Philip Chaston is a regular contributor to the Airstrip One blog. He believes that the current political climate in Britain presents an exciting and unique opportunity.
Last Monday I went to the University of London Union to watch a concert given by the band British Sea Power. With me were a couple of friends, a carpenter and a handyman from South London. Just prior to the gig, I had been assailed by their voluble and bitter complaints while we downed some pre-concert alocohol in the Toucan Bar which is just around the corner from Soho Square in Central London.
The level of dissatisfaction with the government and the public services in London and the South East has risen over the last few years as people have seen their taxes rise without any perceived improvement in public services. This has been linked to increasing concern over levels of immigration. As my friend said, “I’m going to vote BNP in protest. Who else can I vote for?” Anecdotal evidence can be indicative of changes in the structure of British politics changes that will provide more opportunities for libertarian ideas to gain popularity and influence. The first question would be: why does this opportunity arise now rather than back in the 1970s when there was a far greater crisis in the role of the state and its effect upon individual lives. My answer would be that the crisis of the 1970s revolved around the issue of governance, between the trade unions and the Labour Party an issue that never brought the role of the state itself into disrepute.
Libertarians in the 1970s could console themselves with the rise of the New Right under Margaret Thatcher in the economic sphere but witnessed the rebirth of economic freedom alongside a strengthening of the state. The concept of establishing a libertarian political party was stillborn as the two party system prevented third forces from “breaking the mould” as the SDP (a group of social democrats who broke away from the Labour Party) proved with its costly failures in the radical centre. From what little I know of the era, libertarian strategies of starting the long march through existing institutions and propagandising their ideas proved more influential than playing at party politics. These have proved successful in propagating a receptive atmosphere for libertarianism (in all its variations) with sympathetic quarters and camp followers in all three of the main political parties.
For the first time since the 1970s, the level of dissatisfaction and disillusionment with Parliament has risen to extraordinary levels, characterised by low turnout and shrinking political movements. Unlike that decade, this takes place against a background of economic stability and New Labour hegemony. The lack of economic crisis or volatility, so dear to the memories of many of us, and the collapse of the Tories has opened up the question for many people: what else?
My friends were aware that their taxes were being squandered, that the present incumbents had no answer to the problems of transport, health or education and they were receptive to new ideas. Unlike the crisis over the trade union movement, the present problems arise from the state delivery of services and there is a realisation amongst many that provision by the state is inefficient and incompetent.
But as the English electorate have pointed out: for them, there is no alternative to the state-socialist BNP (the self-styled “Voice of the Silent Majority”) as a protest vote, unless they are Green or on the far left supporting the Socialist Alliance.
This is not a call to establish a libertarian political party. It is merely an article demonstrating that an overt political channel may have opened up for spreading this meta-narrative: an additional strategy to be deployed in the armoury of ideas and institutions.
Interesting comments. I’d like to add some of my own, surprise surprise!
Firstly, something calling itself The British Libertarian Party has web pages here. Just how official it is I don’t know but the web page seems rather amateurish and also seems to have some broken html code in it too.
Secondly, ISTM that for all its huge majority in parliament, the govt is potentially very vulnerable when the next election comes along. A look at the numbers of votes cast for each party in the 1992, 1997 and 2001 general elections shows some interesting facts.
In 1992, the Tories got 14 million votes, Labour 11.5 million and the LDs 6 million.
In 1997, the Tories got 9.6 million votes, Labour 13.5 million and the Liberal Democrats 5.2 million.
In 2001, the Tories got 8.4 million votes, Labout 10.7 million and the LDs managed 4.8 million.
There are millions of voters who’ve stopped voting for the 3 major parties, many of who have in fact stopped voting period.
ISTM the current govt’s majority could be swept away in one go if any of the other major parties were able to get these voters to vote for them. It would be nice if they did so by enthusing those voters with a libertarian programme. If voters really are dissatisfied with the govt taxing and not delivering, the scope may well be there for such a thing to happen…
Why isn’t this a call for a new party? That’s the whole problem libertarians isn’t it! They talk one hell of a game, but in the end, nobody ever steps up and squeezes the trigger. I’m an American, but most of the concepts presented here are in line with the American concept of Conservatism. Ok, so you guys don’t want the Conservative label, and I can’t say I blame you based upon the British Tory party’s sad self-destruction since Thatcher. The Tories are truly clueless and cannot really claim the conservative mantle, at least not by American standards. I believe that the real difference between American Consertives and American Libertarians, is that the Cons believe that it’s not enough to have good ideas, but you have to organize, win elections, and implement as many as you can. You Brit Libertarians seem much closer to the American Conservative/Libertarian movement that the British ‘Conservative’ party, which as far as I can tell, has been trying to make itself into a bad copy of the Labour party. However, you guys really need to decide what to call yourselfs, and get with the program ASAP! You are losing your freedoms daily and that government of yours is sending you straight to hell in a handbasket. You write wonderful platitudes, but every day you document your own enslavement (EU-ification is but one mode of this insidious process), while wondering when somebody is going to do something to stop it! Guess what? Tag! you are it. Call your party whatever you want, maybe bring the ‘Whig’ name back, but do something now, please. If you don’t do something soon, you will eventually be just an interesting historical footnote about a group of people who, oddly enough, thought their personal freedoms were more important than the ‘Collective Good’.
As pointed out in many previous posts, too many people are employed, or owe their livelihoods to the State.
Too many older people have been impoverished by recent pensions legislation, and are further penalised by receiving derisorily low interest rates on lifetime savings, consequently they have been forced to rely on the State to maintain any sort of living standard.
To the State, ‘existence’ is good enough when it comes to the older segment of the population, however, the Tories offer an even worse scenario for the pensioner, with tougher pension rules and various other threats to withdraw the very services that pensioners have come to rely upon. Not by the pensioners choice, I may add, but by past legislation that limited the amount of salary that could be stashed in a pension plan.
The very people that suffered in the 80’s, being retired early or by the massive redundancies of that time, are now the ones who find themselves as pensioners with too few resources to lead anything more than a very basic lifestyle.
None of the above folk are likely to vote for anything other than Labour, if they vote at all.
The whole idea of the Welfare State is to force people to rely on them (the State), for anything necessary to lead life, and all the while legislating to prevent folk providing for themselves.
How in all conscience or self interest, could this large portion of the population vote anything other than Labour?.
I think that something very drastic will have to occur before we see any change.
A political reallignment is do-able. It always is.
But it would be expensive–the barriers to entry are getting higher, as I have remarked before–and demand a dedicated cadre of competent personnel, who are willing to make compromises with the public that I’m afraid most soi-disant libertarians would be unwilling to swallow.
rc is right.
I was at BSP last week. They’re one of the best live bands around at the moment. It makes a change for a band to be interested in history and not chant the usual leftist crap Thom Yorke et al come out with
While a UK Libertarian party would have little chance of winning anything, I think the Referendum Party’s impact is an instructive episode.
The Referendum Party backed by James Goldsmith, stood on a single issue platform of demanding that the UK have a referendum before any entry into the EUro. The tactics were interesting. If I remember right, they claimed they would only stand candidates in a constituency where there was no candidate who was sufficiently anti EUro, thus stiffening the resolve of numbers of Tory candidates to express their anti-EUro views in the face of the party leadership’s pro EUro policy. Five years later the Tories were anti-Euro as a matter of policy, many of the pro-EUro lot such as David Mellor having lost their seats by losing some votes to Referendum candidates.
Of course, there is more to it than that – Dr Sean Gabb’s Candidlist project forced many potential candidates to declare their hand in advance and allowed constituency selection panels, which were predominently anti-euro to eliminate pro-euro Tories in their selection process.
I am just surprised no one has set up a liberty -oriented candidlist to allow libertarians active in all the main parties to identify sympathetic candidates.
John
Just want to point out that any Libertarian votes will be preferentially stripped from the Conservatives, and they are the best hope of defeating the current bunch of monkey who are the worst government ever IMHO.
Concentrate on the now and kick out the Slavour party.
Yes, get rid of Tony Blair and the Lie Factory first, then concentrate on developing the Libertarians. This is a “government” which has found nothing too insignificant for its officious attention and whose accomplishments in seven years of announcements number a big fat zero. They are poison, and they have introduced poison into the body politic.
BTW, seems like Bill Clinton isn’t such a pal of Tone’s after all. Ananova and The Telegraph have reported that he has said Blair confided in him a few years ago that he was worried about a heart problem. Downing St says that just isn’t true. Honest. Given the two players, it is impossible to know which one is telling the truth. But my money’s on Clinton. Why would he just suddenly come out with it if it weren’t true?
Much and all as Libertarians shudder at the thought of interacting with the political process it seems to me that it would be an awful lot easier and cheaper to “convert” the Tories towards libertarianism than set up a brand new political party. It is a moribund institution seeking new ideas, yet it is also the second largest party and the only realistic alternative to a Labour government. It is probably more compatible with libertarianism than any of the other parties and no less compatible with Libertarianism than “Old Labour” was with “New Labour” prior to the Blair-Brown takeover.
There are quite a few libertarians doing just that in the Tory Party. Its a long bloody road, but they are making progress. I can name 10 libertarians, some of whom hold positions in the party who are trying to do this. As they say, watch this space. There may even be a new dining/drinking group forming of like-minded Tories.
But Frank what is the best way to convert them? The point of any protest party is not that they can storm their way into government on a landslide of voter rage but that they can leverage their influence by taking votes and seats from the established players and so force a different agenda.
The trouble with the Tories is that as individuals they so often seem to have too much of an emotional investment in power and the process of government to be truly committed libertarians. A case in point is Dominic Cumming’s description of the fratricidal court politics of CCO on last Sundays Broadcasting House (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/bh/ click on listen and ffwd 15 minutes for his interview). So long as the shadow cabinet see their differences as ones of personality rather than ideology, so long as they are willing to ignore their vanishing party membership, and so long as they regard political as nothing more than a dialogue amongst themselves rather than with the electorate then I can’t see a future for them. Perhaps it will take a Canadian style collapse in their vote to persuade them of their folly, in which case they wont be worth converting
“The point of any protest party is not that they can storm their way into government on a landslide of voter rage but that they can leverage their influence by taking votes and seats from the established players and so force a different agenda”
I’m afraid that in a first-past-the-post system, a hung parliament is rare so this scenario never really happens. And anyway it’s still not so great. Here in proportional -epresentation Ireland it frequently happens but is rarely desirable. The minority party or independent courted to make up the numbers will succeed not by the quality of their ideas but a simple mathematical quirk.
“The trouble with the Tories is that as individuals they so often seem to have too much of an emotional investment in power and the process of government to be truly committed libertarians”
This may be the case for the present set of individuals but individuals come and go. I’m thinking about how New Labour was transformed from a selection of gruff trade unionists and crazed marxist idealogues into an army of bland Blair-bots. Some of the latter even used to be some of the former. Margaret Thatcher performed a similar transformation of the Tories in defeating Heath-style corporatism.
I agree that the best strategy is to push the Tories in a libertaran direction. I have a suggestion about how best to achieve this. Using the internet, libertarians can collectively pick the Tory MP who best fits our cause. (My suggestion would be Boris Johnson.) We can then lobby the Tory Party with a consistent message. Whenever any of us is faced with a canvassing Tory, we can tell him “You’ll get my vote when you start listening to Boris Johnson’s ideas,” or, at a time like this, “You’ll get my vote when you make Boris Johnson leader.” If the Tories are getting the same consistent message from large numbers of current non-voters about how to turn them into Tory voters, the message will quickly filter up the hierarchy.
Come to think of it, this idea would probably work just as well with a list of three or four names as with just one.
A successful Libertarian Party wouldn’t have to aspire to anything as ambitious as a hung parliament to influence the Tories. Like the UKIP all they really need to do is split the right wing vote in enough marginal constituencies then sit back and watch how quickly the conservatives adopt a libertarian programme. This wouldn’t be necessary if the Tories were not so enthralled to Burkeian notions of stewardship rather than Jeffersonian ideal of least government. Perhaps that’s why I distrust them so.
When people talk about “converting the Tories” do they refer to the Parliamentary Party, or Party members? I’m no spring chicken myself but I blench at the average age of Tory Party members, which I believe is somewhere in the 60s, and from my acquaintance with them I would be prepared to eat a barrel of raw herrings if these Neanderthal stuffed shirts proved open to libertarian conversion. As to the MPs, they are career politicos barely distinguishable from their oppos in NuLab and SocDem (note Orwellian contractions) and would mostly run a mile if confronted with genuinely libertarian ideas. But it might be a good idea to run a few Libertarian Party candidates, sort of run this flag up the pole and see who salutes… I’d vote like a shot for an Indy candidate espousing Lib ideas.