Liberal Forum

[TimPerkins]

I recently read an article by Rupert Read, who started out an enthusiastic SDP convert who eventually became convinced that right wing Labour is about shoring up the status quo and came to see the alliance and merged party as an historic stumbling block to radical reform. He echoes your comments here . He has ended up in a Green Party Councillor and Euro candidate in East Anglia. Pity he went the single-issue party route .
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''Hold firmly, without wavering , to the Hope that we confess.''

[Leftwing and Liberal]

Firstly, it is erroneous for Tim to say there are virtually no differences between the Lib Dems ans the other two main parties. On policies and ethos, with regard to to civil liberties, the environment, democratic reform, the EU and on taxation the Lib Dems position is quite different to the Blue Labour consensus.

A cursory glance at the 'Reinventing the State' book shows that social liberalism is far from dead within the Lib Dems. Indeed, were this so I'm sure Mr. Meadowcroft would not have headed towards our direction. Further, the chapter by Duncan Brack is one that best encapsulates my philosophical outlook. Equality of opportunity is not enough to forge a progressive liberal society, it is outcomes that are key.

It is true the radicalism of many Liberal Party positions are closer to my own perspectives, than some of the nuanced shifts within LD policy. However, what good would it do to be in opposition to the only progressive force challenging the Tories in Torbay ? Further, our MP (Adrian Sanders) and council group leader (Cllr. Steve Darling) are also people with whom I agree with on more things than not.

Therin lies the problem. If I lived in Exeter or East/Mid Devon, Liverpool or Worcestershire then I would consider membership of your party. Outside of these small enclaves, the greatest number of social liberals can be found in the Lib Dems.

There is a shift to the right in economic terms (at least), additionally a previous LD Conference opened the way for part-privatisation of the PO and next Spring's Conference will see an Education paper debated, in which David Laws will no doubt seek to weaken the party's opposition to Academy Schools. All depressing stuff.

That said, shifts in positioning by parties happens frquently and if one jumped ship after each disappointing vote one might end up having been in as many parties as Tim Perkins !

Therefore, whilst there's still a debate raging in the LDs then I'll fight my corner (as I did when I voted against the shift in taxation policy at Autumn Conference). Wheeling out the big guns to win votes at Conference will only work so many times for Clegg.

Alongside this approach it is my intention to listen to what the Liberal Party has to say, to engage with some of it's supporters on here as fellow liberals, in addition to watching for a renewal in the Labour party ranks. Tim Perkins is wrong, the Greens do have a phalanx of policy positions. Their 'Manifesto for a Sustainable Society' is wide ranging and radical in parts. All of us, irrespective of party, have a role to play in challenging the centre-right orthodoxy now being cemented at the top of British politics.

I am very encouraged by the honesty and bravery in saying that isn't where you are at. In Exeter, Liverpool and a small number of other places you may well be best placed to challenge this orthodoxy, elsewhere it will be down to others including radical liberals like myself within the Lib Dems and those progressives in other parties too.

I do not consider the Tories to part of that equation in any way, shape or form ! They are still the 'enemy'.

[TimPerkins]

Words are one thing, actions another. Whilst claiming a liberal position on Civil Liberties, their actions in blocking a referendum on the EU treaty proclaim the Lib Dems as fundamentally unprincipled and untrustworthy. I'm surprised you are neutral on this issue and feel it unimportant to the Citizens of the UK. I know that the EU is important to fishing communities and I'm sure Liberals in Cornwall would emphasise that. On green issues the Lib Dems pay lip service at federal level but often have local disagreements with policy yet still claim to be the greenest party..They have a respectable policy prospectus on democratic reform but as the Bones Commission and COG decision undermines internal democracy, these instincts are no longer to be taken at face value and on taxation, well,
far from being different from 'Blue Labour', the Lib Dems are proposing uncosted tax cuts, reliant on unindentified public spending cuts. It's hardly radical or JM Keynes at his best. Indeed, it's a policy approach that Vince Cable himself criticised the Tories for in 2005. How that is ''quite different'', i don't know , except perhaps in an 'off the wall' and deeply inopportune sense. I don't argue that social liberalism is dead within the Lib Dems just that its undermined and uncertain. New Labour and the Tories have both being claiming liberalism recently. They must think it a useful electoral tool or mantra but unless its matched by the kind of radical reforms on education,economic equality of opportunity and democratic reform, then it remains that. Managing symptoms or even outcomes is not quite the same thing. I'm glad you are like minds with some local Lib Dems, my experience of Lib Dem MP's shocked me.Perhaps my standards are too high. Many Lib Dem local workers are the salt of the earth and are often left hoping for something better, not least from their own party leadership. I agree that the Liberal Party is the effective and best opposition in Exeter, Devon, Merseyside and Worcestrshire. I agree that there is indeed a major shift to the right in the Lib Dems. Have you read the Orange Book? As a Councillor, the Labour overlords in Salford used it as a way of attacking the Lib Dems. Probably one reason why the Lib Dem breakthrough in the North West has been postponed. I tried several parties before concluding that the Westminster concensus is a radblock to the radical reforms that aren't only needed but essential. Sad to see the Lib Dems taking the same route, tactics, policies and strategy. Incidentally, the Lib Dem press release about me which you refer to indirectly, was cobbled together by a LD Cllr with occult and far[Authoritarian] left connections, who attacked me for my religious beliefs as well. He's still a Lib Dem Cllr for another Ward, having ditched one ward mid term and ,unbelievably, is now a PPC ! I have a fondness and respect for Greens so would not attack them unless they pursued authoritarianism. Indeed, on a wide range of issues we could and should make common cause in disposing of unsustainable policies even if not always able to agree on propositions for alternative ones.
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''Hold firmly, without wavering , to the Hope that we confess.''

[Dane Clouston]

Tim Perkins,

How right you are about the LibDems and the Lisbon referendum! Completely disgraceful! Not only do they pretend that the Lisbon Treaty is not the same, or worse, even for the UK, than the EU Constitution, but they pretend that to call instead for a referendum on In or Out - which they think, or hope, they would win, will get them off the moral hook. It does not. It shows how deceitful they are. It is they who are responsible for the vote in the Lords. We must do everything we can to ensure that they do not hold the balance of power in the next Parliament. The Liberal Party must develop Big Bang inflationary growth. How are we going to do it?

Incidentally, I wrote this to the Spectator the other day. I don't subscribe to it but they send me email links to their website:

"Charles Leadbeater is right. We should indeed be searching for a new kind of capitalism.

What we need is certainly not from the far left, but is Liberal "popular capitalism" - with the wider spread of privately owned wealth, through the judicious redistribution of gifted and inherited wealth in each new generation.

How? Tax all giving and bequeathing of capital at a flat 10 % without exemptions, to record what is given or left, with a reformed IHT (currently at a scandalously exemption-riddled 40%). Call it Capital Donor Tax - or some similar name. Objection? - Donor Tax is double taxation of after tax income? Objection overruled! - So is VAT!

Introduce a new tax on lifetime receipts of gifted and inherited capital, from which the Capital Donor Tax would be deductible. Call it Unearned Capital Receipts Tax - or some similar name. Let it start at 10% and be progressive after that. Most people would have no more to pay, since the 10% would already have been paid by donors or bequeathers.

Use the flat rate and progressive rate proceeds to give all British-born British citizens a broadly self-financed British Universal Inheritance at 25 of at least 10 % of average wealth. Average wealth of every adult and child in the UK was £85,000 at the end of 2002, when the FTSE was about 4000. Say a BUI of £10,000, itself subject to the Unearned Capital Receipts Tax.

Objection? Unearned Capital Receipts Tax is a tax on after tax income? Objection overruled! - Not in the hands of recipients, it isn't! They do nothing to create, earn, save or make these unearned receipts. Why should those who receive gifted and inherited fortunes not pay some tax on lifetime receipts so that others, in the poor streets of Glasgow, Liverpool and London, close by streets of vast wealth, can inherit something rather than nothing during their lifetimes?

British Universal Inheritance is an Asset Welfare State measure that would help to increase entrepreneurial activity, home ownership and opportunity for all. It would help reduce alienation, crime and policing costs, financial and social exclusion, poverty and the need for and cost of the Income Welfare State. It would increase a sense of progressive national identity and community - much needed in times to come. It is already the party policy of the EU-sceptic Liberal Party (not the EU-fanatic LibDems). See www.liberal.org.uk and www.universal-inheritance.org .

Which major party will take up British Universal Inheritance first? Referendum-denying DimLibs or New Labour and Gordon Brown - who deliberately messed up "Opportunity for All" and the Fabian Society's 2000 "A Capital Idea" by giving the consultation process in the Treasury to a "Savings Incentives Team" instead of to an "Opportunity for All Team"? Or Compassionate EU-sceptic Conservatives, for the "Opportunity Society"?

Disraeli and 19th Century Conservatives used modest steps towards universal suffrage to help gain power. 21st Century Conservatives should be using a modest degree of universal inheritance to do the same. In a capitalist democracy all should have not only a vote at 18 but also a basic minimum inheritance at 25."

[Leftwing and Liberal]

To Tim :

How on earth did you possibly believe that the Tories, under Cameron, or anyone else, could be the answer ? It is 'quirky' to sat the least that from having stood for the Tories in 2007, you then a year later support the Liberals becoming 'officially' becoming a party of the radical left !

Yes, I have read the Orange Book and it's follow-up 'Britain after Blair'. Take a look at my blog postings over a sustained period and you'll see me as an unabashed critic of the OB and any drift to the right by the LDs. Duncan Brack's chapter in the far better 'Reinventing the State' points more to where I am at politically. Equality of opportunity is not enough. What sense of freedom is there if you have poor health, are badly educated, live in poverty ? It is fair to say that I am to the left of 90% of the Lib Dem members I've met.

I didn't say the Liberals were the best party in those areas where your party is active, I said it may be so.

BTW Tim, as a fellow practising Christian, you'll get no hostility from this Lib Dem !

As for tax, the LD proposals, are different from those of Labour and Tories. The former took away the 10p rate of tax thereby hitting the poorest hardest. The Tories, the one promise I know of on tax is also a redistribution of wealth towards the better off via it's Inheritance Tax proposition. The LD proposals redistribute the other way, albeit it will be the comfortable middle classes who'd benefit most.

However, as I've already said before, given a choice of tax cuts or more public investment, I'd clearly go for the latter.

As for the EU, I am neutral in the sense that I am not a EU groupie, but in areas such as the environment, defence, shared common foreign policy objectives and as a trading block it has it's uses. The undemocratic nature of an unreformed EU is something else.

Beyond the Lisbon Treaty debate the Lib Dems were offering a much more radical option, to actually have a vote on EU membership itself ! The LDs offered to you and others the ultimate vote as to where our country's future direction lay !! As it happens, on the Lisbon vote itself the Lib Dems did not speak and vote with once voice as you well know !

Tim and Dane : can I ask that you make a distinction between Lib Dems en-masse, particularly the leadership and grass roots Liberal [Democrat]s such as myself. Dane referring to us as DimLibs just comes across as insulting too and serves no-ones interest. Further, as you may have gathered I take very differing views from the other 'out' Lib Dem I've seen on here !

BUI, on the face of it, sounds both interesting and progressive and I'll take a look at it more closely over the next few weeks.

The Greens used to promote a Citizens (Basic) Income. On paper it sounds a very progressive idea, although I don't know if they made the sums add up.

As for electoral politics, even if the Liberal party policy messages often chime with my own, I see it as 'my job' to see progressive candidates elected ahead of the Tories. A number of good liberal Liberal Democrats can be found in the Torbay area and are worthy of support. For example, for Adrian Sanders MP to lose to an arrogant careerist Tory counterpart would be disastrous for the bay, in the same way that the privatise it and sell-off our open spaces to developers policy of Tory controlled Torbay Council is proving a millstone around our heads in my locality. In Torbay, it is the Lib Dems that are working hard all year round and taking up issues that impact upon one of the poorest areas in the SW. To join the Liberal party at this time, even if I can agree with much of what you say, would not make much sense. That is (the current) reality on the ground here.

Pragmatism, without losing sight of principles, is an acceptable position to take.
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For a contrarian, liberal left take on politics :
www.leftleaningpolitics.blogspot.com

[TimPerkins]

As the only feasible challenges to an over-mighty State and the failures of new Labour, people have a choice -Conservative reforms or radical reform. I briefly chose to trust the possibility of the former. I was wrong.
I chose to believe the promises Cameron made in 2005 such as withdrawal from the pro-federal Europe EPP. He broke the promise, i believed he'd create a more inclusive party. He merely filled the shadow cabinet with 15 old public School boys and no vision has been forthcoming, merely opportunism- of the kind Mr Clegg is also apeing. I also discovered little local democracy in Tory decision-making and no possible means for the ordinary member to influence policy development. As today's misjudgements by George Osborne have proved, the Tories are fundamentally unchanged. I n recognising this , I have been looking for an independent Party to challenge the economic failures that produced the credit crisis and to extend political and economic empowerment to meet the challenges I experienced as a Councillor in a deprived City dominated by political hacks. Only the Liberal Party has the philosophical base, radical policies and experienced community activists to develop this approach. I could have stayed put, toed the old party lines and kept a career . I decided to put the need for real reform first, I may be quirky, a maverick even-but I won't accept nonsense under any colour.
Real redistribution requires public spending on the poorest, particularly in a time of recession, not tax breaks for lower middle income earners paid for by inopportune and unspecified public spending cuts. Trickle down doesn't work.
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''Hold firmly, without wavering , to the Hope that we confess.''

[Dane Clouston]

'Left Wing and Liberal'

It is reasonable to prefer the Conservatives to New Labour, and certainly to the LibDems, in some situations, if one is seriously EU-sceptic and concerned about the future of Britain as an independent country.

Equality of opportunity covers education, health and the inheritance of wealth. Of course it is not enough, but it is a way towards greater equality of outcomes which has the least possible adverse effect upon incentives and the creation of wealth.

Where did religion creep in? Human centred wishful thinking on this cosmic dot, as far as I am concerned! Best to focus upon this life, rather than relying upon the next to redress the balance for those who suffer in this.

Common foreign policy and defence objectives are fine when they exist, but having one EU state and one EU Foreign Minister is not. We can coooperate on the environment and other matters without belonging to the EU.

I do think the LibDems are the DimLibs when it comes to the EU. I first heard the expression when I went to a UKIP meeting and rather liked it, because the LibDems never changed their views when the EEC changed into the bureacratic and protectionist EU. It became a kind of heresy in the party to question our membership of the EU. The LibDems challenge my love of my country as an independent progressive and internationally cooperative national community, so I do feel pretty hostile to them as a party, but obviously not at all as individuals. Nothing personal. All you have to do is to join us!

A basic income is very different from BUI. For a start, it either is - or is not - enough to live on. Problems either way! And the present discounted value of a lifetime stream of such income is vast in comparison with BUI. I see it as a way for people to turn a blind eye to the need to redistribute the ownership of capital in each new generation.

I quite see what you mean about local LibDems versus arrogant Tories. But what are the LibDems FOR these days. They should be FOR a fairer country and FOR an independent country instead of turning us into a collection of regions in a country called Europe, but they are not. As a party of protest they are a huge failure, because of the contrast between their hung-onto views on the EU versus public opinion on the EU. I had heard that Nick Clegg was relatively EU-sceptic, but on that he is a flop as far as I am concerned.

I think it makes sense to join the Liberal Party. LibDems joining the Liberal Party will make a difference to the LibDem policy on the EU in the end, and then maybe we can all be in one party again.

Tim Perkins.

Good for you! I agree with you. Except that real redistribution does require, in addition to your demands, greater equality of opportunity not only in education and health but also in the inheritance of wealth - an Asset Welfare State as well as an Income Welfare State - British Universal Inheritance, together with VAT on private education and health!

[TomWilde]

Dane, congratulations on making the 800th posting on the forum!

I have read the postings above with great interest. I reckon I'm somewhat to the right (whatever that means) of most here on this forum and possibly most in the Liberal Party, in that I support economic as well as social liberalism. I reckon that the desire for equality of outcome does clash sometimes with the desire for personal liberty, and when there is such a clash then I'm almost unfailingly on the side of liberty. To be frank, as long as there is equality of opportunity and as long as everyone is able to live with some dignity I'm simply not bothered about equality of outcome. I imagine that all of us here support tolerance and democracy; in addition I support free trade. I haven't read the LibDem "Orange Book", but I've liked what little I've heard about it at second hand. And I have grave worries about the threat to personal liberty from an over-mighty or over-extensive state - howevermuch that state might enable us to achieve liberal ends in terms of enabling peoples' opportunities and welfare. My favourite Liberal from history is Gladstone (or possibly Mill) rather than Lloyd George.

I don't want to get too flustered about the label "radical left", even if it has little attraction for me, as I think the policies are what count. I support many Liberal Party policies, including some of the economic ones. I strongly oppose the extension of VAT to private healthcare and education (sorry Dane!) but note that the Assembly rejected that proposal anyway. After much thought and hesitation I do now support the Universal Inheritance policy - even though I initially dismissed it and it put me off the Liberal Party completely for about six months! I think it is not only just but also could be a very effective wealth-creation mechanism. Where there are Liberal policies with which I disagree, the disagreement is not so vehement as to cause me to lose sleep.

[Dane Clouston]

Tom, just as long as it isn't the 999,999th, as I was told recently again!

I too support economic as well as social liberalism.

That is why I demand equality of opportunity with an Asset Welfare State - focusing upon gifted and inherited capital - together with an Income Welfare State safety net (which Liberals helped to bring about) to reduce inequality of outcomes.

That is not to say that, as an economic Liberal, I would not be happy with a higher rate of tax on incomes above a certain level, in order to finance the operation of the Income Welfare State safety net, up to the point at which such higher rates start to reduce incentives to create and earn.

However, inequalities of income or wealth outcomes can never be eliminated. Nor should they be. I'm all for footballers, the Beatles and business people making legitimate fortunes. I would just like people to start off their lives less unequally. I am delighted you now support British Universal Inheritance - the Capital Asset Welfare State. That is very encouraging. Do let me know if you would like me to add you to the email list of Supporters. No obligation other than receiving the occasional copy email letter to press or politician!

I don't wish to cause you to lose sleep, but would like to try to persuade you and others on the other question!

Education and Health are part of the Income Welfare State expenditure. But, like the British Universal Inheritance - the Asset Welfare State - they, too, are vital to equality of opportunity.

Because of my politics we sent our children to State Schools until the end of compulsory education. So I spent my time at school meetings complaining about the Oxfordshire County Council pupil/teacher ratios. We then sent them off to private boarding schools for sixth form in order to mix them with the other "educational tribe" for, probably politically and educationally incorrect, largely social reasons. But that was how it was.

My view is that if fewer people opted out of state education because VAT was payable, resources would increase and also the standard would rise because of more involvement by the articulate, influential and wealthy. It is of course a question of chicken and egg, which always makes things difficult.

Personally I would have been happy to pay VAT on the private school sixth form fees, or alternatively - if the VAT had been the straw to break our camel's back - to keep our children at their state Comprehensive School for sixth form. Incidentally, the transition from public to private at 16 was quite tough for them all, but they are all content in retrospect with what we did, apart from regret that they had less sport than they might have had, particularly once the teachers' strike had put the kybosh on that.

Similarly, because of my politics, I have never paid for private health (- apart from a McTimony Chiropractor, a service I would like to see available in the NHS because it was so effective, as I discovered when we had an antiques and pine furniture shop. I complained to a customer who turned out to be a practitioner that I had just wrecked my back lifting something. She told me to lie down on the floor and fixed my back there and then!)

In fact I had to fight to stop the Banque Nationale de Paris, when I worked for their London branch, from paying a BUPA subscription for me - much to their surprise. I like being involved with the National Health Service and seeing how it works and might be better. Maybe I will die a little earlier or not receive quite such good treatment as I might if I went privately, but I have never been disappointed by the NHS, which I think is a wonderful service that must be continually improved where possible.

Opting out of both State Schools and the NHS really does remove influence which would help to improve them. VAT is paid on all sorts of expenditure. Private education and health is luxury expenditure on opting out. Opting out tends to harm the State Schools. Why not tax luxury expenditure on private education and health in order to have more resources for the State Schools and NHS and to involve more articulate, influential and wealthy patients and parents in improving them and being willing to support taxes to finance them. The better are the state schools and the NHS, the more equality of opportunity there will be.

I rest my case! I hope it may be persuasive and that next year I will be able to attend the Assembly and argue for it!

It may be an idea on the left, but I think it is right!