As long we are neatly happy in our insular protective self righteous intellectual hubs? Who cares about the real issues which are how to govern an effective society?

Have there been any concrete suggestions of people who’d consider us who’d we’d actually want to have?

Pure deed brulliant! Best post I’ve read for a long time!

Let’s not forget almost all of these guys and gals supported the invasion of Iraq, ID cards, increased detention without charge etc etc. Any that opposed most or all of these issues consistently – yes we can consider them.

Richard: Jock – would you have resigned from Oxford East Lib Dems in c.2002 when Labour party member Stephen Tall defected?

Hmmm – don’t remember that one. I remember a chap called “Fairweather-Tall”. Maybe the same chap? But I think I recall him defecting because Labour were becoming too “new”.

Must’ve been a bit before that I think, as we were both on the council together I think – must’ve been 2000?

David Allen: After the total collapse of the free market economy

And the great host of the liberal ancestry sayeth: as oft as any of you, who go by the name “statists”, oft also described as “social liberals” in order to deceive, preach such unsubstantiated falsehoods to the world, I will repeat unto ye – “we have never had a free market economy whereof we may bear witness to its collapse”. When the whole earth is utterly subjected to the whim of money lenders, rentiers, monopolists and their political acolytes, in that land there cannot be a free market. The great host of the liberal ancestry came to destroy such outrages but were repeatedly vanquished, until their descendents too became subjugated to the “statists”.

We used to boast of being the party of common sense, the party that didn’t get blinded by crazy ideologies, etcetera. My, how we’ve degenerated.

Verily did Liberals once both understand what a free market consists of and believe it was the best way conceived, yeah even by an Invisible Hand, to provide for the relief of the greatest suffering amongst the greatest number of the poor and disposessed. And lo! did the greatest number of the poor and disposessed heartily agree with them.

Then there came from the darkness, false prophets, pretending to be “left” but really knowing themselves to be secretly of the “right”, calling themselves “socialists”, who did deceive liberals and the poor and disposessed into believing men of small mental stature and large self-regard could plan such relief better by mainforce, thievery and “redistribution” of what was not theirs to sequester. And by these means Liberals were indeed degenerated and threwn into great long exile for an hundred years and more.

We used to boast of being the party of common sense, the party that didn’t get blinded by crazy ideologies, etcetera. My, how we’ve degenerated.

Sorry, the man who’s convinced that the free market economy has utterly failed is accusing others of being ideologues?

Ouch, I must hold my sides.

A “properly regulated” market economy is one where Government has seen enough sense to introduce an element of planning and external governance.

No. a properly regulated market is one in which the rule of law is upheld, monopolies are prevented or broken up, and attempts to conceal information are treated as serious crimes.

Governments are terrible at planning economies, that’s been a basic principle of liberalism for as long as there’s been a definition of liberalism.

The current problem is a market correction after our government, as well as the US government, failed in its duty and stoked up an artificial boom in the housing and consumer credit markets.

In other words, we had government planning and governance, it failed, as our Governments were incompetent. Both Nick and Vince have made serious speeches and articles on this over the last 2 years, Nick’s speech on banking reform from February last year makes especially good reading and sense.

Markets are a system of distribution and exchange. They work, well, as such, but have faults. It’s the responsibility of Govts to find and fix those faults.

The current incumbents failed in this duty. The market is punishing them for it, heavily. We’re all caught up in the same tide.

Ye gods, why does it take the openly labelled socialist to explain this to the supposed liberal?

A “properly regulated” market economy is one where Government has seen enough sense to introduce an element of planning and external governance. If that’s what you support, then you’re not the kind of crazy fundamentalist neocon free-market loony I was aiming my comments at! But there are far too many of them out there, and phrases like “infinitely superior” do rather give them away.

“I don’t think we’ve got the total collapse of the market economy happening at the moment.”

OK, OK, I did overstate things. A little!

On your bigger questions, where my non-libertarian personal preferences came through despite studied non-intra-partisanship:

I will always defend the party being a broad tent, but I’ll also aim to make sure the ideologies I describe as democratic socialism and economic libertarianism are opposing guide ropes rather than the tent’s frame. (Wow, that metaphor is tortured even by my cruel and unusual standards, but I quite like it so I’ll let it stand).

Now, I understand very well that we have different definitions of what those ideologies are. And you’d probably consider *me* a democratic socialist and your libertarianism to be authentic liberalism. But let’s leave aside the “I’m the only real liberal in the village” argument as we’ve all been through that one before.

As far as anything pre-election was concerned, where there is a candidate in situ then the defecting MP would have to accept that and either stand down or find another seat.

We used to boast of being the party of common sense, the party that didn’t get blinded by crazy ideologies, etcetera. My, how we’ve degenerated.”

Hmmm. I don’t think we’ve got the total collapse of the market economy happening at the moment.

And Tom’s argument still stands – a properly regulated market economy is still infinitely superior to a planned or mixed one. You’re confusing the means of exchange with the type of ownership. There’s no reason why a market economy can’t function with mutuals and co-operatives as well as share-holder funded companies.

After the total collapse of the free market economy, this is simply world-class lunacy. It’s on a par with Kim Il-Sung, Osama bin Laden, Arthur Scargill, David Icke, and Ozymandias!

We used to boast of being the party of common sense, the party that didn’t get blinded by crazy ideologies, etcetera. My, how we’ve degenerated.

Just three comments:

1) I would hate to think of anybody “unthinkingly fetishising market forces” but what about those who have thought about it very carefully, weighed all the odds, and concluded that the market is infinitely superior to any sort of planned or mixed economy?

2) “We would be made not to welcome defectors from Labour in similar circumstances”. Unless you mean we would join the Mafia, I guess that should read “mad” )

3) In some paragraphs you differentiate liberals from socialists and conservatives, in others from “socialism or market fundamentalism”. I hope that this is not to suggest that there is anything that connects conservativism with free markets, which have only ever shared common ground when Tories used free markets as a tactic to achieve their own ends.

On the general point, however, you have interestingly (and perhaps both deliberately and with good reason) avoided the politics of this. Depending on the number and prominance of the defectors, such a shift could be a massive non-event or a huge boon to the Liberal Democrats. As long as we were not compromising our principles we should be wary of looking a gift-horse in the mouth.

Obviously, some anti-Brown Labour mps would not be a good fit (the Blairite ultras for example) but I think there are many good Labour Mp’s who could serve their constituents far better under a yellow flag.

Surprised you haven’t encountered the Georgists given your wonders around blogging, maybe they’re not posting on the subject as much these days, they certainly persuaded me. Then, find a Lib Dem that doesn’t, eventually, favour some form of LVT as a medium term goal…

Georgists? Geo-Libertarians?

I admit that is beyond my ken of the varieties of Liberals.

Do they kiss the girls and make them cry and hide themselves in caches in the Peak District respectively?

Help.

Thanks.

I ‘d say ideologically pure would be a terrible way to describe the Lib Dems

at least from an economic perspective

just look at the posts on any thread on this site

Keynesians, Libertarians, Geo-liberals Classical liberals, American style social democrat liberals, Georgists, geo-libertarians

Its all good to see but the Lib Dem party is like trying to herd cats

But overall, the party’s got a large number of “soft Labour men” in it already, a few more won’t tip the balance too much, especially given the large number of fully liberal members there are in the younger activist base.

I joined the Liberal Democrats, and want us to reach out and rebuild a liberal coalition, not the small rump party that existed pre-merger.

Clarke’s an authoritarian fool, but other moderates within Labour? Fine, as long as it’s handled right.

Let’s not forget, the public are anti-Labour at the moment, they don’t really /want/ the Tories, but don’t think we can win.

If a chunk more of Labour came to us and signed up to our ideals and our constitution (especially the preamble), then that’ll bring a lot of moderate Labour types and former activists as well.

If that gives us the tipping point to finally break the mold, I’m good.

Then we can have STV, Jock and I can form a radically left wing mutualist party of our own and the whole thing is settled.

We need to win as many seats as possible supporting our agenda under an electoral system that’s designed to stop us.

Let’s not turn away a good chance at doing so just because we don’t like some of them.

If they are more of the socially-liberal, electoral-reform-promising early years of Blair type then come on over. If they were cheerleaders for Iraq, ID Cards, detention, rendition and all that jazz then no.

Overall though, we as a party membership need to reconcile ourselves to the fact that over the years a great many people who might otherwise classify themselves as “liberal” have gone to the Tories because they believed in the market and talked about individualism – or to Labour because they talked about equality and social progress – and ignored the Lib Dems because, even though we might be more authentically liberal, they judged one of the other parties as a better vehicle for actually achieving their aims.

As this party grows and strengthens – and I hope no-one is still labouring under the tragi-romantic idea that we will always remain a rump third party, ideologically pure but useless – we will inevitably accumulate people who have been with other parties. If they are genuine in their belief in liberalism and honestly want to work with us to acheive our gommon goals then we must welcome them with open arms, give them a bunch of Focuses and send them on their way.

On these particular rumours, with all the above provisos, I would urge the Party leadership to be as open as possible to MPs and Lords wanting to cross the floor from whatever direction – the more hits we can score against Labour, the Tories, the SNP or whomever else, the more it will help us in the country.

One word of caution if anyone at POLD is reading – before anyone gets given a gold rosette and a press conference, I want their expenses gone through with the finest of fine tooth combs!