Lib Dems move right
It seems that Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has joined David Cameron in pinching leaves from Tony Blair’s communitarian hymn sheet. Yesterday in a speech to Lib Dem activists, Clegg declared that the state should back off. [1] From education to health care, the gratuitous binge of attacking the role of the state heralded the anticipated move rightward in the aftermath of Clegg’s victory.
Most of what Clegg is talking about seems almost meaningless. His attack on ‘excessive’ regulation of schools seems almost paranoiac and his support for ‘Free schools’ seems to have little which differentiates it from New Labour. The demand that patients be treated free, privately, if they exceed a certain waiting time on the NHS seems the logical free market capitalist extension of paying private clinics to do NHS work. That’s another New Labour idea.
The concept of giving patients their own personalised ‘budget’ for treatment through the NHS seems to me a few steps from undermining the whole point of socialised medicine. Rather than the efficiency achieved by central planning, Clegg’s idea will create new dilemmas for patients which otherwise they wouldn’t face. Attaching a price tag to treatment (which they would have to do, in order for someone to expend an individual budget) is only a few steps short of asking individuals to pay for it. Or, knowing the piecemeal approach to the dismemberment of social democracy, asking individuals to pay for the most expensive treatments first…and so on.
I’m not doubting Mr Clegg’s ideological commitment to the course he proposes, but it really highlights the walking contradiction that forms the Liberal Democrats; and their activists have the gall to attack New Labour for selling out to the Tories!
Communitarian? Interesting word to describe this…
I wonder, would he include faith groups in his plans to control schools? This all stinks, and it’s aggravating that Blair seems to have made this kind of thinking the norm.
Not sure about this though: “the walking contradiction that forms the Liberal Democrats.” Their focus is social liberty, while Labour’s is (theoretically) socialism / welfarism. The Lib Dems have internal divisions over economics, Labour have internal divisions over things like civil liberties (not to mention economics!) and the Tories have internal divisions on everything. Not sure this shows any is an internal contradiction. Just that each has their own focus, and is fuzzier on other areas.
The Lib Dems were born of an uneasy alliance between demoralised Labourites of the Old Labour Right (i.e. Gaitskellite) wing of the party and the old-style Liberals, some of whom had moved towards welfarism with the seeming complete victory of social democracy. Yet Clegg is a sure reminder that the classical liberals have not gone away.
The Liberals are a contradiction as a party because more properly they are parts of two parties, in traditional British politics. One half of them belongs with the Tories, the other half belongs with Labour. Once the parasitism of Blair et al is purged from Labour (and more on this in an article in a minute), then the Lib Dems will, no doubt, sink once more to their pre-1983 level.
Incidentally, communitarian is how Blair liked to describe himself and New Labour when they were breaking the ground of this type of policy, hence the word use.