Author Archives: Joe Zammit-Lucia

Constant dissatisfaction is an essential part of the liberal spirit.

That which, over the decades, has characterized liberalism is the constant search for progress. Progress that seeks to create open societies that welcome diverse views and allow, in Popper’s formulation, constant challenge from below. Progress that breaks down imposed power from the top and liberates the disadvantaged and those that do not have a voice.

The essential flip-side of achieving progress is a constant dissatisfaction with the status quo. The ability and determination to imagine that a better world is possible. As Robert Kennedy’s very liberal statement put it: “Some men see things as they are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were, and ask why not.”

In this regard, I was very encouraged by reports that Vince Cable is considering significant reforms to how the party works. A direction intended to make the party more open in different ways.

The rise of insurgent parties or insurgent leaders in politics has split the political landscape. In business terms we can see this as a battle between incumbents and entrepreneurs.

Established political parties with traditional leaders are the incumbents. They are the equivalent of large, oligopolistic corporations. Slow moving, stuck in the old ways of doing things and fighting for the status quo that favours them. Their success depends on having a broad base of support to which they can play. They favour their base while trying to expand it at the edges to gain their overall majorities. In essence, their business model is one of rent-taking – using their dominant market position as their main advantage.

Insurgents are the entrepreneurs. They imagine a different world. They invent a different way of doing things. They are not bound by the previous rules of engagement. They duck and dive, respond and change their ways quickly. They have a much deeper understanding and are closer to the needs and psychology of a particular customer base. They capture that base, learn and expand from there. They have another particular skill – the ability to first needle and then punch the incumbents in their weakest spots and in a way that makes it difficult for them to react effectively.

UKIP, Trump, Geert Wilders, Marine Le Pen, Podemos, the Five Star Movement. These are all political entrepreneurs. Trump’s was a double success. His entrepreneurial approach first overcame the Republican establishment and then the Democrats.

They say that there is no war that is more difficult and emotionally draining than a civil war. So it is with ideas. When liberals and progressives fight conservatives, the battles are easy. Each is convinced of their own righteousness and, when they run out of arguments, can simply dismiss the other side as being either Neanderthal or degenerate and therefore not worthy of much consideration. Everyone can go to bed enveloped in their own warm glow of self-belief.

Much more difficult are conflicting ideas that spring from the same ideology. Because resolution is difficult, these issues tend to get quietly …

The World War II defeat of fascism ushered Europe into an era where liberal democracy became the undisputed political ideology. West Germany became an exemplary democracy. By the end of the 1970s, the dictatorships of Spain, Portugal and Greece had disappeared and these countries soon transformed themselves into liberal, democratic states. 1989 saw the fall of the Berlin Wall rapidly followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the eventual expansion of liberal democratic ideals into former Soviet states. In Europe, the success of liberal democratic ideals seemed total and irreversible.

As is often the case, success breeds a complacency that soon turns to hubris. To many of us the idea that liberal and democratic ideals could be reversed just as quickly as they had taken hold was utterly inconceivable. As a result, we started first to forget and then to undermine some of the core principles that underpin the success of liberal democracy. We forgot that democracy derives its legitimacy from a politically engaged population not from the ruling class. We forgot that a system where the idea of democracy is reduced to no more than giving people the opportunity to vote once every five years or so is no democracy at all.