We’re Liberals and Democrats, and we should be outspoken in support of both. And both have to be fought for to prevent our country sliding back into illiberalism and authoritarian government.
At the end of the Cold War American liberals thought that democracy had triumphed, and that authoritarian states would move towards liberal democracy as they became more prosperous and more integrated into our open world society. 35 years later, things look far less rosy. Orban’s illiberal regime in Hungary has thankfully just fallen, although it is still too soon to see how stable and constitutional its new government will be. Trump’s second administration in the US has shown how easy it is for a populist leader to sweep past constitutional safeguards and create a corrupt and chaotic autocracy; we may at last see after the mid-term elections some belated resistance. In France we are watching a surge of anti-constitutional violence, which may well lead to a hard-right executive presidency in their coming elections. And we are witnessing in Britain illiberal movements on the left and the right, with Farage as a pluto-populist (a politician financed by the ultra-wealthy who claims to stand for the ‘people’ against the elite) and Tommy Robinson as a violent anti-democrat.
In the face of this, the current Labour Government is astonishingly complacent. Manifesto promises to modernise the Commons have shrunk to a few measures to improve access; Burnham’s government payroll in the Commons is even larger than Starmer’s or Sunak’s. Its changes to the composition of the Lords have been minimal, and a flood of new appointments is again leading to an oversized House. The Representation of the People Bill passed through the Commons virtually unchanged; the Lords will do its best to regulate political finance and foreign interference more tightly than the government is proposing. Behind Burnham’s rhetoric about changing the voting system many Labour veterans are denying the need for change. David Blunkett, among others, has welcomed the troubles that Reform and the Greens now face as marking a return to our traditional two-party system. Public trust in Westminster politics is low, and many young people are disillusioned and disengaged.
So what arguments should we be making about current threats to British democracy and ways to strengthen it? First, we need to be clear about the difference between constitutional democracy – or liberal democracy – and popular democracy. The populist right argue that Britain has been betrayed by its elites; that ‘common sense’ comes from the unfiltered voice of the people on any topic – meanwhile attacking the BBC and ‘the mainstream media’, and spending large sums fuelling popular grievances and putting out misinformation to win the public over to their authoritarian preferences. Liberal democracy is about much more than elections and referenda: it’s about discussion and persuasion, about presenting hard choices to parliamentarians and public, and about building in safeguards against the abuse of power and the temptations of corruption. It’s also about involving citizens in public life, through local democracy and public information – and public education about the rights and responsibilities of citizenship.
Democracy in the UK IS in danger. We have a government elected on just over a third of those who voted, on a historically low turnout. We’ve lived through the populist misgovernment of Boris Johnson and the corruption of the Covid pandemic. We’ve seen local democracy squeezed and shrunk. Labour seems to see the key to good government as delivering services to a passive public, not engaging citizens in sharing in public service provision; the Conservatives deny responsibility for the mess that Labour inherited. The UK like other economies is facing low growth and rising demand to public spending, which makes political leadership more and more difficult. The next election could lead to a confused outcome, with anti-system parties of the right and left well-represented in Parliament.
Labour ministers are breathing sighs of relief at the difficulties the Greens and Reform are now facing, and hoping that politics can now return to ‘normal.’ But they are not at all normal. Foreign interference, from ultra-wealthy Americans, Russian bots, Iranian proxies and Chinese agents flows though social media and party funds onto our streets. Young people, in particular, fear for their futures and do not see Westminster and Whitehall as sources of support. We are about to witness a budget process which will not address the underlying issues of technological and demographic change, alongside the desperate need to spend more on national security and defence – swamped by the confrontational style of Commons politics, with Her Majesty’s Opposition opposing whatever the government proposes. A year after the Strategic Defence Review called for a ‘Whole Society’ approach to national security and resilience, with local volunteers for civil and homeland defence, no attempt to engage the public has begun.
Liberal Democrats should be calling for radical reform of Westminster and the style and structure of our national politics. We should be talking about engaging our public, old and young, as citizens rather than as onlookers to the way their country is run. We should be attacking the over-dependence on mayoral authorities to deliver public services, and making our own proposals to revive local democracy. None of this will be easy to get across to our disillusioned public. But the alternative is to drift away from liberal democracy towards corrupt autocracy, or violent clashes between hard right and hard left, as we are witnessing in the USA, France and elsewhere.
* William Wallace is LibDem peer, a former vice-chair of the Federal Policy Committee and convenor of the party's 1997 manifesto team.
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
A 14-year-old Mick Jagger demonstrates rock climbing on television
Prisons
Why Kierkegaard should be the official philosopher of Scotland supporters
Labour makes by-election gain in PM's own constituency
An extended period of silence is called for
PM
Denis Mollison
Mick Taylor
David Evans
Tristan Ward
9 Comments
It is also worth mentioning that Labour is not just doing a few changes to expand access to the Commons, but is legitimising more authoritarian forms of Government with their empowered Metro Mayors, who will supposedly have powers over taxation, transport, housing and – according to Burnham’s speech – Water Companies, with few references I can find to how they will be held accountable. They will have no visible opposition like a Council Leader would, and no Party / Coalition to maintain the confidence of.
I am very concerned about the kind of political culture Labour is legitimising through this system of strongmen, as even more so than the Commons this system reduces the importance of political consensus, so we should be very vocal in calling for their scrutiny.
Lord William Wallace………..At the end of the Cold War American liberals thought that democracy had triumphed, and that authoritarian states would move towards liberal democracy as they became more prosperous and more integrated into our open world society….
Sadly, the end of the cold war coincided with the explosion of neoliberalism (unfettered capitalism) of Thatcher and Reagan…
Until the mid 1980’s the ‘wealth gap’ had been falling; under Thatcher and Reagan it exploded.. Today the top 0.1% own over 50% of the world’s wealth..
In the UK the top 20% of households take roughly 63% of the country’s total wealth, whereas the bottom 20% hold just 0.5%… The disparity in Asset wealth, especially housing, are condemning most of the younger generation to forget ever becoming home owners
Little chance of a true ‘Democratic society’ in today’s world
Judging from yesterdays results, 3 Conservative gains, it now seems pretty clear that they are back. Surely we have to adopt a different approach. There is a void opening up with the aid of Polanski’s demise and Labours almost certain unpopularity over the next 12 months, Time for an image change from us and ending our complacent quiet response.
The public want to hear from us, will we meet that challenge.
“ First, we need to be clear about the difference between constitutional democracy – or liberal democracy – and popular democracy”
I don’t agree that ‘liberal democracy’ and ‘popular democracy’ are opposing ideas. Popular democracy, as I understand it, is seeking to involve more ordinary people in making the decision that affect their lives and their communities, whether than be by enabling more opportunities for grassroots participation or by using local or national referenda to make certain decisions. Why can all the above not sit comfortably within ‘liberal democracy’?
“And we are witnessing in Britain illiberal movements on the left and the right, with Farage as a pluto-populist (a politician financed by the ultra-wealthy who claims to stand for the ‘people’ against the elite) and Tommy Robinson as a violent anti-democrat.”
Would you like to *name* an illiberal movement of the British left, then? (One with actual political power or a chance of getting it, ideally, the SWP doesn’t really count)
This article seems to be quite full of the thing that lefties regularly accuse Liberals/Centrists of:
– minimising the problems of the hard-right even when apparently complaining about them (there’s a much more descriptive term for “violent anti-democrat” or “corrupt autocracy” that people a century ago wouldn’t have had difficulty saying, for example. Begins with an “F”. Gets the actual threat across rather more.)
– pretending that “the left” and “the right” are equally bad in terms of their danger to democracy when – in Britain, at least – it’s not even close.
Even “illiberal” is hardly the worst problem with the likes of Robinson or Farage or Trump, is it. But you can’t say the “r” word nowadays, or even the fancier “x” word euphemism, can you, that’s not politically correct.
Trying to look on the bright side, Reform are slowly sliding into irrelevance & the Conservative recovery makes a Hung Parliament the likeliest result of the next General Election – Fair Votes will be there for the taking if we display even a tiny amount of courage.
Burnham and Macron face similar challenges. There is huge demand for money to be spent to tackle failing public services – such as crumbling schools in France, and a crumbling NHS in the UK. But there is no money left, and with the bond markets making it laregly impossible to continue raising the national debt, Keynesian solutions are no longer available.
The difference is leadership performance. Macron has failed for years – Failed to achieve consensus with the moderate Left, and failed to tackle the problems. Nobody trusts him to do anything effective, and so France has protests, riots, and a slide toward the false answers of the Fascists.
Burnham, by contrast, is clearly doing his best to try. That gains him a lot of credit with the public, even if actual success is elusive. For now.
The problem is the next FPTP election. All the signs point to a hung Parliament in which a governing coalition must be formed. The Tories and Reform claim to hate each other and to be unable to work together. If between them they win a majority of seats, those objections will instantly be blown away on the wind.
Which way will Davey jump? He has hedged.
Can Burnham afford to wait until after a disastrous election result before seeking electoral reform? By then it may be too late.
Burnham and Macron face similar challenges. There is huge demand for money to be spent to tackle failing public services – such as crumbling schools in France, and a crumbling NHS in the UK. But there is no money left, and with the bond markets making it largely impossible to continue raising the national debt, Keynesian solutions are no longer available.
The difference is leadership performance. Macron has failed for years – Failed to achieve consensus with the moderate Left, and failed to tackle the problems. Nobody trusts him to do anything effective, and so France has protests, riots, and a slide toward the false answers of the far Right.
Burnham, by contrast, is clearly doing his best to try. That gains him a lot of credit with the public, even if actual success is elusive. For now.
The problem is the next FPTP election. All the signs point to a hung Parliament in which a governing coalition must be formed. The Tories and Reform claim to hate each other and to be unable to work together. If between them they win a majority of seats, those objections will instantly be blown away on the wind.
Which way will Davey jump? He has hedged.
Can Burnham afford to wait until after a disastrous election result before seeking electoral reform? By then it may be too late.
Surely the Corbyn/Sultana party, whatever it’s calling itself now, is an illiberal movement of the British left. Also George Galloway’s party and satellite grouplets. Admittedly none of these have any more chance of getting power than the SWP, but they’re there. They can be identified by their knee-jerk anti-western foreign policy positions, so (sometimes echoing the far right) tend to be pro-Russia. Foreign policy is where the ends of the political horseshoe meet.
I doubt the Lib Dems will ever form a coalition with the currently constituted right bloc, unless it becomes a very different party from the one I joined. Some European liberal parties are countenancing coalitions with the far right (surely grounds for expulsion from ALDE/Renew Europe) but most of the people who would have considered that path for the Lib Dems have cleared out since 2015.