Author Archives: Lord William Wallace

When I first joined the Liberal Party many decades ago, it thought of itself as the party of ideas.  It wasn’t much good at campaigning, but groups of Young Liberals and old liberals, in universities and London clubs, held study sessions and published papers and books; and the Liberal Summer School devoted several days to serious discussions of policies and principles.  We took pride in the occasions when other parties pinched our ideas: we saw ourselves as the intellectual drivers of British politics.

Since then we have learn how to campaign, above all at the local level.  But that’s come at the cost of thinking and debating, of picking up new ideas and translating them into policies.  There are many reasons for this.  Politics in Westminster has become far more hectic, preventing our MPs (and peers) from spending the time with outside experts and intellectuals that their predecessors in the 1960s and 1970s enjoyed. Our policy-making process is slow and under-staffed, churning out policy papers over 9-12 months for conference approval.  Since Paul Marshall went over to the dark side of Brexit politics we have lacked a friendly think tank to push out proposals before they grind through our official processes – though there are some bodies to which we can and should turn for advice.  The Social Liberal Forum and other groups do their best, but cannot – without staff and funds – compete with the well-funded think tanks of the right.

With an election campaign in 18 months or less, now is hardly the time to sit back and reflect at length on alternative futures for British politics.  But we will fade away as a party unless we develop distinctive narratives about how to promote liberal values in our society, economy, environment and international policy.  We should, for example, be picking up the themes being developed by policy-related economists, criticising the dominance of free-market assumptions and reintroducing political economy and the moral concerns that Adam Smith addressed in his first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments but downplayed in The Wealth of Nations. 

The Westminster model of politics and government is broken.  A change of prime minister will make little difference to the deep divisions within both our major parties, and the deterioration in the quality of policy-making.  A change of government can only make things a bit better, but sadly not that much.  We need a major set of changes in the framework of constitutional government.

That’s not at all easy, in spite of the polling evidence of popular disillusion with Westminster politics, particularly among young people, the decline in membership of all parties, growing discontent with government instability in the business world and painful awareness in Whitehall that British prestige and international influence is slipping.  Nor that unless we change our structure and methods of government, both Scotland and Northern Ireland will probably leave the UK within the next 10-15 years.  Keir Starmer, the most likely prime minister after the next election, is cautious, concerned to hold his fractious party together, looking forward to grasping the levers of central government without weakening the powers of No.10.

Labour, of course, is part of the problem.  Its leaders cling to the current political and electoral systems because they guarantee Labour a shot at power when our governing Conservatives fall apart.  They look across the Channel at what happened to social democratic parties in France, Italy and elsewhere and cling to a system with high barriers against alternative parties, holding in place two centrally-funded organizations which parachute their favoured candidates into seats across the country.

Yes, Labour constituency parties voted in favour of a more open system of voting.  But the party leadership doesn’t want to press that case, and (rightly in current circumstances) gives higher priority to effective government in the context of a national emergency, a war in eastern Europe and a global recession.  So we are going to have to work hard to persuade the incoming government, the commentariat and the wider public that rebuilding public trust in democracy, and strengthening the checks and balances that make for stable constitutional government – which Boris Johnson did so much to weaken – need to be part of the next government’s agenda.

We will have to work with friends across parties to make the case for political reform.  Yes, PR is an essential part of any reform, but we shouldn’t start with that if we want to win over the hesitant, but explain why it’s important to include it in any political reform package.  And we shouldn’t talk about ‘PR’, an offputting acronym: offer the choice between the Scottish and the Irish systems, both of which work and neither of which confuse their voters.

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.