Liberty Alone

I know members of the Labour party who wish their party was a socialist party, more Blairite, had broken the ties with the unions, had never gone to war in Iraq and so on.

They all stick with the party because they feel it best represents their views and they would rather it was in government compared to the Tories.

If you feel a broad sympathy with the Liberal Democrats and want see Lib Dem MPs elected, then stay in. Party leaders and policies come and go, but the values of a party generally stay the same.

I would say, please stay. We need people like you to give us “wake up calls”.

Yes.

I think the party’s making progress, but it’s always slow. There’s a very ‘lefty’ rump in the party that’s never going to go away, so we need people like you to keep showing that there’s other ways, that there’s other opinions.

We also need people to demonstrate what liberal actually means… it’s not the American sense where it’s a euphemism for socialist. :S

But yes, I share your frustrations. I am a reluctant lib dem myself, but I could never reconcile myself to the social authoritarism of the other two parties, so I stay.

Is it enough? Probably not. But, here, in the blogosphere, we have a chance to help form opinions, and that’s your best shot… it’s not much, in and of itself, but the more of us the better, surely?

(Ignore “anonymous”, I suspect we can guess who it is!)

I’ve been humming and hah-ing about this question for a while now as you know. My membership is also up for renewal and earlier in the year, when the Libertarian Party was founded, I sort of made a mental note to review the situation nearer my renewal date.

Whilst I recognize all the traits in the party you mention, I do also believe that the preamble to the consitution of the party makes it quite clear that people with a libertarian ideology ought to be welcome. Indeed, since you mention devolution, that aspiration is clearly in the preamble (just as plainly as “not enslaved by poverty…” albeit that this latter gets a mention on our membership cards and devolution does not explicitly).

The question for us is whether we can make more of a difference working within a party, even a “flawed” one, than we can outside of one. I still think the answer to that is yes. We have an audience, even if at times it seems like it’s not listening. And I do believe that more than in most parties in the Lib Dems people are willing to listen out for radical ideas that might achieve their aims and at the same time be more liberal.

And I really do feel that our aims, as liberals, at whatever point of the liberal spectrum, are in fact pretty much the same. Just that some people haven’t heard how they can achieve some of the Hobhouse type results without state interventionism.

So, I’m certainly giving it until Spring conference and the Liberal Alternative book launch to see how that goes. Then it will probably be till the General Election. And, whilst I was thinking of writing something along these lines myself, whilst it is absolutely not an ultimatum, I do think that a. the manifesto we go into that with will tell us more about the future direction and willingness to grow liberal balls, and b. the outcome might tell us whether or not the Lib Dems will be a voice strong enough to bother trying to convince for a while longer.

Liberalism is very different to libertarianism and laissez-faire economics.

I disagree, we but degrees of liberalism. Find me a fag paper to put between me and Herbert Spencer say. And it rather depends how far you take “laissez-faire”. The huge amount of corporate welfare prevalent today should be anathema to both types of liberal. And “laissez-faire” does not necessarily imply leaving everything to operate on its own – most anarchists and libertarians would recognize a need, for example to eradicate monopoly as being a situation that impinges on the freedoms of others.

Liberals for over a century have opposed the latter in particular.

Even if you had said the “British Liberal Party” I would disagree – L-G in the thirties was still promoting absolute “Free Trade” (as of course were some in the Labour party under MacDonald). Hayek and Friedman were liberals however and get pretty close to what you seem to be calling “laissez-faire”.

That the British Liberal Party have become enamoured of intervention rather than monopoly eradication, tariff abolition and truly Free Trade does not sit well for the heirs to J S Mill and so on. Proper Free Trade has been a call of the left as much as the right. At the turn of the last century the workers’ song condemned the Tories for promoting tariff reform because they thought only abolition would do as tariff reform left too much room for the interfering state to get wrong.

That the British Liberal Party and its successors have lost touch with this economic tradition is regrettable, but dare I suggest that we will not win power until we reconnect with it and promote something different than the dead hand of government.

“Ignore “anonymous”, I suspect we can guess who it is!”

Oooh! Who? Who? I can’t. Let me into the secret!

(I’m going to track you down and conference and not let it lie until you tell me who you think it was).

Think of it this way. For just £12 a year (or whatever the minimum is) you get to bring joy and happiness to so many of us, and really needle the rest. That’s worth a pound a month of anybody’s money :oD

[...] Should I bother? on Tristan Mills’ Liberty Alone blog. A libertarian Lib Dem ponders his future in the party. (If [...]

Yeah. What Григорий said.