No respectable publication seems to be able to interview any senior male Liberal Democrat these days without asking about their leadership ambitions. The Independent on Sunday was no different but it was slightly irritating that it had to spend half the article writing about a contest that hasn’t even been called yet. To be fair, they are doing it with Tories and Labour too, although not to the same extent. There was a chat on Pienaar’s Politics this morning comparing Yvette Cooper and Theresa May for example.
Anyway, Norman gave that sort of very diplomatic reply which he can do as a very obvious close ally of the leader:
When people raise this with me it inevitably makes you think, in the circumstances envisaged, what would I do?” said Mr Lamb. “I have to answer the question. I’m fiercely loyal to Nick. I always have been, but at some point there will be a further [leadership election] and I will consider the position. I am open-minded about it. My view is if people think well of the job that I’ve done [as Health minister] and people then, as a result, conclude they want me to have a go for the top job, then I will consider it.”
What they didn’t mention about Norman is how well respected he is by activists. However people feel about the coalition, they love the work he’s been doing on mental health. Should there be a contest at some point in the future, Lamb is bound to be a strong contender. Of that there is no doubt.
It’s not until you get way down the article that they’ve put in some interesting stuff he has to say about his own brief. It’s clear that he is still full of new ideas:
The North Norfolk MP added he had asked civil servants to look into the possibility of raising cash for the NHS by selling off unused land, such as former hospital sites.
Despite describing himself as an economic liberal, he would also use the surpluses from foundation trusts to fund cash-starved parts of the NHS in the same area. Mr Lamb denied suggestions that a raid on successful trusts would act as a disincentive for them to perform well. “It’s public money. They’re not private organisations, for goodness sake,” he said. “Let’s use that money to make the system more efficient.”
Anything to do with public sector IT is enough to send most people into despair, but Norman wants to modernise the NHS:
He would also establish a “transformation fund” which would digitalise the NHS and care system “once and for all”. Mr Lamb added: “It’s unbelievable that here today there will be thousands of faxes flying around the NHS. What other part of our economy still uses fax machines? Every part of the economy has seen improvements in productivity as a result of digitalisation. That hasn’t happened yet in the NHS.”
He was asked about ways to improve the party’s horrendous gender balance. After talking about the aggressive, brutal off-putting political culture, he suggested some sort of clustering system rather than All Women Shortlists:
“We have failed ultimately to get a good balance into Parliament and we have to think of other things to pump- prime the change,” said Mr Lamb. “The current imbalance, the likely continued imbalance and the potential for the situation to be less good make me believe that something more is required and that’s why I argue for some form of positive action.”
The party needs to focus on regional groups of about 10 to 20 constituencies, rather than have all-women shortlists for the party’s few safe seats, he said. “You may get a cluster of seats, and you say within that cluster of seats there has to be 50:50 [candidates] between men and women. You then avoid imposing a particular shortlist on a particular seat, but within that they will have to work together to get a balance of men and women.”
It’s good to see he’s thinking about that, but one of the questions I’d want to ask him is about how you then make sure that women are selected for the winnable seats in that clustering set-up.
There’s a link within the article to a feature of “10 things you didn’t know about Nick Clegg”, none of which, I suspect will be news to many of us.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings
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43 Comments
The rule is that if he doesn’t say no then he means yes.
I think he would be a good choice, although I am undecided for now.
I think we need a more fundamental solution to NHS funding but I am not aware that anyone has the answer for that. On the issue of gender we always seem to be chasing our tails on this one. Is he suggesting something we haven’t tried already?
A good way to throw the spanner into the works of the media’s king-making games and criticisms about Lib Dem attitudes to women is to have a female leader next.
People will say that the stand out candidates appear to be men, but with a top class advisory board I think one of the Lib Dem’s women MPs could do a very good job next.
I know people will say “but I’m not saying the men need a top class advisory board”, but I’m trying to square the circle of having a situation where the few stand out candidates appear to be men, but where Lib Dems need to challenge gender inequality in the party’s own ranks.
As shown on Liberal England this morning, Norman is following the script written for him by Sir Humphrey Appleby.
I am an outsider in all this, but it has been apparent for some time that Lamb was being positioned as the successor to Clegg. He is the continuity candidate.
He was very close to the ‘Lansley’ NHS reform bill that even the Tories now admit was their biggest mistake in government. At the very least he would not need to apologise for his role in passing that bill.
As Liberal Democrats we are heading into this election with some clear (but largely uncontested) views on mental health, but no clear policy on the NHS.
If I knew his views on the NHS they may not be too different to mine. However he has been part of a tactic that has led us to abandon our role as a national party, and enter the election without clear policies or political positions in many areas.
I would find that difficult to stomach as a strategy for the party following the election. In fact it would make membership of the party pointless.
“I’m fiercely loyal to Nick. I always have been, but at some point there will be a further [leadership election] and I will consider the position.”
Sir Humphrey didn’t write that bit. The word “fiercely” is, in a sense, unnecessary. Sir Humphrey’s draft would be something like “Well, there isn’t a vacancy at the moment, and I am very happy to serve under Nick Clegg for as long as he wants to continue as leader. But at some point…” etcetera etcetera. That would be quite enough to show a reasonable degree of loyalty and to avoid any accusation of destabilising the current leader.
Since “fiercely” is not necessary, it follows that its use is deliberate and important. As Stephen Donnelly says, it is a ringing declaration that Lamb stands for continuity. That must mean the alliance with the Conservatives.
“A senior MP said Mr Lamb and Mr Davey would have to be “locked up in a room and work out a Granita-style deal”, referring to the 1994 meeting that resulted in Tony Blair standing for the Labour leadership rather than Gordon Brown. Sources say both men are too similar as party centrists and they would split each other’s vote, leaving them with little hope of defeating Mr Farron.”
Thanks Independent on Sunday. So you’re saying that the majority of MPs and peers want one or other of these “centrists” – for which read, followers of the gravy train that is the Conservative alliance.
The activists want Farron, who is not a Tory. But since when (since 2008) did this party bother what the activists think?
As I, like Stephen, am an outsider, I suppose I should defer to David’s enjoyable Kremlinology, though I can’t resist some observations of my own…
The first thing I’d say is that I agree with Geoffrey, David, Jonathan and others that Norman Lamb is quite clearly minded to stand for the leadership if and when a vacancy arises. I’m not sure how well this free-ranging speculation will have gone down with Nick Clegg. My first reaction was to nod in agreement with the person who commented on Liberal England: “Well, if the fierce loyalists are telling the press two months before a general election that there’s going to be a leadership contest at some point, I hate to think what the traitors are up to!”
On further reflection, though, the proximity of the election might actually have created a window for Lamb to hypothesise in this way. He knows that such speculation is unlikely to be damaging to Clegg given that there is no prospect of a leadership change this side of the election; it would have been much more destabilising to have entertained such thoughts publicly a couple of years ago when Clegg’s position was vulnerable.
I suppose it is even conceivable that Clegg encouraged Lamb, who I would imagine is likely to be his favoured successor, to let it be known that he was up for leading the party – or at least that he did so with Clegg’s knowledge and blessing.
Perhaps that is over-thinking it. Clegg presumably still holds out hope of the Lib Dems confounding the more pessimistic forecasts and returning enough MPs to justify his continuing as leader. But it must be a possibility; in the event that he concludes that he cannot, or does not want to, stay on as leader, Clegg would presumably like to see his centrist legacy preserved. He will be aware that the more left-leaning Tim Farron is already off to a flying start in the jockeying to succeed him, and might be keen for Lamb to stake his claim to be a contender before it is too late.
I’d also observe that Farron is playing a canny game at the moment, seeking to broaden his appeal across the party with some counter-intuitive statements that indicate he would be receptive to all the various strands of party opinion and not a boilerplate left-winger, and with speeches and articles focusing on philosophy and policy designed to dispel the idea that he is a mere populist unencumbered by an interest in serious long-term thinking. This is a sensible attempt to neutralise the opposition that he might face in those parts of the parliamentary party that do not share the activists’ enthusiasm for him.
I’d much rather a pact between Norman Lamb and Steve Webb.
David’s surmise about the significance of Lamb’s words “fiercely loyal” seems plausible to me. It might indicate a determination to be the standard-bearer for Cleggite centrism, and that would fit with what I have always seen as Lamb’s political stance.
He strikes me as an Orange Book man, indeed more so than some of the contributors to that contentious, if largely unread, publication. But he is naturally conciliatory and moderate rather than an intellectual outrider like Jeremy Browne. It is not his way to challenge party orthodoxy head-on, but if he believes it is necessary he will patiently and persistently lay the groundwork to do so. He appears to share with Clegg, David Laws, Danny Alexander, (previously) Chris Huhne and perhaps also Steve Webb and Ed Davey the conviction that the Lib Dems should seize the chance to be in government if any half-decent opportunity presents itself, that the compromises and responsibilities that come with power, however painful, are preferable to the comfort – and marginalisation – of opposition.
His instincts as regards public services are those of a pragmatic reformer. As this article reports, he regards himself as an economic liberal, and I think there is some evidence for that insofar as he is keen on the idea of choice in public services, is non-doctrinaire about the role of the private and voluntary sectors in public service delivery, and shows some signs of disliking state monopoly.
I remember it was he who first tried (unsuccessfully at the time, but very much with the support of Vince Cable, who went on to deliver the policy in government) to persuade a Lib Dem conference of the need to liberalise and bring private capital into the Royal Mail. He pushed for a policy that would share the costs of long-term care between individuals and the state, as opposed to the previous Lib Dem policy of ‘free’ – that is, entirely tax-financed – social care. And while he expressed strong public reservations about the Lansley NHS reforms, it was noticeable that, unlike other opponents, he did not make theological statements about the horrors of competition, but pointed to practical deficiencies and the central role accorded to GP consortia (a producer interest) rather than patients themselves.
To his credit, he appears to approach questions like the future of the NHS and other public services first and foremost from an analysis of the long-term policy challenges and only then from the point of view of how the Lib Dems might be able to carve out partisan advantage – although this may count against him with his less scrupulous colleagues.
That said, there is a danger that his pragmatism, a virtue, could become tepid managerialism, a vice. In other words he might be susceptible to the same criticism that is levelled, not altogether unfairly in my view, at the party’s positioning under Nick Clegg. Lamb’s penchant for cross-party solutions shows his fundamentally constructive nature and moderate, consensual instincts; but, by the same token, a more sceptical observer might wonder whether it disguises a lack of distinctive content or an unwillingness to take a brave but unpopular stand unless there is the safety in numbers of cross-party consensus.
Overall, he seems to me the most appealing of the likely candidates from the centre/centre-right of the party. If the comments by Lib Dem members on this site are any guide to the centre of gravity in the party, I would have thought he would struggle to beat Farron. I’m aware that other surveys of party opinion suggest the hostility to Clegg in these parts may not be representative of broader party opinion.
But in the circumstances in which a leadership contest seems most likely to arise – a disastrous election result triggering Clegg’s swift departure – there will surely be an appetite for a break with the recent past. Quite clearly the Jeremy Browne analysis will not find favour, so the party’s interpretation of the change required is likely to be a reversion to its more traditionally left-of-centre positioning with Farron as leader (no doubt with Farron seeking to maintain party unity by praising Clegg’s resilience and making some centrist gestures).
I imagine that, given his personal and political closeness to Clegg, Lamb will find it hard to shake off the perception that he is the ‘continuity’ candidate and for that reason will not offer a convincing enough break with the party’s recent traumas.
As we don’t have an “agree” button, I have to state that I agree with the comment of Alex. Says it all.
Only 9 months ago there was a list of names regularly appearing in LDV and the wider media saying that there was no candidate amongst the sitting MPs that could possibly replace Old Nick.
Now everything seems to have changed.
Norman Lamb, Ed Davey, even (rather implausibly) Danny Alexander and more understandably Lynne Featherstone are all frequently mentioned.
Some suggest Alistair Carmichael – although as he will soon be the only Liberal Democrat to the North of Westmoreland he may have other priorities after May.
There seems to be a lot of agreement on one thing. The membership support Tim Farron and nobody, but nobody supports Old Nick.
When even Ming Campbell is plotting against him Clegg really should recognise that the game is up.
@John Tilley “Only 9 months ago there was a list of names regularly appearing in LDV and the wider media saying that there was no candidate amongst the sitting MPs that could possibly replace Old Nick.”
Really ? Can you be kind enough to give us a link? People have been talking about Ed Davey and Tim Farron as possible leadership candidates for ages – recently joined by Norman and Alastair.
When you say ” the membership support Tim”, I think you mean “many of the more vocal activists support Tim”. As we saw in the Presidential election there are big differences between the vocal activists and the membership.
@JohnTilley
There was no candidate then, as shown by no MP calling for Nick to go. That is just a matter of record. Also, the membership did not support changing NC. You, and many others, have been vocal voices calling for NC to resign, but you were not in the majority on that. For whatever their reasons might be, most did not call for NC to go.
I’d be more surprised if there was not talk of the next leader before this election, there is for all three parties. NC is likely to go this year as a matter of course, and I think should do so (a party leader for three elections is, to my mind, wrong) but so will either DC or EM.
And yes, I still support Old Nick! TF wil be the next leader, a different side of the party to my own but he is the candidate I support as I think he’ll be the person to unite the party. Cometh the hour, cometh the right candidate (though I can’t help but wish Kirsty Williams was standing this year…).
But, enough of that now – let us instead make sure we have a solid slate of MPs from which to pick!
ATF
You are correct to say that there was no actual candidate 9 months ago.
My point however was the pretence by a lot of people in LDV that only Clegg could possibly lead the party.
Some even suggested that all he needed was a few more months and the voters would start to show their appreciation for the magnificent job he had done promoting ‘Nice Conservatism’
Didn’t work did it?
@JohnTilley
I for one was arguing that only NC could lead the party into the election, which I stand by.
Prepare to faint, but I also still think we could see a NC uptick in the weeks ahead – GB managed something of a bounce back in 2010 afterall. Wisely or not, I remain glass half full on these matters.
@John Tilley “My point however was the pretence by a lot of people in LDV that only Clegg could possibly lead the party.
Some even suggested that all he needed was a few more months and the voters would start to show their appreciation for the magnificent job he had done promoting ‘Nice Conservatism”
Can you give us links to the articles where that was said?
If you believe the future of the Lib Dems lies in returning to a position somewhat to the left of the Labour party on economic policy and public services, then Farron would indeed be the logical choice. His central critique of the last Labour government appears to be that it was too ‘right-wing’ economically, and too keen on markets, competition and choice in public services. In rebutting Labour jibes about coalition reforms, he makes the debating point that Labour in government often pursued similar policies, but without sounding like he is sure whether the reforms themselves are desirable or were unavoidable coalition bargains.
Although in general terms he is as keen as anyone else in the Lib Dem or Conservative parties to pin the deficit that the coalition inherited on the last Labour government, I have rarely heard him criticise it for spending and borrowing too much; when he does make passing references to this, he seems to imagine it all went belly-up in the last year or two when Gordon Brown was Prime Minister. In reality, the stronger charge of fiscal profligacy relates to Brown’s boom-time policies as Chancellor throughout Labour’s second and third terms, not his crisis-fighting measures in 2008-09.
Anyhow, it must be questionable how much room there will be to the left of an Ed Miliband-led government; all the same, I’m sure there will be a receptive audience among the remaining Lib Dems should Farron seek to find some.
I’m assuming that Norman Lamb is unlikely to offer a radical break in the other direction – going for full-blooded economic liberalism of the sort Jeremy Browne advocates – since even if he were instinctively tempted to do so, political calculation would dictate that he would not be able to carry enough Lib Dems with him. The problem then is that it is hard to see how he could offer a plausible alternative vision that is sufficiently different from Clegg’s to win the support of a demoralised and defeated party.
His hope would have to be that there would be a rapidly emerging public appetite for Clegg-style centrism in the new context of either a more right- or left-wing government, that he could tap into that more credibly than Farron, and that the campaign to elect a new leader would give the party the opportunity to get a fresh hearing for a political stance which is less unpopular than the Clegg himself and the party have become (for various reasons including most obviously the broken tuition fees pledge). But it is a more nuanced pitch and I don’t fancy his chances, especially in the compressed timescale of a leadership campaign following soon after the general election.
An interesting question is whether the eclecticism and rhetorical embrace of aspects of economic liberalism that Farron has exhibited in some of his recent speeches are largely tactical or substantive. Are they designed to allay fears among those on the ‘Orange Book’ side of the party and thus cement his status as the favourite to succeed Clegg – yet worn lightly enough to be easily discarded once he has sewn up the leadership, or once general election defeat has made it safe to bury Cleggite centrism? Or is he in the process of developing some new synthesis that will (he hopes) somehow unite the party’s disparate ideological factions in a way that Clegg has not been able to?
What sort of economic and fiscal policy stance does he envisage in the event that he is leading the Lib Dems in opposition while there is a Miliband-led government possibly bolstered by other left-leaning parties? I find it hard to imagine him holding Ed Balls’ feet to the fire on the budget deficit, and much easier to picture him exploiting the likely backlash in left-wing circles against the tough decisions that the next government of whatever hue will have to take. But I might be wrong. For now, and for as long as possible, certainly until after he is safely in post as leader, I suspect he will be content to finesse such awkward dilemmas.
ATF 9th Mar ’15 – 12:00pm
“…..I remain glass half full ..”
ATF the glass was only 23% full in 2010. If it was half full we would be dancing in the streets.
For the last two years and more the Liberal Democrat glass has usually been less than 10% full. Double figures in the opinion polls seem like the distant memories of an earlier generation. There may well be an “uptick” from the current 5% to 8% or maybe in your wildest dreams to 13%. The reality is that your glass has a Clegg-shaped hole in the bottom.
The problem for those who want more of the same in their next leader is that what has become known as Orange Book Liberalism has failed to capture the imagination both of the British people and of the Liberal Democrats.
Remember it was Orange Book Liberals who claimed that the leadership of Charles Kennedy had failed in 2005 because the party only then got 23% of the vote.
Obviously it is much more challenging to be in government as a junior partner in Coalition, but even so a continuation of Orange Book Liberalism will prompt the obvious question; where are the votes going to come from? Where are the members going to come from?
I have to admit I am not going to enjoy the next 8 weeks of electioneering, but if we do have a leadership election afterwards that will be really fascinating and well worth waiting for.
I think it still too early to speculate much. Clearly over the last year no alternative condidate has put him or herself forward, it is stupid to suggest otherwise. I do not think it would have doen anything for the party either. What is needed in the event that the Party is back in opposition is an extended period of reflection which includes fresh leadership and direction that is rooted in Liberal principles.
An unstable outcome of the next election (see Tony Greaves article) could throw a spanner in the works. A follow up election within months could easily further harm the process of renewal and Lib Dem prospects.
John, I can’t deny I admire the ambition of a 100% LD vote!
The most recent polls are 8-11, I’d say the 15-16% recorded in the council elections in 2011-12 remains possible – afterall, was 13% last year and 16% in 2012-13.
Not saying things are perfectly rosy, they aren’t – but at least we can look at some real results. A well targeting campaign, which I think we are seeing, could do much better than expected. I live in a target seat and am seeing plenty of national campign material coming through my door.
(And, for the sake of remaining on topic, Norman has done a great job in highlighting mental illness. Along with the excellent Paul Burstow, it is a reason why I’m glad were in Govt.)
Geoffrey, if it is your view that Clegg embodies ‘Orange Book’ liberalism, and that this has been an aberration and wrong turning for the Lib Dems, then I struggle to see how you could think Norman Lamb would be a good choice. Do you not see him as very close to Clegg, personally and philosophically and in policy terms? We have his word for it. He is an economic liberal and “fiercely loyal to Nick”. There seems to be a dissonance between the direction you would like the party to go in and your (albeit provisional) willingness to support Lamb. Do you disagree with the consensus among the other commenters in this thread (from very differing standpoints) that he is the ‘continuity’ candidate, at least in comparison to Tim Farron?
I suspect most of the media will find Lamb the more credible candidate of these two – since the media is keen on centrists, on right-wing Labour/Lib Dem leaders and left-wing Conservative ones, not least because the juxtaposition is liable to provoke spats between leaders and activists, and they can then dust down their ‘splits’ stories. No doubt the opportunity to spurn the media would be a further incentive for activists to back Farron in even greater numbers than they otherwise would. As Simon says, party members as a whole might take a different view.
Personally, although Lamb is closer to my views than Farron is, I don’t necessarily think he is more ‘credible’ (a question-begging word that tends to escape further definition) or would be a more successful Lib Dem leader. There is a danger his election as leader would represent a further decision to duck rather than face up to the philosophical and policy divisions within the party. In this sense too he might be the continuity candidate.
The positive spin on that is that it signals a desire to hold the broad church together; and I am certainly not arguing that political parties should be like sects. But I do think there comes a point where long-standing cracks that have opened up over ideological and policy direction become too large, and too obvious, to be patched up by soothing bromides and studied triangulation.
To be sure, there are similar tensions in the other main parties, as I suspect we will see over ‘austerity’ in the event of a Labour government and over EU membership in the event of a Tory one. But the existence of greater divisions than for some time in the other parties does not obviate the need for Lib Dems to address their own, especially since a party of 25-30 MPs would not have the critical mass to withstand such divisions while remaining a coherent force in Parliament and beyond.
The view that Clegg is an Orange Book liberal is probably correct as regards his general instincts and preferences. But as party leader he has not pursued or sought to push through an unambiguous agenda of the sort indicated by the more radical chapters in that book – including his own in which he called for repatriation of much social and employment law from the EU to nation states, alongside further transfers of environmental policy to the EU level – or of the kind advocated by Jeremy Browne during this parliament (and David Laws during the intermission between his two stints in Cabinet). Rather, he has sought a pragmatic middle ground between Orange Book and SLF party factions (if you will excuse the shorthand here) that has left him assailed on both sides.
There was a case for doing this, particularly in the inevitably difficult circumstances of a coalition with the Tories in times of austerity. But it has not worked. It may be that taking a more radical Orange Book approach would not have worked either, though it would have had the benefit of greater coherence and clarity. Equally, had he pursued the policy agenda the Lib Dems stood on in 2005, a coalition with the Tories (and therefore Lib Dem participation in government, given the parliamentary arithmetic in 2010) would probably have been a non-starter. So Clegg was faced with an invidious choice, and he chose a perfectly sane, if uninspiring, path that might have had greater success but for the traumas associated with the broken tuition fees pledge in particular. But the choice was in essence to finesse the party’s internal tensions rather than to confront them head-on.
The signs that this would be Clegg’s approach were evident during his safety-first leadership election campaign in 2007, when, backed into a corner by the pugilistic Chris Huhne, he went to great lengths to avoid saying anything radical while giving the impression to journalists and others that he knew he would have to tackle some of the party’s ‘comfort zones’. The failure to do during the election campaign meant that he was elected on a bland managerial prospectus in 2007 and lacked the mandate to seek to take the party wholeheartedly in the direction which (I suspect) he wanted to go in.
Coalition with the Tories provided the opportunity to sacrifice some Lib Dem sacred cows, albeit at huge political cost in the case of tuition fees. David Laws explicitly acknowledges this in his description of the coalition negotiations in his book 22 Days In May, pointing out that both negotiating teams (the Tory one as much as the Lib Dems) seized the opportunity to drop what they regarded as their less wise commitments.
“The insistence by each party of holding to its ‘bottom line’ policy commitments soon became a real strength in the negotiations with the Conservatives. Instead of the negotiations leading to ‘lowest common denominator’ compromises, what actually happened was that on the whole we made a choice to include either the Lib Dem or the Conservative position, more or less in its entirety.
“This created a sense that we were picking the best policies of each party, and it soon became a standing joke amongst the negotiating teams as each side agreed to drop its least favoured policies while embracing the better alternatives presented by the other party. No doubt some in both our parties would have been horrified to hear cherished policies being so happily cast onto the coalition bonfire.”
The problem with this rather covert approach to challenging party orthodoxy is that it only takes you so far before what you are doing is noticed by those who still believe in the old-time religion!
That reality, plus the anxieties about Lib Dem identity in the face of dire poll ratings – and the resulting conclusion that the solution was increasing ‘differentiation’ from the Tory coalition partners – forced Clegg to abandon this trajectory. Instead he limited his ambitions to educating his followers (as he saw it) in the harsh realities of government, and putting down the Lib Dem anchor in the pragmatic centre ground where the Tory and Labour parties were helpfully making space by retreating to their own comfort zones.
“Coalition with the Tories provided the opportunity to sacrifice some Lib Dem sacred cows”
Sacrifice, noun: The bloody and expensive murder of innocents in return for wished-for benefits from imaginary forces, lacking any logical connection between cause and effect and prompted by magical thinking.
I am reserving judgement on the possible candidates until they get the chance to make their case. If the party loses half of it’s support at the general election then their surely has to be a change in direction. For the time being in the run up to a general election then all the potential candidates will take their lead from Nick Clegg.
This is a re-writing of history — “…he has sought a pragmatic middle ground between Orange Book and SLF party factions ..”
Clegg was never equidistant between Orange Book entryists and the rest of the party. He was a creation of The Orange Book.
I suggest Alex Sabine reads Chapter 10 of ‘The Clegg Coup’ by Jasper Gerard. Clegg’s position is clear from the opening paragraph which includes —
“..he was also candidate of the party’s bright, modernising wing that coalesced under the informal title ‘Orange Book Liberals’,”
It goes on –
“..Laws had been in parliament longer and, with the serious hedge fund player Marshall, was the driving force behind The Orange Book.”
“..Clegg had scarcely found a desk in parliament before Laws and other Orange Book Lib Dems identified Clegg as the one..”
The book goes on to detail how Clegg, Laws and the Orange Book plotters first knifed Charles Kennedy and then Ming Campbell to get Cegg into the position of leader of the party.
None of this is new or secret information it is all there in the book.
Clegg has not been some maintsream Liberal Democrat being pragmatic and working between differing factions within the party — he is the beating heart of The Orange Book entryists.
Selling off surplus NHS land is not a new idea. It’s been going on for decades. Neither is digitalisation new. If that’s the best he can come up with as new ideas, he is no contender.
John Tilley is right. Alex Sabine has fallen for an old trick pioneered (if I am not missing an earlier precedent) by Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew.
Nixon wanted to look balanced, moderate, and presidential. In fact he looked like a rather angry, unstable right-wing politician obsessed by power, which is precisely what he was. To counter that impression, he recruited Spiro Agnew as his vice-presidential candidate. Anybody looked presidential when looked at alongside Spiro Agnew.
Since then we have had Bush and Quayle, and we have had McCain and Palin. It’s a common trick, and Clegg brought it here.
When the Orange Book was written, David Laws took on the “Agnew” role by writing the opening, and deliberately the most controversial, chapter. Others also gave the hedge fund industry the raw meat they were looking for. Clegg, however, picked Europe as his topic, and wrote an anodyne, thoughtful piece about both its importance and its shortcomings. Many people objected to the Orange Book but made an exception for Clegg’s contribution. That is what he wanted.
Next up, Norman Lamb. Is Mr Lamb loudly demanding brave new schemes to bring more business into the NHS, as Laws did? No, of course not. He is writing thoughtful, unexceptionable policy statements about mental health, alongside a cautious nod in the direction of gender equality. What a nice fellow. Our next right-wing storm-trooper, ready to carry on where Clegg leaves off? Perish the thought!
JohnTilley: Although I am no longer a party member, I still take an interest in Lib Dem affairs and debates. I have read Jasper Gerard’s book. It was published over three years ago, not long after the ‘Rose Garden’ phase of coalition and before ‘differentiation’ became the watchword.
My point was that there have been different phases to Clegg’s leadership culminating in what I have dubbed ‘pragmatic triangulation’. There have been periodic attempts to move the Lib Dems to a more economically liberal position but also tactical or strategic retreats, not least because Clegg and his like-minded colleagues never really sought and won explicit party support for a full-throated Orange Book agenda.
I am not denying he has attempted to reposition the party to some extent, to infuse it with Orange Book ideas. But it would be a major exaggeration to say he has pursued an undiluted credo of economic liberalism and free markets, let alone the laissez-faire that some of his left-wing critics accuse him of. His main technique of differentiation against the Tories has been to accuse them of such doctrinaire tendencies, positioning himself and the Lib Dems as the bulwark against them. He has, as I say, been criticised by Jeremy Browne on the economic ‘right’ as well as the ‘social liberal’ faction.
But in any case I don’t think my thesis is contradicted by Jasper Gerard, even from the perspective of 2011. I don’t take issue with any of the claims in his book that you cite.
What it says is that Clegg was the Orange Book leadership candidate, which -given Chris Huhne’s more left-leaning and activist-friendly pitch in 2007 – he was. That said, the actual policy differences between them in that campaign were pretty small, greatly exaggerated by the bad-tempered nature of the contest. That was my point: Clegg did not stand on a platform of radical change in 2007, and therefore was inhibited in what he could do afterwards even if he were minded to be radical. On the contrary, Huhne saw an opportunity to go for a social democratic, high-spending pitch that he calculated would appeal to the activists (quite different from the stance he had taken in the previous leadership election in which he stood) and Clegg was pushed onto the defensive.
Nor do I dispute that David Laws and Paul Marshall were the driving forces behind the Orange Book. So what? That was hardly a secret, even at the time: they are both listed on the front cover as the editors.
I’m also sure it’s true that Laws, Marshall and others identified Clegg at an early stage as a potential leader (along with plenty of others in party and media circles). I don’t think Laws ever harboured leadership ambitions for himself, so it was not surprising that he should back Clegg. However, that is not to say that Laws and Clegg have interchangeable views, or that Clegg has followed the agenda Laws set out in his introductory chapter to the Orange Book. He certainly hasn’t sought to promote the proposals in Laws’s chapter on the NHS.
There is no doubt Clegg was, and is, an ambitious politician, and that he harboured leadership ambitious at any early stage. This is hardly shocking. His generational rival Huhne is not exactly a shrinking violet! Indeed, Jasper Gerard relates how Huhne’s former allies in the Orange Book camp (which included Clegg) were angered by his breaking ranks – reputedly in breach of an undertaking he had given – and standing against Ming Campbell in the 2006 leadership election. And, compared with the rough-house tactics used by Huhne’s campaign team in 2007, Clegg was playing by Queensberry rules…
I’m sure the title of the book, ‘The Clegg Coup’, is the kind of eye-catching title that the publishers would have wanted. But Huhne’s bid in 2006 was no less an attempted ‘coup’. Where there is perhaps some justice in the term ‘Clegg coup’ is that it hints at an agenda to reposition the party by stealth rather than head-on ideological confrontation of the sort that the Thatcherites in the Conservative Party or the Blairites in the Labour Party undertook. I think, to an extent, that is justified, on the basis that Clegg took care not to rock any boats when he stood in 2007 and said very little of substance about his intentions, perhaps (wrongly) assuming he could ‘coast’ to victory. But for that very reason (as well as others such as the policy-making process in the Lib Dems), his subsequent attempts to shake up the party’s policy platform was inherently limited and partial.
Likewise in coalition, at the outset Laws and indeed the other negotiators seized opportunities to drop or mothball certain policy commitments (as did the Tory modernisers Letwin and co); but as the parliament has gone on they have sought to put clear yellow water between them and the Tories based around a more or less explicit strategy of equidistance, or being ‘anchored in the centre ground’ as they see it. That in turn has prompted the critique from Browne that it amounts to little more than tactical positioning, and is not a political philosophy. Whether or not you agree with his ideas (and obviously you don’t), it is hard to fault him on that observation.
David: That is an interesting thesis, and I see what you are getting at. Clegg plays a consensual role while surreptitiously advancing the Orange revolution. Well all I can say is that he is an unlikely revolutionary!
I think it more likely that the differences between Laws’s chapter and Clegg’s is that they have (or had) somewhat different views. Laws is the more economically liberal, albeit of a technocratic rather than doctrinaire variety; Clegg is less policy-oriented, has broadly economically liberal instincts but is quite prepared to trim these in pursuit of solutions more acceptable to party opinion. Laws is more fastidious about the policy niceties as he sees them.
There is a revealing comment in the Jasper Gerard book, attributed to a friend of Paul Marshall’s, which I think makes this point: “Paul is very aware that while Nick is associated with Orange Book Liberalism, he has kept open a much wider set of channels. It explains people like Danny Alexander and Neil Sherlock. It shows he isn’t really a radical. Nick works with trimmers. He is a bit suspicious of people like Paul and even David. Their ideas on education, for instance, were very watered down.”
Laws himself is not averse to trimming and recognising the limits of what the party will accept. Gerard, a fan, observes that “for all his high-mindedness he is not short of low cunning”. Indeed sometimes it is difficult to tell when Laws is merely competently arguing a brief the leadership have decided on as opposed to expressing his own views.
To take one example, in the period between his two stints in Cabinet, Laws made the proposition (I don’t recall if it was in a speech or an article) that a sensible medium-term objective for the level of public spending in the UK was around 35% of GDP. The assumption in the last Autumn Statement was that the public spending ratio in 2019-20 will be 35.2% of GDP, a relatively low figure by recent historical standards although only a whisker lower than under Labour in 1999-2000. Laws was making his recommendation several years ago, so Laws cannot credibly argue that the timeframe and trajectory for getting to 35% set out in the Autumn Statement is unrealistic. Yet Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander’s line is that the Tories are wrongly fixated on reducing the spending ratio, are pursuing an ideological will o’ the wisp, and that the Lib Dems will spend more. I am sure David Laws will not demur and indeed will be one of the most cogent advocates for the Lib Dems’ economic policies. Yet he argued just the opposite a few short years ago. It would be interesting to know why he thought as he did then, and what has changed his mind.
So I think Laws is just as capable of pragmatic trimming as Clegg or Alexander, perhaps more so since in his case the new position appears to represent more of a journey from his previously expressed views. I do not necessarily mean this as a criticism: but it should give pause to those who see him as an inflexible ideologue. He has shown himself prepared to make plenty of intellectual sacrifices in pursuit of what he perceives as the good of the party – I dare say too many for Jeremy Browne’s liking! But the point is that they have been made in the service of the perceived imperative of differentiation from the Tories, filing the coalition divorce papers, equidistance between the Tories and Labour, and being anchored in the centre ground. They do not bear witness to an ideological coup.
Alex – I think we are a long way apart ideologically but I think you are spot on in your analysis – you are at a point where you almost writing a book.
As I mentioned before, I think the MPs are going to stick to the Nick Clegg line up until May 6th. After then they will have more freedom to say what they really think and for now I think it is hard to predict how the debate will go at that point. Obviously the MPs have a voting record they will have to defend, so I am not predicting a year zero, but all the same a big drop in support for the Lib Dems will undoubtedly have consequences.
I think David Laws is a strange case. I remember a couple of years ago he wrote a very doctrinaire article in the Evening Standard on education policy. Yet at the last LD conference he did a fringe meeting on education policy where he was the complete opposite and I actually agreed with virtually everything he said. I am wondering if his experience in government has changed him.
Alex Sabine 9th Mar ’15 – 8:19pm
“JohnTilley: Although I am no longer a party member, I still take an interest in Lib Dem affairs and debates. ”
Alex, you obviously have a continuing interest in wider liberalism. Would it be intrusive to ask what caused you to leave the party?
Hi Stephen. By all means I shall answer your question (and apologies in advance for yet more lengthy comments by me, but I felt I should explain how I came to join as well as why I left). Please don’t take my reply as being disrespectful to the Lib Dems: I still have some affection for the party (as well as frustration with it). I still think it represents an important tradition and voice in British politics that needs to be heard, especially on issues like civil liberties, immigration, a rational approach to drugs reform and the humane instinct to stand up for the underdog.
I may even vote Lib Dem in 60-odd days’ time… I’m afraid I am still undecided! I have never felt a tribal loyalty to any political party – and although I have studied politics and political history, I find this to be a curse as much as a blessing when it comes to making political choices! Few questions in politics or policy are as black-and-white as our political parties and rather puerile political debate make out… As H. L. Mencken put it: for every complex problem there is an answer which is clear, simple, and wrong.
On this site I often express my frustration with aspects of Lib Dem economic, tax, industrial, EU policies, and its occasional ‘nanny state’ proclivities. But important though these issues are, sometimes there are issues at stake that trump economics or the details of policy. I tend not to comment on these other issues so much, because they are not my areas of expertise and I don’t necessarily feel I have something distinctive to contribute, but they certainly play a part in determining my vote. And while I would like to feel I could one day vote Lib Dem because of the party’s economic policies, when that hasn’t been possible I have on several occasions voted Lib Dem in spite of them, before, during and after my period of membership.
Although my research interest when studying political economy at university was social democracy, I have always considered myself a small ‘l’ liberal. I dislike coercive power of whatever type, believe in personal freedom, wider economic opportunity and capital ownership, I prefer competition to monopoly and a society open to trade, ideas and people. I do not believe equality of economic outcomes (or anything like it) is feasible or desirable, but poverty, gross inequality and concentrations of rent-derived wealth are objectionable and should be tackled by appropriate policies.
Except in the narrow sense of selection for jobs or positions on the basis of merit rather than connections, I think the concept of a meritocracy is unhelpful (for reasons explained by the Fabian socialist Michael Young in his 1950s satire The Rise of the Meritocracy), even if I may agree with many of the policy prescriptions of people who call themselves meritocrats. I prefer Churchill’s metaphor of a society with both a safety net and a ladder of opportunity; and, as he said when still a Liberal, “Socialism seeks to pull down wealth; Liberalism seeks to raise up poverty. Socialism exalts the rule; Liberalism exalts the man. Socialism attacks capitalism; Liberalism attacks monopoly.” Too much of social democracy, while more moderate than socialism and coexisting happily enough with capitalism, seems to me to embody the same assumptions and to seek to ‘pull down wealth’, ‘exalt the rule’ and if not attack capitalism, then to frustrate and rig markets, which is different but in some ways worse.
(Capitalism and free markets are different things: one is about the ownership of productive assets, the other about the distribution and pricing system – a point that both corporatist Tories and anti-market lefties rarely grasp. One way of thinking about this is that capitalism harnesses self-interest, encouraging people to invest, produce, roll out new technologies etc; while markets ameliorate the effects of capitalism through the role of competition. And it is the role of competition, and of markets as an informational and signalling system, not the method of ownership, that is key reason why market economies work better than planned ones.)
In the sphere of so-called personal liberalism, I like Roy Jenkins’s riposte, when attacked for ushering in the ‘permissive society’ with the legal reforms he sponsored in the 1960s, that, for him, the permissive society was the civilised society.
I remember being struck by an observation of Sam Brittan’s about what he called a “tragic chasm” that had opened up in the political world between those who supported economic liberalism and those who supported greater personal freedoms. As he wrote in his book ‘Capitalism with a Human Face’: “Those who care most about civil liberties, open government, limitation of police powers and similar matters have drifted to the left, while those who have been most concerned with economic liberalism have drifted to the right. Both sets of ideas have been impoverished as a result.” I think that observation is just as valid today. I support economic liberalism, but this is based on a wider ideal of personal freedom of which the economic component is only one part. The commitment to the whole is more important than doctrinal purity in any one part.
Anyway, to continue my story, I joined the Lib Dems in 2007, when Ming Campbell was leader, partly because of the party’s strong stand against the authoritarian proposals that the Home Office was spewing out at that time, and partly because I had noticed, and approved of, the party’s gradual move towards a more economically liberal position, highlighted by the publication of the Orange Book but also the evolution of policy in areas like tax reform.
I voted for Nick Clegg in the ’07 leadership election. I did so despite not being terribly enthused by what I regarded as his lacklustre campaign. In fact I took him to task on this after a hustings in London. I said I had enjoyed many of the newspaper articles he wrote as an MEP and his performances in the home office role, and intended to vote for him. But I put it to him that Chris Huhne’s tactics during the campaign (there was the ‘Calamity Clegg’ dossier, and Huhne had engineered a big fuss over some comments Clegg had made about learning from other European healthcare systems) seemed to have put him on the defensive: I felt he had been ‘boxed in’, with the result that he was unable to articulate the reforming agenda that I associated him with, and was reduced to largely platitudinous statements.
He listened very politely to this complete unknown and didn’t flinch at anything I said. In fact his reply was disarmingly frank: he said I was right, he had been boxed in, but he felt he had left himself enough ‘wiggle room’ to be more radical as leader and to continue the party’s journey away from statist solutions which had begun slowly but falteringly under Ming.
I didn’t know what to make of my brief conversation with him, to be honest. I was simultaneously impressed by his warmth, good humour and down-to-earth frankness, and rather startled that he had made such unguarded remarks to someone he didn’t know from Adam (I happened to be a journalist, but not in the political field – so he was safe from the kind of expose that occurred on the occasion he was overheard making disparaging comments about some of his shadow ministers on a plane journey with Danny Alexander).
I was encouraged that he seemed willing to revisit the Orange Book ideas on which he had been virtually silent during the campaign. But I couldn’t help thinking that this was not the sort of reforming agenda that either could, or ought to be, pursued by stealth. It required ‘rolling of the pitch’ and a sustained intellectual case to be argued and won. The leadership election was surely the time to begin, and signal, that process.
In any event, it seemed to me that Clegg would soon find the Lib Dem policy-making structure tying him up in knots. If he wanted to persuade the party of the need to adapt its philosophy or policies he really needed to have set out his stall during the leadership campaign. Having failed to do so, his task would now be much more difficult. He would have the ‘bully pulpit’ available to party leaders, and could appeal to party members’ loyalty, but those would only get him so far. How much ‘wiggle room’ had he really left himself? I took it for granted that most of those on his campaign team, not just one or two ideological kindred spirits, must have been ‘on board’ for his reforming agenda. Certainly there were rumblings that Clegg had got into an over-cautious rut: that in going for the jugular, Huhne had succeeded in neutering Clegg.
In some ways I think the subsequent debacle over tuition fees bears witness to the pitfalls of the softly-softly, ‘reform by stealth’ approach taken during this period not only by Clegg, but by other senior party figures including Vince Cable. Indeed, the issue of tuition fees was a classic case in point. Clegg and Cable sought to persuade the Federal Policy Committee and other internal bodies to drop the policy of scrapping fees, but were unable to win the argument and unwilling to force a showdown over it. They then compounded this failure by signing the now-infamous NUS ‘pledge’. Presumably they figured that, now that they were saddled with a manifesto commitment they regarded as foolish and unaffordable in the circumstances, they might as well gain as much political capital as they could from it. I’ve heard Cable say that he was very reluctant to sign the pledge, but unfortunately he did not press the issue and signed it all the same. Clegg and Danny Alexander did insist that the fees policy should not be one of the ‘headline’ pages in the manifesto – but that proved scant defence given the pledge, which set in motion the ensuing slow-motion car crash.
While tuition fees was the most obvious example of decisions ducked or finessed by the Orange Bookers in opposition that would form part of the coalition agenda, there are other examples, including free schools (for which Laws had pushed before they became Tory policy) and the question of when to begin deficit reduction (with Laws privately arguing several months before the election that some modest cuts would have to be made in 2010 for a coalition government to have market credibility; Cable apparently regarding the question as more finely balanced and less significant than he had intimated during the election campaign, when he sided with Labour on deferring early action; and Huhne being similarly agnostic on what he rightly regarded as the relatively trivial demand impact either way of £6 billion in a £1.5 trillion economy.)
Returning to my story, I welcomed the formation of the coalition and the chance (or so it appeared) for a synthesis between some of the more attractive and sensible policies of the Lib Dems and the Tories. That is not to say I wanted to see some kind of merger between the two parties, but rather that I hoped that coalition could be more than a ‘zero sum’ process of bartering and trade-offs. In the process I hoped the Lib Dems would continue their evolution towards a more economically liberal position, as a matter of conviction rather than treating it as the unwelcome by-product of coalition.
I know plenty of people here believe I got my wish! But I disagree, for essentially the same reasons that I alluded to in earlier comments, and that Jeremy Browne has articulated in some detail. (Naturally I don’t sign up to every dot and comma of his policy prospectus, but I agree with most of it and I think his basic analysis of how the party under Nick Clegg is currently defining itself is spot-on. I would be intrigued to know how much of Browne’s argument David Laws agrees with but has decided it is impolitic to press at this stage.)
Basically I concluded some time ago that the sort of approach and policies that I would like to see the Lib Dems adopt in areas like the economy and public services isn’t going to happen. While we may disagree about the merits of those policies, and about how far Clegg has succeeded in shifting the party’s position in the Orange Book direction (some distance, I would say, but not nearly as much as some of his left-wing critics allege), I suppose I agree with David, Geoffrey, John and co that the party’s heart still beats on the left in these matters. Whatever the so-called ‘Clegg coup’ may or may not have achieved at the policy or government level, I do not think the Orange Book faction has won the internal debate or what you might call the ‘battle of hearts and minds’. The attempt to do so by stealth, as I put it, has reached its limits. I could be wrong, but after May I think there is a good chance the Orange Book types will flee the battlefield and allow the party to return to a more unequivocally left-of-centre stance under Tim Farron’s leadership. I know that is what some of the contributors here fervently hope…
In any event, given the distance between my views on these issues and those of the majority of party members, I concluded that I could not reasonably expect the party to dance to my tune. So, with regret, I decided to leave. As I say, that does not mean I wish the Lib Dems ill. My comments here (even the rather caustic or critical ones) are intended to be constructive and (hopefully) thought-provoking, just as I find plenty of food for thought in the contributions of other posters and commenters here. You keep me on my toes!
Alex Sabine 9th Mar ’15 – 8:19pm
Thank you for this interesting and comprehensive comment. You know the subject much better than many who post comments in LDV.
A couple of quick comments on what you have said in this comment (I have yet to read your three subsequent comments).
I am not sure that Jeremy Browne’s recent position is much different from what it has always been, even when he worked for Paddy and promoted the Project of cosying up to a Labour establishment, almost twenty years ago.
It is entirely helpful to Clegg and The Orange Bookers to have Browne as an Outrider saying those things that Clegg himself feels constrained from saying in public.
Whilst in Government Clegg has been hugely helped by being able to pose as “not so lunatic as Browne” whilst for example signing off and in private enthusiastically welcoming the Top Down vandalism of The NHS.
You pitch a lot of your comments in terms of Clegg versus Huhne. One rich Westminster schoolboy against another — it was not exactly a principled struggle for the Liberal soul.
For all I know, if the police had been as thorough studying ever jot and penalty point of Clegg’s driving offences he might just as easily have ended up in prison.
But that is the justice system —
If you get caught out on a traffic offence like Huhne – you go to prison, resign your seat as an MP, lose your career and you are sent off to the outer darkness;
If you get caught out like David Laws “fiddling your expenses” (or stealing public money – as it used to be called) you are back as one of Clegg’s favourite ministers quicker than it takes to mistakenly “sanction” someone on disabiity benefits.
You could not have a better symbol of the morality of Clegg and The Orange Bookers.
Alex,
Thank you for your insightful analysis. As Geoffrey Payne said, you’ve almost written a book – and a much better piece of literature than “The Clegg Coup”!
I think that the differences between us are not only between right and left. They are also between your enthusiasm for ideas and political / economic analysis, versus my more pragmatic interest in broad political outcomes.
By and large, most people who embrace free market economics do so because they want to be rich and successful, and they don’t want anybody to take away their money and spend it on some other deserving cause. A minority of political thinkers instead embrace free market economics because they think it is an efficient and effective way to organise an economy, but aren’t particularly seeking personal enrichment, and may very well not favour excessive social inequality. These are the people who think they can ride the tiger. They construct ideal political universes in which the law of the jungle rules, and yet some form of countervailing power also exists to enable “poverty, gross inequality and concentrations of rent-derived wealth … (to) be tackled by appropriate policies”, to quote your words.
Pragmatists, like me, instead ask “What is going to happen, in the real world, if we take a particular political line? What will happen if we help the Tories into power?” The broad answer is that we have enabled the creeping marketisation of schools, universities, and the NHS, coupled with a deliberate polarisation of society between the goodies with alarm clocks versus the baddies who can’t get jobs and therefore must deserve the squalor we have condemned them to.
Clegg simply marches steadfastly along to the beat of this drum. Laws analyses where he is putting his feet, every step of the way. Both of them, sadly, have got there. I don’t think the differences between them are very significant.
David: Thank you for the kind comments. I don’t wish to outstay my welcome in this thread, but felt your points warranted an extended reply…
– Doubtless you are right that some people support free-market economics for self-interested financial reasons, and others through intellectual conviction. Unsurprisingly, there are numerous factors that influence people’s beliefs and political allegiances. I dare say plenty of people – not only on the political right, but all sorts of interest groups in society – pursue what they perceive to be their self-interest in casting their votes. I don’t blame them for this, or think there is anything particularly wrong about doing so.
– Personally, however, since I do not think human beings are simply calculating rational agents or are motivated solely by financial considerations, I think it is useful to have a set of values or principles to help guide our political allegiances and voting decisions, as well as some intellectual toolkit (drawing on various sources in different fields and disciplines) to assist us in making sense of a confusing world. This may sometimes lead us to supporting things that are not in our own direct financial or professional interest, but which we perceive to be in a wider public interest or to be dictated by our personal beliefs and values.
– This is in no way inconsistent with market economics or economic liberalism. Indeed, one of the oldest and greatest of economic liberals, Adam Smith, explicitly recognised this wider social canvas of human motivations, including altruism, fraternity, professional motivations and a sense of vocation. Like many of his contemporaries in philosophy and political economy and scientific fields, Smith was a polymath and a long way from the ‘greed is good’ caricature drawn by his modern critics (and perpetuated by a few of his less enlightened disciples in right-wing circles).
Smith indeed applauded the role of the profit motive in harnessing to the common good the self-interest that he saw as an inherent aspect of human nature, and added for good measure: “I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public interest.”
His insight was that, in some areas and under certain conditions, the use of markets avowedly based on self-interest will prove more beneficial than an overt attempt to achieve the public good directly. His concept of the ‘invisible hand’ upsets people more by its apparent sanctioning of greed than by its economic reasoning. (In passing, I would venture that people in the grip of greed often do much less harm than people in the grip of self-righteousness, especially when that is harnessed to the supposed needs of a collective entity like ‘the people’ or ‘the nation’ or given some theological or metaphysical justification. As Bertrand Russell pointed out, the danger is that people ‘fall below’ enlightened self-interest not rise above it. He reckoned that “among those occasions on which people fall below self-interest are most of the occasions on which they are convinced that they are acting from idealistic motives. Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.”)
Yet, as Smith’s opening sentence in The Theory of Moral Sentiments observed: “How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.”
– Economics is a useful tool in helping us to think about and understand the world, in particular for analysing the nature of choices and trade-offs between competing objectives and use of resources: it is not, and does not purport to be, an ethical blueprint for humanity. That would be asking more of it as a discipline than it can reasonably be expected to deliver. I think an understanding of economic ideas and history is a highly useful, but in no way sufficient, condition for an informed political discourse.
– An interest in economic principles, theory or history does not nevessarily imply a lack of pragmatism as to policy solutions, or a lack of interest in real-world outcomes. Quite the reverse: the whole point of the exercise is to improve the real-world outcomes. But it is useful to have some framework with which to analyse and assess different policy options. And, whether they realise it or not, avowedly pragmatic and non-ideological politicians act in ways which embody all sorts of a priori assumptions and half-digested theories. As the great arch-pragmatist Keynes put it, “Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.” Personally I am interested in economic theory, even more interested in economic history, and mistrustful of panaceas of any kind.
– One of the ways in which high-minded left-wingers (including some very rich ones) like to pose as altruistic, and morally superior to their opponents, is that they claim to support policies hat would disadvantage themselves financially (though usually only at the margin). Sceptics might wonder, if they were truly altruistic, whether they would feel it necessary to grandstand in this way, and whether they were not seeking to assuage some guilt (whether justified or misplaced) about their own circumstances or behaviour – but this probably takes us on too much of a detour into moral philosophy and the nature of altruism for the purposes of this discussion!
– But the essence of their claim to superior motives is that there is by definition something counter-intuitive or self-denying about a well-off person supporting a left-wing programme, whereas the well-off who support free trade and free markets conveniently stand to benefit fom the implementation of their beliefs. The problem with this argument, quite apart from the unattractive self-righteousness, is that it is far from clear that it is the rich and powerful who primarily benefit from free trade, free markets and competition, or that they suffer from the more corporatist and statist policies favoured by the left.
In reality it is often big businesses and powerful ‘insiders’ that benefit from cosy cartels incubated by the state, from the protection of incumbents and the stifling of potential competitors, or from the welter of directives spewed out by government and the EU that favour those with the resources to interpret and implement them and systematically discriminate against SMEs. The EU is supposed by many on the left to be a moderating influence on corporate power, but this would be a surprise to anyone familiar with its lobbying system or its policy record in many fields. It is wealthy farmers who have benefited from its agricultural protection racket, and small farmers and consumers that have suffered. There is a risk that many of the green subsidies are enriching large industrialists and landowners at the expense of energy consumers and the ordinary taxpayer. Legal privileges given to the professions often foster restrictive practices harmful to the consumer, such as fixing minimum fees, restricting entry etc. Over-restrictive employment laws can protect the more highly-skilled existing full-time employees at the expense of younger, part-time low-skilled workers or the unemployed: several of our continental neighbours are clear examples of this (the problem is aggravated by the single currency locking them into a deflationary cycle, but high rates of structural unemployment, especially among the low-skilled, have been apparent since the 1990s).
Corporate tax avoidance is a symptom of the Byzantine complexity of our tax system, with its numerous reliefs and exemptions and tax breaks that have been inserted by policy-makers who believe they have special insights into ‘the economy of the future’ and that tax policy should be a tool for industrial tinkering and social engineering. The unintended – but inevitable – consequence is that all the exemptions and subsidies and reliefs breed loopholes, which benefit large corporations and wealthy individuals with the means to find clever ways of reducing their liabilities at the expense of the average worker on PAYE, self-employed small business owner or saver. Reams of anti-avoidance provisions will not stop the proliferation of further loopholes; they are mainly a displacement activity by politicians who do not wish to see that their micro-management makes the problem worse, not better, and that it needs to be tackled at source.
– To develop your theme about motives a bit, lobbies and interest groups on the left and the right will always seek to influence policy and control bureaucracies to their advantage, or to protect their own power, while politicians will seek the votes of client groups. This is sometimes called the ‘economics of politics’. There is even a school of economics devoted to studying such behaviour (public choice theory). This arose as a reaction to the pious notion that government somehow stands above the sordid self-interest of the common market place and is subject to higher motives and purpose. Instead, it was posited that politicians operate in their own market place, seeking votes rather than cash, in a market place that has its own distinctive kinds of failure. This is a useful corrective to a naive faith in the motives of governments and public bureaucracies; the lesson is simply that political actors have their own share of self-interest, just as economic actors are influenced by their view or assumption of what is right and proper.
There is nothing unique about free-market economics in any of this. Indeed, it seems to me that the real dangers from rent-seeking behaviour arise from the conjoining of powerful interests in the corporatist model of the state perpetuated by social democrats and many Tories. Here, big business, trade unions and all sorts of interest groups jockey to use the instruments of the state to advance their private interests. The result is the concentration of benefits from intervention among specific and vocal interest groups and the dispersal of losses among the mass of consumers and voters.
The real threat to the public interest comes not from individuals pursuing their own private financial interests within a law-governed society, but from the conflation of those private interests with those of the state, and from the resultant concentration of power. The state should hold the ring in the service of the public interest, not co-opt private interests or preside over a feeding trough at which rival groups kick and jostle for position. It is important to distinguish between corporatism/state capitalism, competitive markets (ie the resource allocation system driven by price signals which reveal consumer preferences and balance supply and demand) and capitalism (the method of ownership and control of productive assets): they are quite different things with different characteristics.
I recognise market failures (such as, to take one example, the externalising of social costs through pollution), but many who regard themselves as pragmatic social democrats or pragmatic centrists fighting ‘market fundamentalism’ completely fail to recognise the defects of the political market place. The policy question is whether, in general but also in specific instances, the benefits of intervention outweighs the costs. Sometimes this is the case, and there are no absolutes, but there are grounds for scepticism. The political incentive is to intervene, because the benefits (say of a subsidy to a particular industry, or a tariff or a tax break or price controls) tend to be concentrated and visible while the (often larger) costs are dispersed through the wider economy.
As regards my own financial self-interest, I am a self-employed basic-rate taxpayer with no great financial privileges to defend. If you are right about those who gain and lose from market economics, I suppose this makes me the equivalent of one of Lenin’s “useful idiots”, since I would stand to lose from the application of the principles and policies I support. Clearly I dispute the premise, and therefore the conclusion.
But in any case, since, like Elizabeth I, I have no wish to “open windows into men’s souls”, and I cannot reliably sit in judgement on people’s motives, I prefer to consider and debate ideas and proposals put forward by politicians and economists on their merits.
– Although I often disagree with them and think their economic analysis is flawed, I don’t think social democrats or social liberals (or indeed socialists) are any less public-spirited or sincere or humane or in any other sense morally inferior to those of a more ‘classical liberal’ persuasion or of other political hues. I am quite prepared to believe that they are good people who want the best for society and their fellow human beings. What I object to is the idea that people with my views are assumed to be pursuing some sinister agenda, to have ulterior motives, or to be somehow disqualified from having these humane and decent instincts. I have always regarded it as a travesty of good sense to believe that people you disagree with on politics or economics embody all the worst features of human behaviour and thinking, while your lot encompass all the virtues. Neither the ‘left’ nor the ‘right’ has a monopoly of what is commendable in human nature.
Hi Alex
Apologies for my delay in responding to your interesting and considered explanations as to why you joined and then left the Lib Dems. I have frequently found your personal explanations regarding free market libertarianism clearer than those offered by professional politicians of a similar economic persuasion – quite possibly due to your disclosed journalistic and political-economic backgrounds and you being Liberal or at least liberal friendly. Also, as pointed out by David Allen, your interest is not of the self serving variety but driven by your interest in political philosophy. This shows through and is a welcome change to those whose politics are driven by ruthless short term economic, and usually corporate, interest.
The economic liberalism of Clegg and the ‘Orange Bookers’ and the stealth (= wholly dishonest entryist) tactics employed by them (with the notable exception of Jeremy Browne) has resulted in the uneasy internal coalition essentially breaking down.
I can forgive honest mistakes – even if very basic but absolutely not the barely disguised dishonesty that has accompanied their attempts to hijack this party. Their collective project has resulted in a considerable threat to the continued existence of our party.
Further/follow up comments tomorrow.
Hi Stephen – Thanks for your generous words, appreciated.
David – As Columbo would say, just one more thing… (But I’m not about to land a killer punch, more retire with a whimper!)
I stand by everything I said above, but I will plead guilty to being drawn to ideas. I like to think I temper them with pragmatism and empiricism – my liberalism is a compass, not a philosopher’s stone – but I do prefer to think of politics as a contest of ideas rather than a clash of interests.
This, of course, was the traditional temperamental difference between Liberals and Tories – until the Conservatives developed an interest in ideas in the 1970s. (Their interest seems to have been fairly short-lived, and in some – though not all – cases appeared to play a purely instrumental role.) That said, in my study of economic history I have generally concentrated on the nitty-gritty of policy rather than philosophical enthusiasms.
And I certainly recognise the value in empiricism and scepticism. The philosopher Michael Oakeshott was a notable exponent of this, explaining the conservative disposition in classic Burkean terms: “To be conservative … is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss.”
Although this doesn’t describe my own position, I have some sympathy with it. It represents the more attractive side of conservatism rather than the boorish or atavistic side. The modesty of ambition, and the humility, is a useful corrective to utopianism. The 20th century would have been a good deal less murderous if this disposition had prevailed. Yet ultimately I do not believe it is possible to sustain the will to change things for the better, on however modest a scale, without some measure of idealism and some intellectual ballast.
I will sign off with a final quote from Samuel Brittan which basically sums up my own political instincts: “To an economic liberal, what has gone wrong with the movement to market economics in our day is not that it is too extreme or not extreme enough, but that it has been divorced from a wider commitment to personal freedom… People may make many mistakes in the use of freedom, and nature or society may hold many unforeseen snags. But in the end the dangers from freedom are far, far less than the dangers from those on the left and the right alike who deign to tell fellow citizens how to live. The absurdities produced by the moral authoritarians and the economic collectivists alike will always provide the supporters of freedom with a chance, so long as their supporters are prepared to meet that challenge.”
This does not mean that the freedom is an absolute value. There are many other values – security, justice, order, efficiency, fraternity to name a few – that will weigh in the balance, and which in some circumstances may trump the priority given to liberty. But my view is that there should be a strong presumption in favour of freedom, and sacrifices of freedom are always an evil, even if a necessary one. The onus of proof should rest very much on the state in curtailing the liberty of the citizen – whether in the economic sphere or in terms of civil liberties or personal freedoms – rather than a default position that the citizen is unable to be trusted with it.
Alex Sabine
” – but I do prefer to think of politics as a contest of ideas rather than a clash of interests.
This, of course, was the traditional temperamental difference between Liberals and Tories – until the Conservatives developed an interest in ideas in the 1970s. ”
Alex,
This reveals a great deal about you (almost as much as your list of favourite books in another thread).
I am not at home with the concept of The Conservatives being about anything other than the party which at every opportunity mounts a visceral defence of class interest. The are the party of Kings and landed wealth.
Even the Keith Joseph Tories from the 1970s only let their interests in “ideas” go so far.
John: I see you are in characteristically gracious mood. Regarding my list of political books (which was just a list of some that I have enjoyed or learned from, not a scientific selection), I perfer to read widely rather than seek out only those viewpoints that might confirm my own preconceptions. I take the same attitude to newspapers. The world would be a dull and colourless place if everybody thought the same way and nobody entertained the possibility they might be mistaken. As Tennyson put it, “There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds.”
Socrates is supposed to have put it more bluntly: “I am strongly convinced that I am ignorant of what I do not know”. The point is not that (like Fawlty Towers’s Manuel) we “know nothing”, but that we cannot know anything with the absolute certainty of seeing and can feel confident only in the possibility that we might be wrong.
Anyway, I think an enquiring spirit is a rather important part of the liberal temparement. One of the most powerful arguments for free speech proffered by John Stuart Mill is that, as well as being a central aspect of liberty, it is a necessary condition for intellectual and social progress. Exposure to rival ideas and perspectives and experiences, examining and questioning our own beliefs and assumptions, is a form of intellectual maturity in my view. It is those who close their minds to these alternative perspectives, like those who curtail free speech, who exhibit a lack intellectual self-confidence.
I imagine that what you mean by saying my list of books was “revealing” about my views was the inclusion of books by some of the more thought-provoking people on the political right as well as the left and the centre. What you overlook is that the political left does not have a monopoly of wisdom. It is simply ignorant to say there are no interesting or worthwhile or thought-provoking ideas beyond its shores.
And since I am interested in political and economic history, it would, I suggest, be rather limiting and self-defeating to ignore the contributions and testimonies of a large contingent of those who shaped it.
As it happens, the British political tradition I probably know best (originally because it was the subject of my Master’s at university) is the Labour and social-democratic tradition. My familiarity with it has bred not contempt, but sympathy with some of its objectives, a measure of affection, and respect for some of its leading lights – albeit less for the methods and the results. My list includes plenty of examples of the key figures from this tradition, but I could have included many others.
– On your other point, I don’t think it is particularly controversial among historians or anyone familiar with the subject to observe that elements of the Conservative Party developed a taste for ideas from the mid/late 1970s, whereas for most of their history they have been rather indifferent to, indeed downright suspicious of, them. Some of this interest was undoubtdly genuine, whether or not it was misdirected. Some was what I called “purely instrumental”. The reaction of the more traditional Tory school to this intellectual ferment – they regarded it as a dangerous diversion from the business of statecraft and upholding tradition – bears witness to this rupture. That’s not to say the Thatcherites were all intellectuals manques, or had all read and understood Smith, Hayek, Friedman et al, just that there was a new-found tendency to formulate policy positions via reasoning from theory rather than through the pragmatic balancing of interests and institutions. The former approach had traditionally been a characteristic of the political left more than the right.