Monday, February 07, 2005 AD
Britain's "illiberal" politics
This previously formed the second half of the post above, but I've separated it out to avoid having one overly-long post, and also to separate out the valuable general point made by Anthony Kenny from my own maunderings about UK politics
Thinking on the distinction made by Anthony Kenny between "socialist" and "liberal" as an improved method of analysis compared with "left" and "right", my own political views have gone from quite a long way to the left of the political spectrum to - well, I'm not quite sure where, but the Political Compass doesn't lie, and it has been tracking me steadily rightwards ever since I started my occasional visits to that site. However, as I read Kenny's article I realised that despite these changes, what has remained constant is a tendency towards "liberalism" in the sense of mistrusting central government as the most effective means of securing change and running people's affairs. Even at my most left-wing, around 10 to 12 years ago, I preferred models of "socialism" that were aimed at devolving power downwards as far as possible: workers' councils running companies, rather than the man in Whitehall knowing best.
This is similar to the way in which what I described in an early blog post as my "theological serial monogamy" - from evangelical to charismatic to Calvinist to Lutheran - had nevertheless been undergirded by certain constants that meant first of all that Lutheranism was what I had actually been looking for throughout that ten-year period, and secondly that a further journey on into Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy would involve a far greater change than any I had undergone previously.
The socialist/liberal distinction also helps explain the great paradox of "New Labour", and one of the main things that has led to my increasing alienation from the current government: the apparent (and to a large extent real) embrace of market economics, coupled with a statist mentality that has seen a huge increase in public sector spending and in the size of the public payroll. How to explain this? Well, the point is that, however much Labour may have decided to accept market economics and the post-privatisation environment as a "done deal", the fact remains that whenever a problem arises, the instinctive reaction of the Labour government is to increase the size and power of the state in order to deal with it: pass a few more laws, hire a few thousand more public sector workers.
Unfortunately, there is no real "liberal" voice in the British political scene at the moment. You might expect the Conservative Party to provide this, but all they can manage are a few bleatings about "cutting waste" from the existing scope of state spending - always easier for oppositions to promise than for governments to deliver - rather than asking serious questions about where the boundaries of the state should be (for example, why should the state be involved in the provision of healthcare and education, rather than in just the funding and regulation of them?), coupled with shameful panderings to the law'n'order and anti-immigration votes. The last straw was the Conservative Party's support for ID cards, "in principle". What is the point of the Conservative Party if it is going to meekly acquiesce in the ultimate in big government, big state, big spending projects?
By all accounts, there are some younger figures in the Liberal Democrats who are arguing that the party should aim for that truly "liberal" ground, but they got pretty heavily slapped down by the leadership last year for voicing these thoughts in "The Orange Book". The LibDems as a whole remain firmly committed to the government doing things, spending more money, confiscating "excessive" profits etc.
So I find myself pretty frustrated as we approach a likely general election this May. The certainty of a Labour victory; the basic crapness, pardon my French, of the Conservative Party; the continuing smug superciliousness of the Lib Dems; and my own unformed, half-thought-out political views. I honestly never thought I would end up as a disillusioned floating voter, but that seems to be where I am at the moment.
What will be interesting over the next few years is where the restoration of liberalism will come from, if indeed it comes at all. Will the Conservatives finally get their act together? Not under the current leadership. Will the Lib Dems finally decide to take the risk of having a more definite and radical position, rather than their current triangulation strategy of trying to look like "nice" Tories in Tory areas and a more "principled" version of the Labour party in Labour areas.
Whichever one of these parties can start to articulate that truly liberal approach to politics, of a smaller state and personal freedom, will have a rough ride from the current political and media establishment, but will also find that a fair-sized chunk of the 21st century belongs to them.
Thinking on the distinction made by Anthony Kenny between "socialist" and "liberal" as an improved method of analysis compared with "left" and "right", my own political views have gone from quite a long way to the left of the political spectrum to - well, I'm not quite sure where, but the Political Compass doesn't lie, and it has been tracking me steadily rightwards ever since I started my occasional visits to that site. However, as I read Kenny's article I realised that despite these changes, what has remained constant is a tendency towards "liberalism" in the sense of mistrusting central government as the most effective means of securing change and running people's affairs. Even at my most left-wing, around 10 to 12 years ago, I preferred models of "socialism" that were aimed at devolving power downwards as far as possible: workers' councils running companies, rather than the man in Whitehall knowing best.
This is similar to the way in which what I described in an early blog post as my "theological serial monogamy" - from evangelical to charismatic to Calvinist to Lutheran - had nevertheless been undergirded by certain constants that meant first of all that Lutheranism was what I had actually been looking for throughout that ten-year period, and secondly that a further journey on into Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy would involve a far greater change than any I had undergone previously.
The socialist/liberal distinction also helps explain the great paradox of "New Labour", and one of the main things that has led to my increasing alienation from the current government: the apparent (and to a large extent real) embrace of market economics, coupled with a statist mentality that has seen a huge increase in public sector spending and in the size of the public payroll. How to explain this? Well, the point is that, however much Labour may have decided to accept market economics and the post-privatisation environment as a "done deal", the fact remains that whenever a problem arises, the instinctive reaction of the Labour government is to increase the size and power of the state in order to deal with it: pass a few more laws, hire a few thousand more public sector workers.
Unfortunately, there is no real "liberal" voice in the British political scene at the moment. You might expect the Conservative Party to provide this, but all they can manage are a few bleatings about "cutting waste" from the existing scope of state spending - always easier for oppositions to promise than for governments to deliver - rather than asking serious questions about where the boundaries of the state should be (for example, why should the state be involved in the provision of healthcare and education, rather than in just the funding and regulation of them?), coupled with shameful panderings to the law'n'order and anti-immigration votes. The last straw was the Conservative Party's support for ID cards, "in principle". What is the point of the Conservative Party if it is going to meekly acquiesce in the ultimate in big government, big state, big spending projects?
By all accounts, there are some younger figures in the Liberal Democrats who are arguing that the party should aim for that truly "liberal" ground, but they got pretty heavily slapped down by the leadership last year for voicing these thoughts in "The Orange Book". The LibDems as a whole remain firmly committed to the government doing things, spending more money, confiscating "excessive" profits etc.
So I find myself pretty frustrated as we approach a likely general election this May. The certainty of a Labour victory; the basic crapness, pardon my French, of the Conservative Party; the continuing smug superciliousness of the Lib Dems; and my own unformed, half-thought-out political views. I honestly never thought I would end up as a disillusioned floating voter, but that seems to be where I am at the moment.
What will be interesting over the next few years is where the restoration of liberalism will come from, if indeed it comes at all. Will the Conservatives finally get their act together? Not under the current leadership. Will the Lib Dems finally decide to take the risk of having a more definite and radical position, rather than their current triangulation strategy of trying to look like "nice" Tories in Tory areas and a more "principled" version of the Labour party in Labour areas.
Whichever one of these parties can start to articulate that truly liberal approach to politics, of a smaller state and personal freedom, will have a rough ride from the current political and media establishment, but will also find that a fair-sized chunk of the 21st century belongs to them.
