Here’s your starter for ten as we experiment with a new Saturday slot posing a view for debate:
Disdainful comments about political motivations and ideological fixations abound. But what Britain needs is more ideology, not less. Because it’s having a core of ideological beliefs that gives those in power a plan for action that is more than simply responding day to day to events or taking on board completely the agendas, assumptions and perspectives of those running the machinery of government. Ideology provides a model that can make different ideas hang together in a coherent whole that is more than the sum of its parts and is more than simply accepting the world as bureaucracy currently shapes it.
Agree? Disagree? Comment away…
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
From Norman settlement to a civic square
Northern Ireland debates the future of its railways in 1957
Church Green video
Thinking of standing for election or re-election next year? Helpful questions to consider
Jeff
Nonconformistradical
John Peters
David Raw
Henry
13 Comments
I agree – British politics desperately needs more ideology. I think the most important reason is that ideology is the political equivalent of a moral compass: it informs political judgements. Specifically, ideologies help politicians answer the question of when it is right or wrong for them to make a decision that restricts our actions. Liberalism gives pretty clear answers to most cases; unfortunately both Labour and the Tories seem to be guided by unthinking paternalism rather than any coherent idea that sets limits on what the state can do to its citizens. The ID database and Cameron’s marriage bribes are part of the same disturbing trend. If the trend is not broken we may well end up with rulers like those in Henry Porter’s excellent book The Dying Light: morally rotten but convinced that what they are doing is for the common good.
Ideology is not something one can have more or less of, in my opinion: it informs all political actions. Even when one believes one is acting in a non-ideological way, what is actually happening is one is following an ideology of repudiating older, better known ideologies; pragmatism is an ideology – just the one that dare not speak its name. So, for example when I say, as Prime Minister, that, putting ideology aside, we should implement x policy or follow y course of action (implying that it’s the sensible/pragmatic/common sense/whatever thing to do), I have, of course, made certain implicit value judgements about what ends it is right that government pursues, what i am prepared to trade in order to implement the policy or general course of action, and so on and so forth.
The call for ‘more ideology’, then, is really a call for a more explicit ideology, and one that tries to justify itself over and above the call for ‘pragmatism’. I think that’s right, but i think it’s also worth pointing out how dangerous the adherence to dogmatic ideological assumptions is – the Thatcher decade is a case in point. There is undoubtedly a middle way between ‘pragmatism’ and the explicit ideological dogmatism Thatcher pursued, but i think to chart a course through it takes considerable courage on the part of any politician; not least because if they then fail, it may discredit that ideology. J.M. Keynes was acutely aware of this when, for example, he wrote to Franklin D. Roosevelt in an open letter:
“You have made yourself the trustee for those in every country who seek to mend the evils of our condition by reasoned experiment within the framework of the existing social system. If you fail, rational change will be gravely prejudiced throughout the world, leaving orthodoxy and revolution to fight it out. But if you succeed, new and bolder methods will be tried everywhere, and we may date the first chapter of a new economic era from your accession to office.”
We probably do – but then again, there’s definite limits to how far it’s useful. For example, there was an argument on these pages on what was the ‘liberal response’ to the abolition of the cheque. Am I the only one who thinks that we ought to think about what’s sensible on an issue like that? Men of good will, socialist conservative or liberal, should be able to come up with an answer on this pretty quickly.
That said, it’s pretty obvious that the electorate is desperate for the parties to distinguish themselves – and, moreover, to differentiate themselves in left-right terms.
@Leo: Even when one believes one is acting in a non-ideological way, what is actually happening is one is following an ideology of repudiating older, better known ideologies; pragmatism is an ideology – just the one that dare not speak its name.
Excellent point! The trouble with pragmatism is that it doesn’t place any red lines around the individual – anything that isn’t too outlandish goes. So maybe what I meant was that we needed more liberalism – no doubt an unsurprising sentiment in these pages 🙂
@Foregone Conclusion: another good point. I find it difficult to see the abolition or retention of the cheque as a rights-based issue. In the rest of Europe life goes on, even though they use giro payments.
Instinctively, I despise ideology. It seems to cause decisions to be made on the basis of grandiose rhetoric rather than on plain-speaking reasons that pay attention to the likely practical consequences.
E.g. Should we take Northern Rock into temporary public ownership. “Of course! Banks are the kingpins of the evil capitalist system. We should take every opportunity to bring their power under the workers’ control!” Or “No! Failing companies should go to the wall, rather being propped up by the dead hand of the state.”
Of course no-one in power or aspiring to power argues like this any more, thankfully. The advantages & disadvantages of actions are examined more closely. Perhaps not as closely as one would like, and public justifications still pretend there are no grey areas, no tricky judgments of consequences, no weighing up of negatives for different groups in society.
And yet… all this apparent despising of ideology actually amounts to is a hatred of unthinking dogmatism about simplistic principles. Ideology itself is not necessarily bad, if it is more nuanced to take account of more than just single factors, if it enables us to take decisions in a way that makes explicit the inherent value judgments, and if adherents are able to be swayed by rational arguments about the limitations of their ideology.
Moreover, if governments do not have a distinctive agenda to guide decision-making (over-and-above consequentialist calculations), they often seem to lack momentum, to drift without purpose. And if parties do not have a distinctive agenda to guide decision-making, how do voters know how these parties might respond to new problems and situations, unanticipated at election time?
I seem to have merely restated the debate, rather than reaching a conclusion! But I suppose I am arguing against ideology, while asking for more explicitness and a distinctive agenda.
We do have ideology, plenty of it. It’s just that after the failure of the Soviet Union, the range of credible ideological positions that one can take has shrunk,. Policies have to account for human nature in light of the lessons of the twentieth century’s experience of dictatorship and democracy, rather than aspiring to the wholly unrealistic re-invention of man. This is a good thing, because it means our political parties can rule out campaigning on really bad ideas, and focus on idea competition in fields where there are valid trade-offs between different social goals.
I agree. And the Lib Dems need more ideology. Look at recent elections – the vote share of the ‘managerial’ parties – Con,Lab, Lib Dem are decreasing while the vote share of the ideological parties SNP/PC/Greens/UKIP/BNP are increasing. Without a unifying ideology, there is no floor to our vote – see Glasgow NE by-election. Our party cannot be expected to grow merely on the back of local campaigning wherever our activists happen to live – there has to be some ideological incentive for people to join us spontaneously in areas with no history of local Lib Dem activity.
Ideology is no substitute for fact and we should not excuse political figures who pretend they can obscure reality with wishful thinking – whoever those figures may be.
But at the same time no amount of evidence can be understood fully without being interpreted through the prism of the principled logic of a coherent set of ideas – however comforting that may be.
So what we need is not just more ideology and more evidence, but a greater recognition of the need to actively balance one with the other.
Conditions always vary, so context is all!
I have decided to oppose the motion.
It is very obvious from observing even the political discourse in LibDem bloggery, that there are too many people who are blinded by simplistic political ideology and ignorant of how the real world works. I mean of course all those free market head-banger types.
I really am very moderate and pragmatic politically. I grew up in an environment where it would be natural to be a Labour voter, and them moved on to an environment where clever people who were interested in politics tended to assume that being a “socialist” was the natural way any thoughtful person should go.
I observed how these clever people’s ideas on how real life worked were somewhat remote from the reality I had observed when younger of the “working class” they talked about in the abstract. Indeed, it seemed to me they adopted this label “socialist” and played the game of trying to out-socialist each other, because it enabled them to use lots of clever-sounding jargon and to appear to be very clever and superior people. Even when they had good intentions, their fixation with simplistic ideology and lack of contact with real people or even of basic common sense meant they missed the obvious. I was often left howling in anguish, even if I sort of agreed with their end goals “Can’t you see how you are getting this wrong, can’t you see how this ideological fixation of your is losing the very people you claim you are working for, can’t you see how very stupid it is that your only answer to ‘why did what you want not work in practice?’ is ‘it wasn’t done in an extreme enough manner’ or ‘someone came along and messed it up, it would have worked beautifully if that hadn’t happened’ i.e. ‘it works in theory, never mind the practice’?”.
Well, I decided from all that to become a Liberal, because in could see in the Liberal Party solid people who seemed to have some common sense.
If I should sometimes be howling now, it is because fashion has turned to another ideology and I see the same attitudes and mistakes being made. Indeed there seems to be this strange phenomenon whereby when an ideology starts to show its obvious failings in practice, the fashionable become ever more devoted to it.
‘For Liberals, the test of any society and of any economic policy is whether it enhances ‘life chances’; that is, does it give individuals greater opportunity to influence their own lives, to care for their families and friends, and to share fully in the life of the community? The capacity to answer these questions is, of course, affected by available resources but it is not intrinsically determined by them. Ours is not an economically determinist party. Quality is far more important than quantity. Our position was expressed in a 1974 Liberal Party Report:
Once the basic needs of food and shelter are met, the individual’s greatest satisfactions are to be found in love, trust and friendship, in beauty, art and music, and in learning, none of which are served by the mythology of growth for its own sake.
It is because no-one else, and no other party, represents or advocates this crucial belief that the Liberal Party continues to exist as an independent and dedicated political party.’
Not my words, by the way, but despite its whiff of Trustafarianism it sort of feels right. But I wonder whether it count as a workable ideology?
One of the reasons that I was attracted to the Liberal Democrat party was because their policies seemed consistently rooted in sensible political ideology, as opposed to the often very similar policies of Labour and Tory. I like it how on blog comment sections people appeal to the ‘liberal ideal’ so to speak, as opposed to that which will win votes. Indeed, Rod Liddle, a man who I should note I largely despise, wrote in an article last year that one of the reasons we were so badly hit by the expenses scandal is because we are more ideologically driven than Labour and the Tories. Just something to consider…
Sorry, in my last comment I meant to say NOT so badly hit!
As has occurred previously, I find much to agree with in what Matthew Huntbach commented.
Ideology may be necessary in politics (to build a base and attract votes) but if it starts to override reason and evidence, then I would say that something has gone wrong.
Ideology can lead to the kind of false reasoning made fun of in Yes, Minister.
We must do something.
This is something.
Therefore we must do this.
I would like to see the rise of empirical liberalism which gives due weight to evidence.