Against the social democratic consensus

It used to be said that Britain was a conservative country, yet it is undoubtedly true that the establishment, at least, is now thoroughly social-democratic in orientation. All three main political parties are now fighting over a very small area of political terrain: we have not one, but three Social Democratic Parties in this country.

New Labour and the Liberal Democrats are, in their own ways, the heirs of the original SDP of the 1980s. Blair's transformation of the Labour Party had not only the blessing but also the participation of many former SDP-ers, and the Liberal Democrats are of course the product of a merger between the old Liberal Party and the SDP itself. Several leading members of the Liberal Democrats today are old Social Democrats. So there is an organic link, but also a much older philosophical link. It is a very long time since even the Liberal Party itself was recognisably liberal. By the beginning of the twentieth century social-democratic ideals had begun to infect the Liberal Party and this situation has persisted ever since that time. Old-style liberals in Britain have since then often found a home within the Conservative Party, although some have also remained within the other main parties.

It was Margaret Thatcher who did much to release this repressed strain of Liberalism in the 1970s and 1980s, and the resultant transformation, though traumatic at the time for some, did much to increase the freedom and prosperity of the nation by releasing it from an increasingly Sovietised economy. The power of the state was rolled back and the power of the people to control their own lives through their own efforts was increased. In retrospect many in the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats have paid tribute to this achievement either in open praise or implicitly by neglecting to repeal the reforms of the Thatcher years.

Nevertheless, Thatcherism was not perfect and neither was its author: we all know what happened to the Conservative Party in the aftermath, and now after a lengthy interlude the Conservative Party is seeking to overturn the Thatcher revolution and join the cosy social-democratic consensus with not-so-new Labour and the not-so-Liberal Democrats. After ten years of Labour rule the state is marching ever more boldly into every area of private life - through sequestering an ever larger proportion of our earnings through punitive taxation, through ever more circumscribed civil liberties, through intrusive nannying of many kinds.

With all three parties holding to the same underlying social-democratic set of assumptions about society, where is the democratic opposition to come from? Conservatives have a choice, either to follow David Cameron in the hope that his pretensions to a new centre-left Conservatism will at least deliver the trappings of power as a consolation prize for the betrayal of political principle, or else to pursue their political objectives elsewhere. Many Conservative Party members are now taking the latter option. The Liberal Democrats have never been anything other than a leftist sect with an occasional interest in civil liberties, to which any meaningful interpretation of Liberalism is entirely alien. As a result of all this British politics is virtually dead, suffocated under a blanket of leftist platitudes and political correctness, leaving the cause of freedom orphaned.

There are genuine liberals in each of the mainstream parties, but in all cases they are a minority. In the Labour Party, they are those who enthusiastically backed the young Mr. Blair's call for public service and welfare reform, only to be disappointed by the regime of centralised targets and high taxation that followed (all promoted particularly by Gordon Brown). In the Conservative Party they are those who uphold the free market ideals of Thatcherism, ideals that are increasingly squeezed between an authoritarian "right" and Cameron's high tax pro-welfare "left". And in the Liberal Democrats, they are the "Orange Book" liberals who recognise the need for liberalising markets and instituting serious public service reform.

It is therefore time that the social democratic stranglehold on British politics should be challenged. The freedom, dignity and prosperity of the individual must be upheld in preference to the tyranny of state control. The power of the state must be restricted by ensuring that laws and taxes remain minimal, simple and fair. We need to build a society which is cohesive and harmonious, with a strong civic and national identity. And above all, we need to promote the same values of freedom and democracy at home and abroad.

It is time to reject the sterile social democratic consensus and stand for the resurgence of a new progressive liberalism for the twenty-first century.

Freedom and democracy must be defended

Times' columnist Oliver Kamm backs Tony Blair's call for Britain to maintain an interventionist foreign policy.

The greatest threat from US policy towards the world is not an excess of intervention but that there is too little of it, too late. There are few issues in international affairs that would not benefit from greater US involvement. In a BBC interview I tried to give some background to the PM's views, in particular citing his Chicago speech of 1999. The belated international response to the aggression of Slobodan Milosevic was a warning of how indifference can encourage atavistic and genocidal forces. In that speech, the PM was already indicating, when George W. Bush was a presidential hopeful advocating traditional conservative realism, the need to confront Saddam Hussein.

As this comment makes clear, the frequent denunciation of Tony Blair as a tame sidekick for George Bush is completely inaccurate. Tony Blair was advocating, and indeed acting upon, a policy of liberal interventionism when the writ of George W. Bush did not run outside Texas. What this demonstrates is that the concept that freedom and democracy may need to be actively defended and promoted in the world is not an invention of an extremist cabal of "neocons", but part of a tradition in American and British history which pre-dates even Tony Blair by a long way. Antecedents in the United States include Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt and John Quincy Adams. In the United Kingdom we might think of Churchill, Palmerston and George Canning.

Progressive Liberals stand firmly in this tradition. This does not mean advocating military intervention as the answer to every problem, but is does mean a proactive foreign policy, and one which will prioritise democracy and human rights over cynical realpolitik, and which will refuse to ignore problems and threats for the sake of a quiet life. As Kamm indicates above, citing the aggression of Milosevic, those who seek a quiet life in world affairs rarely find it.

Why failure is still not an option

At Kennedy Space Center in Florida a tee-shirt is on sale, bearing the legend "Failure is not an option". The phrase dates from the time of Apollo XIII, when the staff of Mission Control at Houston refused to countenance the possibility that they might not bring their astronauts home alive. That was in another era, of course: before the end of the Cold War, before the fall of Saigon and America's humiliating exit from Vietnam.

How times change. A weakened American administration is bogged down in another war far from home, and a tired and divided American political establishment is desperately trying to fashion an exit strategy. The Baker/Hamilton Iraq Study Group report has provided such a strategy: cut and run. Failure may not be an attractive option, but at least we know it's achievable.

Against all odds, given the weakness of his political position at home, President Bush is refusing to give in to defeatism. In sending 20,000 additional troops to secure Baghdad the President is moving boldly because he understands the consequences of failure. Weakness, as his former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld liked to say, is a provocation. It encourages the enemies of America, and the enemies of America are the enemies of freedom and democracy worldwide. A perceived American defeat in would be incalculably more catastrophic than the war itself has been. Until now, the likes of Al Qaeda have had to make do with propaganda victories, which they have nevertheless exploited profitably. An American defeat in Iraq would hand militant Islamism its first military victory over the West. The world would know that the West lacks the stomach for a long struggle.

The lacking ingredient is will. In times where a people is tiring of war, leadership is required to restore confidence, and maintain resolve. Bush has shown that he has the will, even when the courage of the American people and a large portion of the American political establishment is flagging. This is the mark of real leadership.

On this side of the Atlantic, the British public as a whole has never been very enthusiastic about the Iraq War. Nevertheless, Tony Blair has been a stalwart leader with a clear understanding of what is at stake, but he also is much weakened and will not be with us much longer. What can we expect in the future? The first thing to be said is that America's new strategy will not much affect the situation in Basra where British troops are operating. But still, American and British policy have been inseparably linked throughout the whole saga.

Perhaps not for much longer, however. Gordon Brown has let it be known that he intends not to follow the United States as closely as his predecessor has done. The Conservatives, for their part, have expressed scepticism of the new Bush plan, and have called for training of the Iraqi forces along the lines suggested by the Baker/Hamilton report in order to facilitate an early withdrawal. In other words, the mood music has changed. The urge to draw a line under the whole episode is growing. No matter that there is a country which needs to be secured, a new democracy that needs to be nurtured, a job that cannot be left undone because it is inconvenient, dangerous or just too difficult. The signs are that in the next few years the West may not have the leadership it needs or deserves.

Reading list

The items listed on this page are all relevant to the politics of the New Progressive. However, opinions expressed in them may not in all cases reflect our views.

Articles online

The following recommended articles and speeches are all available online.

The Doctrine of the International Community - Speech by Tony Blair to the US-based Global Policy Forum, 22 April 1999.

New Threats for Old - Lady Thatcher’s 1996 John Findley Green Lecture, delivered in Fulton, Missouri, on the 50th anniversary of Churchill’s renowned ‘Fulton Speech’.

Liberal Democracy vs Transnational Progressivism: the Future of the Ideological Civil War Within the West - landmark article by John Fonte of the Hudson Institute.

Why I am a progressive - by Melanie Phillips, published in the New Statesman, January 2000.

It’s the demography, stupid - Mark Steyn’s January 2006 article in the Wall Street Journal’s online Opinion Journal in which he outlines ‘the real reason the West is in danger of extinction’.

We managed to make a mess of Europe for decades. Now lead on - A Times article by Michael Gove, dating from July 2005, on the management of decline.

The Tyranny of Moderation: Respect and Civility are the Enemies of Free Speech - by Oliver Kamm, 22 May 2007.

Liberalism vs Islamism - a presentation by Melanie Phillips at the Neo conference in Stockholm, Sweden, 11 May 2007.

Working Definition of Antisemitism - from the EUMC (the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia), now known as the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights.

The Euston Manifesto - a statement of the case for liberal interventionism from a centre-left perspective.

Books

The following books are highly recommended:

Anti-Totalitarianism: The Left-Wing Case for a Neoconservative Foreign Policy by Oliver Kamm.

What’s Left?: How Liberals Lost Their Way by Nick Cohen.

America Alone by Mark Steyn.

The British Moment: The Case for Democratic Geopolitics in the Twenty-first Century by the Henry Jackson Society.

Neoconservatism: Why We Need It by Douglas Murray.

What we stand for

The New Progressive stands for a politics that is rational, liberal and progressive: rational because we base our politics on the principles of reason and free inquiry; liberal because we stand for a market-based economy and liberal democracy; progressive because we understand our principles and values to be forward-looking and universal in scope.

The Individual and the State

We believe that human creativity is most powerful when expressed in freedom. We envisage a facilitating role for the state, enabling individuals and groups to act for themselves in the economic, political and cultural spheres.

Economic freedom

We hold that economic prosperity is best secured through the operation of free enterprise and competitive markets. We aspire to a society in which laws, regulations and taxes are minimal, simple and fair.

Welfare

We advocate enabling individuals and families to build up their own assets and take control of their own lives. We consider state controlled welfare to be inefficient and demoralising, and support individual choice and ownership in the public services in preference to the dependency culture of the traditional welfare state.

Liberal democracy

We contend that democracy cannot survive where the rule of law, freedom of expression and belief are denied. We uphold individual freedom, recognising that individual rights must be bounded by social responsibilities. We oppose the bogus notion of "group rights" which undermines personal liberty.

Education, science and technology

We respect the pursuit of knowledge, regarding education as a lifelong process fundamental to personal development. We view the progress of civilisation as dependent on scientific and technological advance. We defend academic freedom and deplore the manipulation of science for ideological or commercial ends.

Social cohesion

We assert that stable, cohesive and free societies depend on the maintenance of a common civic culture built around commonly accepted core values and traditions. We condemn the segregation of communities on racial, religious or cultural grounds.

International co-operation

We look forward to a world of open, flexible and free societies working together to address common problems and achieve common goals. We promote free trade and recognise the need for international social and economic development. We emphatically reject protectionism, isolationism and xenophobia.

Spreading democracy

We support the establishment and maintenance of democratic forms of government appropriate to the history and culture of each society and nation. We oppose the imposition of undemocratic supranational bureaucracies on democratic states.

International security

We seek strengthened relations between democratic states in order to challenge regimes that abuse human rights and to confront threats to international security. We support the use of any appropriate means - diplomatic, economic or military – in pursuit of progressive goals in the international arena.