Last week, the British Liberal democrats elected Menzies Campbell as their leader. Yesterday in the Guardian, he laid out the LibDems' claim to be the UK's only real liberal party. While framed in terms of British politics, the result is basically a manifesto for progressive liberals the world over. Here's the key sections:
Liberals believe in human rights. Human rights are being flouted in Guantánamo, where prisoners are denied due process. The prime minister calls the situation an anomaly. Liberals know that it is an outrage.[...]
Liberals believe in creating a fairer society, in which individuals have the opportunity to make the most of their talents. Britain has become a more unequal country since Labour came to power. Income, social origin and educational background determine success more now even than they did during the Conservative years.
[...]
Liberals believe that the environment should be at the centre of our thinking. That means developing proposals to change individual behaviour. It means changing the taxation system so that it rewards environmentally friendly behaviour, and penalises environmentally damaging behaviour. Labour's contribution is disappointing - hot air, hand wringing and missed targets.
Liberals believe in localism: giving greater responsibility to locally elected representatives and more power to local communities. Under Labour, we have seen the centralisation of public life. Citizens feel increasingly powerless. Public services controlled by officialdom are out of touch and remote.
(Emphasis added; examples snipped).
Classical liberals will no doubt disagree with much of this, and the section on the environment certainly isn't as tightly connected with core liberal beliefs as the rest (OTOH, its also not at all inconsistent, and I did say this was progressive liberalism). But overall, this is a clear and coherant statement of the values of that branch of liberalism which wants to maximise practical human freedom and wellbeing for all, and which believes that freedom is for everyone, not just the rich.
I'm not, as such, against the things they say they stand for & more power to them if they offer a viable alternative to Blair- but as a Manifesto it kind of reminds me of the part in Brigid Jones where she says something along the lines of that she's left wing which means she's in favour of Nelson Mandela and being nice to people. Nothing anyone can really object to but not really specific enough to be rousing in any way
ReplyDeleteHello Idiot. I have just sent you an email because I have a silly little picture that fits with the genre of your blog. When you get something from ellie at hush dot ai, that would be me. It ain't spam; it's fan mail.
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ReplyDeleteI'd just dispute that "localism" is an essential part of Liberalism.
ReplyDeleteMaking decisions at local level is all well and good, but local politicians can be as fuckwitted as national ones (or worse - they have to convince fewer people to vote for them). If a policy has been decided on at national level e.g. legalisation of prostitution) I don't believe that a local council (e.g. Manukau) should be able to effectively reverse that legislation locally.
There is also a substantial set of policy where the local good has to be subsumed by the greater national good (building any form of large ugly infrastructure like a wind farm is an obvious example).
The Liberals keenness on "localism" is based more on the fact that they control lots of councils than any coherent ideology, IMHO.
I agree with rich
ReplyDelete>The Liberals keenness on "localism" is based more on the fact that they control lots of councils than any coherent ideology
ReplyDeleteI might be wrong but I suspect, in that one, what they are at least partly implicitly drawing on is an aspect of participatory democracy theory which is all about encouraging democracy in small scale local settings.
But I agree- I don't think that it is a liberal perspective in the technical sense which to me refers a core set of rights and a high level of freedom from state intervention- but the word liberal is getting to a point where its virtually meaningless anyway.
I rather wish we could find a different word than 'Localism'.. However the central point is empowering individuals (and that includes empowering individuals to join with others). That includes fostering institutions which are in reach of people.
ReplyDeleteThe specific UK localism agenda is fighting the increasing centralisation of a state with 58 million or so inhabotants where more and more decisions are made by central bureaucrats or ministers.