How do we apply Liberalism in day-to-day politics? A thoughtful new book, When We Speak of Freedom, edited by Paul Hindley and Benjamin Wood, deserves more discussion here. The subtitle is ‘Radical Liberalism in an age of crisis’. For the editors, the crisis is part-political, caused by the challenge of populism and nationalism, but primarily ethical, about a failure of community and a sense of alienation.
Alan Butt Philip’s foreword introduces one important theme of the book: how individual citizens can find a way of living that is environmentally sustainable and morally fulfilling. Michael Meadowcroft’s opening chapter addresses the ‘deep hollowness at the heart of our politics’ and the need to reorient community identities away from the rat race in an era of low growth.
To me, as a political historian of Liberalism, the book raises the question of how Liberals can strike the right balance between ethical ideals and practical politics. It is produced by the John Stuart Mill Institute, and, like Mill himself, focuses on issues of moral purpose and citizenship. Ben Wood is an accomplished theologian. It’s well-written and stimulating.
Liberals always run the risk that the public sees their philosophising as something well-meaning but abstract, divorced from the day-to-day task of winning power. Politics is a competition, and party slogans only work if they persuade voters to take one side against another. As David Howarth recognises in his chapter, the ultimate threat to liberal politics is illiberal authoritarianism. Liberal Democrats need to undermine the appeal of Faragism, which threatens everything they stand for.
They have the tools to do that, if they think politically. Political Liberalism can be seen as a more-or-less coherent philosophy adopted by successive charismatic leaders over the last two hundred years. In my own short account of it, Russell, Gladstone, Lloyd George, Grimond and Ashdown define ‘Liberalism’ rather than Mill, who never held office, and was a deliberately provocative intellectual. Posthumously he has been given some special significance by thinkers who like his ethical arguments, but also, I suspect, by some people who don’t know very much about the nineteenth-century Liberal Party and wrongly think that he had influence over its policies.
As a practical party philosophy, Liberalism has always foregrounded the process of politics itself, and argued that effective representation is the fundamental idea from which everything else develops. Liberals have prioritised constitutional reform; they have adjusted many policies in response to popular grievances; they have mounted crusades against anti-social vested interests. They have claimed that a mutually respectful relationship between politicians and people is the basis of good governance, because it legitimises authority, stability and law. This commitment to the practice of political interaction still underpins Lib Dem success at local level.
Such a focus on politics and constitutionalism can sharpen our critique of Farage in three ways.
First, Lib Dem effectiveness locally can show politics working for people at a time when Reform exploits the loss of faith in democracy. When we Speak of Freedom will be of most use if its ethical principles inspire specific Lib Dem initiatives at local community level which counter the charge that Britain is ‘broken’. Lib Dems should explicitly demolish Farage’s claim that the political class is separate from, and indeed has betrayed, the people.
Second, in modern multi-ethnic Britain, a sense of common purpose and patriotism is most safely constructed around confidence in political and constitutional processes – parliament, the rule of law, the monarchy. The alternative, a divisively ethnic conception of national identity, will end by destroying any sense of common Britishness. So national government needs to show that it can address key popular concerns. From this perspective, Denis Robertson Sullivan’s chapter on housing reform is most suggestive.
Third, restoring faith in politicians gives them the moral authority to make difficult arguments. Almost all Liberals agree that rejoining the single market is essential for British economic prosperity, but it will be difficult to sell it to an unsympathetic media. It must be packaged alongside more obviously patriotic arguments, which is why criticism of Ed Davey urging ‘Buy British’ is surely misplaced. Britain needs what Michael Ignatieff has argued the Canadian Liberal party must pursue: a ruthless audit of what infrastructural renewal is necessary to enable us to remain a prosperous country as globalisation gives way to hostile regional economic blocs, followed by fast and effective action. For nineteenth-century Liberals, the ultimate aim of constitutional reform was more energetic executive government.
* Jonathan Parry is a member of the Liberal Democrats and a retired university History teacher. His “Short Histories: Liberalism” is published by Agenda Publishing.
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14 Comments
We need to learn from the 2024 US election experience where the Democrats thought attacking Trump and the GOP as extremist would do the trick. It didn’t!
It won’t work here either, yes we need to criticise Farage, Reform and the Tories but it needs to be combined with our policies to fix Britain. Labour have abandoned their place on the centre left leaving us alone to speak up for progressive answers to the problems that urgently need fixing.
I am sure that the overswelling majority of our MPs elected last July, and the councillors who will be elected on Thursday, are good solid liberals at heart. But do they tell their electorates,or are they mainly elected because hey are seen as “nicer” than the Tories, and less dangerous than Labour?
I am haunted by this sentence for Page 442 of In Dunt’s “How to be a Liberal.” viz;
“For many years now, liberals have failed to argue for our values. We have apologised for them, or seemed embarrassed by them, or not even mentioned them at all.” Canbury Press, 2020
As Jonathan Parry argues, we need to campaign on a blend of local issue combined wiih a clear expression of our values, not least building up our democratic structures, respect for individual freedom even if the individuals are asylum seekers or in prison, co-operation with foreigners, even if they are in the EU, and economic justice for the Global South as well as at home. (And there’s more. . . .)
In the political history of Liberalism Edmund Burke often appears to be written out and is today claimed as the father of modern conservatism. However, as Aidan Beatty of Trinity College Dublin concludes in this piece Edmund Burke: Where Did The Liberalism End And The Conservatism Begin?“…Burke himself remains an elusive and not always coherent liberal conservative.”
In his era he contended with the challenges of populism and nationalism arising from the French revolution. The British empire was the multi-ethnic community that supposedely furnished a shared sense of common culture.
Modern day multi-ethic Britain is a legacy of that Empire and the challenge remains in how to nurture a shared sense of common culture. In the past, community cohesion has often come from banding together to face aggressors that woud bring conflict to the homeland. Perhaps, therein lies the answer as totalirian regimes once again arise across the world.
Can Neoliberalism be compatible with Liberal Democracy?
What might be the Neoliberal quotient of the current L. D. Party?
“For nineteenth-century Liberals, the ultimate aim of constitutional reform was more energetic executive government.” Another aim was to develop citizenship. Bear in mind the influence of T. H. Green, for whom citizenship was a consciousness of the moral ends of life as embodied, firstly, in the structures of the state and, secondly, in liberal Protestantism or, to put it in modern terms, in a multi-faith, multi-ethnic society. Paradoxically one of the greatest pieces of Liberal reform of the period, aimed at developing citizenship, was the Balfour’s Education Act, which established state-supported secondary education.
@ Steve,
I think you are perhaps making the mistake of thinking that those who actually run the economy don’t understand how it works. When the Covid and 2008 GFC crises hit, those who didn’t understand wondered where the money was going to come from to keep the economy going. Even relatively right wing economists didn’t have a problem in this respect.
There is a difficulty about being totally honest in a political manifesto. If we correctly say that “taxes don’t fund spending” then we do have to explain what they are for. Many who use these slogans don’t properly understand themselves and give the impression there’s never a problem to fund whatever projects they might favour.
They make it sound like a non-neoliberal approach is too good to be true. Naturally enough those who are sceptical resort to accusations of ‘money printing’ and fiscal irresponsibility.
So it’s unlikely any party will be pushing a ‘government can never run out of money’ argument any time soon. It’s far simpler to explain economics in terms of what we all experience ourselves in the way of our household budgets.
@ Mark Frankel… ” Paradoxically one of the greatest pieces of Liberal reform of the period, aimed at developing citizenship, was the Balfour’s Education Act, which established state-supported secondary education”.
In fact, Mark, The Liberal Party, David Lloyd George in particular, and Dr John Clifford the Baptist leader, played a key role in the opposition to the 1902 Education Act, particularly its provision for state funding of voluntary schools, including those of the Church of England and the Catholic Church. LLG framed the Act as a way to “rivet the clerical yoke on thousands of parishes in England,” and led a movement of passive resistance against it. This opposition significantly impacted the 1906 general election, contributing to the Liberal landslide victory.
Opposition to the Act was one of the prime factors contributing to the Liberal landslide of 1906 and there were many examples prior to the general election of nonconformist Liberals refusing to pay rates to finance the changes.
“taxes don’t fund spending”
What do they fund then? If they just fund interest on borrowing, what happens if the lender decides it wants its money back and no one else will lend? (We may be about to see this in the US).
And if taxes don’t fund interest on borrowing or spending, presumably there is no need for taxes at all.
@ Tristan,
The idea is that ££ are an IOU of government. When we get our own IOUs back we tear them up. Postage stamps are cancelled. Theatre and football tickets are destroyed too. So, likewise, government puts its own IOUs in the shredder, which is usually digital these days.
The reason for taxes is to create a need to acquire the currency and so give it a value.
@ Peter Martin
What happens when the person to whom you have given the IOU demands the money promised? Where does that come from?
And stamps are a poor analogy since you pay the money up front (so not an IOU) in return for the stamp and a promise that the letter goes to the right place.
Here are a couple of articles on the purpose/uses of taxation:
https://taxjustice.net/faq/what-are-the-four-rs-of-tax/
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2024/05/07/there-are-six-reasons-why-we-need-taxes/
Both refute the accuracy/truth of the “household book balancing” model as households cannot issue their own money as states with a sovereign currency can and do.
Why are those who are well paid, and well fed, to run our country, use and preach the “our state is just like your house hold” misunderstanding/ignorance/lie/habit/?
Here are some suggestions. Yours would be welcomed as would your opinions.
1) Ignorance
2) Ideological blindness
3) Political group/caste fashion
4) Donor influence
5)?
Here is an article on the massive current and future effects of Austerity/Neo-liberalism on our children:
https://theconversation.com/getting-shorter-and-going-hungrier-how-children-in-the-uk-live-today-238364
Might the L. D. party say/do something about this?
It is a misnomer to say taxes don’t fund government spending. It is fair to say that spending comes first and concurrent taxation or borrowing is required to maintain that spending. Without taxation the continual issue of currency would very quickly render government issued money worthless.
The UK has already seen the effect of proposals to ramp-up spending while cutting taxes and increasing borrowing in the Liz Truss budget.
The USA has been able to attract sufficient inward capital flows to maintain high twin budget and current account deficits over the past 25 years without experiencing the same kind of upward pressure on interest rates on government borrowing as Truss/Kwarteng did. This has been greatly aided by the deflationary impact of a low wage Chinese workforce entering the International trading arena.
The Trade war that the Trump administration has unleashed has slowed down that inward flow of capital. If the USA is to maintain its high level of consumption and budget deficits it will have to put more reliance on domestic capital flows to finance government spending or look to monetising its borrowing requirements with ever greater rounds of QE, inflating nominal asset prices as the curency is debased (including housing) and exacerbating an already extreme level of wealth and income inequality.
A more pragmatic approach would be increasing taxes to reduce excessive consumption and deficits to manageable levels that equate more closely with government investment spending and significant redistribution to lower inequality.
@ Tristan,
At one time the IOU would have been, at least theoretically, redeemable in terms of something tangible such as quantity of gold. Now, all the phrase “I promise to pay the bearer.. ” means is that King Charles promises to give us two fives for a ten. So why do they have any value? It’s because they are effectively taxation vouchers.
As Joe correctly says ” Without taxation the continual issue of currency would very quickly render government issued money worthless.”
Freedom of action is highly valued especially by those who have less of it. Increasing freedom (of action) should attract voters as long as it is relevant and significant. So why don’t politicians make more of it while campaigning? Perhaps consumer choice is so overwhelming in western society that voters prefer politics to be a judging rather than deciding issue. Part of our campaigning should seek to allow people more freedom politically and show why it is important both for a healthy society and their own wellbeing.