Why Vote Liberal Democrat 2015 E-Book

Jeremy Browne

• Herausgeber: Biteback Publishing
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Why Vote
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 171

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

The 2010 general election saw the largest popular vote for the Liberal Democrats since the party's creation, but will they build on that success in 2015? Could they become partners in another coalition government or will they join the ranks in opposition? In this concise and accessible guide, Liberal Democrat Jeremy Browne explains how the Lib Dems are best placed to tackle both the problems facing the nation today and those of its future - and why they deserve your vote on 7 May. By exploring the party's key policies, agendas and traditional commitments, Why Vote Liberal Democrat 2015 will prove invaluable in helping you decide where to place your vote.

Leseprobe

To my dad, who died, prematurely, this year. He was notparty-political, but he imbued in me a combination of liberal internationalism, a patriotic and resolute British individualism, a willingness to question received orthodoxies and a commitment to public service.

Contents

Title PageDedicationIntroduction: Britain in CrisisChapter 1 The Liberal AgeChapter 2 FreedomChapter 3 OpportunityChapter 4 DecentralisationChapter 5 SustainabilityChapter 6 GlobalisationConclusion: A Liberal Party of GovernmentAcknowledgementsAbout the AuthorCopyright

Introduction: Britain in Crisis

Thursday 6 May 2010, 10.00 p.m.

The polling stations have closed at the end of an epic, rollercoaster general election campaign. None of the three principal parties have seized a decisive advantage; none have fallen by the wayside either. Almost all outcomes remain possible. As the process of counting the ballot papers begins, the only certainty is that nothing is certain.

Britain is looking into an economic abyss. Our country has endured the worst recession for generations. Our economic prospects are bleak. Unemployment has risen and is widely predicted to get worse. The government is running an unsustainable budget deficit, clocking up an extra £430 million of debt every day. Across Europe, only Greece, being dragged helplessly into bankruptcy, is borrowing more as a proportion of their national income.

The economic panic elsewhere in Europe has not yet gripped Britain, but pessimism and anxiety are rife. Fears abound that we will struggle to deal with our burgeoning debt, forcing interest rates up to ruinous levels. The prospects for businesses and job creation appear desperate. The affordability of essential public services is in doubt. Expert criminologists, and some politicians, predict soaring rates of crime and the wider erosion of civic society.

Across the country, from town halls and municipal sports centres, the election results are filtering in. No clear picture is emerging. Labour has suffered its second worst share of the vote since the introduction of universal suffrage, but is showing more resilience in its marginal held seats. The Liberal Democrat breakthrough has not materialised but nor has the party been substantially squeezed. The Conservatives are winning the most votes and the most seats, but are falling short in key battleground constituencies. As dawn breaks, political clarity remains elusive.

Friday 7 May 2010

Exhausted politicians and sleep deprived commentators are navigating the new and unfamiliar post-election landscape without an up-to-date map. It has been thirty-six years since Britain had an inconclusive general election result. A full-blown coalition, now under active consideration, has not been tried in Britain since the exceptional circumstances of the Second World War. Our economy needs decisive attention and our country requires resolute leadership. For those of an unsteady disposition, it is an unnerving time. Only an exceptional, bold, imaginative and magnanimous political solution will be an adequate response to the magnitude of our collective national predicament.

The case against the Liberal Democrats in 2010 took two main forms.

The first was a matter of credibility. This problem has inevitably dogged the Liberal Democrats as decades in the political wilderness erased any collective memory of the party holding office. Success at other levels of politics, most particularly in local government, went some way to addressing this deficiency, but only some way.

Britain was seen as having two governing options: Labour or the Conservatives. To opt for the Liberal Democrats was seen by many as essentially abstaining from the responsibility of choosing a national government. Thus a self-fulfilling prophecy was created: voters rejected the Liberal Democrats because the party could not reasonably be expected to be in government. It was a ‘wasted vote’.

The credibility barrier also featured another dimension. Many who conceded that the Liberal Democrats could plausibly enter government, or were willing to vote for its candidates even without this expectation, entertained doubts as to whether the party really had the backbone to make big and tough decisions at the national level.

Damning the party with limited praise, voters would acknowledge the impressive track record of local Liberal Democrat councillors, before then asserting that these qualities would not translate to the national stage. The self-fulfilling prophecy was reinforced: the Liberal Democrats were deemed to not be cut out for national government but were denied the opportunity by their detractors to prove those very same detractors wrong.

These circumstances put the Liberal Democrats in an invidious position. All elections, rightly, involve politicians and journalists testing the strength of the different policy platforms. But the criticism of the Liberal Democrats has taken a different form. The party has been ridiculed for the naivety of its policies by politicians wearing the cloak of authority that government has bestowed upon them.

Thus, in 2010, Lord Mandelson, as part of a government that was presiding over a massive recession and a catastrophic budget deficit, still felt confident enough to belittle the Liberal Democrats, claiming, ‘Their policies are a joke. They aren’t serious. Their policies are almost unfathomable and certainly unaffordable.’ A columnist writing in the Daily Telegraph in the immediate aftermath of the election also mined this seam, claiming of the Liberal Democrats that ‘their plans deserve to be put in the box labelled “fantasy” and no more talked about in polite society’.

Alternatively, assertions have been made about the dangerous recklessness of Liberal Democrat policies, without the party having an opportunity to demonstrate in government that the accusations made by their detractors were groundless.

As an example of this full-on unsubstantiated charge, perhaps another columnist, also writing in the Daily Telegraph just days before the 2010 general election, provides a definitive illustration: ‘Clegg is beyond doubt the most left-wing major UK politician in a generation.’

The second case against the Liberal Democrats in 2010 was more particular to that general election, and was made with increased shrillness and hysteria as polling day approached. It concerned the perceived dangers of a hung parliament.

This outcome, caused by no party being able to persuade the electorate of their suitability to govern alone, was routinely described as leading to a government that would inevitably be weak, unstable and discordant. It was conveniently overlooked that many majority single-party governments of recent decades, particularly those of John Major and Gordon Brown, could objectively be said to possess those traits in abundance. Coalition government was widely thought to be incapable of being sustained for a whole parliament. It was even said to be inherently ‘un-British’.

Pillars of the status quo establishment lined up to give their authoritative thumbs down to a hung parliament with the possibility of coalition government. Peter Hargreaves of financial advisers Hargreaves Lansdown said: ‘A hung parliament will be the worst possible result for our economy. It could trigger a similar situation to the 1970s, when the government was eventually forced to go to the International Monetary Fund for a loan.’ Savills, an upmarket estate agency, said: ‘The worst outcome for the housing market would be a hung parliament.’

David Frost, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, said: ‘Businesses are right to be wary about the prospect of a hung parliament.’ General Sir Richard Dannatt, former Chief of the Defence Staff, warned against the election ‘producing no clear answer’, adding, ‘We owe it to … our servicemen and women to do better.’

The Centre for Business and Economic Research was extremely confident in its predictions, claiming that a hung parliament could cost consumers as much as £5,000 a year, interest rates could rise seven-fold to 3.5 per cent, the pound could fall and financial markets could go into ‘full-scale crisis’.

Many newspapers and media commentators shared this analysis. The Daily Mail said: ‘Britain needs an outright winner in this election – not the disaster and uncertainty of a hung parliament.’ The Daily Telegraph expressed anxiety that a coalition government ‘could cut the value of pensions, push up mortgage rates and generally endanger recovery’. A historian writing for the Daily Mail provided a fuller context, writing under a headline on the eve of poll which read: ‘Paralysed Britain: the last time we had a hung parliament … and the chilling parallels with today.’

Perhaps most extraordinary was a mock election broadcast, produced by the Conservatives, on behalf of the ‘Hung Parliament Party’. The spoof party would, it was claimed, guarantee ‘indecision and weak government’, ‘disastrous’ hikes in interest rates and would ‘paralyse’ Britain. The broadcast also featured a picture of Gordon Brown standing in Downing Street with the message: ‘This is what a hung parliament looks like.’

The supposed consequences of a hung parliament were thus presented to voters as having two features: an apocalyptic impact on the economy and the inevitability of a Labour–Liberal Democrat coalition with Gordon Brown remaining as Prime Minister. It was asserted without equivocation by many Conservatives during the 2010 general election campaign that the Liberal Democrats would automatically default to a coalition with Labour.

This supposed underlying preference was still being held up as the default option long after the general election polling day. Writing in the Daily Mail on 12 May 2010, one senior political commentator said:

Now Clegg is entering into a conspiracy with Labour to steal from the British people their choice – and impose another unelected Prime Minister in a backstairs stitch-up. ‘Vote Clegg and get Brown’ were the taunts in the election run-up. Now it seems that mantra should have been ‘Vote Clegg and get Miliband’. Until Clegg’s act of betrayal, there seemed every chance that the Tories and the Lib Dems could get together … now that is out of the question.

In the same newspaper, on the following day, responding to the formation of a Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition, another commentator, Max Hastings, was among the first of many observers to predict an early demise for the newly constituted government, requiring another general election ‘almost certainly within a year’.

2014: The coalition government enters the final year of its five-year agreement

There have been inevitable disagreements, although often within parties as much as between them. The government has benefited from a high degree of stability. Margaret Thatcher was driven from office after a revolt by her own Chancellor and Deputy Prime Minister. John Major was forced to resign as leader of his party in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to flush out internal critics of his premiership. Tony Blair, despite giving Labour an unparalleled stretch in government, was forced from office by the allies of his own Chancellor. Gordon Brown survived against a constant backdrop of conspiracy, plots and Cabinet-level resignations. The 2010 coalition government, by comparison, has been a model of calm and harmony.

Most importantly, the deep economic darkness of 2010 has been dispelled. More needs to be achieved, but the progress made is beyond dispute. The budget deficit has been significantly reduced. Interest rates have remained low for years, and when they are increased it will be in response to economic success, not a panic reaction to economic failure. More people are in work than ever before, confounding predictions that unemployment would rise. Taxes have been cut for millions of people earning typical incomes. The economy is growing more strongly than in other comparable Western countries.

The Liberal Democrats have been on a remarkable journey. Britain has been on a remarkable journey.

Chapter 1

The Liberal Age

This book has one big contention: that we live in the liberal age, and that it would be perverse not to embrace the spirit of our time by electing a government suffused with liberalism.

Liberalism is the belief in freedom and, by extension, opportunity. The freedom to be who you are; the opportunity to be who you could be. It is the ideology of personal liberation from authoritarianism, suppression, coercion, conformity and ignorance.

The questions then are: ‘Freedom from whom?’; ‘Freedom for whom?’; and ‘Freedom to do what?’ – and it is worth examining each of these in turn.

At the heart of liberalism is the individual. Liberals start with the recognition that every person is born free; the task is to protect him or her from the excessive or arbitrary use of power and to guard the liberties of the individual against abuse from authority.

That is why protection against an over-mighty and presumptuous state is a core liberal objective. The state should be the servant of the citizen, not his or her master. The state should have no power over and above that which is granted to it by its people. It is not a natural entity: it has been formed by individuals to serve their interests.

Yet the world has long been full of states that rule over their people rather than serving them. In the worst cases, those in positions of authority actively suppress their own people. They imprison them without trial. They torture them. They restrict their freedom to express themselves. The state becomes more than an aggregate of the people; it becomes an entity in itself, with its own interests, in conflict with those of the people.

The most egregious examples of excessive state power are the most shocking, but all exercise of political power has the ability to exceed what is in the interests of those the state exists to serve. Even in more benign systems of government, vigilance remains necessary.

That is why liberalism is so concerned about the restriction of excessive and arbitrary power and the codification of government. It is why liberals favour transparency and accountability in government, a dispersal of power between the executive, the legislature and the judiciary, a free and vibrant media, and constitutionally enshrined rights and freedoms.

These systems are necessary to contain the state in a way that continues to serve the public interest. Liberals are not anti-government, but we are always wary of the potential of government to accumulate power, seeking to direct people rather than seeking instruction from them.

So, to the question ‘Freedom from whom?’, the first answer is ‘the state’. But not all authority derives from the state. The individual citizen can also have his or her freedom restricted by other organisations. So liberals are concerned with restricting the power of the over-mighty, the distant and the unaccountable.

Big businesses can compromise the freedom of people. They can operate cartels or adopt monopolistic practices that curtail the free choices of consumers. They can maintain a working environment which threatens the safety of their employees or pay them exploitative wages.

Trade unions can help to prevent such abuses, but they can also compromise people’s freedom themselves. They can restrict the right of an employee to go to work or seek to coerce a person into becoming a member against his or her wishes.

The media plays a crucial role in holding the powerful to account. But it too can compromise individual liberty by using the power of mass communication to libel, slander or intrude upon the personal life of a private individual.

Even wider society can restrict the freedom of the individual. Anyone who does not conform to majority preferences can be discriminated against or ostracised.

Liberals, in all these cases, are champions of the underdog. Our cause is that of the violated and the defenceless. It helps to explain why the Liberal Democrats have never been heavily funded by either big businesses or trade unions: our loyalty has always been to the individual, not to any institution, group or vested interest.

To protect people from excessive and arbitrary uses of power, it can sometimes be necessary to galvanise the state in that cause. This is why liberals are not anti-government so much as anti-authoritarianism. The state can accrue too much power but, contained and scrutinised by the people, it can also protect the private citizen.

That is what prevents big businesses from deploying monopolistic practices or trade unions from operating ‘closed shop’ compulsory membership systems; it provides legal redress to a person who has been libelled by the media. The government can also protect the private citizen directly – from crime, for example – in a way that enhances, rather than detracts from, his or her freedom.

The full answer to the question ‘Freedom from whom?’ then, is ‘the powerful’; people or organisations, including the state, that threaten the liberty of the individual.

To the question ‘Freedom for whom?’, the answer is ‘the individual’.

The history of the last century was, in large part, about the struggle for freedom against the menace of fascism and communism – collectivist ideologies that placed the declared interests of the group above the rights and liberties of the individual. Socialism seeks to do the same, albeit in a more diluted form and on the basis of collective consent. The curtailment of freedom is acknowledged by the socialist, but dismissed as the price of greater equality.

Conservatism is more subtle. When it offends against individual liberty, it does so through a gentler form of social coercion, with the individual pressured into relegating his or her preferences behind those of the institution or the social class, whose behaviours and beliefs are reinforced by tradition, custom or collective prejudice.

The liberal belief in the primacy of the individual means the Liberal Democrats can never be a party that represents a particular social class, ethnicity or religion. Liberals do not believe that an individual’s affiliation with a collective group is what defines them.

That does not imply that liberalism is entirely individualistic. People find an important sense of belonging and purpose through their memberships of groups, be they religious, sporting, social, charitable or commercial. Few people prefer isolation to inclusion, but our associations should be a product of choice, an expression of freewill. They should not be a label that is pinned on the individual.

And to the question ‘Freedom to do what?’, the answer is ‘live your life as you see fit’. Liberals believe that free people, unconstrained by authoritarianism or collectivism, should make their own decisions.

Liberals favour free choice. Freedom to choose where you live, who you marry, what religion (if any) you practise. Freedom to start a business, expand it and keep a reasonable share of the product of your labour. Freedom to give your custom and to withdraw it. A suffocating ‘one-size-fits-all’ uniformity is the antithesis of liberalism.

Liberals are suspicious of groupthink and received orthodoxy, not because they are necessarily always wrong but because they are not necessarily right and always benefit from being challenged. Liberals shrink from conformity, whether formal or informal, which moulds the individual into a shape which satisfies the collective. Liberals stand against social pressure and the tyranny of the majority.

When liberals support state intervention, it is because it will either protect individuals from harm or enable them to expand their freedoms by increasing their opportunities: providing the education that liberates them intellectually; providing the transport infrastructure that liberates them physically; providing the free market systems that liberate them economically. Liberal freedom and opportunity is how every person can realise his or her full potential.

It is an outward-looking, forward-thinking, internationalist ideology – an enlightened belief that people who make free decisions are best placed to push forward the frontiers of knowledge and progress. Liberalism does not divide people into groupings that are defined by their antipathy towards, or fear of, other groupings. Instead, it sets them free to explore: new innovations, new alliances, new experiences; free trade, free people, free thinking.

Other ideologies start with the assumption that somebody else knows best – our predecessors in the case of conservatism; the all-knowing central planner in the case of socialism. Other ideologies are always concerned with outcomes – competing visions of the ‘good society’. Liberalism, by contrast, is about processes – the intrinsic value of choice and free will to human welfare.

So where the other parties seek to direct people down the path of their choosing, the Liberal Democrats offer something else: the freedom to be who you are; the opportunity to be who you could be. We want people to be the authors of their own life stories, free to chart their own course, to go their own way.

The changes in Britain over my lifetime have been remarkable.

I was born at a watershed moment in the social development of our country. In 1970, Britain was coming out of a decade of dramatic liberal change. I cannot be the only person of my age who feels a twinge of envy at having missed out on such a period. The class fallout of the Profumo Affair, the sexual fallout of the Lady Chatterley’s Lover