The story of the next general election is one of three party politics
Charles Kennedy, Liberal Democrat leader
Sure, Tories, Labour and… UKIP? 
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Three Party Politics, eh?June 14th, 2004 |
 33 comments to Three Party Politics, eh? |
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Has the time now come for libertarians to start thinking about standing in Euro and London Assembly elections? Not in order to get power but rather as a means of spreading libertarian ideas?
I have always been against it, on the basis that it is a waste of time and effort, but with PR rather than 1st past the post, people are more open minded about whom they will listen to.
Cydonia: without a serious cultural blitz about what libertarians are for and why, a libertarian party would catch mostly random vote-scatter, like the other crazy parties.
I don’t vote but I like the UKIP, their policies are probably the most state-reducing actoss the board. In particular, pulling out of the EU could easily lay the groundwork for a libertarian political swing. The only way Britain could make it alone is to become a business haven with low taxes and much less regulation. People would be able to see they were better off, and they could become more responsive to libertarian persuasion.
Julian:
I think that is putting things the wrong way around (or perhaps I mean catch 22). I wouldn’t see the exercise as being designed to catch votes. Rather, the intention would be to spread libertarian ideas to a wider audience at a time when people are at least vaguely receptive to political messages If it catches votes, all the better, but that would not be the purpose.
As for UKIP, they rather resemble the Tories in that their policies are a curate’s egg of vaguely free trade stuff, mixed up with populist authoritarianism. Unfortunately I fear that most of their votes come from those who favour the latter tendency.
Perry de Havilland writes:
“Sure, Tories, Labour and… UKIP?”
Well, indeed.
But what’s the betting the BBC et al continue to behave as if the LibDems meant anything at all – other than an anti-war vote for those lacking the balls to vote for Galloway?
Julian,
“The only way Britain could make it alone is to become a business haven with low taxes and much less regulation…”
Exactly as we were under Mrs. Thatcher, then?
Some news from Sweden:
The newly formed, EU-sceptical June List got 14,4% of the votes.
http://www.aftonbladet.se/ettor/webb/2119_normal.html
FPTP electoral systems like the UK’s are essentially two-party affairs. There is no indication at this time that British domestic politics is going to change from a Labour-Conservative double act.
I think this is healthy. In order to have more-than-two-party politics, you really need a system of proportional representation, which is not good at providing stable government and puts the nation into the thrall of single-issue fanatics and odd minorities.
A single issue anti-EU party is not going to have much success in a domestic election, although it can (and in the case of the UKIP probably will) encourage a deal of soul searching in the two main parties.
As for libertarians standing, there are some problems. Libertarianism seems (from what people tell me) to be perceived as an selfish and oddball creed supported by policy wonks and the socially maladjusted. It seems to have very little popular support. Organising libertarians into a coherent party group with discipline is probably akin to herding cats. Individuals standing on a non-party platform will not attract any more support than pretty much any other independent candidate.
Ask yourself, would a collection of unorganised individuals each holding a similar anti-EU view have garnered anything like the popular support the organised UKIP enjoyed in this election? No, of course not. People vote for parties.
If you want to get libertarian ideas accepted in the political mainstream, you need to found a party or come to control an existing party. Otherwise, libertarianism will continue to be seen as an odd minority pursuit. You also have to accept that the bulk of the British electorate have shown no great sympathy for libertarian ideas (I would not class Thatcher as a libertarian).
I would expect that it would not work. If I had money, I’d bet on it, but I don’t so I can’t.
EG
Regarding libertarian ideas in the UK, I often feel the success of libertarianism in this country depends on how it is marketed.
If a libertarian candidate states that taxation is theft, then the electorate would consider that a far out, wacky belief. If you tell them how they would be better off without taxation, then they may warm to that better.
Similarly, I don’t believe most would accept libertarian beliefs on the repeal of race relations legislation or even the complete legalisation of drugs and firearms.
In the meantime, since there is no libertarian party in Britain I guess I’d have to vote Conservative. It annoys me that there is no one who truly represents libertarian views out there.
Libertarians would be bonkers to try and create a political party out of nothing. The only useful thing is to try an change the cultural background by making the unthinkable… thinkable.
In any case, the democratic political system is so inherently corrupting I would rather see people with good ideas spend their efforts spreading them to as many people as possible by other means, producing effects indirectly, and leave the dismal kleptocratic business of professional politics to the less gifted.
Perry and others
I guess you are right. Sigh 🙁
It is just that a little part of me feels cheated when I look down the list of candidates and see nobody with the word “Libertarian” against his/her name. What I would give to be able to vote “Libertarian” just once in my life!
Cydonia
Briefly going off on a tangent…
We received our Tory Party election letter for the June 10th election…this morning (the 14th)!!!
I phoned the local Tory Party office to ask why they had wasted money sending it out so late, and the answer was that the letters had gone out weeks ago.
According to the local Tory office, it seems that Croydon’s post office staff have a long-standing habit of sitting on boxes of (properly individually-addressed and paid-for) Tory letters that were posted in bulk at the post office, and only delivering them AFTER the election.
So now the local Tories are going to have to individually stamp and post their mailings on different days using a variety of envelopes and postboxes to try to get their mailings past the (presumably Socialist) activists in the post office.
Anyone who wants to start a mass movement must recognise that these kind of post-service activivities are not only the preserve of 3rd-world banana republics, and plan accordingly.
Another (hilarious) tangent…
… the kind of cheerful news Tony Blair needs now … Michael Moore, is contemplating making the prime minister his next victim.
Cydonia : the “use the election to educate people” libertarian strategy doesn’t work. The two strategies, preaching and party politics, are mutually exclusive. Correct strategies for the one are guaranteed to wreck the other.
If education is your goal, you’d be better pursuing it directly.
Ron, that is not surprising at all, alas. I have seen a member of the RM taking Tory leaflets out of the front halls of some dwellings on his normal round.
I think there is a fairly safe bet that UKIP will retain their vaguely libertarian/free market mentality. I think they are well aware that messing about with the formula that go em’ where they are now would be incredibly stupid.
Polytoines on Cue
Tee Hee. Her Pollyness is NOT pleased. I’m just a Yank, but if I were British, I might think it worth voting for the UKIP just to see this.
“Libertarians would be bonkers to try and create a political party out of nothing.”
“The only useful thing is to try an change the cultural background by making the unthinkable… thinkable.”
so how about making the idea of creating a party thinkable?
Andrew:
I am skeptical that the free-market elements of UKIP are the “formula” that got them “where they are now”. It is true that they talk the talk of free trade and less government regulation but I fear their opposition to economic migration gives the game away.
Cydonia
Julian:
“the “use the election to educate people” libertarian strategy doesn’t work. ”
I know. I know. It’s just that being able to vote libertarian would make me feel better 🙂
Cydonia,
Having been in the fortunate position of voting for a genuine libertarian in a UK general election I can testify that it doesn’t really make you feel that much better.
UKIP’s policies on immigration are scarcely much different from the other parties, besides there are many prominent libertarians who argue that immigration restrictions are perfectly compatible with libertarianism. (I think they are mistaken.)
It seems to me to be a perfectly sensible tactic for libertarians to get behind the UKIP bandwagon on this one, I voted UKIP in the Euro elections this time but didn’t waste my time encouraging their idotic candidate for London Mayor who is supporting the Olympic bid of all things. Cretin.
You can’t have open immigration while you still have a welfare state. The welfare state must be gotten rid of before open immigration. That’s because it distorts the free market forces that would automatically put a brake on too much immigration too soon (i.e. the high cost of living that inevitably results n a densely populated area would act as a natural brake on excessive immigration — but that brake is removed by the welfare state.)
Susan: I’m not sure it would brake. Absent a welfare state, immigrants would create jobs and wealth enough to absorb the immigration. And “overcrowding” could be fixed trivially: pull out of CAP, repeal the green belt laws and the requirement for “planning permission”. Swathes of cheap countryside ex-farmland would flood the market, and house prices would plummet.
At some point there would be a natural brake, Julian. But, nontheless, as current situations in many European countries demonstrate, welfare statism in combination with open immigration has been very detrimental. Doesn’t help that most of the immigrants taken in by Europe come from a culture that doesn’t readily assimilate with other cultures, or have a cultural commitment to the Protestant work ethic.
You actually want that? I mean, concretised suburbia from the Solent to Southend? Just for starters?
Why not just only pay unemployed people to live in the cheapest part of the country?
There are supposed to be a very large number (figure difficult to find) of people claiming JSA/Housing Benefit in London, the second most expensive city in the world. If they all went to somewhere cheaper that would mean quite a few extra houses to rent! Problem solved, money saved too!
Tony:
“You actually want that? I mean, concretised suburbia from the Solent to Southend? Just for starters?”
You mean as opposed to the State subsidised agri-deserts that comprise most farmland in the UK?
Cydonia writes:
“You mean as opposed to the State subsidised agri-deserts that comprise most farmland in the UK? ”
Now that is just plain, silly polemic. I spend most of my time in the rural parts of England and I absolutely do not recognize such a sweeping generalisation.
Criticisms can be made, but to suggest slapping concrete over our countryside because it is an ‘agri-desert’ is just bonkers.
I cannot believe someone who actually lives or works in rural England can have written that.
Unrestricted immigration is way of ensuring less freedom not more. Allowing all those who have a job to come into in is another matter entirely. There are different types of immigration and libertarians come acropper often by not defining what type they mean.
Tony H asks: “You actually want that? I mean, concretised suburbia from the Solent to Southend? Just for starters?”
Wouldn’t happen. Bland suburbia is a symptom, not a natural settlement pattern. Planning permission has 3 effects that cause it: (1) the difference in price between land with and without planning permission puts house-building out of the reach of any but big corporate developers, who create whole estates at once (2) houses are crammed together on the outskirts of existing towns, rather than diffusing into the countryside (3) houses are forced to be bland, samey and unoriginal.
With repeal of “anti urban sprawl” and planning permission, I expect the effect would be a population shift towards small towns rather than continued spread of cities. Villages would expand into towns, new villages would be started. In each case, the expansion would be “organic” and would not dilute the character of the town.
Seriously, if central planning and an allocation state is a disaster everywhere else, why should it suddenly be any good when designing towns?
(warning – off topic)
Tony H:
Ok I was being polemical (although large tracts of the Midlands and East Anglia are agri-deserts. Monocrops that stretch for miles, with brown mud in the winter). But nobody is talking of concreting over the country. Most of what we now hold dear was built at a time when land use was uncontrolled. Most of what we now excoriate was built at the behest of central or local government. Draw your own conclusions. In any case, abolition of planning controls does not mean abolition of land use controls. The law of nuisance means that nobody is free to build a polluting factory next to a residential street. But much of modern day planning controls have nothing to do with keeping the country pretty. For example, developers are hampered from building to the extent demanded by the market because of the absurd requirements imposed by local authorities to build 25% or 40% “social housing” for “key workers” (i.e. the politically favoured class of the day). Nothing to do with aesthetics and everything to do with politics. There are many other examples (ludicrous building regulations, zoning regulations put in place to protect favoured trades, requirements to cater for the disabled at vast expense and little purpose etc etc).
Returning more or less to parties, I’m wondering why the BBC has suddenly seen fit to show a “life of Gordon Brown in pictures” on its news site…
Are the Pravda editors preparing the people for news of a change in leadership, I wonder?
EG
Euan Gray writes:
“Are the Pravda editors preparing the people for news of a change in leadership, I wonder?”
Funny you should mention that. I was sitting here peering at the page, wondering just the same thing.
A pre-emptive strike from the BBC in the wake of the elections, maybe?
Then again, if the rumours are true and Brown really is less of a Europhile than Bliar, I can’t see his agenda matching the corporation’s in that respect.
It appears we may be living in the proverbial ‘interesting times’.
It would be somewhat ironic if Blair is deposed in the next couple of weeks.
It will be recalled that Thatcher was finally done for on a trip overseas to negotiate a European treaty, being seen by many as either the major selling point of her party or a disaster for the country, and this after prolonged internal squabbling, meetings in back rooms, etc. Blair is scuttling off to negotiate a European treaty, and is seen as either the major selling point of his party or a disaster for the country, after prolonged internal squabbling, meetings in restaurant car parks, etc.
This would be too nice and neat, I suppose, to actually happen.
EG
Wishful thinking, I expect. I believe the Labour constitution, unlike the Tory one, forbids the unseating of a Prime Minister.