I think Chris Huhne may have just lost my vote
He’s come down against individualism and choice in public services, paying homage to the myth that localising bureaucracy is the only way to improve services and that denying people freedom is the liberal way forward.
There is no difference between a bureaucrat in my local council or one in Westminster – neither can understand the needs of an individual and respond to them. Individual choice is the only way to provide a fair service.
As a party we need to embrace the individual not the politician or bureaucrat. The problem is ensuring everyone has access to services not that everyone has the same service.
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November 1st, 2007 at 11:07 am
Were you considering to vote him before?
November 1st, 2007 at 11:19 am
I think it depends on the Council – a `bureaucrat` in four star Stockport is different from one in one star wherever.
I think local councillors should direct policy etc – of course in Liberal Democrat authorities they’ll probably like to devolve more anyway and set up new systems and embed new attitudes for staff.
It’ll be up to us as a party to campaign on this and win councils.
November 1st, 2007 at 11:31 am
However, Tristan (and see my post about this today for more) Huhne is the only one in my opinion that understands the sort of economic changes that could potentially provide the wealth in the hands of individuals that could allow us to move more radically to more market based systems.
November 1st, 2007 at 1:17 pm
You should not focus unduly on bureaucrats at any level. The key is good democratic oversight of any organisation and if the organisation is local and udner the control of locally elected councillors then yes, it will be a million times more representative and responsive than the dead hand of Whitehall ever could be.
We need bureaucrats in a complex society and we need elected representatives to keep eye on those bureaucrats on our behalf.
November 2nd, 2007 at 12:43 am
Completely agree with wit and wisdom on this. The key here is contestability. Competitive elections and debate can work just as well as a local market – and massively better than a local monopoly.
The state has two dimensions – the bureaucratic centralist absolutist dimension (much loved by Labour – and rightly distrusted by us) – and the democratic deliberative dimension (which drives our commitment to localism and constitutional reform).
The characterisation of the state as “state bureaucracy” and ignoring the role of “democratic deliberation” in public decision making – and the reduction of political debate to bureaucracy vs. free markets is boring, empty, half-baked and about 20 years out of date. Much of community politics and the Liberal Democrat approach is about harnessing the forces of the latter (democracy) to take on the former (bureaucracy).
I once wrote a blog post on this.
November 2nd, 2007 at 3:10 am
[...] one. The second is his defence of equality. The latter guarantees that the likes of Andy Mayer and Tristan Mills won’t vote for him, but it marks him out as a centre left politician and contrasts with [...]