Continuing the thread [next site update September 8]
August 26th, 2004MORI’s new poll has: CON 32%, LAB 36%, LD 21%. Labour are up 4%. the Tories are up 1%, as UKIP fall one point to 4.
At this stage before the last election MORI was showing a 22% Labour lead with the LDs on 15%. Labour were on 51%.
YouGov should be out tomorrow and UKIP’s rating will be interesting.!
After 94 comments can the thread be continued here?
Many thanks.
Mike Smithson
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Quote \”The likes of Beverage and the Wedgwood-Benn’s where what was called “new liberals” at the time, it was the “new liberals” who leaned to the left on a string of issues, such as welfare and poverty alleviation, and eventually drifted away from the Liberal Party and eventually found themselves wedded to the Labour Party with its more leftwing agenda. The new liberals where always a minority within the Liberal Party and as the Liberal Party began to see these leftwing supporters drift towards Labour its own base of support amongst the lower middle classes began to be eroded by the conservatives as the divided in British politics became no longer one between Conservative and Liberal but Conservative and Labour.
But the idea that the Liberal Party’s history or leaders (up until Kennedy) have marked it out as a “leftwing party” is pretty weak.\”\”
Well Ben - which political almanac did you get this one from then? The Peter Mandelson, Hartlepool by-election guide to the Liberal Democrats?
If you are to persist in the use of a left-right spectrum then the Liberal Democrats and Liberal Party before it (since its creation in the 1860s) has been on the left of centre - or shall we say radical side of of the political spectrum? The various Liberal governments of the Victorian and Edwardian era oversaw the introduction of fresh water and sewerage schemes, compulsory education, old age pensions, moves to Irish and Scottish Home Rule the disestablishment of the Church of Wales etc and a host of other measures which even today would be seen clearly as on the centre left of the political spectrum.
The rise of organised Labour and its Bolshevik influenced socialism (which was boosted by Edwardian Liberalism crisis over the Great War) meant that there was a full blooded left wing alternative (as opposed to centre left) to Toryism. It took 35 years from 1910 (whne Labour started organising separately from the Liberals for them to form a majority - a period of unheralded Tory hegemony. And what\’s more the lasting achievements of this government - the NHS and cradle to grave welfare state - are arguably the achievements of these \’new\’ Liberals - Beveridge and Keynes - both of whom stayed loyal to the Liberal Party (not \’wedded\’ to Labour)
Blair recognised that social change meant old fashioned socialism could never win again in the UK (you can argue it never has and Labour has always won elections on a centrist platform that \’hid\’ its unacceptable Bolshevik face). That\’s why he made the chages to the party he did and why he is so vital to Labour\’s continued success. The idea that Brown will be more successful because he will return Labour to its roots is nonsense. Which is why I believe there are parallels to be drawn to the collapse of the Liberal Party at the start of the last century from a position of unbridled electoral strength - big social changes, more fluid party competition, a crisis of ideology in the government and strong and divisive personalities within the leadership.
Labour are the masters now but the conditions are there for a quite rapid collapse - I personally don\’t think it will happen next time (if indeed at all). It partly depends on the line the Lib Dems take.
But if you are getting your views on the ideological debate within the Lib Dems solely from Liberal Future then it isn\’t surprising you think that the party is either or is likely to be in future a party of the right - and it probably suits your wishful thinking too.
Keynes\’s status as the spiritual father of the left\’s conduct of government post-1945 tends to be overplayed. He said during the Second World War that a tax burden of over 25% after the war would never be tolerated, which is not really advocacy of the welfare state at its present-day extent.
This is not to deny that Keynesianism did make Labour more comfortable in moving fiscally to the left. Philip Snowden, the Labour chancellor in the 1920s, was very conservative with regard to borrowing and the deficit spenfing that governments of all parties use these days.
Dean & Paul P
As a LibDem who is a keen supporter of the Oaten/Laws tendency in the party & who always thought the idea that Nick Harvey would be leader patently absurd I believe that there is indeed an ideological divide in the LibDem with a mall proportion of the party say 10-15% free market liberals and about 20-25% welfarist \”social liberals\”, however the vat bulk of the party 60-70% of the party have no real ideological stance beyond a general support for a more tolerant & just society.
Whoever succeeds Kennedy will be the person who is best able to appeal to that non-ideologoalcentre ground.
Fair point, Dan, re the Liberal goverments of the Victorian and Edwardian era. The wage boards abolished by the Tories in 93 were set up originally by Winston Churchill. As Home Secretary, Churchill was noticeably more liberal than David Blunkett.
On the other hand, who are you calling a Bolshevik? Tory historian Andrew Roberts argues that Ernest Bevin stood up to the Soviets more than Sir Anthony Eden did as Foreign Secretary (having had to deal with Communists in the Transport and General Worker\’s Union, he thoroughly disliked them, and was familiar with their bullying tactics). Also, the deployment of cruise missiles which (along with SDI) played no small part in making the Soviets realise they would not face the West down, was agreed to by Carter and Callaghan. Of course, there\’s another, less flattering Labour history on defence (unilateral nuclear disarmament and all), but you\’re presenting only one side of the picture.
You make a good point, Mike, re. the polls, and how they compare with a similar point in the cycle before the 01 election. Circumstances are very different than they were before 97. All the same, I\’m reminded of the conventional wisdom among the punditry at the time that the government\’s opinion poll ratings (far worse than Labour\’s at the moment) would automatically improve as the election got closer, and Labour would certainly not enjoy a double digit lead.
If they\’re wrong again (as I think they might be), then this - taken with factors such as a breakdown in Lab/LD tactical voting, LD targetting et al - lends weight to your argument that Labour will either get a much reduced majority, or even lose its majority altogether.
Will Hartlepool (as possibly the last by-election before the next GE) offer some clues? The rule used to be that no postwar government which suffered a drop of more than 10% in its share of the vote would win re-election. This was broken, though, after Labour suffered a drop of 13% in its share of the vote in Falkirk West in December 2000, and won by a landslide in 2001
On the other hand, if Labour suffers a swing as large as that in Brent East (29%), B\’ham HH (27%) or Leicester South (21%) in the last by-election before the GE (which Hartlepool probably will be), but goes on to win at the GE by a landslide (or the comfortable 88 predicted by Martin Baxter), the old laws of psephological gravity will have been confounded even more spectacularly.
Where I differ with most of the commentariat is in their assumption that such a turnaround will take place automatically (or, as the late Tommy Cooper would have said, just like that).
Again, the circumstances are very different than in the run up to 97, but the commentariat\’s almost universal assumption that Labour wouldn\’t romp home in Wirral South (as it did, with a 17% swing, followed by a swing just 2% less on May 1st) was proved wrong.
Firstly on your claim that the Liberal Party…
“…has been on the left of centre - or shall we say radical side of of the political spectrum? The various Liberal governments of the Victorian and Edwardian era oversaw the introduction of fresh water and sewerage schemes, compulsory education, old age pensions, moves to Irish and Scottish Home Rule the disestablishment of the Church of Wales etc and a host of other measures which even today would be seen clearly as on the centre left of the political spectrum.”
Strange on the provision of fresh drink water and sewage systems that would have been as a result of the “Public Health Act of 1875” which was introduced by Disraeli’s Second Government. As for other issues such as Progressive Trade Union Legislation (Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act:1875 and the Employers and Workers Act:1875), Education Reform (Lord Sandon’s Education Act: 1876) and Housing Legislation (Artisans Dwellings Act:1875), all of these where progressive measures introduced by the Conservative Party so if your’ trying to say that the Liberal Party was a consistently Progressive force from the middle of nineteenth centaury onwards you are not going to succeed, because it was not.
The Liberal Party was split between three main groups (bound together by a belief in the open economy in response to Peel’s repeal of the Corn Laws in the 1840’s), on the right where the ultra-conservative Whigs, in the centre, and the largest group, where the Gladstonian Liberals and on the left, and the smallest group, where an excellent group of “radicals”. To understand the collapse of the Liberals Party you must understand the relationship between these groups. By 1906 the Whigs had largely deserted the Liberal Party and what remained was a party made of up of 2/3rds moderates and 1/3rd of Radicals, the division between these radicals and moderates was what eventually lead to the Labour party splitting with the Liberals and carving out its own territory as a genuinely leftwing parliamentary force. At the same time the achievements of the Liberal Government where hardly radically progressive, trade union legislation remained largely unreformed, and much of the welfare legislation you trumpet was little more radical that that introduced by Otto Von Bismarck (not a noted radical) in Germany forty years before. Over issues of protectionism and free trade the Liberal Party remained resolutely to the right of even the Conservative Party, while they where also to the left of the Conservatives prior to the second world war on issues such as welfare. Even in the 1930’s with the rise of prominence of such “new liberals” as Keynes and Beverage the Liberal Leader Herbert Samuel left the “national government” rather than abandon the cause of free trade. During the 1950’s and 1960’s the Party was dominated by champions of the free market and the smaller state, such as Oliver Smedley and S W Alexander heavily influenced by the Fredrick Von Hayek’s “the road to serfdom”. The famous Liberal Leader Jo Grimond was an outspoken opponent of the post war consensus ushered in by Atlee and reinforced by Macmillan’s conservatives. Under Thorp and then Steel the commitment to free trade and a shrunken state became less prominent in a charge to gain votes from Labour, which failed spectacularly between 1966 and 1979. Steel’s alliance with the SDP also failed to take significant ground from Labour, under Ashdown the Party retained its commitments to constitutional reform however it also moved back to a more economically conservative agenda however under Kennedy the entire agenda has been confused.
It would seem that recent successes have quietened the voices of dissent with the Liberal Party however the paradox is there, the LibDems have adopted are blatantly, unprincipled and populist approach to each constituency they contest this will work in the short term but in the long term it could spell disaster. On the Left of the Liberal Party are those intoxicated by recent by-election successes on the back of the Iraq war, however on the right are those such as Law and Oaten who fear that the party is both neglecting its core values and at the same time, by doing so, missing a great opportunity to challenge the conservative party. If Dan is representative of Liberal thinking as he claims to be then all the better for both Labour and the Conservatives as a little bit of short term discomfort now is better than the more long term threat of a viable Liberal Democratic Party.
As for your assertion that Brown is some how “Red Gordon”, this just shows your lack of understanding of the contemporary Labour Party I’m afraid. Brown is policy wise almost indistinguishable from Blair on issues such as Top-Up-Fees and Foundation Hospitals he is too Blair’s left however on PFI and the other corner stones of the “New Labour Agenda” he is at one with Blair. The difference between Blair and Brown that would please many on the left is that Brown is a far more tribally Labour politician, his arguments are framed in “Labourite” language and his preoccupation which areas such as international aid, redistribution and poverty alleviation play very well on the left, unlike Blair’s use of conservative even Thatcherite rhetoric and preoccupation with international relations.
If any individual threatens the “new labour coalition” it is Blair because he has threatened to alienate some moderate middle class supporters with Tuition fees and some on the left with the Iraq war and his public services reforms, Brown would appeal to both these groups. The idea that any Labour government is unelectable with Blair is wishful thinking on your part I think, this government has an impressive record of economic competence and improvements in public services that has laid to rest any idea that Labour is “unfit to govern”, in fact confidence in the government and the labour party would probably be higher under the more focused Brown than it currently is under Blair.
So to sum up…
On the Liberal Party being historically on the left of centre? – Wrong
On Brown being somehow a danger to Labour’s electoral prospects? – Wrong
Just one last point, I work in a business where my impartially is important but I will make a point at leaving that at the door as much as possible from now on when I write here.
On the LibDems as a whole, I think most of activists are alright, that said the contradiction In the party’s approaches and how they differ radically from constituency to constituency does annoy me a great deal and the reason I respect Law and Oaten is they are honest and are attempting to put forward a platform beyond the opportunism that has plagued the Liberals since the Steel years and get back to traditionally Liberal ideas and values. That I respect unlike the present fashion amongst some Liberals to be one thing in Labour seats and something completely different in leafy suburban Tory marginals.
4 years ago Labour dropped 10% on its August MORI poll rating and the actual election. The same happened in 1996-97.
On what basis, apart from wishful thinking, do people think they are now going to recover?
Ben,
A number of us in here are politically active - we can all slag off other parties if we want but that\’s hardly worth while - do the LibDems say different things in diferent part of the country - probably because circumstance are different - did the Labour party\’s campaign in Leicester feature the same hysterical anti-asylum attackes as they do in Dover? No, they did not.
Can we just knock off the point scoring - accept that we all have different political views & get back to the refreshing political analysis from widely differing views that this site usually provides
Anonymous, I was merely responding to Dan\’s points which i felt to be fatally flawed in most respects.
That said I\’m more than happy to offer my considered opinion at any time, but if someone wants to make a more partisan attack on one of my arguments I\’ll be more than happy to respond to that too, especially when they are as poorly thought out as Dan\’s. That said the Liberal Democrats regular opportunism is far more breath taking because unlike Labour or the Tories they often (and this varies) put forward polices which bare no relation to an national program and instead tailor their message to which ever seat they are fighting with no regard for any national platform… remember that the LibDem to recommend that their activists “be wicked, act shamelessly, stir endlessly\”, and continues \”don\’t be afraid to exaggerate\” in one campaign handbook. This is what gets me… and it really does, with Labour and the Conservatives there is clear ideological honesty, you can disagree but you understand that they put forward their values and don’t shrink from them, with the LibDems, in many cases, they seem to have no ideological honesty beyond what they think is popular in a certain constituency, it not honest and as a result annoys me intensely especially when LibDems claim “dirty tricks” or that other party’s are being dishonest.
I would imagine people would understand this, but at the same time I think this is just symptomatic of the divisions within the Liberal Party and the failure of the Liberal Party to deal with them and not with ordinary Party members.
Mike, I would love to think that Labour will drop 10% on their MORI poll rating, but I don\’t think it\’s likely they\’ll finish up with 26% at the next general election. OTOH, I don\’t believe the current political/journalistic consensus that they\’re a shoe-in for another three figure majority either.
WRT where the Liberal Party historically stood on the right/left spectrum, I think one should bear in mind that prior to the 1920\’s, political divisions tended to be about constitutional and religious issues. Broadly speaking, the Conservatives were the Anglican/Unionist party, and the Liberals were the non-conformist (outside Ulster) /Home Rule Party. By today\’s standards, the Liberals probably were a bit to the right of the Conservatives in economic terms, but economics wasn\’t the main political fault line.
Only after that time did economics become the major dividing line. Labour were the Socialist party, and the Conservatives/National Liberals the pragmatic anti-Socialist party. Given that economic differences are probably no longer that important politically, this causes problems for both Conservatives and Labour.
Oh and at this stage last time for every 2 people telling MORI they were LD 7 supported LAB. Today the ratio is 3 to 5.
Mike - the reason for that probably wasn\’t Labour\’s support falling, but MORI overrating it to start with. Their polls at the times included all respondents and were not weighted or filtered by turnout. Leaving aside the fuel crisis the levels of Labour support they recorded didn\’t fall to more realistic levels until the 2001 election campaign when then began prompting respondents with the parties that were standing (therefore boosting the reported level of LibDem support at the expense of Labour) and factoring in turnout.
Labour\’s drop in support from August 2000 to June 2001 was more about MORI\’s methodology than the Labour party. ICM\’s polls in Summer 2000 were reporting a level of Labour support far closer to that they finally received in 2001.
Thank you anonymous - I\’m glad you\’re not the only one annoyed by Ben\’s petty point scoring.
A couple of points in response to Ben -
Firstly - I have argued that liberalism is difficult to define in a traditional left/right spectrum - and I think by highlighting \’free trade\’ you make my point for me. Free trade is one of the \’totem\’ issues for Liberals and bears little relation to liberal views on other economic issues. I notice you define left-wing in terms of trade union legislation - a pretty narrow field (and one that I would have thought puts Blair on the right of the political spectrum).
Again you make my point for me on Gordon Brown - I\’ve never said that he\’s some sort of swivel eyed lefty - my contention is that as you say he is tribally Labour and has a greater appeal to the disillusioned left of the new Labour \’coalition\’. It\’s those very factors (much of which is about style and language) that limit his appeal to the more important part of the coalition - Daily Mail reading \’middle England\’. He is as other contributors pointed out a rather awkward operator who appears to make as many enemies on the Labour benches as friends - not necessarily a recipe for winning a leadership election.
Finally - I have never claimed to be representative of liberal thinking and anyone who knows me will no that my views are very much my own.
Mike,
Labour will probably recover in the run up to the next general election because of the simple fact that general elections are called when a government believes it can win and win convincingly. So Thatcher did not go to country in 1986 to see her majority slashed and went in 1987 so that she won a second landslide, ditto Wilson in 1966 and Macmillan in 1959.
Added to this during the spring and early summer Labour’s poll numbers slumped dramatically for this first time in its time in government. But over the last few months Labour’s ratings have begun to improve while at the same time polls have shown public satisfaction with areas such as health and education also becoming more positive showing that voters are getting the impression that public services are improving under Labour, this is all likely to continue into the new year and possibly get a bounce when Iraq holds its elections in January 2005, while the economy remains one of the strongest in the world and unemployment and inflation remain at record lows… so a second Labour win married with an improving position in the polls is likely, if not certain.
Ben - unfortunately there isn\’t an ignore user button on this site but can you please give it a rest!
You trot out the old Labour attack on the Lib Dems that they “be wicked, act shamelessly, stir endlessly”, and “don’t be afraid to exaggerate”. How then do you react to the fact that Ken Livingstone has just appointed the author of the said guide as a board memebr of the London Development Agency? Ken recognises the context and relevence of this advice - why can\’t you? And what has it got to do with Edwardian Liberalism anyway?
Wishful thinking Ben
If I didn’t know better Dan, I’d say you wanted me to stop because I’ve destroyed your argument that the LibDems are “a party of the Left”, then destroyed your argument that they are not inconsistent in the way that fight election from constituency to constituency…
The reason I brought up the quote from the handbook was because I was explaining the traints that annoyed me about the Liberals, and I will stress again that I do not blame LibDem activists for this but rather a leadership that is incapable of putting forward a coherent policy agenda on a national basis and will no doubt feel threatened that the likes of Law and Oaten are putting forward something that could be called an intellectually honest and grown up agenda for the party rooted in “liberal principles”.
But consider that my last word on the subject.
Mike, how is what i have said wishful think?, for starters the Labour poll numbers have largely begun to pick up again already, as with most other post-war governments that have done badly (often far worse than this government) in mid-term polls and then recovered and come back to win convincingly at the general elections… as for by-elections look at Thatcher’s record of losing by-elections on big-swings against the government and coming back with thumping majorities at the general.
If I didn’t know better Dan, I’d say you wanted me to stop because I’ve destroyed your argument that the LibDems are “a party of the Left”, then destroyed your argument that they are not inconsistent in the way that fight election from constituency to constituency…
Just as well you know better then
Ok that was cheap :)… on that note let’s give it a rest comrade.
Ben,
Can\’t you just stop attacking other parties - fair enough you dislike LibDem tactics but honestly I don\’t think anyone comes on here to lob attacks at their opposition, instead we think we can have an intelligent discussion about political trends so that we can make more informed bets on political events.
Yes Steve Hitchens\’ activist guide was stupid & indefensible but then what would you describe Tom watson\’s campaign in Hodge Hill attcaking the LDs as sof on asylum seekers (not even sof on asylum but asylum SEEKERS!!). We could all play that game , so please stop teating us to your ranst about the LibDems.
Anonymous, as I think I said to Dan, let’s give it a rest and leave partisanship at the door… or try our best
Ben, you are spoiling this site with your party political biased nonsense.
Ben you can\’t win any arguments when you have fundamentally failed to acknowledge Dan\’s main (and nonpartisan) point - that the \’traditional\’ left/right spectrum is not something which can be usefully applied when discussing the LibDems. As a result you stick to your basic contention that \”right-wing\” libertarianism would attract disgruntled Tories (because Tories are \”right wing\”), even though most Tory voters are pretty authoritarian - another trait which has been ascribed to the \”right wing\” (eg. Blunkett and Howard). It is not too difficult to see that \’right wing\’ cannot be both authoritarian and libertarian at the same time, just one example to show how the whole debate is futile. Therefore it is not axiomatic that positions cannot be consistently taken which can gain simultaneously appeal to both traditional Labour and Tory voters.
Re. point 13, the interesting irony is that, while Brown\’s appeals to Labour tribalism (the very worst sort with his egalitarian posturing re. Laura Spence) may go down badly with Middle England, he has notably good relations with Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre. As I\’ve said before, Brown\’s comparative Euroscepticism would play well not just with Dacre, but also many Daily Mail readers. I don\’t think anyone in the Labour Party would ever dream that the Mail would back Labour, but a toning down of the paper\’s current vitriolic hostility to Labour as led by Blair would probably be advantageous. After all, while the Sun backed Labour in 97 and 01, it never backed Labour with the enthusiasm or verve with which it backed the Tories. Blair, Campbell et al were just relieved to avoid the sort of rabid hostility to Labour which the paper had shown while Kinnock was leader.
On the other hand, as Dan and other people have noted, the downside of a Brown leadership would be the way he rubs many parliamentary colleagues up the wrong way. He would probably be as dictatorial and autocratic towards the PLP as Neville Chamberlain was towards fellow Tory parliamentarians when he took over from Baldwin (though whether he\’d employ a Joseph Ball figure to tap dissenter\’s phones, I don\’t know). He might invite Labour MPs round for tea and parties now, but once he got the leadership, I expect Brown might show a different side of his character.
I can\’t help but remember an incident in the 2001 campaign when a journalist tried to ask Estelle Morris a question about how women had been sidelined during the campaign, and before Morris could say anything, Brown answered the question for her! Much more gracelessness like that as leader, and the electorate might tire of him very rapidly.
Going all the way back to Richard\’s comment re Bolshevism - I quite agree that the likes of Bevin probably knew more about the Soviet influence in the Trade Union movement than many Tory grandees.
My point was really that the nascent Labour Party was a creature of what we would now know as the \’hard left\’ and despite big social changes - it was the crisis of confidence in the Edwardian Liberal coalition that allowed them to become the opposition. Because of the unpalatable nature of much of early Labour\’s position the Tories became the \’natural\’ party of government (which the Gladstone/HC-B/Asquith Liberal Party had been).
Labour won occasionally from then - either due to unprecendented circumstance or by obscuring their more unacceptable elements - until Blair took the bull by the horns.
Blair\’s Labour party has managed to reach across social, geographical and economic divides that Campbell-Bannerman\’s Liberals did (in an entirely different era). That\’s why Blair\’s succession is so important (to Labour at least) - and I\’m not convinced that Brown has the necessary qualities to keep the \’coalition\’ together.
Dan, good point about how little the Labour party has been in government compared with the old Liberal Party, David Marquand\’s \”the progressive dilemma\” explores this a great deal and comes to a similar assessment that Blair is trying to reforge the old \”liberal coalition\”… on consideration I take your point, take away Iraq and I\’d agree that Blair is undisputedly the greatest asset the Labour Party has however I worry that he may have alienated the left of the \”new labour coalition\” too much with his approach to public services and Iraq and Brown would be better able to win over such people, at the same time its a shame that Benn, Miliband and Cooper are still really too young to be viable successors to Blair in the near future… personally I\’d be happy with Milburn but I fear he would completely alienate the left in a very short period of time, while Pat Hewitt could be the most viable \”Blairite\” candidate for the leadership with her popularity within the CLPs and the PLP, not sure about the Unions though, as Barber seems to be a very strong backer of Brown.
And Blair really took the bull by the horns by abolishing Clause 4. To think that just ten years ago every Labour membership card committed the party to nationalising \’the means of production, distribution and exchange\’, three years after the demise of the Soviet Union…
I think people underestimate the Labour Party, the popular caricature is of a party dominated by middle aged northerners unwilling to embrace the Blairite agenda, that said I think that Blair’s style makes them feel left out and while Brown would use langue that would appeal to many grassroots members he would still be uncompressing in his approach while the likes of Benn or Hewitt, or even Hain would probably be more open… hmm
Indeed Richard - the Clause 4 debate was absolutely vital in redefining Labour\’s message.
The interesting thing is the Tories have been floundering in their attempts to do similar. Portillo knew they needed to do something similar - but couldn\’t find the issue that worked for them. I\’m convinced Howard understands the need to have a \’totemic\’ change - but it\’s difficult for a party to change that doesn\’t really have a constitution and whose main motivation is being in power. The fact that the Tories exist to be in power makes them a lousy opposition and it extremely difficult for them to do things to change this when their mantle is hijacked by another party.
I can\’t see the Tories losing while Blair is Labour leader.
That of course should read \’I can\’t see the Tories doing anything other than losing while Blair is Labour leader.\’
It is interesting that there seems to be an assumption that free trade is a right-wing concept. It may be that the current bastardised version of it _is_ — where the characature that it is simply neo-colonialism is not a million miles wide of the mark.
And the issue may provide clear yellow water between the LDs and the Greens who are pretty close on a lot of other issues.
But the concept of free trade surely owes more to left-wing Internationalism, especially when characterised against nationalist protectionism and especially the imperialist protectionism of the Chamberlains and the National Government from which the Liberals pulled out.
Paul is quite right - free trade was never traditionally considered right-wing - the early Labour Party was fiercely free trade - believing quite rightly that protectionism simply served to increase domestic prices for the poor.
Free trade is still a progressive idea - what the UD & Euope advocate is not free trade but an open door policy by developing countries for Wesern products - while closing the door to Third World produce by maintaining subsidies for our farmers, allowing them to undercut the prices of third world producers. At the WTO summit in Seattle it was African countries who were most keen to conclude a comprehensive free trade agreement because it would have opned up lucrative werstern markets for them. That doesn\’t sound like neo-colonialism to me!
I guess there isn\’t much a a market for a bet as to whether the WTO will succeed in reducing Western agricultural subsidies by its new deadline of next year?
As part of the free trade debate the repeal of the Corn Laws in the 1840\’s was a progressive policy which benefited the poor at the expense of landowners. It was supported by the free trade Liberals/Radicals and led to the break up of the Tories with Sir Robert Peels supporters, including Gladstone, joining the Liberals.
Isn\’t, or wasn\’t, Mark Oaten leader of a \”Peelite group\” within the Lib Dems trying to enhance their appeal to Tory voters?
The Peel Group was actually formed by John Stevens, form,er Tory MEP & now LibDem member & Marie Louise Rossi - aoither former Tory but yes Oaten is a part of the group - I\’m not sure sure jow active it actually is at present. It may play some particular role in Tory marginals at the election though.
A couple of questions for the large number of LD activists (and thoerists) on the site. If there is a significant sector within the party for \’small govt\’, how does that translate into the % of GDP the govt should spend? (The tories had it below 40%–and would like it there again– whereas under Brown it is 43%, and rising, with which his the party seems comfortable). Where would the \’small govt\’ sector of the LDs like to see it?
Politics is the art of the possible. And, if you can\’t get exactly what you want, half a loaf is better than no bread. It seems to me that the LDs would have far more power were there to be a hung parliament. It would be entirely logical for them to help the tories win some labour marginals. If they then preferred to to a deal with the labour party (rather than
the tories who they may have helped), maybe under a leader they had some influence in selecting, LD policies might actual
ly become govt policy. I have seen no sign of that; am I missing something?
It may be that deals cannot be done explicitly, though I don\’t see why not. UKIP seems to be too stupid to come to any \’arrangments\’ with the tories (for example, by not splitting the vote in 150 constituencies in exchange for a \’free run\’ in 2 seats).
I used to think that through some fey sense of integrity, the LDs prefer no input into govt policy. But isn\’t it more responsible, if you believe that you have the best policies, to try to have half (or even a quarter) them implemented rather than none?
Re. free trade, I remember a presentation by Oxfam at the Young Labour conference in 2003. As I recall, its gib wasn\’t with free trade, it was with the third world not enjoying free trade when the US and EU both subsidise their products (particularly agricultural). Similarly, Michael Wills (Brownite) resigned from the government to campaign against the CAP.
Good for Oxfam to put it so clearly, but the sleight of mouth by which the US and EU refer to what they want as \”free trade\” has resulted in a real backlash against true free trade. I see the current popularity of protectionist anti-globalism largely as the result of the misperception of the status quo as being a state of free trade.
Richard, do you think the progress of this issue will break the dominant pro-EU stand on the left? Removing tariffs on imports from developing countries is going to mean standing up to the French and others.
I should perhaps have said \”centre left\” rather than \”left\” as I was referring to mainstream Labour. I am aware that there is considerable EU-scepticism in the Campaign Group etc.
Oddly enough, even the Campaign Group is divided on Europe - Ken Livingstone is pro-EMU, while Alan Simpson (much more impressive in person than he is on TV - he spoke to the UN Society at University for 90 mins without a single note) and others are against.
To return to the centre-left, though, I\’d say yes. Larry Elliott of the Guardian is a vociferous critic of the EU re. the CAP and the deflationary bias of EMU.
Even before Iraq, Blair had a confrontation with that sanctimonious bully Chirac re. the CAP. His reward for standing up to the Franco-German axis over the CAP was to have the French President hiss \’You have been very rude to me\’.
Unfortunately, Blair deludes himself that UK membership of the Single Currency would give the UK the political clout to overcome the French and Germans on CAP reform. As if! There\’s also the general Europhile view that the CAP is an example of what happens when the UK doesn\’t join in from the outset, so we should have joined EMU at Maastricht, and must do so in the future. Afer having seen British beef have a worldwide ban slapped on it by the EU after BSE, and German beef escape such a ban when Germany had its own BSE outbreak, I\’m slightly sceptical towards this argument.
Brown would probably be more realistic (and Chirac would certainly meet his match). Clarke or Hewitt would be just as pro-EU as Blair (fatuously so in Hewitt\’s case). Straw, Milburn, or Benn (Hillary) wouldn\’t exactly be Euro-sceptics, but would be less Messianic than Blair re. the EU.
To answer David Kendrick\’s point re what % of GDP small govt LibDems would like to see, obviously individuals have their own views but - generally I would say well below 40%, the issue here is not whether certain services should be funded by the state but whther they should be DIRECTLY provided by the state
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