tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169740113013066976.post5907777103900365262..comments2024-02-10T12:12:06.028+00:00Comments on The Real Blog: The historic destiny of the Lib Dems. There is one.David Boylehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11410159311875228620noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169740113013066976.post-3799649123968650192015-05-12T12:12:50.934+01:002015-05-12T12:12:50.934+01:00Of course the outcome in 1909 was wrong, and we st...Of course the outcome in 1909 was wrong, and we still have to go back and fix that before we can make any true progress on economic justice :) <br /><br />That should be our starting point, but I agree that opportunities for radical change comes due every few decades and this is it. Generation rent etc. <br /><br />Predictions are that there will be over 100 constituencies by 2025 that will be majority renters, and that these are not large council estates but what would once have been upwardly mobile, erudite people who feel that they ought to be able to afford better somehow. <br /><br />Rent (plus taxes, all coming out of rent anyway, or most of them) consume so much that there is less and less return to capital and labour. Lancing this boil is a benefit to all workers and all producers, and only disbenefits those who get something for nothing - rentiers. <br /><br />A tax free, rent funded society was maybe not quite what they were after in 1909, but nobody has yet addressed Lloyd-George's contention that "it is all very well to have "Housing of the Working Classes" bills [or any other rent stoking welfare policy - JC], but they will be ineffectual until we deal with the taxation of land".Jock Coatshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15550558005508328017noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169740113013066976.post-58605774219239659052015-04-09T13:06:16.834+01:002015-04-09T13:06:16.834+01:00Jacob Rees-Mogg's selective assessment of the ...Jacob Rees-Mogg's selective assessment of the origins of the liberal wing of the Lib Dem's is of course based on Gladstone's origins as a Peelite Tory. It is rhetorically mischievous and intellectually inadequate to style the GOM's agenda as merely Peelite. His political beginnings were significant. But Gladstone's final premiership was nearly fifty years after he had served Peel as a minister. The workings out of his economic liberalism in that time would have been too small state for either the contemporary Labour Party or indeed (especially on defence) the current Conservatives to embrace. Pace Jacob Rees-Mogg, it would be an interesting speculation to construct a Gladstonian position on Trident. The one I would venture would in its conclusion of unaffordability alienate many of the heirs of Palmerston, Peel, and the old Tories alike, but find favour with many who count themselves their heirs of Bright - or indeed Mill. <br /><br />But we may return Jacob's compliment by noting that Peel's career itself is one of many examples of the Tories' awkward relationship with the economic and other liberalisms that are the hallmarks of post-enlightenment progress. This was dramatised in the paradoxes of Thatcherism: economically liberalising, socially reactionary, Palmerstonian in Foreign Policy, Eurosceptic. And the tensions continue to play amusing havoc in the contemporary Conservative Party's suicidal and illiberal tendencies (economically, as well as by virtue of their xenophobic anchorage)over Europe, together with other variants, such as backbench resistance to Cameron's laudable embracing of modernity over things such as equal marriage. <br /><br />This should present an opportunity for the Liberals to re-embrace and promote their composite identity: economically liberal and pro-business, while wary of monopoly power and supportive of small enterprise and mutuals; repudiating the crude atomism of those whose economic liberalism leads them to reject interdependency and collective interests, such as "society", but sceptical, because of their belief in a positive and challenging individualism and support for minorities, of the big state solutions that sometimes masquerade as the commonweal's equivalents; instinctive devolvers of power and accountability. It is a creed with many more progenitors than Peel. Consider its debt to the small state, individualist strain of the American constitutionalists, and even certain French revolutionaries who experienced disappointments - and worse - at the hands the paradoxical state apparatus of the Committee for Public Safety. Consider its debt to the iconoclasm of the Romantic poets, to Mary Wollstonecraft and her successors, even its presence in (some) of the anti-oppressive, proto-anarchism of Godwin. It is present in every cry of freedom and enfranchisement that does not degenerate into either selfish atomism or crude and establishment-administered forms of collectivism. It is a tough creed. But it should resonate. After all, so many people basically believe it. But almost no governments practice it.<br /><br />By the way, Jacob shouldn't be going out on blind dates at all since he is married. To the heiress. Helena de Chair. A fact which supports my theory. That at least one wing of Jacob Rees-Mogg originated in the collective imaginings of Monty Python.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169740113013066976.post-69185242993892805762015-04-09T09:40:42.933+01:002015-04-09T09:40:42.933+01:00You're quite right Rob. Rees-Mogg misses the ...You're quite right Rob. Rees-Mogg misses the deep conservatism of the Labour Party.David Boylehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11410159311875228620noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169740113013066976.post-39141169817589821692015-04-09T09:38:25.556+01:002015-04-09T09:38:25.556+01:00Quite apart from Rees-Mogg being completely wrong ...Quite apart from Rees-Mogg being completely wrong about LibDems, there is another flaw in his analysis. It ought to read "which is closer to Labour, and hence is essentially Peelite and quite conservative...."Rob Parsonshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10172127627370862611noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169740113013066976.post-42292317017927254662015-04-08T22:17:10.635+01:002015-04-08T22:17:10.635+01:00Because they were forward-looking too!Because they were forward-looking too!David Boylehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11410159311875228620noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169740113013066976.post-60279424367293678592015-04-08T18:01:49.297+01:002015-04-08T18:01:49.297+01:00Oops "name-check"Oops "name-check"Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16726324398934097722noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4169740113013066976.post-51566288323035491632015-04-08T18:01:02.548+01:002015-04-08T18:01:02.548+01:00"Liberalism, it seems to me, is an essentiall..."Liberalism, it seems to me, is an essentially forward-looking creed."<br /><br />David, if this is true, why does every post you make on Liberalism make-check pre-1930s politicians?Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16726324398934097722noreply@blogger.com