In Wednesday’s Daily Telegraph, Janet Daley wrote an article called The Tories have room for liberals of both persuasions.
Now I really have no quarrel with the thrust of her contention:
The cruellest and saddest irony of all is that the self-styled new model army, with its social liberalism ticket, need have no dispute with the old faith. Social liberalism and Thatcherite economic liberalism are consistent with one another.
Nothing is more likely to give people the confidence and the wherewithal to live their lives as they choose than personal prosperity and the freedom that it brings. Respect for personal liberty sits neatly alongside the promotion of economic self-determination. Together, they could make a coherent, radical and very modern party programme.
Well as our confreres in the United States so lyrically say: no shit, Sherlock.
What I find so saddening is that perhaps Daley has indeed set the level and tenor of this article to what is appropriate for the current state of sophistication and received wisdom of the typical Daily Telegraphy reader, i.e. acting as if ‘all the elements of truth and measure’ were to be found within the essentially bipolar world of parochial Westminster party politics. But frankly what Ms. Daley is saying is nothing more that what libertarians in Britain have been saying for a great many years. When she says:
Respect for personal liberty sits neatly alongside the promotion of economic self-determination.
This phrase practically defines the libertarian meme and yet you will search the article in vain for the word ‘libertarian’.
