Liberty Alone

What I’d like to see from a LibDem leader is fresh thinking from a liberal perspective.

I want a restatement that we would give up government powers if we were elected, that is something which is vital to a liberal future for Britain.
I also want to see us tackle the two biggest illiberal institutions in the UK, two institutions which are failing too many people - the NHS and the education system. I have my own ideas on these, but naturally I am open to debate. I’m working on setting the ideas down and responding to common criticisms. Suffice to say that inclusive markets and choice are the liberal way, not monopoly and political control. We should raise those who fall out of the market for these services back into it rather than excluding all but the rich from it.

Other things I’d love to see is simply articulating policy based upon the idea of individual liberty and a total withdrawal from the nanny state position of making people behave in a way which is ‘good for them’. Treat people as adults (It is true, on a lot of issues the LibDems are far better than the other two parties in this respect- I just want it to go further).

A commitment to lower the tax burden would be fantastic. Lowering the burden on the poor is the first step though, and I’m glad we’re already doing this.
I’d like to see us promoting land value taxes though and working towards them rather than nodding to them and moving further away from them.

We need a more liberal stance on ‘vices’. It is not our job to protect people from themselves, all we can do is ensure they don’t harm others. Current prohibitionist tendencies in this country serve to cause massive harm to others, we need to tackle this.

The most important thing though is to offer a vision of what the Liberal Democrats are about, not weak phrases about ‘fairness’ or undefined ‘justice’, but something concrete we can take to the press and to people. What are the LibDems for? To give you back control over your lives. To ensure that people have opportunities to pursue their own ends, not implementing some plan drawn up by pressure groups, bureaucrats or politicians.

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