Author Archives: Katharine Pindar

Change will come and change will go, but the Liberal Democrats just keep going. Hopefully, usually forward!

We have been successful enough this year to attract both alarm and attempted derision from our rivals. Now we are being blamed for the defeat of the anti-Johnson alliance of smaller parties. Yet our leader did make us a force to be reckoned with in the Election by leading the anti-Brexit drive with the strong unique policy of possible Revoke.

However, in the over-confidence Jo showed in suggesting she could be prime minister she fired a rocket which, like the November 5 ones, shot up with a thousand stars – and then was extinguished. She lit the touch-paper herself and suffered the burn from it. But thousands of her colleagues in our party are still standing, and a few made it to the House of Commons.

So what? – disillusioned voters may say to us. You are irrelevant again – and more distrusted because it seemed by adopting the Revoke policy you threw away your one concession to Leave voters, that you would give them a chance for reconsideration in another referendum. You can apparently be as tricky as the biggest parties, voters may say, especially when the voting record of your departing leader in the Coalition is considered.

It would seem so at the moment. We are in an unprecedented, astonishing political crisis, where an alliance of Opposition politicians is trying to stop our Prime Minister from ruining the country by permitting a No Deal Brexit, if no deal can be reached with the EU by October 19.

How can this be? How is it that a man who has already committed an illegal act involving the Queen without accepting that he was wrong, who is universally known for unscrupulous behaviour in pursuit of personal ambition, is permitted to continue in the highest position in the land? His word is so distrusted that Opposition politicians are obliged to try to find additional safeguards to ensure that he keeps to the law. Truth is a stranger to Boris Johnson, yet his Cabinet obeys the directions of himself and his disreputable chief adviser, and his party conference feted him as expected. Unelected by any democratic means, without a majority, having cast out a score of more moderate Tory MPs, he still looks forward to winning a General Election in the near future, since his party is well ahead of Labour in the polls, How can this be?

It has surely more to do than the apparent fact that the country wants Brexit settled now. The Labour Party also wants it settled, and also supports Brexit, albeit after a revised deal is reached. Why does the country, Brexit-riven, not put Labour first now? 

So the question arises: maybe there is still deference in England towards people who appear to assume a right to rule? 

Long after the end of our Empire, perhaps there is still a grudging acceptance that men educated at Eton and Oxbridge, who have old-boy networks linking them to top people in the legal profession, to directors of top companies, financiers and media moguls, who mix easily with successful entertainers and sportsmen and other influential public figures – that maybe they do genuinely have the right to run the country.  Top Tories are a privileged elite, but with their self-confidence and their connections, their directorships and financial heft, who can deny their assumed right to hold power?

Has Britain ever had an Advent with less expectation of a happy arrival?

On December 11, general expectation is that Theresa May’s EU Withdrawal Bill will be defeated. Nobody can tell what will happen next. All that seems certain is that no political grouping will be completely satisfied. There can be no fulfilment of much-touted aims, only grudging compromise.

Besides, for Christians, the joy this year surely should be qualified. To be shopping extravagantly now and feasting lavishly then, for those who can afford it, doesn’t feel right when there are 420 Trussell Trust food banks supplying more than a million people each year, and food parcels will shortly be packed for the children of the poorest families.

It doesn’t feel right to rejoice, when the recent report of the UN rapporteur Phliip Alston has shown the extent of suffering among the 14 million British people living in poverty, with so much of the decline in their fortunes set in train by our Government.

Liberal Democrats have to promote the vital measures we have agreed and put forward to tackle these towering problems, much discussed in recent articles on this site. But what our country is also surely waiting for is the restoration, the second coming, of its rightful values.

Values which have been ignored by the Government, says Philip Alston, in considering the likely impact of Brexit on people in poverty as ‘an afterthought’; and in meantime overturning ‘key elements of the post-war Beveridge social contract’ by inflicting misery on the working poor, on single mothers, on people with disabilities, and on ‘millions of children who are being locked into a cycle of poverty from which most will have great difficulty escaping.’

To begin at the beginning, at least 2017 is over! It wasn’t a great year for us. Our 24-month climb back to prosperity since May 2015, buoyed by thousands of new members and encouraging Council election results, was paused at the June General Election. The two big parties in their nose-to-nose confrontation swept up more than 80% of the vote, leaving us with less than double figures, though now a dozen good MPs.

It seemed our progress was no more. We lost an inspiring leader in Tim Farron, though gained one of great experience and knowledge in Vince Cable. (It felt a bit like living in the old Rose and Crown joke routine. “They’re closing down the Rose and Crown. Boo! And building a new one. Hurrah!” But yet too serious to joke about just then.) Besides, our commitment to a referendum on the negotiated deal was continually queried, even within the party, though it was reaffirmed at the September Conference. According to the national opinion polls, the Leave voters weren’t coming over in droves to Remain, and our share of voting intentions stayed at around 7%.

All in all, we couldn’t rejoice too much that the quasi-presidential campaign of Theresa May and the Tories’ ill-conceived manifesto failed, so that a hung Parliament unexoectedly emerged. It still meant that the country would have to put up with a Tory minority government backed with expensively-purchased DUP votes. It still resulted in the Government backing a potentially ruinous ‘hard’ Brexit, with the apparent acquiescence of the pallid Janus-faced Official Opposition. The EU negotiations moved at a snail’s pace as impossible outcomes were sought. The Brexiters demanded minimal payments, no further jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, and all to be as usual on the Irish Border – and,  Why can’t we have trade talks NOW!? 

Are we Liberals, radical liberals, or Liberal Democrats? It’s interesting that a current piece aired here about radical liberalism doesn’t mention democracy or refer to the second part of our name. Is democracy then less relevant to our party identity?

This set me thinking, and there seem to be three different aspects it may be worth beginning to consider.

1. Our party’s own understanding of its identity. Are we here to promote liberalism more than democracy? What do we mean by that, if so?
2. The party’s identity in relation to that of the Conservatives, Labour and the nationalist parties.
3. The party’s identity as understood by British voters.

On the first, although personally I was a Liberal member long before we became Liberal Democrats, I should be concerned to think that democracy is less important to us. That is partly because liberalism is closely identified with freedom, which idea, extensively considered in past threads here, is susceptible to being hijacked by the Tories.

Consider, for instance, the statement of principle in our Agenda 2020 party consultation paper.

“Liberal Democrats stand for liberty, the freedom of every individual to make their own decisions about how to live their lives. We trust people to pursue their dreams, to make the most of their talents, and to live their lives as they wish, free from a controlling, intrusive state…”

Liberal Britain must be neither a country of entrenched privilege riding over the less fortunate, nor a nanny state shepherding and corralling its people.

Liberal Democrats stand for liberty, the freedom of every individual to make their own decisions about how best to live their lives. We trust people to pursue their dreams, to make the most of their talents and to live their lives as they wish, free from a controlling, intrusive state and a stifling conformity; a free and open society that glories in diversity.

That statement of our principles contained in the Agenda 2020 party consultation paper makes me doubt the ideas of Universal Basic Services and Universal Basic Income, discussed here lately.

“We stand for equality”, continues the declaration of Agenda 2020. Yet UBS and UBI could be argued as likely to reinforce structural inequality in Britain. The benefits might be intended to keep the mass of the population reasonably content in having enough to live on and being looked after, while the rich and privileged might willingly pay for the right to continue to accrue wealth and power in unchallenged peace.

The policy would then be the equivalent of the bread and circuses of Roman Emperors, so Liberal Democrats should shun it. It is too easy for us in our middle-class, educated way to avoid facing the glaring inequalities of our country by offering palliative measures, as we did in lifting poorer people out of income tax but ignoring the poorest who didn’t pay tax at all.