A canker at the heart of our political system

I’m going to stop writing about Liberal Democrat News soon, I promise!

But one last thing: an excellent comment piece by Andrew George MP in which he examines the easy vacuousness of opposition. As he is writing for Lib Dem News, he’s unable to avoid a dig at David Cameron in the last paragraph, which is a shame as it slightly detracts from the main point of the piece: that it is easy to point the finger of blame but harder to propose alternative policies.

Nonetheless it is a good piece and worth reading; so much so that I have shamelessly reproduced the best part of it here, for which I hope Deirdre Razzall will forgive me. He writes:

‘…political opposition can, in fact, become a deeply unpatriotic business of quietly praying for the worst, secretly shaping the waxed effigies of government aspirations and wishing ill on everything it does.

‘Fairly scant attention to the most successful post-war opposition party campaigns shows that they have not been about capturing the imagination of the electorate with the sheer brilliance of political ideas, but their ability to seize the opportunity to feed like successful vultures on the spoils of the political misfortune or mismanagement of the other side.

‘After a while this becomes an uncomfortably easy part of political instinct: fanning the flames of the doomsday scenario and associating yourself with the collective hand wringing over the failure of government policy. It’s the pastime of the politically talentless, though every politician in opposition has to do the apprenticeship at some time.’ (Liberal Democrat News, issue 932, p5)

This is an honest and unusually candid critique of Mr. George’s profession and one to which I would unswervingly subscribe.

I hope that the implication is that Mr. George, at least, is not guilty of that sad vice. If not, he is a rare politician indeed.

Liberal Democrat MEPs are being seduced by centralised power

It was an unusually good edition of Liberal Democrat News (the in house tabloid that Mark Valladares once referred to as “our very own Pravda”) – if by good one means that it gets the pulse racing.

The story on the European Parliament’s report on rail transport earned my particular ire. According to Liberal Democrat News:

‘Liberal Democrats have backed (CHECK) [sic.] a crucial European Parliament report that will vastly improve rights for rail passengers…

‘The Lib Dem Economic Affairs Spokesperson Sharon Bowles MEP said: “The
Parliament has stood firm and is calling for this directive to apply to all rail
journeys regardless of whether they are international or not…”

Liz Lynne MEP, Liberal Democrat Employment and Social Affairs Spokesperson… has tabled and amendment to this report on behalf of the entire ALDE Group… to ensure accessibility for… people with reduced mobility…’

While the objectives being sought here are undoubtedly laudable, it is another unfortunate case of the European Parliament arrogating powers that should be exercised at a national level. There is absolutely no reason why policy regarding the railway system of the United Kingdom – which is, except for one discrete rail line, completely separate and independent of the rest of Europe – should be set at a supranational level.

There may be a case, because of greater connectivity among our continental European partners, for an agreement binding transnational rail travel. But when the European Parliament specifically suggests that such a ruling should apply to purely intra-national railway journeys (such as “Cornwall to London, Edinburgh to Southampton”, as Ms. Bowles enthused) it is a clear violation of the much-vaunted but rarely-seen principle of subsidiarity – that decisions should be taken at the effective level nearest the citizen.

It is deeply disturbing to see Liberal parliamentarians championing this un-necessary centralisation of power, decision-making and regulation. It is also disturbing to see Democrat parliamentarians using the European Parliament to pass into law what is effectively domestic regulation, rather than seeking to do so through national parliaments – where, presumably, they would expect to meet more resistance.

No matter how worthy the aims or how desirable the outcomes, they do not justify the use of inherently illiberal and undemocratic means. It suggests that our MEPs, like all too many of those who find themselves in positions of authority, have ‘gone native’, becoming co-opted by the institutions they have joined and seduced by the power to ‘do good’, irrespective of the principles of liberty and democracy that first brought them there.

The Liberal Democrats should be promoting subsidiarity in Europe just as we seek localism in Britain – irrespective of the urge to reform society from the centre. As I argued last week, Britain’s place is in Europe. But it is in a liberal Europe.