According to “Labour List” (1st January) Sir Keir Starmer has appointed a new chair of the Labour Party. She is the former MP Anna Turley, who writes that she is so proud of “everything we are doing to change the lives of working people across Britain.” (my italics)
Those words “working people” are the first reason why Labour is not liberal.
Liberals exist to represent the needs of all people: children, students, carers, home makers, disabled people, the retired , criminals (yes indeed, no one should be held in inhumane conditions,) academics, innovators, migrants and asylum seekers, SME entrepreneurs, - what the Prayer Book calls “all sorts and conditions of men (and, in updated editions, women.)”
Labour has its roots in the past when it can be argued that the “working class” needed special protection for which they deserved absolute priority. But the modern world has moved on from a world of ”the bosses v the workers.”
Certainly some workers do still need protection, not least those on exploitative zero-hours contracts and the young unable to find employment other than as unpaid “internships, but there are other and equally important sources of conflict: we citizens v the overweening power of the state; the state v overmighty conglomerates; misinformation v truth; might v the rule of law; fairness v the influence of the rich an powerful.
It is on many of these other sources of conflict that the Labour government is found wanting. Recent examples are:
Labour’s failure to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14, the “civilised” European norm:
The confiscation of migrants' phones;
Measures to reduce the right to protest;
The absurd prosecution of those who have peacefully displayed support for the aims of Palestine Action;
The failure to remove the restriction on voting and the powers of the Electoral Commission imposed by the Tories;
The proposal to impose compulsory digital ID on those seeking work, clearly the thin end of a wedge;
The ban on freely elected councillors permitting a four-fay week for their council workers:
The shameful cuts to Overseas Aid;
The failure to fund adequately and defend the BBC;
The failure so far to stand up for the rule of international law and condemn the US invasion of Venezuela.
The tendency to place destructive economic growth above the green measures necessary to preserve the habitability of the planet;
An obsession with social mobility, and hence a tiered society, rather than an aspiration for social and political equality.
For a genuinely liberal future we still need the Libel Democrats.
Labour is not liberal.
ReplyDeleteOf course it isn’t. Why should it be? In fact, isn’t it good that it isn’t? After all, most of the electorate don’t want a liberal government. I know I don’t! So for democracy to work, those people need parties that aren’t liberal parties — like Labour and the Conservatives — to vote for, don’t they?
Nonsense. Most people want to live in a liberal society in which the rule of law prevails, their human an political rights are respected and they are free to do whatever they like provided that they do not impinge on the freedom of others. Most people in the West since 1945 would have thought they lived in a society which respected and aspired to this ideal but the pillars which guarantee it are now being chipped away, blatantly in the US and, sadly, gradually in the UK. We clearly need a political party that puts the preservation and improvement of our liberal society as its first priority.
ReplyDeleteNonsense.
DeleteNot nonsense. If people wanted to live in a liberal society they would vote for a liberal party. They clearly don’t vote for a liberal party, so their revealed preference is that they don’t want to live in a liberal society.
Most people want to live in a liberal society in which the rule of law prevails,
Most people want to live in a society where the rule of law prevails, yes, but that doesn’t have to be a liberal society. It could be a socialist society or a conservative society where the role of law prevails. I personally would like the latter, but people who want the former should have a party to vote for, and that is the Labour Party.
We clearly need a political party that puts the preservation and improvement of our liberal society as its first priority.
Yes, we clearly do need a liberal party for people who want to vote that way. But the whole point of democracy is that people don’t agree, so we also need parties for people who don’t want to live in a liberal society to vote for.
If all parties were liberal, how could we have a democracy?
In a liberal democracy (he worst form of government except for all the others?) all parties should be liberal, but some put other priorities first: Labour the condition of the "workers;" Tories the opportunity to grab from any enterprise the maximum amount of return for themselves; nationalist the advancement of what they see as the interests of their territory; populists power fro themselves Thus a Liberal Party is necessary to give priority to preserving and improving the conditions for liberalism
ReplyDelete
DeleteIn a liberal democracy (he worst form of government except for all the others?) all parties should be liberal, but some put other priorities first:
In that case I don’t want to live in a liberal democracy, and it seems neither do most of the rest of the electorate (or they wouldn’t keep voting for non-liberal parties like Labour and the Conservatives).
And in a true democracy (as opposed to a ‘liberal democracy’) the electorate must be allowed to choose whether it wants to live in a liberal democracy or not.
Therefore it is important that not all parties are liberal, so that those do want to live in some other form of society than a liberal democracy have someone to vote for and, if enough people agree, get what they want.
The whole point of democracy is that people disagree on fundamental values like ‘should society be liberal?’ — they don’t just disagree on matters of emphasis like ‘should we be liberal but favour workers or be liberal but favour owners?’.
So we need parties which disagree on those fundamental values in order that our democracy can allow everyone in the electorate the chance to have a say in what our fundamental values as a society are.
So basically PR, where no party has a majority, where the parties have to work together to achieve a decision for the majority. You have stated all parties have some liberal in them so should not be difficult to come to an agreement IF the 'grown ups' were mature enough to realise that fact of maturity. There does not need to be a LIBDEM govnt but it can help influence others.
ReplyDeleteI do note that most of the papers and social media are not 'liberal minded' cos freedom, in all ways. for others does not make a capitalistic paradise. When you note that CEO,s earn 10 TIMES a normal persons wage getting a number of parties WORKING TOGETHER could do some thing to alter the situation. After 100 years of a 2 party system something has to change.
Thanks Nigel Hunter for your comments. It is clear you are real and not a bot. (I'm not sure about Mr/Mrs/Ms Anonymous above). It said in yesterday’s paper that some CEOs would have "earned" the annual median wage by noon that day, so the gap is a lot bigger than 10x. I agree that most parties in Britain apart from Reform subscribe to liberal democracy, but they are liable to to push their.liberalism aside if it limits their other priorities (eg looking tough on migration to appease the populists.) Liberal Democrats in government as part of coalitions will put a brake on these breaches (as we did in the 2020 coalition, stopping ID Cards for example.) As you say, with the ADULTS in a coalition, WORKING TOGETHER , we should be able to create a society in which "no one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity." Bring it on.
ReplyDeleteas we did in the 2020 coalition, stopping ID Cards for example
DeleteAssuming you mean the 2010 coalition, the scrapping of ID cards was actually a Conservative manifesto policy:
http://media.conservatives.s3.amazonaws.com/manifesto/cpmanifesto2010_lowres.pdf
Page 79:
Labour’s approach to our personal privacy is
the worst of all worlds – intrusive, ineffective
and enormously expensive. We will scrap ID
cards, the National Identity Register and the
Contactpoint database. To protect our freedoms
from state encroachment and encourage
greater social responsibility, we will replace the
Human Rights Act with a UK Bill of Rights.
We will review and reform libel laws to protect
freedom of speech, reduce costs and discourage
libel tourism.
So that would have happened without the Liberal Democrats in coalition.