Response from Simon Jenkins

I have had a response from Simon Jenkins to my letter about his comment piece in the Guardian last week suggesting that it is time that the Liberal Democrats disbanded.

He actually sent it on 14 May 2007, but as my spam filter is not as discerning as the readers of the Guardian; it junked him, and I have only just come across the replay in my bulk mail.

His response is frankly shocking:

Dear Tom Papworth

Thank you for your most interesting email. I have almost no quarrel with anything the Liberals have ever said. But if they disbanded and split into their more Labour and more Tory wings, think how clear-cut each general election might be.

With best wishes

Simon Jenkins

I have a suspicion that this is a standard reply, as it shows little evidence that he has read my letter. As I explained to him, the antithesis between left and right (Labour and Conservative wings , as he calls them) is archaic and does not represent the three competing philosophies that have shaped political discourse in Britain for two centuries: conservatism, liberalism and more lately socialism.

To say that he has almost no quarrel with anything that the Liberals have ever said, but nonetheless propose their disbandment, seems positively bizarre to me. It is usual in politics to support a party with which one almost always agrees.

As for how clear cut a general election could be, he has missed an obvious solution. Why not disband both the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party, along with all the minor parties. Then general elections would be very clear cut indeed, with the Conservatives winning 646 seats and nobody else holding any. This is the sort of clear cut result one gets in places such as Cuba and North Korea, and leads to executive power that is in no way “diluted [and] unstable”, though one might wonder how it is to be held accountable.

Sir Simon clearly places the clarity of the outcome above the contestability of the result. I disagree. The fact that individuals may choose to demur from the cosy consensus of two-party politics (those rare “Sincere friends of freedom” to whom I referred in my letter, in homage to Lord Acton) is healthy and valuable and should be encouraged.

That a plethora of political parties should compete with one another is essential if politics is not to result in the inevitable failure of that always accompanies duopoly. Duopolies always result in the provision of identical products by identical firms: on the rare occasions when different firms ran trains between the same cities, they ran them at the same times and charged the same ticket price, leading to no discernable difference for the customer and so no real competition. As Gordon Tullock explained in The Vote Motive, political parties in duopoly act in a similar way, gravitating towards the “centre” as they seek to capture the votes of the median voter. This results in stultifying consensus of the type we saw between Conservatives and Labour in the third quarter of the last century, and (as Sir Simon himself showed) between the Thatcherites and New Labour.

Yet while Sir Simon is clearly unhappy with the Thatcherite consensus, he actively decries the one major party that would seek to undermine that consensus and return power to local authorities (a big theme of at least two of his recent books). I can only believe that this is a result of cognitive dissonance: though the evidence is before his eyes, he cannot (or does not wish to) overcome the established thought-patterns that fused in his mind in an earlier era.

That is a shame. The Liberal Democrats will continue to have a role in British politics as long as liberty is threatened by conservatives that fear progress and socialists that want to govern it; as long as the other two political parties in Britain subscribe to dirigisme and social engineering; and as long as majorities are allowed to dictate to individuals. With his strong support of localism and his having “almost no quarrel with anything the Liberals have ever said”, Sir Simon would be an ideal supporter. Instead, his talents are wasted supporting a party with which he clearly has greater disagreements. Our loss is also his.

A letter to Simon Jenkins

A cornucopia of Liberal Democrat bloggers have responded on their sites to Simon Jenkins’ comment piece in yesterday’s Guardian, in which launches a bitter but slightly confused attack on the Liberal Democrats.

I see no point in adding to James Graham’s fisking. Nor can I ever hope to match the wrath of Cicero. I have not the time to rival Mind Robber’s essay. I cannot hope for a wide a readership as Stephen Tall. I will defer to Duncan Borrowman's acidity.

The only way to add value to this debate is to take it to its source. I have therefore written an email to Sir Simon in which I point out that he has, himself, demonstrated what the Liberal Democrats are for in his most recent book.

I have also sent a truncated copy to the editor, in the hope of it being printed. Were it to be, I would have a wider readership than Stephen (for just one day). However, as I imagine Party grandees are even now formulating an official response, I suspect it is a vain hope. The full version would anyway never see the light of day, so I am reproducing it below. I hope you enjoy it.

Dear Simon,

I was surprised that you should question the role and purpose of the Liberal Democrats in your article in yesterday’s Guardian, as the answers were clearly contained within your most recent book.

Your article suggests that you continue to analyze politics through the lens of a right-left antithesis. Yet in Paradoxes of Power, on which you leant quite heavily for the first part of Thatcher and Sons, Alfred Sherman wrote that “We should long since have been liberated from shibboleths inherited from the parade of the Estates on the Versailles tennis court in 1789”. This is undoubtedly true.

As Friedrich Hayek suggested in explaining why he was not a conservative, there are in fact three distinct political traditions, each competing for space in the political arena. In answering your question, therefore, I would point out that the Liberal Democrats continue a long political tradition of liberalism, as opposed to both socialism and conservatism.

Of course the divisions between the political parties are not always as clear as ideology would suggest. There is a Social Democratic tendency within the Liberal Democrats, just as Roy Jenkins et. al. represented a liberal tendency within the socialist Labour Party. David Cameron claims to be a liberal Conservative, though in practice he seems to lean more towards a paternalistic High Tory dirigisme that shares ground with the socialists.

Ironically, Thatcher and Sons also indicates how this ideology translates to distinct policy, and further suggests that this policy is one with which you have sympathy. You note that the Thatcher government’s attempt to denationalise and deregulate the economy, to break up corporate interests and to inject market discipline into public services (the “First Revolution”) was pursued by means of a massive centralisation of authority in Whitehall, in the Treasury and within the office of the Prime Minister (the “Second Revolution”). While recognising the need for the first, you lament the second as both a failure and an encroachment on the liberty and diversity within British society. Yet as you clearly demonstrate, this centralism and arrogation of power has been the policy of both Conservative and Labour regimes for three decades.

The Liberal Democrats have consistently supported an alternative, local agenda that is in keeping with the liberal tradition that decision making should take place as near as possible to the citizen. While agreeing wholeheartedly with the First Revolution, the Liberal Democrats would seek to reverse the second, injecting greater power and autonomy into decrepit and demoralised local government. The Lib Dems would hand power to national, regional and local authorities that are more responsive to individual citizens, empowering individuals and communities and so encouraging greater political engagement.

The bulk of your article is in fact an expression of genuine concern that the outcome of a truly representative voting system may have on the unity and authority of the executive branch. This is a serious matter and deserves greater attention (though to continue with the status quo is not a satisfactory answer). However, to suggest that the difficulties presented by a system of proportional representation warrant the dismantling of one of Britain’s oldest and greatest political parties, with a distinct ideological tradition and substantial electoral success, is illogical.

Sincere friends of freedom may be rare, but no matter how the British polity is constituted, they will find a home within the Liberal Democratic Party.

Yours sincerely,

Thomas Papworth