Nick Clegg: is liberalism too much to expect from the Lib Dems?

Posted on Tuesday 18 December, 2007
Filed Under Liberal Democrats

 

The so-called centre ground is the most overcrowded stretch of real estate in British politics. It is – as I’ve argued before – in truth really the centre-right, and must rank somewhere about seven or eight on a scale from democratic socialism to Thatcherite Conservatism, but let that pass.

With both New Labour and the Tories firmly entrenched in this location, it cannot be easy to develop a distinctive brand of centrist politics. After all, some differences just are just too small to split.

Yet that’s the challenge facing (yet another) new Liberal Democrat leader. Nick Clegg – pictured – has this afternoon narrowly secured the job from the older but otherwise identikit Chris Huhne.

Back in the 1980s, the party of Keynes and Beveridge might have offered a suitable home for vaguely progressive types who thought that the unions had too much influence on Labour Party structures, while its Manchester School tradition might have appealed to free marketers repelled by Thatcherite authoritarian populism.

But a quarter of a century later, it is hard to know just what the Lib Dems are for. Clegg – who started in politics working for a Tory politician, and is usually considered a rightwinger on economic issues – has pledged to form a ‘liberal alternative’. But what would that look like?

Consider the strategy of one of his recent predecessors. Charles Kennedy at times seem to flirt with the idea of taking his party to the left of New Labour.

Political positioning is entirely relative, of course. But Kennedy could easily and coherently built on initial opposition to the Iraq War, stuck by the 50% tax call for six-figure incomes, and maybe made a few friendly noises to the unions.

Clearly he calculated that it was not in his best interests to go there, probably because the Lib Dems have more votes to gain from disillusioned Tories than from disillusioned Labour supporters. And so – the use a Cameronism – he bottled the choice.

But surely there is space in Britain today for a liberal party that is, like, so actually liberal. If not, they might as well pack up and go home.

Sometimes it seems like we are running out of civil liberties for New Labour to crack down on. Since 1997, it has in effect torn up the Geneva Convention on refugees, and clearly disdains the substance and spirit of the European Convention on Human Rights. Instead, the agenda is one of house arrest, arbitrary and punitive deportation, and shoot to kill policies.

Jack Straw famously inveighed against ‘Hampstead liberal lawyers’. Charles Clarke remarked: ‘I am neither woolly or a liberal or a woolly liberal.’ John Reid didn’t even have to both with the rhetoric; no-one who gave the matter any thought ever accused him of closet L-word tendencies.

But for the new leader of the Liberal Democrat party, accusations of liberalism should not prove too damning. Clegg could do a lot worse than picking up the civil libertarian ball and running with it, if only for the sake of a bit of product differentiation.

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