Twenty-first century politics are a mockery of the rigorous and committed process that is required if our society and our communities are going to have a chance of surviving the challenges that dominate the agenda today. I happen to believe in politics and in the innate ability of men and women to work together in political organisations in order to create a secure and sustainable environment within which their life chances can be enhanced. To achieve that we need a far better quality of politics than we get from the two major parties today.
Spin, image and focus groups have dulled the public appetite for involvement in the political process – even at the most basic level of voting – and the electorate sees politicians as cynical chancers who will embrace any tactic that will give them a chance of power. Over the past twelve years new Labour has abandoned any semblance of an ideological anchor in progressive politics.
There was a time, before Blair, when, even if one did not agree with its proffered solutions, Labour could be trusted to have an instinctive response which would differentiate it from the Conservative right. Helping the poor, empathising with the developing world, being gentle with refugees, defending civil rights, building houses to let and espousing comprehensive education, could all be expected to be part and parcel of Labour’s agenda. But today all this has gone and the pragmatic dissection of its honourable past means that nothing is too illiberal or too harsh for Labour.
I discovered my personal Liberal millstone very early on. Once identified, we happy band of instinctive Liberals have no choice: it’s a lifetime of commitment and struggle. I joined the party way back in 1958 and after very few years it was a case of finding jobs that would keep me in politics. Over the thirty years to the merger I reckon to have done just about every task within the “backroom” and in the “frontline”, and to have written on just about every subject. It’s all on my website. Faced with those who lacked confidence in the potential of their Liberal beliefs, the task was to provide them with the material with which to triumph in debate and on the hustings.
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A Week in Politics #9
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