The Liberal Democrats have a habit of arguing through books. The Orange Book, the Little Yellow Book, the Green Book; each tried to say something important about the future of our party. But taken together, they still leave one tradition unnamed: liberal social democracy.
These books aren’t just publications, but attempts to define what kind of party we are.
The Orange Book laid out a deliberate statement of intent in 2004. It was a serious effort to restate one kind of liberalism and carve out a path that distinguished us from the Conservative and Labour Parties at the time.
The Little Yellow Book argued for a more socially liberal, people-centred direction, one that grounded us in progressive thought and provided us a home on the centre-left.
The Green Book widened the frame by placing environmental limits and stewardship at the heart of our party, providing us with a framework to tackle one of the greatest challenges of our time.
Yet for all this intellectual activity, the party still has not fully named one of its own inheritances: the liberal-social-democratic tradition that runs through Jo Grimond’s realignment vision, through the Alliance, the merger, and the best of the SDP strain in our history. This did not begin at Limehouse alone. Grimond had already begun to sketch out a politics that rejected the stale binaries of British public life and looked instead to a radical centre grounded in liberty, reform, and a fairer distribution of power.
It must be said, this ground has not gone entirely uncovered. The Future of Social Democracy, published to mark the 40th anniversary of the Limehouse Declaration, made an important contribution to the argument of our inheritance. But commemoration is not the same as consolidation. The party still lacks a central statement of how its liberal social-democratic traditions fit together now, not just historically, but politically.
Those traditions, taken together, allow for a freer economy without worker insecurity; markets where they work, along with public power where it is needed; individual liberty joined with social protection; reforming institutions, not just managing decline; dispersing power from both the state and the market.
A new book not only brings a new direction but also gives party members a shared language. It shows that social democracy still has a legitimate home inside the Liberal Democrats, and is not just an idea owned and operated by the Labour Party. It will connect economic fairness, democratic reform, and liberal pluralism, and make clear that this is not a tradition grounded in anti-liberal thought, but just a different expression of liberalism in practice.
The next Lib Dem book should not be an exercise in settling old arguments. Call it the Gold Book, a statement of confidence that liberal reform and social democracy belong together.
Our party is at its best when it says so plainly.
* Jack Meredith is a member of the Welsh Liberal Democrats and an active campaigner and canvasser with Swansea and Gower Liberal Democrats. His writing focuses on democratic reform, social justice, trade unionism, economic democracy, and the institutional foundations of effective government. He has written for the Fabians, Lib Dem Voice, Liberator, Nation Cymru, Bylines Cymru, and Centre Think Tank.
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23 Comments
A useful contribution. However, the phrase “markets where they work” requires some serious fleshing out. For example, are we starting from the position that ‘markets mostly work’, in which case we need to identify the specific cases where markets don’t work, and to provide some idea of what intervention is required to make up for market failings? Or are we starting from a position closer to ‘markets usually don’t work’, perhaps due to environmental damage not being fully taken into account?
If we take the position that ‘markets usually don’t work’, what alternative to market forces are we proposing to decide on the allocation of scare resources to different possible purposes and to determining how what is produced is shared or allocated to those who want it?
Thank you very much for this, Jack – I could not agree more. It seems to me that much less is said about social democracy on LDV than about liberalism, and I feel that is a pity. In this world of oligarchs social democracy is an important part of the answer. We must make the case.
It would help if somebody could accurately define exactly what ‘social democracy’ is. As someone there at the time, fighting the 1983 General Election, I observed and got the impression, that it was mostly those who didn’t like poor old Michael Foot. They certainly made a right old hash of the Darlington by-election….. and as for the Bootle b y-election ???
As for Jo Grimond, in 1981 he said “that the Liberal-SDP Alliance “occasionally looks too much like a half-way house on the old road to state socialism,” and suggesting that the SDP was not as radical in cutting the state as he would have preferred”.
At a time when our government is spending more on welfare than it brings in in income tax it seems to me that Social democracy that focuses on Government intervention to solve problems rather than Liberalism which says the Government shoukd set the stage for individuals to thrive ,an only intervene where individuals need assistance to thrive ,the choice is clear. Why do I feel sometimes the Libetal Democrats are only a Liberal Party rather than a collective Party when it suits us.
Might theories/policies and practicalities which engaged the L D party in the following be an O K start for a “Spectrum Book”?
1] A mixed market which enables/encourages coopetion between the state and the private sector
2] Reform of the tax system so that it is genuinely progressive and transparent and so ceases to favour the wealthy
3] Removes the charging of students for tertiary education and uses state investment for the tertiary education of all in apprenticeships and the like to increase the resouce capability of our society
4] Makes it clear that money is not a resource, like food, healthcare etc. but a tool for exchange activities
5} Makes it clear that the national finance set up is not like a domestic finance set up because homes cannot create money
PS
Coopetition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coopetition
Spectrum Thinking https://medium.com/@KS_nss_vadodara/dancing-in-the-grey-why-spectrum-thinking-matters-991501c5453c
@David Raw: Presumably you mean the first 1990 Bootle by-election*, in which the Owenite rump “continuing” SDP won fewer votes than the OMRLP. The party was wound up soon afterwards. Although it claimed continuity with the original Gang-of-Four SDP, this was misleading as the Lib Dems are the legal successor party to both the SDP and the Liberals. None of the “continuing” SDPs have any relevance to the Lib Dems or indeed UK politics. The present “continuing” SDP is rather right-wing.
* The elected MP died a few months later. There was no SDP candidate in the resulting by-election.
@ Alex Macfie Yes, poor Michael Carr, the newly elected Labour MP, sadly died of a heart attack only eight weeks after being elected in the first by-election.
But my main question remains, can somebody accurately define exactly what ‘social democracy’ was or is supposed to be ?
My view at the time was, and still is , it was a negative reaction to and rejection of Michael Foot’s brand of socialism. What it’s supposed to be in 2026 is a mystery. As for Roy Jenkins, his admiring biography of H.H. Asquith back in the early sixties is a bit of a clue as to where his sympathies lay.
David, for my part I have often struggled with what ‘Liberalism’ is? Economic Liberal such as Gladstone or Clegg? Or Social Liberal such as Lloyd George’s People’s Budget and Beveridge and Keynes?
For my part I know which version I prefer and it wasn’t Gladstone when I studied him in History or Clegg when he took over our Party in December 2007. As an SDP member 1983-1988 and a Founder member of the Liberal Democrats in 1988, I did find it uncomfortable when hearing about Liberal ‘sister’ parties such as the FDP in Germany or even Fidesz in Hungary. The Liberal Parties in Australia or Japan are just overseas versions of the Conservatives. On a Parliamentary visit to Sweden I was paired with a Swedish Liberal parliamentarian but in social discussions in a bar found that the New Labour MP’s on the visit were siding with the Swedish Liberals whilst I was putting forward common views with the Swedish Social Democrats.
Signing off now as I am going back out to do more canvassing for our local by elections. Where Reform are the threat and the Greens are trying to undermine us by pretending they can win despite getting extremely low vote shares in the Ward in all previous elections.
David Raw’s question deserves a proper answer rather than more historical atmospherics. Liberal social democracy isn’t a halfway house between liberalism and socialism, and the confusion persists because people keep treating it as a positional compromise rather than a coherent tradition in its own right.
The actual argument, which runs through Hobhouse, Beveridge, and Keynes, is that poverty and powerlessness are themselves constraints on freedom. The liberal case for redistribution and democratic reform isn’t borrowed from the left; it predates the modern left. A society in which only the wealthy can exercise meaningful freedom isn’t a liberal society, whatever else it might be. That’s the tradition Jack is pointing at, and it’s a good one.
Where I’d push back is on the book framing. The Lib Dems’ problem isn’t a shortage of texts. It’s that they haven’t consistently made this argument in public, in plain language, in a way that connects to people’s actual lives. A Gold Book would be useful for giving members shared language, but the harder work is translating that tradition into a politics people can feel, not just intellectuals can cite.
The ideas are there. The case still needs making.
Interesting responses from Paul and Tanya, but what does Tanya mean by “a proper answer rather than more historical atmospherics” before going on to, “the actual argument, which runs through Hobhouse, Beveridge, and Keynes” ? Yes, I’m familiar with them and a few others too, Tanya, plus, ‘The New Liberalism’ by Michael Freeden. History does matter though. The actualite, is what the politicians do.
As we near the centenary of the 1926 General Strike, (I don’t suppose Sir Ed or LDV will acknowledge), I struggle with (Ed, please note) Churchill’s eugenics – sterilise the ‘inadequate’, orders to force feed over 100 suffragettes, his reintroduction of the gold standard leading to the impoverishment of my mother and grandparents and thousands like them. I also struggle with the historical fact that many Liberal MPs were mine owners, mill owners and extremely wealthy – and with Asquith’s possible successor, the millionaire barrister, Sir John Simon, wanting to jail the 1926 strikers.
As for the modern SDP I still recall their chair in the constituency I fought recommending that I campaign on the semitic background of my Tory Cabinet opponent, which still leaves us with what is social democracy if it ever existed ?
“Where I’d push back is on the book framing. The Lib Dems’ problem isn’t a shortage of texts”
I agree. And (at the risk of mentioning another book) can I recommend Jonathan Parry’s “Short History of Liberalism” where assesses what Liberalism is through an assessment of what elected British Liberals and Liberal Democrats did and do. (*)
Parry is interesting: I’m pretty sure he is a member of the party and he was brought up in the 1960s by parents who were members then. At the launch of his book at the National Liberal Club a year or so ago I asked him if liberal were capitalists: his answer was “yes of course”.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Liberalism-Short-Histories-Jonathan-Parry/dp/1788218051
@ David Raw
“I struggle with (Ed, please note) Churchill’s eugenics – sterilise the ‘inadequate’,”
Eugenics is the dirty little secret of the left (which is not to say the right was innocent): Beveridge and Maynard Keynes have history (*) and the likes of Shaw, Laski and the Webbs all line up too (+). There’s no special reason to repudiate Churchill as a liberal on that basis.
We just have to live with the history, repudiate eugenics today and be grateful it was a long time ago.
(*) https://mises.org/mises-wire/keynes-eugenics-race-and-population-control
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Beveridge
(+) https://www.theguardian.com/politics/from-the-archive-blog/2019/may/01/eugenics-founding-fathers-british-socialism-archive-1997
@ Tristan Ward, Parry is an Emeritus Professor of modern political history at Cambridge, Tristan. I don ‘t know whether he is a card carrying member of the Lib Dems though I wish he’d have a quiet word with Sir Ed about defending WSC.
Just ‘cos “the others are guilty” is not much of an excuse, Tristan, and it wouldn’t cut much mustard in front of the beak. Suggest you research Sir William Sutherland MP for an interesting slice of life.
@ David Raw
The William Sutherland who was an aide to Lloyd George and who published “Old Age Pensions in Theory and Practice” in 1907 providing much of the policy analysis underlying Old Age Pensions Act 1908? Not to mention his support for DLG’s land policies. If only those spin doctors and colliery owners knew how to be proper consistent villains.
“Just ‘cos “the others are guilty” is not much of an excuse”
Not for the first time you are judging people by the standards of our time rather than theirs. In the early 20th Century eugenics was all the rage: it was scientific, anti-religious, modern, fashionable – one might even say say “progressive”.
I agree that that Davey’s brush with Churchill, badgers and bank notes struck the wrong note, but at a time when liberal democracy is under world wide threat from the same kind of forces Churchill made his name fighting and beating it seems to me to be politically inept to repudiate him given his history in our party.
Sorry, Tristan, I’m afraid you look at history with a Nelsonian eye. Lloyd George took no part in the preparation of the 1908 budget, indeed he struggled with it. It was already done by Asquith before he took over from Campbell-Bannerman as PM.
As for WW11, Churchill didn’t beat Hitler….. though his camp followers make that claim. It was done by the ordinary folk who put their lives on the line, and assuming they survived, gave their opinion of WSC in 1945 – as had the ordinary folk of Dundee back in 1922.
As for the standards of their time, dig a bit deeper on the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925, Bronco Bill Sutherland and the LLG millions.
@David Raw Whatever the meaning of ‘social democracy’, I would not necessarily expect to find it in political parties that happen to be called “social democratic”. What’s in a name? The modern “continuing” SDP is no more social democratic than the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party is either liberal or democratic. Neither the LDP nor the Liberal Party of Australia even claim to be ideologically “liberal”. They are not members of Liberal International. Thankfully Fidesz is no longer a sister party either.
Reading through the various comments particularly Paul Holmes and Tanya Park it is clear we have moved on from the Gladstonian brand of liberalism and feel more comfortable with a social liberal brand of politics closer to Beveridge and Keynes Just depending upon the free market to solve every problem has clearly failed particularly with our key public access services . but that requires whole sale reform not state control . I agree with Tanya a new gold book and perhaps a refreshed Liberal Democrat message for 2026 is required .
Further to David’s question about what is Social Democracy? Nearly half a century ago now I read ‘Politics is for People’ written by Shirley Williams and published in 1981, the year I joined the Social Democrats. The first part was based upon lectures she had prepared whilst teaching at Harvard in 1979 and opened with talk of Keynes, Dahrendorf, Marx, Crosland and many others. It analysed how various European countries dealt or failed to deal with, the issue, the West German Socialists for example switching from Socialism to Social Democracy at the Bad Godsberg conference in 1959.
It all seemed like a pretty coherent introduction to me. Much of the book also dealt in detail with the real everyday issues of how all this applied to real political issues and people’s everyday lives. Something which grabbed my attention much more than reading the more abstract and philosophical Liberal principles espoused in ‘On Liberty’ had done 6 years earlier when I was at University.
Thanks for the tip off about Shirley William’s book, Paul.
I always had a soft spot for Shirley, but especially for her mother Vera Brittain. ‘Testament of Youth’ should be on everybody’s bookshelf – and it does a lot to explain the change of the popular mood from 1906 to post WW1.
Shirley’s book is currently on Abe books at £ 2.50 including postage. A bargain.
@ David Raw
“Lloyd George took no part in the preparation of the 1908 budget”
I didn’t ‘t say he did, so this is a classic straw man argument. (*) The point is that – despite the easy characterisation of Sutherland as a wicked colliery owner and spin doctor he seems to have played an important part in the implementation of Britain’s Old Age Pension by Lloyd George by contributing to the Old Age Pensions Act 1908.
“Churchill didn’t beat Hitler….. ……… It was……. the ordinary folk who put their lives on the line….gave their opinion of WSC in 1945”
Sorry – this is just cant.
(*) The same goes for your point about Lloyd George’s well known sale of honours.
Tristam, this really is tedious. Sutherland may have drafted a booklet on pensions when he was a civil servant at the Board of Trade, but it was Asquith (at the Treasury)who produced and introduced the 1908 Budget (with pensions) shortly after C.B.’s death and succeeded as PM.
Sutherland became a coal owner in 1921 when he married Miss Annie Fountain of the Wharncliffe group near Barnsley… (LLG and the first Mrs LLG attended), and took over the group. On 1 May 1926, he locked out the Wharncliffe miners after they refused to accept an imposed pay cut and longer hours. They were out for nine months with all that implies in terms of hardship and suffering.
Yes, with Maundy Gregory, Bill Sutherland was LLG’s sales manager for Honours. Try looking up Prof. Martin Pugh on Bronco Bill.
As to Churchill, he was rejected by a landslide in July, 1945. That’s not cant, its a fact about mass opinion. The actual people who won the war rejected him.
Yes
If one of our aims is to build a more cohesive society then income and wealth inequality must be a key measure. To tackle inssues such as climate change it is essential everyone feels involved and able to play their part in tackling it. Significant inequalities hinder this and allow sectors of our society to feel that they are not important with little input into how their lives unfold.
When I was a young lad some 70 years ago, my dad educated me about Darwin’s discovery and its implications. The triumphant emergence and dominance of the human race was a consequence of “survival of the fittest”. But paradoxically, the successes of modern scientific medicine threatened the long-term degeneration of the human race.
Whereas children with serious genetic deficiencies would not previously have survived into adulthood, modern medicine could enable them to reproduce. This presented humanity with a difficult dilemma. Either we had to accept the long-term genetic decline of humanity, or we had to consider eugenic policies, such as sterilisation of the mentally subnormal (to adopt the language then in common use). My dad, like very many others, feared that eugenics could prove to be the lesser evil.
Well, seventy years later, it seems to me that Dad’s argument had only one major flaw – That the deterioration of the human gene pool has actually turned out to be far less of a concern than was predicted seventy years ago. But that wasn’t known at the time.
Judging historical actions and attitudes on the basis of newer knowledge is wrong.