking.

What I’m arguing for is a greater plurality in the structures we interact with. In order for this to come about the State must recede. The main argument against greater marketisation of public services is the perception of capitalism as being unethical. A greater plurality could mean adding a dimension to capitalism that means organisations/outlets have to compete with each other on grounds of their ethical credentials as well as with prices, quality and providing shareholders with dividends. Most people don’t think about this dynamic between capitalist organisations when they think of the free-market.

The sector I fear for most is education. Classrooms don’t look that much different than they did in the 1930s. Even though almost every other area of our lives have changed our schools still look the same. Children don’t all learn the same, but we teach them all the same. Education does not seem to be moving with the times at all. I know no one who makes their living as a fine artist. I know a great deal who make their living using Adobe Creative Suite. Yet, I was taught fine art in school and I was not taught how to work any part of the Adobe Creative Suite.

Ultimately this rot is due to a lack of plurality ergo a lack of incentive to change and innovate. In my ideal world there would be three different types of school structure – schools run by private shareholder capitalist companies, schools run by cooperatively owned capitalist companies and schools run by private charities/non-profits. There would also be three types of funding – private funds, charitable donation and government vouchers. Vouchers give poor people what rich have. Choice. Were this the case education would look different in a very short period of time and unrecognisable after a long period.

This lack of choice is precisely why social democracy sucks. It sucks flexibility and plurality out of the system. The NHS, state schools and other public services are as good as they’re going to get. If that’s good enough for you, fine. But it may not be good enough in 50 years time. Changes in structure and competition change the game for the better, both ethically and efficiently. Embrace it.

Turn the BBC into a Cooperative

The television license is a tax in everything but name but advert-free, non-profit television should always be an option for consumers. Turning the BBC from a government-owned corporation into a consumer-owned cooperative would mean nothing about its current high quality content would change – just the unfair aspect of how it is funded.

As it is currently structured, the funding of the BBC creates a lot of losers. I love BBC programming but I rarely watch any BBC channels beyond BBC One and Two. I hardly ever watch sport and do not have access to BBC Three and Four. If you only use your TV to play video games and watch X-Factor on ITV, the license fee means you lose out entirely.

Many regard spending £145.50 year on television as frivolous spending they would never normally do unless made to do so – especially in an economic climate where a great deal of us are watching the pennies more closely. As a consumer I should only have to pay for the services I use. Likewise other people should not have to pay for television I enjoy and value if they don’t enjoy and value it themselves. That is unfair.

In many respects the BBC is broken. It is wasteful and has no incentive to cut back on that unnecessary spending. In recent years I believe that a lot of legitimate criticism of the BBC would have been avoided had the BBC taken more time to appreciate what their audience wanted. This would certainly have prevented instances where the BBC overstaffed events, such as Glastonbury and the Dale Farm Eviction.

Currently 20% of BBC funding comes from sources other than the license fee. Those sources could be expanded and this other revenue – coupled with efficiency savings – can take care of niche channels like BBC Parliament and other innovation and experimentation.

Were the BBC a cooperative, members would pay a yearly fee for the service in lieu of commercial advertising. Logistically speaking this may mean the small matter of having a BBC box in your living room. But rather than a flat license fee for everyone this would allow for a variety of membership options, ranging from cheap ‘Basic’ and ‘Student’ options to expensive options with more channels or packages specifically geared towards your interests.

Being a cooperative would mean the BBC would be owned by the individuals who choose to be members rather than being the jurisdiction of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. The members would be democratically enabled thus; the BBC would be more accountable to its audience. I predict that this would result in the content of the BBC becoming much higher quality and the organisation itself becoming leaner and more efficient.

Turning the Beeb into a cooperative is a win-win situation. If you were given the opportunity to preserve something that you enjoy and value, whilst at the same time making it more fair, efficient, democratically accountable and – most importantly – more liberal – it would be silly not to do so.

Sign the e-petition here:

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/28826

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.

Sympathy for Occupy LSX?

In Egypt, they endure the bullets; in Syria, they risk torture and summary execution; in China, they are immolating themselves in ever greater numbers, directly giving their lives for an ounce of equality. In the West, they sit in tents and paint funny signs. It’s not because they’re uncommitted, but because that’s all they need to do. They endure the taunting of the right, the chilling weather and the risk of arbitrary arrest but they stay … and many of them even smile.

In the early days of mass media, the disaffected found that peaceful but irritating acts of protest gain the exposure that spread their message and damaged the reputation of those they targeted. While the Suffragettes were widely scorned for their tactics of disrupting public events and chaining themselves to railings, ‘right-thinking’ man and woman alike cheering the arrest of each, the freedom fighters  earned themselves the reverence of history.

And so it continued throughout the last century, through strikers, hippies, anti-war protesters, miners, Poll Tax rioters, animal welfare and green activists – all were ridiculed, feared and punished for their disturbing of the public mores. They dressed untidily, made lots of noise, blocked the public highway and failed to engage in a sophisticated way with the establishment. Yet, I would argue, the messages of each one enlightened the political debate and shifted public opinion in their favour.

Britain remains such a psychologically conservative nation that we have an inherent distrust of radicalism in all its forms. Paradoxically, by allowing a society where free debate and protest are allowed, we open the floodgates to the radical movements that much of the world has generally been able to suppress. Whereas marches and strikes were once met with sabres and rifles, November 30th will be little more than a family day out for the lower-middle classes.

And now it’s happening again. When it became clear that the Occupy protesters were not going anywhere, the public’s first reaction was to get ticked off. They were accused of spoiling St Paul’s for the tourists and wedding parties; of sophistry with their lack of fully considered demands; and the news that some of the protesters were leaving their tents abandoned for the odd night at home was met with incredulity as if they were trying to dupe the public to undeserved sympathy.

More recently, they’re being perceived as engaging in some sort of squatters party, endlessly drinking in public, urinating in alleyways, filling their veins with heroin and infecting one another with AIDS in an orgy of leftie pleasure. It’s become so de rigueur for the chattering classes to mock them that even the apolitical millionaire entertainer, Chris Evans, strongly stated his distaste for them on his otherwise bland Radio 2 breakfast show.

But now their stamina to withstand weather, legal threats and time has been demonstrated, they are starting to get plaudits from among the radical edges of the establishment. Celebrity campaigners, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Opposition Leader and now the Business Secretary have all added their sympathy in recent weeks, each bringing a small drip of credibility to the movement. This support is more powerful than jeers from bores like Boris Johnson and it makes it that much harder for the police to move against them.

What much of the right-wing press is unwilling to admit is that there is something impressive about the creativity and responsible nature of the protesters. Unlike the self-serving public sectors workers about to engage in the most disruptive strike action the UK has seen for a generation, the Occupy movement are not blackmailing the nation; unlike the destructive anarchy that has accompanied recent protest marches, their methods have tiptoed the minefield around the confusing web of criminal offences that would allow the police to sweep in and arrest them; unlike the petitioners and rally speakers and public meeting holders, they aren’t just in the news one day and forgotten the next.

Of course, the ill-conceived and unrealistic demands of the protesters mean that they will be judged by popular history as a failure. There will be no ending of greed, no destroying of capitalism, no removing of the profit incentive while simultaneously funding evermore social welfare. But their language and their arguments are already sneaking into our consciousness and our vocabulary, even in Westminster. They may be young, naive and economically illiterate but even those of us who realise markets are a mostly reliable force for good tend to agree that things have gone badly wrong and the system must be amended.

Unlike those striking for others to pay for the masses to continue generously funding their pensions, Occupy will win because their message resonates: the system is broken, the bankers got away with it and the innocent were punished. The next month is key: if they survive eviction, snowfall and the draw of a family Christmas, then their credibility will be assured. They will serve to remind us not to be distracted by the Eurozone and the credit agencies and all the foreign things we can do little about and they will serve to remind the bankers and politicians that the country is still awaiting justice.

David M Gibson is a classical liberal and a member of the Liberal Democrats. He is currently interning at Lib Dem HQ for the campaigns team. A collection of his writings can be found at davethedystopian.blogspot.com, as well as on the Freedom Association website.  David recently  posted “the stupid 100%” here on LV.