In recent weeks, both Ed Miliband and David Cameron have had a crack at ‘moral markets’, and yesterday Nick Clegg tried this season’s in vogue political issue on for size. The Lib Dem leader found it suited him the best.
Clegg, speaking in the City, offered both a “liberal diagnosis”, and, more importantly, a “liberal remedy”, to the problems currently facing our economy. A lot of this was based around the idea of a “John Lewis economy”, in which workers own shares and have a greater say in the running of the companies that employ them. Clegg hit all the right notes when he spoke of a “redistribution of power”, while rightly calling capitalism “one of history’s great success stories”.
Such language is welcome, and should chime well with the majority of party members. For every SDP-statist-sandal wearer that remains, there are increasing numbers of ‘real’ liberals, who believe in markets and the freedoms and responsibilities that those bring, making their voices heard within the Liberal Democrats.
One of the biggest criticisms from party activists is not that Nick Clegg and his fellow ministers have stopped believing in the right things, just that the bonds of collective responsibility often stop them expressing them in the manner some members would like. However, on the economy, while Cameron and Miliband continue to haggle over semantatics and detail, Clegg took the political zeitgeist and put his own distinctly liberal touch on it in a manner that should please vast swathes of his activist base.
A prime example of this is a friend of mine whom I met after the speech, and who had been at the event. He is definitely on the left of the party and hardly a classic Cleggite. However, he declared the speech one of the best he had seen Clegg deliver. Equally, I haven’t seen any discontent from my more orange friends, who are pleased Clegg continues to back the market economics that are a core component of liberalism.
More of this, and across the party and the country at large many more will find themselves agreeing with Nick once again.
Comments
Dave Page / January 17 2012 12:54pm
For God's sake let's not start using "real" liberals to describe any one school of liberal thought. The press is already doing an excellent job of portraying a false dichotomy and schism between "economic" and "social" liberals as if the two were mutually exclusive, and the more idiotic party members are falling for it.
Liz W / January 18 2012 11:39am
I'm not sure which is the bigger mistake here: identifying either of the predecessor parties with one side of the supposed "economic vs. social" dichotomy (which, as Dave says, has been grossly over-hyped by the media), or assuming that if there were such a dichotomy, the former SDP members in the Lib Dems would automatically be the statists. They left the Labour Party for a reason, after all. As ever, reality is much too complex to be captured by stereotypes like "SDP-statist-sandal wearer" .
Grace / January 18 2012 4:36pm
A very divisive and inaccurate piece which bears no relation to the actual history of the party. I strongly suggest the author does some research re policy and actions of the predecessor parties and the alliance and actually understands where the different "factions" came from. I think they would get a surprise....
Within the current context describing a fellow Liberal as "SDP-statist-sandal wearer" because you disagree with them is hardly helpful.
Grace / January 18 2012 4:37pm
A very divisive and inaccurate piece which bears no relation to the actual history of the party. I strongly suggest the author does some research re policy and actions of the predecessor parties and the alliance and actually understands where the different "factions" came from. I think they would get a surprise....
Within the current context describing a fellow Liberal as "SDP-statist-sandal wearer" because you disagree with them is hardly helpful.
Mark Pack / January 18 2012 5:05pm
I'm not sure who the "SDP-statist-sandal wearers" are meant to have been, given that the "SDP and the "sandal wearers" were two different groups of people, often at odds with each other?
mike cobley / January 18 2012 7:32pm
Whoa there! Who's writing your stuff - the ghost of Ayn Rand? Markets dont bring freedom and responsibility; they are merely avenues by which commodities are bought and sold according to specific rules regulated to preserve at least the appearance of normality.
Sooner or later this party, and even Labour, is going to have to rediscover the tenets and principles of social democracy and learn that there are those areas of public service provision which must be ringfenced from the market. Just as the market must be reformed to better serve the common good - oh yes, how about that for an idea, rather than bowing down to the global corporations and investors who have made such an almighty dogs dinner of economies and nations.
Just some thoughts, just sowing some seeds.
Josh / January 19 2012 2:41am
Am i the only one who recognises that those who do have their history through the SDP have contributed considerably to the party and have allowed it to get to where it is today, in fact many of them are serving at the heart of this Government! The tribalism isnt going to work and belongs firmly in the Labour party. I thoughts Clegg's speech was brilliant and fundamentally agree with a lot of what he has said but the whole "real liberals" thing is a bit unfair. We have to be a party that welcomes criticisms and conflicting ideas.
Chris Mills / January 22 2012 7:08pm
I am fed up with people trying to artificially open a gap between the Social Liberals and the OBs.
Contrary to Charlotte's belief, the sandal wearers were Liberal Party members, not SDP members.
We all want the same ends, i.e. a Liberal state, just maybe the means we want to achieve it by is slightly different. Lets stop this stupid war of words. All it does is hand the advantage to the other parties whilst we're portrayed as a party without direction.
Everyone in this party is a real Liberal, be they Evan Harris or Nick Clegg.
Foxley / March 06 2012 10:28pm
This really is the most idiotic misunderstanding of the divisions within the Lib Dems. The sandal-wearers were always the Liberals (with a tendency towards CND and going green) whilst the SDP was drawn from the hard-nosed right-wing of the Labour Party (which parted company with Labour when that party embraced unilateral nuclear disarmament and withdrawal from NATO and the EU).
Ahzel / May 29 2012 2:37am
Clegg's speech to Demos (in December) was exclneelt, so I wonder who wrote it for him. He's a very presentable lad... Had the election run for another week, I heard that Huhne would have overtaken him. (And Ros Scott is in charge from today.) But, in a different corner, I have been surprised at how many women in particular simply recoil from Brown when they see or hear him on TV and radio.Bristol West is changing, both in boundary and demography. Fewer students in the rented properties, replaced by a variety of other people. Redevelopment of some former council estates bringing different people in. And Stephen is getting to grips with being a constituency MP.