Are we all big-government leftists?
Fraser Nelson has added the end comment from his piece on Nick Clegg and spending from the Spectator’s Coffee House blog to Liberal Burblings discussion:
“A few CoffeeHousers have teased me for having a love-in with Clegg. So in my defence – my suspicion is that he, personally, is committed to small government, classic liberalism and it would be churlish not to applaud him when he says the right things. But I reckon his party are still big-government leftists, and he’ll buckle under their weight.” Fraser Nelson (Spectator)
My connection with the party has been nearly entirely electronic and therefore maybe the average “street” member is some 60 year-old rabid communist but I don’t think I have seen many posts from Lib Dem bloggers that have decided that the state is really the answer to anything. Most seem more rabid than the parliamentary party for small government. James Graham posted a couple of points similar to this a while back, essentially that the party is not as backward as the media/parliamentary party (delete as applicable) make us out to be.
Is this true, is our party really a statist machine? If so, where do I send the pieces of my membership card back? If, as I suspect, not, why do people think this, and how can we change their perception to win over true liberals who aren’t at home in the Tory party?
Perhaps I shouldn’t say this, but I have had the impression, that the majority of the activists who deliver the Focus leaflets are rather on the Left flank of the Liberal Democrats, whereas the Lib Dem bloggers and the so-called “armchair members” tend to be more market liberals. It must be remembered, that in most leadership elections, where the armchair members for the majority of the voters, the candidate of the “Left” hasn’t been victorious.
Charles Anglin also estimated that the pro-market group is fast becoming the mainstream of party thinking.
There are some in the party, including MPs who I’d describe as Social Democrats who have no problem with extending government power and who are very very distrustful of markets and small government arguments.
Also, like all parties, our politicians are afflicted with the ‘must do something’ mentality which leads to interventionism and big government.
I think in general however the party is open to a more liberal view than any other party. The current prevailing statist and interventionist climate doesn’t help, all you need to do to convince some of the need for intervention is utter the words ‘market failure’.
Perhaps the party is statist in comparison with Mises or Cobden, but we’re generally more liberal than our opponents like to say and I’d say the least statist of all the parties.
Personally I think a lot of this is a hang over from the Steel leadership, the disastrous propping up of the Labour Party and the rise of Thatcher who appealed to many previous Liberals and Liberal voters with her liberal rhetoric. Many drifted back after they saw through Thatcher, others still hope for the Tories to become liberal (no chance in my opinion, but they still hope). I wasn’t around then, so I can’t say with much certainty that this was the case though.
I would agree with anonymous above, and note that the active membership will largely form the confrence delegates, further skewing the medias view- and party policy on some issues.
Well I am 60, so maybe I am part of the problem, but…
My gut feeling about this party in its various stages and predecessors ( been a member since 1965) is that it has sided with individuals against corporate bullying - and that includes bullying by people justifying themselves by appealing to ‘market forces’.
Cheers
Edis
In Scotland, part of the problem may be our recently disastrous inability to decouple ourselves in the public eye from Labour, before, during and since the May 2007 elections to Holyrood.
I’m not sure there’s an age bias. I’d say ALTER’s membership is probably averaging quite old, and some of the most liberal of them are the ones who can still recall listening to some of Mr Asquith’s early wireless speeches…:) People, to boot, at whom I am sure the media would look at conferences and say that they were unreconstructed socialists!