Author Archives: Lord William Wallace

The difference between Liberals and Libertarians is that Liberals position liberty within community: the limits on individual freedom are set by consideration for others.  (In this Liberals follow J. S. Mill, Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments, and many others.)  Libertarians reject the idea that individuals are rooted in communities.  They are for individual freedom without qualification.  For them the pursuit of individual self-interest provides the dynamic for economic growth and personal freedom; state interference only limits both.

Reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic have brought out these differences in British politics.  Liberals have regretted the emergency powers that government has resorted to, but recognised that the situation required extraordinary measures.  We have focussed on accountability for measures imposed, limits on how long they would last for, and a preference for voluntary compliance where possible.  Libertarians, inside the government, writing for the Telegraph and sitting on the Conservative back-benches, have resisted lockdown when the evidence strongly supported it, have refused to wear masks whenever and wherever they can, and have urged the government to put the economy first and social considerations last.  The exaggerated rhetoric from the Tory right has touched hysteria.   William Wragg, currently Conservative MP for Hazel Grove, recently declared that the restrictions of lockdown were an “abomination” that “you’d expect in a Communist country.”  (I hope the Hazel Grove Liberal Democrats will keep that quotation for future use.)

Boris Johnson, you may remember, was heard to have claimed that the success of the Oxford team that developed the Astra Zeneca vaccine was driven by ‘greed’.  He thus swept away the possibility that scientists and doctors might be driven by concepts of public service rather than a simple desire to get rich.  It’s notable that so many of those who dominate the Conservative Party have made their careers in high finance: a world in which large egos make for success and considerations of social responsibility are secondary at best.  Saj Javid, one of the most successful self-made men in the Conservative Party, spent several years working for Chase Manhattan in New York, before becoming a director of Deutsche Bank International.  He has spoken of his agreement with the philosophy of Ayn Rand, whose influence on libertarian Republicans rested on her celebration of the selfish individualism of dynamic men.

Politics and gardening don’t easily mix. I remember ruefully discussing this with Councillor Stuart Galton as I was giving out the prizes at a West Yorkshire Allotments event years ago.  Long before that, Ian Stuart said it to Helen and me in 1973, standing in our spare room and looking at what we had just achieved in our Manchester garden after two years of limited political activity (triggered by discontent with Jeremy Thorpe’s leadership and the drift within the party).  He’d moved in for the duration of the Manchester Exchange by-election, where our good friend and university colleague Michael Steed was candidate.

Several weeks of campaigning, with a succession of Young Liberals sleeping on our floor, did for the garden for the rest of that year.  Reviving the Manchester Liberal Party, with Helen becoming chair and me agreeing to become candidate for the Moss Side constituency, through two general elections in the spring and autumn of 1974, ruined our garden for the next year as well (and threatened to ruin our careers).  When we moved to London, we restored a neglected garden, planted several fruit trees and even kept hens.  But then I stood again for a Yorkshire constituency through two elections, the fruit trees grew too large and the weeds invaded the vegetable patch.

Local elections present the greatest challenge to the political gardener.  Just when you should be planting out vegetable seedlings, watering devotedly, and keeping spring weeds down, there are leaflets to deliver and doors to knock on.  Miss that stage in the gardening year, and you will be struggling to catch up for months afterwards.  A by-election in June or July is as dangerous a distraction: weeds proliferating everywhere, and the peak of the soft-fruit season, with picking, processing and freezing to be done before everything becomes overripe or the birds eat them.

The owners of five of the six English football clubs which they planned to hive off into an American-style Super-League are classic ‘people from anywhere’: three Americans, a Gulf sheikh and a Russian who made billions out of the post-Soviet free-for-all of privatisation. But neither David Goodhart, who popularised the distinction between ‘somewheres’ and ‘anywheres’ in his post-Brexit book, The Road to Somewhere: the populist revolt and the future of politics, nor Theresa May, who adopted the phrase in fighting the 2017 election, meant offshore billionaires by it. They were putting the blame for the loss of a sense of local community and national solidarity on ‘the liberal elite’: people like you and me.

Liberals are too nice, and too optimistic about reasoned argument, to fight back against the cynical campaigners of the hard right. Pluto-populism, in the USA and in England, has seen hedge-funders and offshore financiers fund populist politicians to discredit political moderates, telling those left behind by globalisation or confused by rapid social and economic change that it’s the intellectual classes who are to blame, not those who’ve made most money out of the disruption. Now that the public are beginning to learn about the close and murky links between right-wing politicians and casino capitalism, we need to work harder to undermine the credibility of their narrative.

I’ve just re-read Goodhart’s book. It’s astonishing that he pays so little attention to economic globalisation as a factor in creating popular disorientation. He blames social liberalisation, the expansion of university education and its inherently ‘liberal and international ethos’, and the espousal of ‘progressive causes’ like minority rights for popular disorientation. Nothing is said about the disappearance of local industries and banks, the enthusiasm with which free market ideologues sold off national assets to Gulf state wealth funds, Chinese state companies, and private equity speculators.