To believe the Government’s hype, we are currently experiencing a liberal revolution in England’s education system – powers are being decentralised, with schools given more autonomy to innovate, while new education providers are adding further diversity to the state funded system by joining it through Academy sponsorship.
The uninitiated could be forgiven for believing Michael Gove’s claim that the evidence base shows the structure of the state funded school system is holding education back, as well as his recent assertion that opponents of Academies are “ideologues”, who uphold a “bigoted backward bankrupt ideology of a leftwing establishment that perpetuates division and denies opportunity”.
However, Gove’s analysis is highly dubious. He used to commend Swedish styled Free Schools, until opinion in Sweden swung against them, because they were found to increase segregation; benefit children from more educated families; cut corners; create inefficiency in the public school system, and did not improve overall standards. Perhaps the Government will also jettison charter schools in the US, which they currently applaud, once data and evidence catches up with them.
Gove’s routine dismissal of opponents as merely representing producer interests is indicative of a bunker mentally, where opponents are not engaged with, and his claim that they are the ideologues demonstrates precisely the kind of chutzpa of someone who has decided to write a foreword to the Bible.
In truth, the Government reforms are not grounded on a balanced overview of evidence, but are instead pervaded by naked anti-state neo-liberal ideological conviction, including a profound suspicion and lack of understanding of local authority maintained schools.
In law, Academies are private schools and so enjoy a range of freedoms over their curriculum, staff employment and opening times. But if such freedoms are so important then we should question with suspicion why the Government is not extending them to all state funded schools.
Meanwhile, we must altogether do away with the fallacy that Academies decentralise power. They do not empower parents or classroom teachers, but rather present a mass quangoisation of schools.
In most Academies, existing Governors become life Trustees, electing all future governors, a bizarre and unnecessary enfranchisement. Meanwhile, management is supposed to take attention away from classrooms to become experts in procurement to buy-in services that previously their local authority provided for free – emaciating local authorities and creating a market for the services that they previously offered. If the lessons of private finance initiatives taught us anything, it is that the private sector can and will try to run rings around well meaning public sector workers.
Academies are increasingly now work together and Academy chains growing in order to find greater efficiencies – ever more mirroring the structure of local authorities responsible for education, but without the local accountability.
The freedoms that Academies offer could be achieved for all schools in much less disruptive and expensive ways, through some relatively straightforward changes to the law and fewer commandments from central Government. However, while in power the Coalition has replaced Labour’s dictats with their own: see the English Baccalaureate.
Instead, by viewing Academies as a Blairite Trojan horse, the Government have sought to massively expand Labour’s naive programme. In May 2010, Academies numbered around 200; there are now almost 1,600.
So desperate has the Government been to entrench Academies that they have given Academy Trusts, as standard, 125 year leases with “pepper corn rents” on the publically owned properties that their schools occupy. Meanwhile, Academy funding agreements, which are the primary means for government to influence what happens in Academies, are inconsistent documents that can only be modified once the provider is first given seven years notice of any change.
Furthermore, Academy faith schools enjoy powers that some state maintained faith schools do not, such as to discriminate against children in admissions on religious grounds, as well as to only teach about the school’s faith – these powers are insidious and go against the spirit and letter of Lib Dem policy.
Worse still, this ‘revolution’ is being misleadingly sold to the public using liberal vocabulary and is happening in our name.
We campaigned in 2010 for Academies to be replaced by schools accountable to local authorities and subsequently our conference affirmed its opposition to free schools. Yet the foreword to the education paper that preceded the 2011 Education Act was signed by Nick Clegg and Lib Dems in Government allowed the use of Parliamentary timetabling, normally reserved for emergency legislation, to ensure the 2010 Academies Act was not properly scrutinised, but rushed through. So having let the country down in this area, it becomes all the more important that we do not let them down in others.
As Lib Dems we lack the ideological baggage of other parties – we can judge public sector reform on a pragmatic case by case basis. However, public health care, like education, is a natural monopoly.
Nick Clegg had no mandate to offer a Lib Dem sign off to the Health and Social Care Bill. The Bill, which has been put forward outside of the coalition agreement, looks set to poison the NHS, a cherished institution and one of the most efficient health care systems in the world, with an injection of destabilizing marketisation. Lib Dem parliamentarians should vote against it.
You can sign the “Drop the Health Bill” petition at http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/22670
* Paul Pettinger is a member in Westminster Borough and sits on the Council of the Social Liberal Forum.
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67 Comments
It is very good to see some of this explained clearly. It confirms my fear that the Liberal Democrats are helping the Conservatives to privatise education and health.
Both State Schools and the NHS need more resources in order to improve standards and numbers of teachers, doctors and surgeons, so that there will be less opting out by the wealthy, articulate and influential and more willingness on their behalf to pay the necessary taxes.
To these ends, Liberals and Liberal Democrats should call for VAT exemptions for expenditure on private education and private health to be abolished.
Whilst I generally agree with the thrust of your arguments, Paul, I am getting a bit fed up that anyone who does not want to retain state infrastructure must be a “neo-liberal” as if there is only one reason for not liking state provision. It’s prevalent here, but also by people like Richard Murphy and the Pan B crowd more generally.
Not only is it frankly insulting to those of us who do want to smash the state for other reasons, but by conflating everyone into one big bogie-man ideology it diminishes their/your argument too.
Paul.
You state that “the Government reforms are not grounded on a balanced overview of evidence, but are instead pervaded by naked anti-state neo-liberal ideological conviction” but then present no evidence to support the points you are makings. The evidence, as I set out in https://www.libdemvoice.org/opinion-before-the-debate-whats-the-evidence-26602. html is far from clear in supporting the case which you make. It indicates that there have been benefits so far from introducing choice and competition in health and that the academies programme prior to the recent expansion did have beneficial effects.
So yes let’s “judge public sector reform on a pragmatic case by case basis” and not engage in denunciation of opponents as ‘neo-liberals’
Ha – got distracted halfway through composing a reply asking for Lib Dems to ditch the “neoliberal” term and see Jock got there before me.
Really, it’s a totally meaningless and lazy way to tar anyone a smidgeon to the right of whoever is applying it and isn’t a term anyone would identify themselves as.
I think the dialogue between the type of Lib Dems who vote for Mark Littlewood as voice of the year, and the SLF, and everyone in between is really vital and interesting but it does mean we need to do more to understand each other without using the kind of “us vs them” collectivist labels beloved of the SWP etc.
To be fair, he doesn’t use the term in the article at all, and the LDV editors *are* fond of writing your article headlines for you; but it doesn’t sound quite like a Mark Pack or Stephen Tall headline to me …
“As Lib Dems we lack the ideological baggage of other parties – we can judge public sector reform on a pragmatic case by case basis.”
Yes! I could not agree more.
I’m not sure of the answers for education and healthcare but I do worry that there’s a misplaced ideological assumption that the benefits of markets and choice – that work so well with, say, sofas – can be replicated with schools. This doesn’t seem to be in touch with the reality on the ground where there’s usually a distinctly and unavoidably limited number of schools to choose from in one’s area. You’re living in a dream world if you think, for example, that all the parents who send their children to faith schools do so because they had an unconstrained choice and decided they wanted a faith community over a similar, nearby, but non-faith school.
And to quote myself from another post:
“…if the evidence isn’t immediately unambiguous that means we need to put a greater emphasis on running trials, collecting data, analysing results from around the world and auditing ministers’ pick-and-choosing of evidence. A unit within Government (and our party?) to make sure these things are done or done properly would be a phenomenal investment. And if we can’t show that policies have any benefits, that rather suggests all these reorganisations aren’t worth the hassle; or that we should therefore go with ‘the most liberal’ approach; or that there are other limiting factors (e.g. parenting, early years).”
Well said Paul. By the way did you read the article by Steve Richards in the Independent in which he reveals that Nick Clegg confessed to Shirley Williams that he had not read the NHS Bill before he and his party voted in favour of it? Equivalent action by a doctor who failed to keep up to date in clinical practice would almost certainly result in him or her being struck off by the GMC. Very depressing but even more depressing was the behaviour of those who read the Bill and still voted for it.
just a small point, the enemy of liberalism is illiberalism, not neo-liberalism.
Neo-liberals are unreliable friends with whom liberals should seek to cooperate by convincing them with factual evidence. Because anyone who claims to be a defender of liberty is stating their openness to a persuasive argument.
“If the lessons of private finance initiatives taught us anything, it is that the private sector can and will try to run rings around well meaning public sector workers.”
That’s an insult to all the people working in the public sector who aren’t naive idiots. PFI failed not because public sector employees are naive dupes but because it was a deliberate policy to waste money in order to get as many shiny schools’n’hospitals built in as short a time as possible so Labour could trumpet all the wonderful shiny things it gave the electorate to get votes.
“But if such freedoms are so important then we should question with suspicion why the Government is not extending them to all state funded schools.”
Because some schools don’t want them. That being the Liberal thing to do, giving schools a choice between whether they become academies or remain under local authority care. Pluralism and multiplicity of choice being liberal values we should all support. Only a blatant “ideologue” would assume that all schools should necessarily be one way or the other.
@Ed
He does use the term neo-liberal.
“naked anti-state neo-liberal ideological conviction”
One of those annoying strings of cliched buzzwords that don’t mean anything but are just meant to display vague dissaproval.
“We have let neoliberals devastate state education” – desperate hyperbole.
Under the last Government billions of additional £ were spent on education with very litle discernible effect. The perfomance of children compared to other countries fell substantially.
That is the real issue we should be addressing rather than this fixation with school governance.
To believe the Government’s hype, we are currently experiencing a liberal revolution in England’s education system
And the Liberal Democrats are adamantly opposed to it. Perhaps the party should consider a change of name. Because whenever I hear of someone wanting a liberal revolution in something, it always seems to be a Tory.
And whenever I hear someone in government wanting everything to be run by a government monopoly, it turns out to be a Liberal Democrat.
Right form the fifth word ‘devastate’ this opinion piece resorts to the kind of knees jerk resistance to new ideas that we expect from the Labour Party, but should not be part of a more balanced debate within the Liberal Democrats.
Philip says “In law, Academies are private schools and so enjoy a range of freedoms over their curriculum, staff employment and opening times. But if such freedoms are so important then we should question with suspicion why the Government is not extending them to all state funded schools”
This is a good question. Why not ? There must at least room for some debate.
But Philip concludes “Meanwhile, we must altogether do away with the fallacy that Academies decentralise power. They do not empower parents or classroom teachers, but rather present a mass quangoisation of schools.”
As a liberal, I think we should at least try to give freedom a chance.
That Michael Gove calls his opponents ideologues is merely projection.
The post illustrates that the detail of the policy is problematic at many levels. The same problem exists with the NHS bill. The headline message may sound vaguely plausible (though I don’t think it does) but when you look at the detail what is proposed will wreak havoc. The devil is always, as they say, in the detail. Those who know the system well can understand that. It is the amateurs in the Westminster village who have no idea how to deliver services who are seduced by the headline messages. If it is true that Nick Clegg and others could endorse a policy with such far reaching consequences without even getting acquainted with the detail that is utterly negligent.
You can imagine at some point in the near future the NAO casting an eye over the academies policy and concluding that the Govt has been giving away valuable assets to private bodies at knockdown valuations – poor value for money. And that’s not the worst criticism that can be leveled at it.
As Chris Nicholson suggests, it would be good to make evidence-based decisions on the way in which policy is delivered. He picks up the poster for not offering any. There are a couple of responses to that. Apart from the 30second media soundbite the 700 word blog is probably one of the least suited channels for communicating the subtleties of the messages that can be drawn from the evidence. His own post on choice and competition from a few days ago drew on a small number of studies, mostly from CMPO at Bristol University, as evidence in support of more marketisation. While those studies are suggestive, the domain to which their results apply is limited. The scope for using them to draw general lessons about the wisdom of marketisation is very limited. Some of the CMPO work is notable because it stands against a larger pile of evidence against the benefits of marketisation. This is still very much a live area of debate. So if we are not very careful we are back to picking and choosing the bits of evidence that support our own agenda.
An independent body that systematically reviewed the evidence would be very welcome and would no doubt improve the quality of the debate. But it wouldn’t be particularly welcome by the Conservatives. They believe they know what the right thing to do is, regardless of the evidence.
Lots of people use words like neo-Liberal and No-Conservative to describe views they dont agree with, without actually knowing what a neo-liberal believes.
There are not many true neo-liberals in the conservative party, because neo-liberals would be pro-single market etc. and tories are not…..there is a case for saying that Ken Clarke is a neo-Liberal, and he is deeply unpopular in his party…then of course there is his attitude to gay riughts which isnt quite neo-liberal…….
are there neo-liberals in the Lib Denms? Im not sure among the parlaimenatry party who could be so described…most of them are classical liberals and like intervening in markets far too much to interevene…
the true neo-liberals in british polictis are the blairites….and if you perceive that neo-liberalism exists in the NHS and education and health it may be because of their reforms..but there is nothing neo-liberal about interfering in markets to the extent that the Coalition’s NHS bill does…..its simply impossible to have an NHS free at the point of Use and run in a neo-liberal way…..and thats why the reforms, whether they are good or bad are not neo-libveral…
now for schools……….Its an interesting point of debate whether creating academies and free schools is neo-liberal…the latter originate in Sweden which is not known as a bastian of neo-liberalism..indeed the idea that the power to create schools be partly divested from the state to the citizen is inherently social democratic, which perhaops expalins why it originated in Sweden a nation known for the Social Democracy.
As for academies, well it certainly introduces another element of the market, to an area which has always had the market(education) ut is it neo-liberal? Thazts an interetsing point of debate, again academies origianted with the blairites and they are neo-liberals…but since the schools remain with the state system it could be argued that academies are just liberal rather than neo-liberal.
It should also be pointed out that the intitial results show academies are being effective….and thats most important of all.
I dont write any of this as a neo-liberal, it quite simply doesnt work, the neo-liberalism of clinton and blair has been shown to be flawed……Im a classical liberal. and thats whay Im in the Lib Dems, rather than neo-liberal labour or traditionalist conservatives
Some good analysis in the article; but I turned off big time when I read “the kind of chutzpa of someone who has decided to write a foreword to the Bible.” What the f*** has that to do with anything? As a practising Christian I am sick to death of these pejorative throw-away lines about religion in general and Christianity in general. You want my support you respect my faith!
Alex Marsh simply asserts that there is a “larger pile of evidence against the benefits of marketisation” against which to assess the recent research findings about the pro-market reforms in health and education without quoting a single bit of that “pile of evidence”. As I said in the post on choice and competition in public services the research evidence of the benefits in health are clearer than in education, and even in health it is clear that choice and competition does not have benefits in all cases – A&E being a prime example
Dane Clouston – I share the sentiment behind what you suggest.
Jock – I am not trying to describe all those who support Academies as neoliberal, but do use it to describe Michael Gove.
Chris Nicholson – there is evidence that suggests different things. However, Gove speaks as if the evidence base is conclusive, which it is not. He did this with Swedish free schools, but I am assuming no longer because the evidence has now more conclusively swung against him.
In your recent LDV piece that you link to (https://www.libdemvoice.org/opinion-before-the-debate-whats-the-evidence-26602.html) you wrote that:
“My conclusion in the CentreForum paper, based on the research evidence and liberal principles, is that greater choice, competition and a level playing field between public, private and voluntary sectors in service provision does generally lead to improved services. But we should proceed incrementally and regulation is key to ensuring that in the development of these public service markets the service users’ interests are always paramount. Let the debate commence…”
I agree reforms should generally proceed in incremental steps and that regulation is very important. However, the Govt has created an uneven playing field. Maintained schools operate under an enormous body of law, unlike Academies, and so they are not able to cut corners in the ways academies can.
My view is that Academy Schools (excluding free schools, which are a type of Academy) as currently constituted will, through incremental improvements over time, raise standards, but these improvements will occur because of the freedoms they enjoy compared to other schools, not because of their governing arrangements.
In particular, I think the freedom they have in the employment of teachers will allow them to get more from their wage bill than maintained schools. However, I then fully expect such efficiency to be misused to justify the Academies programme/ more Academies, including their governing arrangements, serving an anti—state narrative, and so support the further erosion of maintained schools, rather than them being given more of Academy’s freedoms.
As I wrote to Jock, I am not suggesting that all supporters of the Academies programme are neo-Liberals, but do contend that Lib Dems that support it are misguided, and fear that some have been won round with liberal language, when they don’t really understand the detail, and that this speaks powerfully against Lib Dem parliamentarians supporting the Health and Social Care Bill.
Take free schools for example, they have been cleverly branded, and Lib Dems well-disposed towards things like free trade or the free churches could get easily sucked in, not appreciating that free schools are not a product of these traditions. Academies are sold as empowering parents and decentralising power, when they do neither of these things.
Ed – The title was mine, and as above, I do not describe all proponents of Academies as neoliberal.
Adam – I agree with your earlier quote.
William Pimm – I had previously read that Nick Clegg had not read the Health and Social Care Bill before offering his Party’s support for it, and think this speaks very powerfully against Lib Dem parliamentarians supporting it. The Health and Social Care Bill is a lot more complicated than the two Education Acts that have been introduced by the current Government.
Stephen W – school management at schools that convert to become an Academy may become much better at procuring support services, but it is not something they currently do at maintained schools. Some schools are also not being given a choice over Academy status; some have and are having Academy status and an outside sponsor imposed on them.
Meanwhile, as the very experienced and knowledgeable Cllr Peter Downs has observed, a great many schools have opted for Academy status because of a short term boost to their funding, or as a cynic might argue, a bribe: http://kingshedgesfocus.blogspot.com/2011/07/opinion-academies-overspend-revealed-by.html.
I wrote ‘anti-state neo-liberal ideological conviction’ because I think it accurate, though certainly also consider it pejorative.
Alex Marsh – I agree with you entirely. I am no expert on Health policy, but our leadership has been won over with many headline arguments in favour of much of the Government’s education reform agenda, without really understanding the detail, or the possible damaging long term consequences.
If Liberal Democrats who are expert in Health policy were offering us reassurances about the H & S C Bill, then I would be much more comfortable. But generally they are not.
This should ring an alarm bell, especially when our leader dismissively wrote with David Cameron in the ‘Open Public Services’ white paper last year that ‘… those who resist reform, put the producer interest before the citizens’ needs’.
John Carlisle – Gove is the only one not showing proper respect to Christianity here – why do you assume I am not an adherent?
Chris – doesn’t the fact that we having this debate after reforms have been enacted tell you something is wrong? You politely write ‘let the debate commence’, but in education the decisions and direction has long been set.
(my initial comment re the use of conventionally short blog posts to explore the subtlety of the evidence, including appropriate scrutiny of its theoretical and methodological assumptions and weaknesses, applies a fortiori to the comment thread)
Provocative post and good discussion. I agree that liberal minds should support the opening up of more choice in education provided there is no disadvantage to other schools. Every proposal will be different in that regard. Lib Dems should focus locally on looking at each proposal carefully, scrutinising, challenging and where the case is not made, fighting. Meanwhile at Westminster our MPs need to get after Gove. HIs procession of botches (BSF cancellation), cronyism (New Schools Network grant), and conflicts of interest (Community Security Trust) should be better exploited. Whether his policies work, a politician who has such a disregard for due process and runs his department like a sixteenth century monarch is extremely dangerous. We need to start attacking Gove on these issues, and looking at free schools and academies on a local case-by-case basis. Some will work, some, like the proposal in Tooting, will be another shocking extension of Gove’s power of patronage.
Paul
Let me play this back to you: “Gove’s . . . . claim that they are the ideologues demonstrates precisely the kind of chutzpa of someone who has decided to write a foreword to the Bible.” NOT the chutzpah of someone who arbitrarily emasculated the brilliant Partnership for Schools programme and cancelled the School for Sports programme with lying statistics.
I do not assume that you are or are not an adherent. What I do assume is that you have diluted your argument with a number of (other) religious adherents. Why do it?
Why is there this noting of Liberals being “free of ideological baggage”? I thought it was Scruton that said the Tories don’t have an ideology? Liberals have the oldest ideology of modern democracy, surely:
“That every person should be free to do as they please subject only to the like freedom for others” or however Spencer put it.
Is it that we have been a party of protest so long that we believe anything the waifs and strays from other parties bring with them?
NO wonder people don’t know what we stand for if we have no ideological baggage. We ought to get some soon because next time they vote the wool will not be so easy to pull over their eyes and others will take the protest vote.
I think our ideology is the best. That’s why I am still here. But yes, it is sometimes difficult to detect amongst all the left luggage people have brought over the decades. Ironically of course Gove would call himself a neo-conservative, originally a refugee from a liberal heritage who took umbrage at the big state policies of Johnson and so on. He may also be a neo-liberal which seems to me to be a more or less purely economic term of abuse.
We should be real liberals though. If they can be made to achieve the favourable, desired outcome we should always favour voluntary over coercive, market rather than state, civic over government, equity over privilege, decision making closest to people that are affected over centralisation. I’d call that an ideology, and it is expressed in the Preamble.
Unfortunately even the very first big policy of new liberalism failed to meet these standards – with Lloyd-George nationalising universal provision of pension and employment insurance rather than accepting that 90% of people were covered mutually and finding a way to do the same for the ten per cent without forcing everyone onto the state.
A hundred years later and with our first taste of national power since then, we have an opportunity to look at what that ideology means for the twenty-first century. It means recognising that the state in fact created and continues to promote and protect much of the privilege and inequity we seek to put right. That instead of additional government programs aiming to compensate for that earlier privilege, rent-seeking and regulatory capture, we should eradicate the cause of the problem not simply seek to mitigate the effects.
Our starting point on any policy ought to be “does something the state has done or does do make it harder for people” and if so eradicate that before adding yet more state action to the mix.
I call this Rigorous Liberalism and I commend it to this house. Oh, and yes, it does involve slaying some very big sacred cows. But liberals were once bold that way. Not much any longer it seems. No wonder people like Compass and Murphy now want post-fascist big state to counter the years of neo-liberal economics. They are wrong and they are illiberal in their error. We should not follow them or take on their trappings like assuming that everyone we don’t like is neo-liberal.
Paul, just in response to your response, I think you miss my point – I don’t object to your calling people who like Academies whatever you like – I don’t like academies, they still smack far too much of state control to me. I object to the notion that people who don’t feel easy with the size of the state and its reach and include in things like education and health, are necessarily neo-liberals in the sense you seem to mean it here.
Of course one of the local councils that saw some of the biggest improvements in educational achievement over the last 10 years was the LB Southwark – run until 2010 by Simon Hughes’s Lib Dems. It was also the local authority that created (under the old regime) more academies than anyone else.
Yes Simon Hughes – an ideological neo-liberal set on devastating state education in Southwark…
“I wrote ‘anti-state neo-liberal ideological conviction’ because I think it accurate, though certainly also consider it pejorative.”
Okay. Please explain precisely how academy schools are a neo-liberal policy? Not Conservative, not liberal, specifically neo-liberal?
Please also explain how a policy that does nothing more than shuffle around state assets is anti-state? Academy schools are as much state schools as non-academy schools.
Are you prepared to entertain the idea that Gove supports academies because he has the prejudice that giving teachers in schools more power will allow them to do a better job for their kids, rather than that power resting in people distant from individual schools?
You may feel free to argue that’s a stupid prejudice. But as far as I can tell there is no reason to assume it’s either anti-state or neo-liberal, except to use those terms as vague terms of abuse.
Stephen – Academy schools are not state schools, but state funded private schools. They provide school places for the Department for Education because they have a contract to do so.
You don’t need to convert schools into Academies for schools to have greater freedom, so why create Academies in the first place? For Gove it is based in part on an assumption that generally the less state involvement in the provision of schooling the better, which is neoliberal.
Paul – “state funded private school” is an oxymoron, and is very wide of the mark in the case of academies. This will become more obvious as a number of them get into trouble, as the laws of chance say they will. A private school would simply go bust, and the government contract go elsewhere. That will not happen to academies, except in cases where an equivalent state school would also be closed. Even if that’s the case in theory, it will not be in practice. It will become increasingly clear that academies are responsible to central government rather than local government. The flaw is that it amounts to centralisation rather than liberalism. Gove simply hopes the schools will be successful without much intervention; his problems will multiply when he discovers this is not so.
As a school governor I have been involved in discussions about whether or not to proceed with academy status. In our case the answer is no because they aren’t different enough. The funding is more or less the same, unless you can find an outside sponsor. Most of the freedoms we care about are already offered by our (Labour) LA. So what’s the point? Greater freedom over staff contracts, cutting back the mountains of union negotiated nonsense that weigh down the current system, does have attractions. But not worth the hassle of implementation as things now stand.
The critical issue is admissions policy. As soon as we see academies getting round admissions rules to dump more challenging pupils elsewhere, then we know the system is breaking down. But then again, some LA funded schools play that game…
As a school governor
Paul, I agree 100% that you do not need academies to give a good education. In fact all, like most re-structurings, it only gets in the way and takes the eye off the ball. Robert Pirsig of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance fame said it most clearly: “But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible.
The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory.
If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government. There’s so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.”
“Jock”
Liberal ideology requires action – by the state.
For Liberals, the Preamble to the Liberal Party Constitution sets out the ideology that “The Liberal Party exists to build a Liberal Society in which every citizen shall possess liberty, PROPERTY (my emphasis) and security and none shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity. Its chief care is for the rights and opportunities of the individual, and in all spheres it sets freedom first.”. All that needs the state.
So does Liberal Democrat ideology. The LibDem Preamble opposes “all forms of entrenched privilege and inequality” and “encourages the necessary wealth creating processes, with a just distribution of the rewards of success”. It also recognises “that the independence of individuals is safeguarded by their personal ownership of property”, supports” the widest possible distribution of wealth” and supports the income welfare state with public services “available on equal terms to all”. All that, including pension and employment insurance – as Lloyd George recognised – and education and health, could not be done “on equal terms to all” without the state.
Of course you are right that the state has “in fact created and continues to promote and protect much of the privilege and inequity we seek to put right”. The state should put that right, but for those who want to reduce state action, it is good that there is one area in which the state, by taking action in one generation, can reduce the action it needs to take in the next. Liberal ideology must challenge the widely and often unconsciously held assumptions of dynastic capitalism.
By reducing the vastly unequal receipt of “entrenched privilege and inequality” in the form of inherited property and wealth, the liberal state must ensure that no longer do some inherit billions while others inherit nothing. Liberal ideology demands that all young adults should receive a basic minimum of capital, financed by and subject to a radical, liberal and logical reform of Inheritance Tax.
Matthew – an Academy is a state funded private school, not de facto, but de jure. Sub-section 5a) of section one of the Academies Act 2010:
“The undertakings are – to establish and maintain an independent school in England”
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/32/section/1
An independent school and a private school are the same.
You write that an Academy can’t go bankrupt, but why not? These are precisely the kind of questions that we should already have answers for. Academies operate in a completely different legal framework to maintained schools, as I fear will become more obvious for the wrong reasons over time. I don’t see a reason why an Academy could not be declared bankrupt, and nothing to stop an Academy Trust just dissolving itself, like any Trust.
Admissions and exclusions are a big worry, as Academy schools are their own admissions authority. Most Academies have to adhere to the whole of the school admissions code, but some have exemptions from parts of it in their funding agreement on an ad hoc basis.
John – you make a good point quoting Robert Pirsig. Upon closure inspection, many of the Government’s education reforms are not motivated by liberal, but right wing Conservative thought, but sadly lots are being incorrectly presented as such. I think it important to acknowledge this, and for many reasons, but one being so that the Party is not hamstrung by trying to defend a lot of the current Government’s record and actions in education when debating education policy in future. We have largely sub-contracted out education policy to the Tories, but at least this is to a large degree a consequence of the coalition agreement and the way ministerial portfolios have been handed out.
Our support for the H and S C Bill seems to have been given freely, and not only offered outside of the coalition agreement that we voted upon in the Birmingham special conference, but in opposition to it: “We will stop the top-down reorganisations of the NHS” (p24).
Having signed up to the Tories deficit reduction plan, when we campaigned against it, and then reneging on our signature commitment on tuitions fees, I struggle to work out why our leadership then thought to support NHS top down reorganisation and marketisation.
Matthew green is right and Paul Pettinger is wrong.
As Matthew says “state funded private school” is an oxymoron. A more thorough way of putting that is its nonsense. Academy schools are state funded schools in state owned buildings with staff paid for by the state. They are just state schools. Twisting semantics around to refer to them as “private” in any sense is total sophistry.
And you still haven’t demonstrated in any sense how the policy is neo-liberal?
I can only conclude that you are using the terms in a sense of vague abuse without any precise thought behind it. Sadly I get the same impression from pretty much all of this article.
Posts above concerning the changes in education are very interesting and cover a number of ideas. However, in terms of academies, there are a number of issues which seem to be unclear in coalition thinking?
If academies are meant to be freed of direct state intervention, then why did the 2010 bill give Gove a large number of additional powers which seem to focus on concentrating direct control of the system on him, hardly a form of localism.
Secondly, if the idea is to raise standards, why do I come across an increasing number of academies where unqualified individuals are employed, sometimes with degrees which do not match up with their teaching responsibilities? By giving such a freedom, it effectively debased the teaching profession, emphasising a view of teachers as a mere ‘technical’ workforce.
Thirdly, claims are often made that academies are raising standards, but in the league tables this week, along with a number of academic research projects, there is no statistical evidence that they make a significant difference. Also, with those which have returned very low attainment, what will happen? The only policy would be to turn them from an academy into an academy.
Finally, I think it is very worrying that reports this weekend of bringing in ways of paying private providers profits by the back door shows that yet again, as with many other policies from the coalition, the Liberal Democrats seem to be constantly outflanked by the Tories. If anyone is relaxed about stepped privatisation and making the case for a free market experiment, you only need to look at the one country which has attempted it, Chile. And this has led to rapidly widening socio-economic disparity, corruption in gaining places in HE, and large scale demonstrations by school children (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-14487555). Any large scale private sector involvement in education must move in this direction as the raison d’être of private activity is to make profits. The outcome of this in Chile is asset stripping of schools, and the loss of social mobility. In addition, we might want to consider what happens if this experiment goes wrong. Having handed over state land, buildings and funding to the private sector for free, we would then be in a position of having to pay market rates to buy back our own social assets, something we could not afford to do. Hence, would it not be wiser to go at a much slower speed, to have a full national debate and be transparent about the positives and negatives of any such move. Indeed, are we not asking if we want a system which is centred on social good or a system based on profit motive? The reforms are occurring quickly, with very little public debate, and I am afraid it is yet another nail in the coffin of the Liberal Democrats (a party I have voted for my entire adult life, but can no longer think of doing) as they appear supine in much of their dealings in social policy change in relation to the Tories, particularly in education.
Paul:
No it is not. To me this is symptomatic of what I was talking about in my first post – that all critics of state involvement must be neo-liberal. In the case of education, and indeed health, check out the likes of Ivan Illich or Paul Goodman. I don’t think anyone would accuse him of being neo-liberal. Would they?
“Jock”
You “don’t want to retain the state infrastructure” but “want to smash the state!”.
What is the practical difference in policy between that political position and the political position of neo- liberals. Do you both want those with the most money to have the best education and the best health – and the Devil take the hindmost?.
Do you agree with the provision of public services “available on equal terms to all”, as in the Liberal Democrat Preamble?
Do you care about equality of opportunity? Neo-liberals don’t. Liberals do – in education , health or the inheritance of wealth. Do you?
“Jock”
I should have said “Do you care about equality of opportunity? Neo-liberals don’t. Liberals do – in education, health and the inheritance of wealth. Do you?”
Jock – the very fact that you are complaining about the policies of Lloyd George only goes to show that there are different types of liberalism and not all of them match yours. I am not a member of the “continuing liberal party”, but they have usefully retained the preamble of the Liberal party constitution – the one I subscribed to when I joined the pre-merger Liberal party. You will notice there is a clearly defined role for the state. We were not in love with the state – in fact we had a critique of it. But we still believed it had a important role in delivering social justice, if only because no other institution could do so in a comprehensive fashion. See http://www.liberal.org.uk/library/constitution.htm
Jock, Ivan Illich and others were certainly libertarian (if of a left variety). I know we have some libertarians in Lib Dem ranks, but they are not very common. Three key issues for many many Lib Dems, however, are 1 Tostop privatisation of public assets, both centrally and locally held and run, 2 To stop centralisation, and 3 To maintain democratic control and accountability in key features of our lives. Whether or not we call those who oppose these key issues “neoliberals” is surely not directly relevant to those important aims.
It seems rather strange to me that you and others who say they are liberals seem to see public ownership and control as being an evil rather than a good, and that you do not generally have anything negative to say about wealthy private owners, who are not even nominally accountable to the people.
Geoffrey – Thanks for reminding us of the toweringly ambitious and radical preamble. Looking back, it’s no wonder many of us had to think several times before committing to merger!!
Tim13, those of us on the “left” of “libertarianism” to use two much overused and often misconstrued terms believe that it is the state, past and present, that through privilege, rent seeking, regulatory capture and protectionism, has enabled a wealthy elite to emerge, and continues to support it.
Indeed even such arch high priests of the “right” of “libertarianism” advocate the dissolution of wealth gained illegitimately through these state brokered processes. So, to pluck a current example out of the air, they would see the current banking system as crony corporatism whose wealth is created because of its cosy relationship with governments and so on. In such cases, they would treat these as effectively state entities and advocate giving them to their real legitimate owners by for instance co-operativising them to their customers, or their employees and the like – and actually with no compensation to the wealthy elites currently in charge of or owning them because their wealth has come about illegitimately.
So, not only would we “privatise” “public assets” by co-operativisng them to their real users/workers (parents, teachers, patients, medics, road users etc) but they would go further and do the same to all those firms who owe their existence to the state in some form or another – from bankers, to the military industrial complex.
Sorry if this is not negative enough for you. But it is a damned sight more hostile to most of the private illegitimately acquired wealth than any policy I’ve seen from any mainstream politicians relating to public ownership, bail outs or banker bonuses.
Stephen – parents of children at Academies do not pay fees, like at most private schools, and you might argue that a state funded independent school is very similar to a state maintained school. However, most proponents and opponents will argue otherwise, and as I have just proven above, Academies are independent schools.
This might appear dull, but it means that locally maintained and Academy schools operate in different legal frameworks, which has very significant practical (and unintended) consequences. David Wolfe, a leading legal expert on Academies, has produced a blog for those concerned about Academies and the law aptly titled ‘a can of worms’: http://davidwolfe.org.uk/wordpress/.
The Academy programme is pervaded by an ambition to reduce state involvement, which in the absence of compelling evidence to do so, is a hall mark of neoliberal philosophy. The assumption that services provided by the state are inherently worse than non-state providers is not held by the vast majority of Lib Dems.
Phil – the Government’s reforms are riddled with contradictions and give power to some people and take it from others, generally the kinds of people the Conservatives don’t like – its tradional Toryism!
Mainstream thinking in the Lib Dems has certainly been overlooked.
Jock – I didn’t write that believing less state involvement to be inherently better is ONLY neoliberal – think I’ve now used the term enough for one weekend!
“Ditch the “neoliberal” term …. it’s a totally meaningless and lazy way to tar anyone a smidgeon to the right of whoever is applying it …. we need to do more to understand each other without using the kind of “us vs them” collectivist labels beloved of the SWP.”
Well, Ed, if you think people shouldn’t use rude words, like “neoliberal”, I don’t think you help your case by using ruder words, like “collectivist” and “SWP”, yourself!
But there’s more to it than that, and I think it helps to look at Labour for a parallel example on factional conflict. Now, of course, the different factions within Labour have always had their fair share of acrimony, while we have tended to pride ourselves on how civilised we are in our internal discussions – sometimes rightly, sometimes not. But when it came to the Militant Tendency, Labour shifted up a gear in excoriation. And quite fairly so. The Militants were “a party within the party”, determined to seize power by stealth. Quite reasonably, Kinnock killed them off before they killed him. Militant had put themselves beyond the pale.
Now, within our own party, we have witnessed what its supporters have called the “Clegg coup”. A process whereby a party within our party have plotted in secret to seize the leadership, have done so through duplicity, and have then acted to put our party at the service, beck and call of our Conservative opponents.
Frankly, I don’t see a huge difference between the tactics of the Clegg coupsters and the tactics and morality of the Militant Tendency. And one day, I hope to see our coupsters exiled beyond the pale.
To be clear on this, I as a social liberal would be happy to agree that there are many “economic liberals” and “Orange Bookers” who very much belong in the party, have useful things to say, sometimes deservedly win the arguments, etc etc. I might be sometimes be a bit robust with them when arguing on LDV, but I respect their views.
But as to Clegg, Laws, Alexander, Browne? I treat them with contempt. That’s what they deserve.
Tim13,
“Three key issues for many many Lib Dems, however, are 1 Tostop privatisation of public assets, both centrally and locally held and run, 2 To stop centralisation, and 3 To maintain democratic control and accountability in key features of our lives.”
I don’t agree that is true, at all.
As I understand it the priority is to find ‘appropriate and proportional’ solutions which work.
This may or may not involve an active stance for or against privatisation and centralisation, precisely in order to enable a smooth transition to greater democratic control and accountability.
So the debate here between the different strands is not only vital to designing successful policy, but will fail unless all different strands are included to bring their ideas and concerns to the table.
Jock is very much a ‘strong’ voice (if perhaps sometimes overly dogmatic), but he really isn’t that far from the mainstream – despite living in Oxford!
Thanks for that Oranjepan. Back last May I had my now annual crisis of identity that leads me to question my place in the party in response to Jonathan Calder calling for a stronger Lib Dem ideology to be wrought.
This blog post was the result – an anarchist fisking of the Preamble.
It is the role of those of us pushing the boundary of the “Overton Window” to be quite dogmatic I’d say though too 🙂
“Oranjepan”
I am glad you have taken issue with “Tim13” on “stopping the privatisation of public assets”.
As a Liberal, I am in favour of the privatisation of all activities other than those which either cannot be or ought not to be rationed by price. Neo-liberal?
As a Liberal, I am in favour of far greater equality of opportunity in education and health and the inheritance of wealth. To that end I include, in the activities which ought not to be rationed by price, both education and health. I would like State education and NHS health to be the best, squeezing out private education and private health by putting VAT on both luxury expenditures. Social Liberal?
Neo-liberal? Social Liberal? Oxford Liberal! As an Oxford Liberal in favour of the Liberal Party “Property for All” constitutional Preamble and the widest possible spread of the private ownership of wealth and opportunity in the UK in a market economy, may I ask when will Liberal Democrats start thinking or taking action, in line with their Preamble, in order to reduce “entrenched privilege and inequality” in the form of inherited property and wealth?
…and there I was thinking you’d travelled down the A34!
Back to the subject, I have a problem with your interpretation of Franz Oppenheimer’s theory of state – conquest can only be maintained with the construction of a social contract, which creates measures of legitimacy. I also feel you overlook his distinction between those states which meet acceptible definitions of legitimacy and those ‘wolf states’ which do not.
As far as this relates to the provision of services there is a requirement for reform because performance according to these measures has not kept up with public expectations – indeed in many areas (Clegg mentioned corporate accounting) those measures have been debased or made opaque in a flood of information while popular feeling is simultaneously stimulated.
Under the current circumstances we can see how mutually-owned companies have advantages, and I’m generally a supporter of subsidiarity, so I would tend to agree with Tim13 about the correct course of action, albeit from a different rationale – in particular, it could be more appropriate were the form of corporate structure determined on the basis of the service they provide and whether it is an asset or a good, not whether one sees them inherently as an evil or a good.
More specifically Housing Benefit can’t be squeezed into a benefits cap for this reason, while Child Benefit would depend upon what it is actually spent on.
With health and education this translates as a question about specialisation of service.
We shouldn’t forget GPs operate within the private sector, in many cases as mutual partnerships, while consultants are practically a lore unto themselves. Nor should we forget the huge variability in performance between different schools highlighted by the introduction of league tables, which creates the dilemma between channeling resources towards raising minimum standards or producing excellence.
Oranjepan:
My interpretation of Oppenheimer? Or someone else’s? I ask because I’m *usually* the one who mentions him but I haven’t on this thread. If you mean me, it seems to me that his idea of creating legitimacy through some kind of contract is in reality the conquerors just realising that they’d be better off if they incorporate the conquered and live off them rather than killing them and taking everything once and then not having productive inferiors to supply their “political means” desires. It cannot ever make the original conquest and expropriation legitimate. Just because you may be a third, and innocent, owner of stolen goods does not make them any the less stolen or your acquisition of them any more legitimate.
And it seems to me that of those very few states he said were of the most advanced, legitimate variety, you could no longer count New Zealand and certainly not Australia (though he doesn’t include Australia in the best category from memory) now that we know more about their treatment of indigenous peoples when westerners arrived. Though certainly NZ and its colonists’ relationship with Maoris is clearly a better example.
David Allen,
“Frankly, I don’t see a huge difference between the tactics of the Clegg coupsters and the tactics and morality of the Militant Tendency. And one day, I hope to see our coupsters exiled beyond the pale.”
To be fair to Nick Clegg and his friends, I think there is. Militant was the Revolutionary Socialist League, a Trotskyite sect that entered the Labour Party in order to build up its own organisation and recruit cadres. Nick Clegg and his friends are a collection of free marketeers and centre-rightists who joined the Liberal Democrats and have been successful within the party because of the naivety and incohesiveness of the mainstream wing. Also, Militant exploited and abused its own activists, operating much like a cult. I don’t think the Clegg people are into anything of that kind.
The Liberal Party was the subject of entryism of the Militant kind, when in 1970 it was targeted by the School of Economic Science, a secret (and highly illiberal) religious cult. The response of the then Liberal leadership was to welcome them, only to see the chickens come home to roost many years later with damaging press coverage. Similarly, Mike Thomas (anyone remember him?) very nearly allowed Exigesis (a kind of self-improvement cult) to take over the campaigning work of the SDP, only to be stopped in his tracks by David Owen at the 11th hour.
If social liberals functioned as a caucus within the Liberal Democrats (just as Tribune does in the Labour Party), then it would be possible to prevent the right taking (or retaining) control of the leadership. The Social Liberal Forum may well presage a move in that direction.
“But as to Clegg, Laws, Alexander, Browne? I treat them with contempt. That’s what they deserve.”
I think it is dangerous to focus on individuals, because it gives the impression that if we got rid of a few bad people we would solve the problem, when the underlying issues are much deeper. What would happen if we got rid of Clegg, Laws, Alexander, Browne, and replaced them with, say, Huhne, Cable, Hughes, Webb? Nothing, I say. There might be a superficial change of emphasis, but we would still be propping up a Tory government committed to mass unemployment and the destruction of the health service. It is the “coalition” that is the root of the problem, not the leadership, and we need to remember that. The entire Parliamentary Party and almost everyone at the Special Conference in Birmingham supported the “coalition”, and no significant figure in the party has called for it to end, yet. At the next general election we cannot go and tell voters that only Nick Clegg and his friends supported this stuff, because they know that we all did. That’s why I think the party is (probably) sunk for a generation.
I am horrified, but not surprised, to hear that Nick Clegg didn’t even bother to read the Health and Social Care Bill (and presumably also the preceding white paper, “Equity and Excellence”) before recommending it. I am even more disgusted by Paul Burstow who has behaved with extreme weakness throughout. There is still time for Liberal Democrats to go into the lobbies and vote this terrible bill down, and they should do so.
“As Lib Dems we lack the ideological baggage of other parties – we can judge public sector reform on a pragmatic case by case basis. However, public health care, like education, is a natural monopoly”
Your presumption that health care and education should be public (and therefore a monopoly is inevitable) is an assumption based on ideology. Looks like baggage to me.
You can’t, of course, remove ideology (for want of a better, less clunky word) from policymaking. It determines our priorities, and helps us sift through the evidence to determine a solution. But Lib Dems could do with being a bit more honest about their own prejudices, rather than claiming some mythical neutrality from which to judge others as displaying “naked anti-state neo-liberal ideological conviction” while they themselves display naked pro-state liberal ideological conviction.
Jock,
Well exactly.
As soon as decision-makers decide legitimacy involves incorporating the wider population it introduces the concept that the interests of those decision-makers are aligned and correspond with those of the population at large.
Essentially Oppenheimer restates Adam Smith’s economic argument against slavery, augmenting it with potential grounds for strategic public ownership and a philathropic welfare state, albeit sceptical of coercive tendencies (a closer reading tells you his preferred model was the traditional British model of liberal democracy – he kept it quiet for obvious reasons given the time and place he was working).
So as far as education and the NHS go, because public demands have inflated out of balance with the ability to deliver, it is an easier task to find flexibility within the organisational composition of service provision. While Gove is following this, and we might agree with the rationale (not least given the results indicated by the Pupil Premium which we claim responsibility for), there is still much to be criticised about the means and manner of proposed reforms.
And the question Paul Pettinger poses in this post, whether the divergence in provision between universal (ie comprehensive) and specialist (ie academy) schools should involve a divergence in state involvement, is valid and highly relevant. He seems to say no, you say yes, and I say if it gives the individual students prime consideration and is not taken to extremes.
Maybe we can get beyond the polarised positioning.
Dane,
“entrenched privilege and inequality” is not simply a matter of inherited property and wealth, and I think this is almost as much a illusion perpetrated by those who have riches as it is a tangible injustice for those who haven’t. That’s inverted values – money can’t buy happiness, it just makes sad people more comfortable.
“entrenched privilege and inequality” won’t be resolved by just designing new taxes targeted at the segment of society which shows it invests successfully, but by changing the social attitudes and mentality which go into designing our system of government which spends the money the state collects.
Personally I don’t have such a problem with privilege – I have one problem with unfair access to privilege, and another problem with the ability to turn privilege to unfair purpose, but that’s slightly different.
“I turned off big time when I read “the kind of chutzpa of someone who has decided to write a foreword to the Bible.””
Actually, I thought Gove was being unusually modest when describing his vital contribution to the Bible as a mere Foreword. I would have expected an Executive Summary and an Action List…
“Oranjepan”
I did, very often, down and back on the A34 to and from Newbury where I was PPC from 1968, living just outside Oxford as we have done since 1971, when we got married and I started reading for PPE at New College. Regrettably Ted Heath messed things up on the political front by calling the February 1974 General Election, which was unexpectedly followed by another in October, the other side of my finals, so no time to squeeze the Labour vote enough during the summer. My reason for getting an economics degree after being in the Royal Navy and then banking? A youthful ambition to become Liberal Chancellor of the Exchequer – in order to try to make ours a far fairer country! Moderator, please delete if you wish!!
“Oranjepan”
“We shouldn’t forget GPs operate within the private sector, in many cases as mutual partnerships, while consultants are practically a lore unto themselves. Nor should we forget the huge variability in performance between different schools highlighted by the introduction of league tables, which creates the dilemma between channelling resources towards raising minimum standards or producing excellence. “
If there were VAT on expenditure on private health and private education, there would be more resources for the NHS to have more doctors and the state schools to have more teachers and smaller classes; the demand for the private sector would be reduced and the dilemma re channelling resources would be tackled more within the state sector, for education and health “available on equal terms to all” in line with the LibDem Preamble
“Jock”
Isn’t there a limit to the applicability of history, or grudges?
Isn’t it better to start from where we are and make things better.
On your side of the argument, yes, one third of all land is still owned by the “aristocratic” families who grabbed it in the Norman Conquest, thanks to the outrageously unlimited exemptions for agricultural land, amongst other assets and lifetime gifts, from Inheritance Tax.
On my side, I won’t bore you again with the details, but we should reform all that in order to start all young adults in each new generation with a basic minimum inheritance. Only the state could do that, and it should, as soon as possible.
“Oranjepan”
In reply to your comments to me, for which many thanks and hoping I am not hogging too much space:-
“entrenched privilege and inequality” is not simply a matter of inherited property and wealth, and I think this is almost as much an illusion perpetrated by those who have riches as it is a tangible injustice for those who haven’t. That’s inverted values – money can’t buy happiness, it just makes sad people more comfortable. “
What else is “entrenched privilege and inequality” apart from inherited property and wealth? Is the latter not a major part of it? An illusion perpetrated by those who have riches? No one suggests that it is a tangible injustice for some to make a lot of money while others do not. What is an injustice is that some start off with billions and others start off with nothing – however much some of the former do badly and however much some of the latter do well.
What inverted values? Maybe money may not always buy happiness, and maybe it makes some sad people more comfortable. What about those for whom money does enable happiness and what about those happy people whom money makes more comfortable?
““entrenched privilege and inequality” won’t be resolved by just designing new taxes targeted at the segment of society which shows it invests successfully, but by changing the social attitudes and mentality which go into designing our system of government which spends the money the state collects.”
The entrenched privilege and inequality of vastly unequal inheritance of wealth will certainly be reduced by a modest flat rate tax on the luxury expenditure of all giving and bequeathing of capital – less than VAT on the ordinary expenditures of life – deductible from a progressive tax, from the same modest rate up to the present rate of Inheritance Tax, on the cumulative lifetime total of unearned wealth from lifetime gifts and bequests. Those who will pay the latter will not be the segment of society which shows that it invests successfully, but people who are about to receive assets unearned by their own efforts.
How do you think “entrenched privilege and inequality” will be resolved by “changing the social attitudes and mentality which go into designing our system of government which spends the money the state collects?” A way it will be resolved will be by changing the social attitudes and mentality of those who accept automatically the assumptions of dynastic capitalism.
“Personally I don’t have such a problem with privilege – I have one problem with unfair access to privilege, and another problem with the ability to turn privilege to unfair purpose, but that’s slightly different.”
Well! Vastly unequal inheritance of wealth and property, ranging from billions to nothing, is unfair access to privilege. Q.E.D!
Ben – I don’t for a moment claim mythical neutrality, and certainly hold many assumptions. However, a lot of the Government’s education policy is being misold and evidence misused, and for ends that most Lib Dems won’t agree with. Members should be made aware of this, so we can learn from it and avoid mistakes in the future, such as relating to the H and S C Bill.
Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.
State education was devastated by the (public-school educated) wrecker Crosland and his socialist bretheren, and then given the coup de grace by the Tories. Prior to Crosland, public schools were in decline. Ever since he smashed the grammar schools they’ve been in the ascendant. Privelege has been fuirther entrenched by the farcical “selection by property prices” system we have at our so-called “comprehensive” schools. But even these so-called “good” schools do not compete with the competitive and selective independent schools in the way that the grammr schools did.
We need to return to selection, and fast.
Sesenco,
I’ve only just found your posting, suspect it got stuck a while in moderation, pity, posts tend to get lost without trace when that happens!
OK, I’m not really claiming that the Cleggies are quite the same evil quasi-religious cultists as Militant or Scientology. I am merely saying that there are similarities. I do think that there is a much greater degree of behind-the-scenes scheming that you typically see with most other lobby groups within parties, such as (for example) Compass within Labour. You say they succeeded because of the naivety of the mainstream, and I wouldn’t disagree. However, I would add that they benefited hugely from being bankrolled by the hedge fund industry who sponsored the Orange Book, set up Centre Forum, and generally demonstrated whose side you wanted to be on if you were seeking career success.
You also have a point, I fear, when you comment that changing the cast would not solve all the problems. The Cleggies plotted to form the Greater Conservative Movement for ideological reasons. Their Cabinet colleagues allowed Osborne to “pay the top price for the Turkish carpet” and sold out for the sake of the trappings of power and influence. The public at large know it, and they may very well condemn the sell-outs with greater contempt than they condemn the ideologues. It has been a terrible failure of character.
Yes, we did all support the coalition, though in my own case, only for a very short while. If my recall of history is right, the Special Conference was held while it was still possible to believe that the Coalition Agreement was actually going to bear a real relationship to the way we would actually govern. However, it was only a few months in when Lansley plopped onto the table, as the first of many demonstrations that if we thought Blair was good at writing a dodgy dossier, we hadn’t seen nothing yet! That, of course, is when the Cables and Hugheses should first have jumped up in horror and demanded a rethink. (The Cleggies, of course, wouldn’t have been horrified, as they obviously knew all along what Lansley, Gove and Osborne were going to do. Until we came to the AV vote, where Clegg got his first real unpleasant surprise, and didn’t that show!) But they didn’t. Now they have until 2015 to earn ministerial salaries, line up future jobs outside politics if still wishing to earn, and prepare to retire from politics, along with the probable demise of the Liberal Democrats as anything other than a tiny fixed-orbit satellite of the Tory party..
And that’s the problem. Even a ten-per-cent party, if linked umbilically to the Tories, can swing elections to the Right. That’s why it is still worth fighting to get our Party back.
David,
if you want to fight to get something back its because you never really had it in the first place.
David Allen and “Oranjepan”
I supported the Coalition because it would have been too difficult for the Conservatives to tackle our parlous economic and financial position as a minority Government. Also, I wanted electoral reform.
On the Saturday evening of the Coalition negotiations, I emailed Oliver Letwin, whom I have got to know – mainly by email apart from saying hello at one political meeting- as a result of lobbying him and other Conservatives (because I share their EU-scepticism) to get them to see the light for UK Universal Inheritance with modest parameters as a way to help bring about a genuinely “property owning democracy” and an “opportunity society”!
Anyway, I asked him/the Conservatives to offer the LibDems exactly what Labour had offered them, and no more – i.e. a referendum on electoral reform. I was very surprised to receive by return and email “Thanks, Dane”! He is always scrupulously polite, but, although I was under no illusion that I had or would make any difference to events, it was very nice to feel with the flow, for a change, rather than against it!
With electoral reform, I had hoped that the EU-sceptic (and UK Universal Inheritance supporting) Liberal Party, of which I am a member, would grow in strength in relation to the EU-phile Social Democratic Liberal Democrats. And maybe that the two parties could merge again at some point, with a balance of pro- and anti- views on the EU and the Euro No AV, damn it! So think again! For the time being.
So
David Allen
I am interested to know whether you could give an impression of the distinctive general political attitudes or policies held by the party you are thinking about when you say “That’s why it is still worth fighting to get our Party back.”
And
“Oranjepan”
When you say, in a rather unlikely way,” if you want to fight to get something back it’s because you never really had it in the first place.”, are you talking about the same general political attitudes or policies held by the party that David is thinking about?
If so, do you think they never existed or is it just that you opposed aspects of them when they did?
Oranjepan,
I must have been dreaming, then. Obviously we never said “penny in the pound on income tax”, or opposed an illegal war, or said that Britain didn’t need three conservative parties, or called for a big switch to green taxation. Or, talked about an alliance of liberals and social democrats in which the liberals (poor saps) thought they were the ones who were further to the left…
David,
whichever way you look at it a policy proposed in opposition is qualitatively different to a policy enacted in government. If you think otherwise, then yes, you are dreaming. If you want to talk about moral consistency, fine, but that’s not the same as action and it’s not the subject of this thread, which I was obviously misguided in thinking was about the role of the state in providing services in relation to actual proposals being considered.
Dane,
I find it strange that you declare your desire for a return to two-party politics while maintaining membership of the seventh party and commenting on a site of the third party. I’m also not enthused by the negative tone of your language, or your ability to twist a conversation from the subject at hand to your pet preferences.
Maybe I can suggest there are more productive ways of contributing.
“Maybe I can suggest there are more productive ways of contributing.”
Pots and kettles!
“Oranjepan”
What makes you think that I have “declared a desire for a return to two-party politics”? I comment on this site because I am a Liberal who wants the UK to leave the EU and who wants to replace Conservative Dynastic Capitalism by a new form of Liberal Universal Inheritance Capitalism. I stand by what I stood for in Newbury as a Liberal many years ago, for a far fairer country with greater equality of opportunity in education, health and the inheritance of wealth and for the privatisation of all activities EXCEPT those which either cannot be or ought not to be rationed by price, in which I fervently include education and health.
I left the Liberal Democrats because of what I saw as their unthinking EU-fanaticism after the merger. I re-joined the Liberal Party because it was quite rightly opposed to the UK joining the Euro; I subsequently persuaded them to adopt as party policy UK Universal Inheritance in 2005. I would like to persuade the Liberal Democrats to change their policy on the EU and to adopt UK Universal Inheritance, but I cannot join them until they have moved some way towards a healthy EU-scepticism. Had they had any power at the time of the decision on joining the Euro, they would have crippled our country out of a misguided quasi-religious idealistic attachment to the idea of a United Europe. In an ideal world I would like the Liberal Democrats and the Liberal Party to merge again and start to be a Liberal Party of protest FOR a far fairer country and AGAINST the UK’s membership of the EU. The fact that something seems unlikely is not a reason for not trying to bring it about.
What you call my “pet preferences” relate to a great number of different aspects of politics, from good education and health “available to all on equal terms” (partly they are not because inherited wealth pays for much private education and health), opportunity for the young, reducing alienation, financial and social exclusion and poverty, increasing entrepreneurial activity and opportunity, home ownership – fewer rented, more owned by occupiers, less general vast undeserved inequality of wealth and wealth-based privilege (remember my Q.E.D?!), and so on. Moreover, quite apart from other objections to our membership of the EU, I suspect it would be difficult to introduce UK Universal Inheritance while we are members of the EU, because the interfering EU would complain about discrimination against non-UK born UK 25 year old citizens – but there must be a cut-off point. These are the issues upon which I comment.
David,
I think you just dropped a clanger.
Dane,
aren’t you going ever-so-slightly off-topic?
It seems to me that by raising Europe during a topic about health and education services you show your blind fanaticism – as well as your inability to make a fair, accurate or relevant criticism.
This applies with the construction of your argument about inherited wealth – you’re using your conclusion as the premise for your reasoning, and you presenting a progression of ideas based upon false assumptions instead of factual evidence.
You will forgive me if I’m not overwhelmed by your skill in using that illogic to ‘convince’ a half-empty room of people who already share your fanaticism.
But talking about the Europe, some of it’s greatest successes have been in the opening up of health and education provision as part of the single market – your e111 form, mutual standards on regulation, recognition of qualifications and the Erasmus exchange programme are all excellent examples of the benefits of integration.
Creation of a tranpsarent Europe-wide market in University fees would for example expose the waste caused by the UCAS monopoly – why pay as much as 10-times more in fees and living expenses to study in academic environments which are often worse than abroad?
So if we’re talking about how the role of the state is changing, then it must also be explained that this is within the context of a changing state.
Continent-wide specialisation is a driver of improved services, as knowledge and expertise is shared more effectively, while improved provision is also possible as the size of the market enables greater flexibility. If the bureacracy isn’t hampered by ideological back-biting then this will continue to create massive innovations and efficiencies.
It doesn’t make sense that you can argue against any of that.
“Oranjepan”
David Allen’s remark about pots and kettles was very much to the point!
As for going off topic, how is this, from you!? “I find it strange that you declare your desire for a return to two-party politics while maintaining membership of the seventh party and commenting on a site of the third party.”
I asked you what makes you think I want to return to two party politics. You did not answer.
You comment on my raising the subject of Europe in a topic about educatoin and health. I did so because of your mentioning “the seventh party”, by which I take it you mean the Liberal Party. I belong to that party because it is an EU-sceptic Liberal Party. The thread has also been about the overall character of the Liberal Democratic Party. Europe relates to my reason for commenting on the site “of a third party – LibDemVoice”. The EU is what prevents me from belonging to the Liberal Democrats.
The reasons you suggest for my mentioning Europe are personal remarks, as are those in relation to inheritance. But I would be interested if you would like to identify any assuptions you think are false.
Then, in the context of raising Europe in a topic about health and education, is it not you who does so, clearly showing your enthusiasm for all things EU? And why not? But it is not necessary to belong to the EU in order to have good state schools and a good national health service.
Dane,
you’ve clearly stated your opposition to plural politics, and far from stating “enthusiasm for all things EU” I stated a couple of beneficial areas. Do you disagree that they are beneficial, and are prepared to state the converse ‘disenthusiasm for all things EU’, or are you you willing to accept ‘how’ is a more important question than ‘what’?
Additionally, please can you expand on your reasons for arguing access to healthcare and education abroad is anything to do with healthcare and education at home, or could be guaranteed without the international agreements written into treaties?
The EU does not prevent you taking personal decisions about political affiliation, rather it is your opinion about it which does. I’d also really like to understand your distaste for specialisation, but you’ve not addressed this point so far.
“Oranjepan”
Of facts, I have never stated my opposition to plural politics.
Of opinions, I have had enough of this pointless discussion.