On the morning of Friday 5th July 2024 the HMS Lib Dem had never been so full, or so well built. It was in a near perfect position to head out of the harbour; well stocked with policy and a new crew capable of navigating new waters and new challenge.
Its main rival reduced to nothing more than a wreck after nine long years of mutiny after mutiny, and crashing into every obvious rock and hidden iceberg it possibly could. HMS Tory was all but sunk. Sure, HMS Labour eclipsed both in terms of size and grandeur but it hadn’t yet realised that her foundations were rotten. The hull already letting in water.
HMS Reform was still being hastily built out of every reactionary plank of wood it could find. But with a formidable Captain, it wouldn’t be long before it could raise the skull and crossbones and begin pillaging, dividing the populist spoils.
But after a year choppy waters and after over a year at sea the HMS Lib Dem finds itself stuck at sea. Not heading in the right or wrong direction but stuck. The rest of the fleet might be moving in the right or wrong direction, but at least they’re moving.
If the Liberal Democrats are to get moving it needs to find its wind again and the easiest to find is Liberalism. Liberalism has never thrived when it sees the State as the solution to societal and economic problems.
The new aged based social media policy is a prime example of this, it adds layers of bureaucracy and Government intervention that will never be able to keep up with technology. It assumes government is the solution rather than education. Rather than educating children about the risks of social media it encourages young people to educate themselves about VPN’s, loopholes and the Dark Web. It assumes that our educators are ill equipped to tackle these issues. That may well be the case currently, but the solution isn’t more red tape, but more funding for education.
A rush to tariffs and barriers to trade is another example of overreach and overreaction that undermines Liberalism. Bullies like Trump need to be stood up to, but if our first reaction is to engage in trade war rhetoric then it blows up our policy of a customs union with the EU and trashes the importance of free trade.
If the Party is to find its wind again, it needs to stop hitting the intervention button and rediscover its Liberalism.
It must scream that it will work for and with people for a fairer society and not impose it from above.
* Danny Loveridge is a member and ordinary exec officer of the North Cotswolds Liberal Democrats
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22 Comments
@ Danny Loveridge “Liberalism has never thrived when it sees the State as the solution to societal and economic problems.” Oh, dear no, Mr Loveridge.
That notion was tested almost to destruction by those leading the party between 2010-15 ……… and almost drowned in a drift to the Tories way back in the 1930’s. Sorry to be blunt, but there’s a whole huge bit of GB outside the wealthy Cotswolds and and comfy Middle England. Have a read of Keynes and Beveridge, please.
“ It assumes government is the solution rather than education”
This argument against the government setting an age before which young people are banned from social media could equally be applied to other aspects of life.
Should the law set a minimum age to get married or should we not set an age and just leave it to education to ensure young people understand to wait until they are older? Should the government set a minimum age for buying cigarettes or should we just rely on education to ensure young people understand the risks and therefore make the smart choice. I could go on. The point is, we should use education to ensure young people understand the reasons why social media harms young people and to prepare them for making sensible choices once they are of age.
I fear HMS Liberal sailed out of port some years ago and has not been seen at sea for some time. To drop the metaphor for a moment, I think that most people in the party today would take the view that the state should play a significant role in the nations life. Old style, small state liberals are now an almost extinct species and if they poke their heads over the parapet are likely to be accused of being closet Tories. Most of the passengers on HMS Lib Dem (sorry, couldn’t resist, its such an appropriate metaphor) are social democrats or Liberals in the American usage of the term.
Personally, I’m pretty sympathetic to your argument, Danny. The social media ban for under 16s has the potential to turn into a mess to rival the Dangerous Dogs Act. There are certain parallels .
Most classical liberals are thrashing around in the water. Near by, the crew of SS One Nation Tory are discussing the wisdom of trowing a lifebuoy or two in their direction.
Thank you for the nautical metaphor!
Might it help the direction and purposeness of political ships and our country if the following were kept in mind?
1)”Charts” showing our course which are based on achieving Mr. Roosevelt’s freedoms which include “Freedom from Want” and “Freedom From Fear” to which we might add “Freedom of Individuality” and “Freedom of Initiative and Drive”.
2) A confident, assertive mixed economy which enables and encourages freedom to and freedom from and so reduces/avoids the lack of “Feedom Froms” inherent in Neoliberalism aka. .Austeritity.
3) Drastic improvements in our state education set up and our mainstream media, both of which make our children, young peiople and our citizenry misinformed, malinformed, unquestioning and hyper gullible
4) Ditto our pseudo democratic set up which is currently, basically an oligarchy with a crummy democratic facade, that has resulted in goverment which represents anti-social financialism instead of pro-social products and services
Could it be the recent and current goverments are more concerned for finance than for the welfare and enablement of its citizens?
The attached article illustrates the latter two points.
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2026/01/30/is-your-pension-safe/
3) Fundamental reforms of our governmental s
Dear me. The notion that the state has no role in the economy was never really part of the old Liberal Party. Gladstone nationalised the Post Office and Foster’s Education Act (circa 1870) made education a matter for the state. Various Liberal government’s involved the state taking a role.
It should be clear to any modern day Liberal that there is a clear role for the state in providing utilities and health care, which the private sector has simple failed to provide efficiently. Of course, Liberals want private enterprise to be the backbone of the economy, but the increasing monopolisation of much of the economy by big tech also necessitates state intervention, probably on a European or even international scale.
Back to the drawing board, Mr Loveridge
Obviously there are many strands to liberalism, and I’m not a party member any more, but I had understood many liberals to have a significantly more nuanced understanding than state = bad and state = good.
Liberals should be able to distinguish between the centralised versus localised state and the democratic versus the autocratic state. I think many liberals would be quite happy with the idea that the state is not the same thing as society, but that the state can have a significant role in enabling societies and communities to reach consensus and have a stable basis to address their issues, through various routes and institutions some of which might be state-run, some of which might be state-protected but not state run, and some of which might be autonomous of the state but not commercial.
“Liberalism has never thrived when it sees the State as the solution to societal and economic problems.”
I’m not sure all liberals are totally happy with the idea that laissez-faire individualism is the sum toto of the Liberal learning from 200 years of experiment and learning.
And whilst it might be right to see the state assuming that forbidding things (as per the social media ban) might be a bad idea, clearly there is a reasonable role – if we look at other past discussions about commercialised media content, power and impact in UK history – for the state as a regulator, or as the midwife of independent or quasi-independent regulators.
“Liberalism has never thrived when it sees the State as the solution to societal and economic problems.”
If we accept John Parry’s recent analysis (*) (which I do) Liberals haven’t really been that hung up on state ownership or not. Parry’s thesis is that Liberalism is about over-dominant interest groups and over-centralized institutional power – which can of course include the state, whether as owner of assets or controller of an unaccountable security apparatus.
One of the checks on Trump may well end up being markets – which is exactly what that economic liberal (and friend of Keynes though of course economically they disagreed profoundly) Hayek would predict.
(*) Here and well worth a read: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Liberalism-Short-Histories-Jonathan-Parry/dp/1788218051
I would think it is rather odd of you to say the state isn’t the answer to our societal problems then propose more state funding for education. I think you have an issue with the proscriptive state, but are then using the word ‘state’ to indicate this when the state has many more roles and ways it can either help or hinder. Falling into the language of anti-state libertarianism is not helpful or analytical.
@David Raw
“That notion was tested almost to destruction by those leading the party between 2010-15 ……… and almost drowned in a drift to the Tories way back in the 1930’s”
I wouldn’t push that argument too far. From the 1920s to 2015 (except the Lib-Lab pact) liberals were effectively excluded from power.
Such influence as liberals had was from the side lines or as closet members of other parties (Roy Jenkins for example or Churchill and (puts hard hat on) arguably Thatcher.)
Today there is a massive opportunity for liberals. The Conservative coalition created in the 1920s and 30s of paternalists, authoritarian nationalists and economically) liberal internationalists and free traders is deeply fractured – quite possibly irretrievably.
It would be a terrible waste if a rigid insistence on social liberal purity prevented us taking advantage of the opportunity, and a tragedy if we did not stop the authoritarian Farage as a result.
“It should be clear to any modern day Liberal that there is a clear role for the state in providing utilities”
What do we mean by this? I’m not aware it’s party policy that any utility should be re-nationalised. The closest I know about is water where the idea is public benefit companies. (*)
Obviously there is a role in enforcing (say) environmental regulation and structuring a functioning and reliable system.
Tristan Ward and David Raw, this is a distraction from the main thrust of Danny’s argument, but:
I’m not sure liberalism is well-served by imagining the 1930s UK conservative party and all the 1930s ‘Conservative’ led governments as monolithic ideological conservative entities with only a few isolated liberals poking out (ie Churchill). The weird thing about second-quarter-century politics is both Chamberlain and Churchill saw themselves as liberals at heart (Chamberlain seeing himself as a Liberal Unionist and hating the term conservative), and both Labour and Tories were riddled with ex-liberal figures, whilst the Liberals split any number of ways, disseminating liberal thinking of various kinds in all directions.
The key thing here is no one ‘owns’ liberalism and its ideas and principles (personal liberty, democracy, choice, conscience, community, stability, fairness, governmental competence and honesty, empowerment of the disempowered, challenge to monopoly and autocracy) point in different directions and have to be held in tension.
Liberalism is at one and the same time: the parent of the modern state and continuously anxious about what is has been and might become; capitalism’s great enabler and its keenest scrutiniser and guilty conscience; devoutionist democracy’s biggest fan and the nursery of technocrats and bureaucrats.
When push comes to shove and a trade-off has to be made, are the Liberal Democrats a liberal party or a progressive party?
I very much suspect, Dav, you would have to be very clear and precise about which push and which shove and on which topic and on what day and what the trade-offs were and who was in the room at the time, and exactly what you meant by those terms.
@Joan Summers: Really poor analogy with minimum age for things like tobacco because tobacco is inherently dangerous for anyone to use, young or old, with no meaningful benefits. Social media is not inherently harmful, for the young or old. As I wrote under other posts, the harm comes from the algorithms and AI bots on the social platforms (and they affect both adults and children). Ban young people from social media and leaving those things alone and nobody will benefit, except for the social media companies. Rather we have to regulate the business model, banning algorithms that encourage addictive behaviour and promote harmful content.
Banning children from social media seems rather paternalistic. As in other issues affecting children, it seems that the adults are talking at or about them, rather than to them. This is not the liberal way.
@ Tristan Ward “I wouldn’t push that argument too far. From the 1920s to 2015 (except the Lib-Lab pact) liberals were effectively excluded from power”.
Sorry, Tristan, Not so. They were not ‘effectively excluded from power’. You forget the Liberal National Party led by Sir John Simon in which they held several very senior offices of State from the early 1930’s. See David Dutton’s biography of Simon and also his book on the National Liberal Party.
@ Matt (Bristol). ‘Chamberlain and Churchill saw themselves as liberals at heart’.
Sorry, Matt, don’t agree – whilst Churchill had a soft spot for and helped Lady Violet he made several comments to the contrary (see Lord Riddell’s diary). Mrs Churchill did continue (very quietly) to be a Liberal.
Suggest you download article (it’s online) :
The Historical Journal 38,1 (1995) pp 133-143, Cambridge University Press. Graham Goodlad, The Liberal Nationals 1931-40 : The problems of a party in ‘Partnership Government’.
“When push comes to shove and a trade-off has to be made, are the Liberal Democrats a liberal party or a progressive party?”
Always a liberal party I hope. Right now I hope not “progressive” but that is because I cannot see a credible and sustainable “progressive” political destination to progress to. Right now our overriding job is to prevent regression.
To put it another way- what sustainable political philosophy/vision is there beyond liberal democracy that enables more wealth and freedom, or at least sustainable maintenance of what we have?
@ Tristan Ward “are the Liberal Democrats a liberal party or a progressive party?”
Certainly when I joined the Liberal Party in the early 1960’s it was both, Tristan. In the last twenty years I’m not so sure. What I am sure about is that we need something to be inspired by rather than something to be put up with.
@ Matt
“I’m not sure liberalism is well-served …. etc ”
Agreed. I see those governments as being coalitions between liberals and conservatives cohering into the Conservative party.
Today socialism and communism is historically bankrupt (see Fukuyama). The forces that drove many liberals and tories together in the 1920s and 30s were fear of the left specifically Bolshevism and want of power. Now there is no reason to fear the left in the same way so that post 1920 coalition is free to break down into its liberal and authoritarian parts (*). The current very real threat is authoritarianism. We know what that looks like from the 1930s and 1940s.
We will see if the wider liberal forces are able to resist that authoritarianism. I see social liberalism’s particular contribution as ensuing no one is enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity – red lines that must be defended – but I think they are best defended as part of a package including the other classic liberal ideas and principles you mention; and I would include free markets and free trade as tools to be used in that package, not feared or despised.
Great final paragraph if I may say so.
(*) Drop in on Conservative Home (if you dare) for evidence of this.
@David
I’m sorry: I should have written:
“I wouldn’t push that argument too far. From the 1930s to 2015 (except for the war) the Liberal Party held no government office and thus no power.”
I looked at the journal you helpfully mentioned. Only the first page is available for free, but it does seem to argue that the Liberal Nationals were for practical purposes. effectively members of the Tory Party for most of the 1930s.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/historical-journal/article/abs/liberal-nationals-19311940-the-problems-of-a-party-in-partnership-government/769C0D96EFD7976EA22F2D43AF923BE4
Tristan, the other elements here that dont get a mention in the article (or in Davs reduction to ‘progressive’ vs ‘liberal’) are the very Lib Dem emphases on localism and consensualism which are not necessarily ideologically Liberal (they arguably are as important to European style Christian Democrat thinking of the 50s and 60s) and are not necessarily pro or anti state and fall beyween the stools of the modern sense of ‘liberal’ and ‘authoritarian’ (because in a fundamentalist-individualist society community smacks of conformity but genuine authoritarisns dont like consensus or genuine autonomy). Im not sure how much these ekdments feature in much lib dem thinking now (although observably an instinctual element of their practice and sometimes their inhoerdntly subconscious habits). Personally i yearn for an ideologically consensualist democratic party but it aint on the menu now, and the people now ckaiming to be one nation conservatives are considedably less consensual (in terms of a cross societal consesnsus) than their forbears…
David Raw: yes, i think i overstated things about 30s churchill. I regretted that sentence somewhat after posting, although his betworks with liberals were a key part of what stuck the 40s cabinet together and arguably paved the way for his relationshil with attlee…
Whilst the right in British politics is yet again looking across the pond at Trump . perhaps modern Liberal Democracy should be looking across the pond as well towards Canada , Mark Carney has been making some interesting speeches about middle sized economies and the threat of power hungry large states undermining those economies , he reflects both economic and social liberalism in a modern age and unlike our own party does not rely upon the past to define modern liberal democracy .
Competence is for me the defining issue that will elevate Liberal Democracy to the heights it deserves in the UK. We have ample opportunity to show how we govern and we should promote our local achievements more. Trust is hard earned in our democracy and when there is little else to show it, the public will grasp even the slendiest of roots.