What planet is Simon Hughes on?
I may not be Simon Hughes’s greatest fan, but I thought him more sensible than this:
“The Labour Party has betrayed, sadly, what I thought were its libertarian principles”
- Simon Hughes, Question Time, BBC1, Thursday 8th February 2007
Umm… in what parallel universe does Labour have libertarian principles? Some individuals may have them (although I suspect they are now few and far between) but from the very outset Labour was a collectivist party, founded to represent the interests of the Trade Unions, largely influenced by the socialism of the Fabians and other groups. This is the party which pursued the nationalisation of the British economy and has now embarked on an attempt to nationalise the British people.
At no point in its history has Labour been libertarian, it is not in its nature.
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February 9th, 2007 at 4:38 pm
There is a social-liberal element to Labour. It was the Wilson government that legalised homosexuatlity and lowered the voting age to 18, and one might argue that anti-discrimination legislation was liberating.
I would not go as far as to call them libertarians, though. For the most part Labour is committed to social reform through state intervention, which is about as un-libertarian as one can imagine.