Right-Wing Entryism and the Neo-Liberals

This article will be published in Tribune Magazine on 28 May 2007 -  http://www.tribunemagazine.co.uk/

The new Con-Dem coalition should come as no surprise to those who have studied the development of a free market philosophy at the core of current Lib Dem thinking. What we have witnessed since the election is the culmination of a right-wing grab for power in what was formerly (albeit loosely) perceived as a progressive centre-left party.

The actual final nail in the coffin for a progressive alliance of the centre-left was marked by the leadership contest between Nick Clegg and Chris Huhne in 2007. Both firmly on the centre-right of their party, the contest was between two free market fundamentalists far more interested in individual rights (by itself commendable) than in state intervention to address manifest injustices.

The party of Grimond, Steele, Ashdown and Kennedy has had its progressive heart completely hollowed out by neo-economic liberal activism in the party and replaced by a right-wing cabal of Clegg, Huhne, Davey, Laws and Cable amongst others. It should come as no surprise that a coalition with the Tories was no ideological barrier to their personal ambitions. Supposed left-leaning Liberal MPs such as Simon Hughes are either now Tory lackeys or simple hypocrites.

The only faction within the Liberal Democrats that would have been able to oppose the relentless drive to the right in their party, the Beveridge Group, made up of social liberals who are convinced that the role of the state should be a force to increase social welfare by state intervention, has been completely emasculated by the leadership cabal. It should be noted that only 2 out of their 28 members in the House of Commons have been given ministerial posts and inconsequential ones at that, one as deputy chief whip and one as a junior transport minister.

The Beveridge group (whose inspiration includes Keynes as well as Beveridge) would have been the core of any progressive alliance with Labour. Even if it was a loose arrangement in this Parliament, it would almost certainly have been able to help Labour block the worst excesses of George Gideon ‘Gus’ Osborne’s savage cuts to come. Instead they have meekly accepted the triumphant entryism from the right and allowed Clegg and his followers to lurch the party rightwards.

Chris Huhne, unsurprisingly, has tried to straddle both factions, being a member of the Beveridge group and former highly successful economist in the City, but crucially a contributor to the Orange Book. Of course, the ex-Labour party supporter has obviously been on a personal political journey, ‘rightward, ever rightward’, However, Huhne, owns seven houses (five of which are rented) and is independently wealthy.

In fact it can be argued that the current Lib Dems have reverted to being a party more akin to a historical Whig position, with its main concern being the defence of the merchant class with their interest in protecting property rights, laissez-faire economics and a penchant for free trade rather than any real or feigned concern for the working class.

What many term as a Blue-Yellow coalition is in reality a Blue-Orange coalition with the little-known Orange Book forming the core of current Lib Dem political thinking. To understand how this disreputable coalition has come to pass is to forensically examine the political thinking laid out in The Orange Book: Reclaiming Liberalism edited by David Laws (yes that Laws) and Paul Marshall. Particularly interesting are the contributions of the Lib Dems' current leadership.

The Orange Book published in 2004 marked the start of the decline of progressive values in the Lib Dems and the gradual abandonment of commitment to a social market system. It also provided the ideological pole for the party's right wing to coalesce around and start the march to seizing power in the Lib Dems. What is also remarkable is the complete failure of the former SDP (and originally Labour) element in their party to sound the warning bell as to the direction the party was going. Ex-Labour people like Shirley Williams and Tom McNally should be thoroughly ashamed about their inaction.

Clegg et al are a mirror image of Cameron's philosophical approach with its social liberal solutions to society's perceived ills. At the core of the Orange Book is an abiding belief in the role of the free market's ability to address most of societal issues, such as public healthcare, pensions, environment, globalisation, social and agricultural policy, local government and prisons. Laws even advocated replacing the National Health Service with an insurance-based scheme.

What is also remarkable is how easy the Lib Dem leadership sits within the Tory-led coalition. This is an arranged marriage between partners of a very similar social class. Even the historical Tory-Whig coalition of early 1780s, whilst similar in class, at least it had fundamental political differences. In many respects we are seeing a Government being formed made up of a single ruling elite that has previously manifested itself as two separate political parties whose leading figures can now be seen to have been divided more by subtle shades of opinion rather than any single ideological difference.

The Orange Book contributors of David Laws, Vincent Cable, Nicholas Clegg and Chris Huhne, Edward Davey are all Oxbridge-educated (as was the remaining member of the cabal, Danny Alexander) and four out of the five went to private schools with Cable an ex-Grammar schoolboy.

These are not people who know how it is to struggle financially, socially or academically. Its leader Nicholas William Peter Clegg was educated at the exclusive and highly expensive Westminster school (as was Huhne). He was also educated at his family's expense in the USA and at the very exclusive and super-elitist, College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium. He was a member of the Conservative Association at Cambridge University and was an integral part of Tory European Commissioner Leon Brittan's private office in Brussels. It should come as no surprise which party and which party leader he feels most comfortable with.

The idea that the current Lib Dem leadership clique could have easily sat with the Labour party; either in Government or in opposition was always fanciful and a forlorn hope to those on the right of the Labour party who thought that an accommodation could have been reached.  The electoral mathematics gave the perfect excuse to the Lib Dem's right-wing cabal (or more accurately neo-Liberals) to refuse to deal with Labour at a strategic level. Whilst hints of a deal with Labour were useful in dealing with the Conservatives tactically, Clegg was quite obviously never interested in a deal.

One salutary lesson to be learned from this squalid deal amongst the country’s forces of conservatism is that the Tories real intentions are plain to see. The Lib Dem Ministers have, to use the vernacular, got ‘the shitty end of the stick’. Appointed to Cabinet Posts with little power (i.e. Clegg and Alexander) or little room to manoeuvre as the Chancellor of the Exchequer holds the purse string (Laws, Huhne and Cable), the Tories’ disdain is manifest.

Finally, the main justification for this squalid coalition agreement being that the country needs strong and stable Government ((i.e. absolute power for a guaranteed five years and a signaled gerrymandering of national elections, Parliamentary procedure and a short to medium-term stitch up of the House of Lords) is vacuous in the extreme.

The basis for the Con-Dem coalition is nothing more than naked class interest that will cost the working class of this country dear and may well endure far beyond the initial five-year proposal, if their naked attempts to gerrymander Parliament bear fruit.