2 Comments

• Geoffrey Payne 1st Dec '11 - 10:43pm

  I congratulate Mark for asking some excellent questions but … I also notice that he seems to think he has exclusive rights to the term “Liberal”. The “continuing” Liberal party are not up to much but at least they hav preserved the original preamble of the Liberal party that I joined many years ago. We were not a “small state” party back then, and indeed we believed in an active state to achieve Liberal ends, see part 4; http://www.liberal.org.uk/library/constitution.htm#preamble
  I notice that nothing at all was asked about the environment. David Laws seems to inhabit this strange world where he can simply detach himself completely from it, and this is the most disappointing thing I find about economic liberals, they live in a 2 dimensional world where success or failure is measured by competition and market forces. Odd they still think like that after the banking fiasco and the consequences we are still having to deal with many years later.
  He doesn’t comment on the fact that the motion proposing free schools and academies was rejected by an amendment supported at Lib Dem conference by a 10 – 1 majority.
  The most intriguing point he makes is that he now pre-supposes that he has shifted the Lib Dems away from a localism based on democracy and more towards one of top down marketisation where consumers choose rather than people vote. The very thing that Nick Clegg denied he believed in during the Lib Dem leadership debate. This is something the party has never voted for at Federal conference.

• Mark Littlewood 2nd Dec '11 - 1:37am

  Geoffrey,

  Thanks for your kind comments re: content of questions.

  On some of your other points/questions:

  I certainly don’t think I have exclusive rights to the term “liberal” and I’m curious as to how you reached this conclusion.

  I don’t think the term “liberal” belongs exclusively to anyone – and it isn’t automatically owned by political parties who use the word in their name either. I do like the last line of the Liberal Party constitution though, which if I recall correctly, reads “in all spheres, we put freedom first” (that obviously opens up a big debate about what freedom means though).

  No. I didn’t ask David about the environment. It simply didn’t cross my mind to. This isn’t because environmental issues are unimportant, it’s because David isn’t very interesting on the subject as far as I’m aware. Even in an hour long interview, there are some major constraints of time. I’m content that I picked the right set of questions given David’s career, background, areas of expertise etc.

  I’m still bemused as to how the banking crisis is seen as a free market liberal failure. The banking industry was and is one of the most heavily regulated, state controlled, government backed sectors of all. Having a backstop for any company of a multi-billion pound taxpayer-funded bailout is the precise opposite of the free market, it’s much closer to socialism. Privatising profits and nationalising losses is likely to lead to the sort of horrific outcome we witnessed (and are paying for).

  In your last couple of sentences, I’m not wholly sure whether the “he” refers to me or David.

  I think I read out the conference motion on free schools accurately (I didn’t reference, didn’t know and didn’t much care the size of the majority it secured).

  Re: your last sentence, I think you’re right that David did imply there had been a move or shift towards “individual empowerment” rather than “localised democracy” in party thinking.

  Whether this is true or not, whether it is consistent with some of Nick’sprevious statements and whether it is inconsistent with any policies or pronouncements from the Federal Party is very much for you – and other viewers – to decide.

  Thanks again for your feedback.