Tag Archives: full employment

Can the Liberal Democrats provide a vision for Britain that the disaffected can support?

By Michael Berwick-Gooding | Fri 20th May 2016 - 8:55 am

A few weeks ago Liberal Democrat Voice published an article by Lord William Wallace entitled Could Trumpland reach Britain in which William Wallace argued that we need to firstly “pay more attention to ‘the bottom third’ of society.” He identified that “what used to be called ‘the white working-class’ has deserted the Democrats in the USA” and spoke of the rise of Marine le Pen in France and UKIP in Britain.

Lots of liberals talk of the rise of inequality over the last 30 or so years. However few if any talk of the major causes of this – firstly the rejection of managing the economy to provide full employment where everyone will have a job. Some people talk of their experience in the 1960’s and 70’s by saying you could hand in your notice on a Friday and within a week you would have a new job and some would say by Monday or Tuesday they would have started their new job.

Secondly the increase in the mobility of labour. In Britain we have seen this most clearly from the 2004 EU enlargement, but in worked in favour of British building workers in the 1980’s who went to West Germany as in “Auf Wiedersehen, Pet”