Evan Harris wants to “dock” with the Labour Party?

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=docking

@blanco,

Perhaps Harris is more a member of the iPod generation.

well he’s gonna have to get reelected first!

When is an ‘envisaged’ cut really ‘needed’?

@4

Trident? ID cards?

S.Pill – yes, I agree, I was just struck by the fact that Evan Harris starts a sentence by talking the Coalition language of cuts that are ‘needed’ but then immediately qualifies/subverts (?) this with ‘or at least envisaged’.

Of course, he hasn’t actually said the envisaged cuts aren’t needed…But the ‘or at least envisaged’ only makes sense if you think there is a discussion to be had about whether they are needed…

Yes, Evan Harris, with his offputting Dawkinsite atheism and inability to hold his own seat at the General Election would be an ideal leader for a doomed project.

Is no one slightly concerned about the implications of this way of thinking for our democracy?

PR works around the world because, by and large, it results in easy to understand two-party-politics with voters choosing between one coalition or another.

In Germany (generally speaking) you get a choice between the left and the right. And the left is the Greens, the SDP and the Communists. And by voting for whichever you prefer you can help shape the natrure of the left.

The right is the Christian Democrats, the Christian Union, and the Liberal party. And by voting for one or other of those you can shape the nature of the right.

What you don’t tend to get or want in a functional democracy is not the foggiest idea which side you are voting for. And yet this idea that the Lib Dems should “dock” with whichever of left or right offers them the nicest offices makes a mockery of democracy.

The case for PR is completely undermined by this sort of mentality. Parties have to choose sides. They have to stand for something identifiable and alignable with other parties. Otherwise the argument that the country is held to ransom by a small party carries far to much weight.

It is bad enough that they are throwing their weight behind a runt of a reform like AV that would entrench their own power as the only electorate that matters, while allowing for no better representation of small and new parties – but talk like this makes PR next to impossible to achieve.

margin4error

Excellent points.

You’re right: PR or not, it’s ludicrous to have a party holding the balance of power that decides once every five years whether it’s a left-leaning party of social democrats, or a right-leaning party of small-state market liberals, depending which way the wind’s blowing.

In fairness to the present Orange Book front bench, they have been increasingly clear that they are market liberals/libertarians by conviction and no longer see the party as being on the left. The question for those on the party’s social liberal/social democrat wing is now whether they act and vote as their consciences dictate, or toe the line in the hope that they get their turn at some point in the future (most likely in coalition with Labour).

The prospect of the situation you describe, with the party ping-ponging between left and right every few years, is another damn good reason why they should either stand up against the right wingers now – before they do any real damage in government, and before they get any more firmly entrenched – or accept that the Lib Dems is no longer a party for social liberals and either form a rival party of their own or go elsewhere.

(The tragedy of the Labour’s record on civil liberties, of course, is that it has left decent social liberals feeling that they have more in common with libertarians like Clegg and Cameron than with Labour. I hope that situation won’t continue under the new leader.)

Under a decent PR sustem, the coalition that we call the Liberal Democrats will divide into its two factions. One part will naturally ally with Labour and one patr with the Tories. They are together by necessity because without the alliance between them, neither would get any seats at all. There are so fairly wide differences within the Labour and Conservative parties.

I think most Libdems would say that their position after the election was not particularly enviable or comfortable. Hardly atht they felt able to do whatever they fancied.

7

What and odd post!

Why would Dawkinsite atheism (or any other form of atheism for that matter) be offputting, or a disqualification? It’s not as if Brown’s presbyterian “son of the Manse” credentials seem to have done him or the country much good!

Perhaps you’d prefer us to have representatives in thrall to the Christian right, or evangelical Anglicanism?

Harris may have plenty of other points in his favour and/or against him, but I doubt many people will make their minds up about him on the basis of his atheism.

GO

(Oddly I got confused and posted this on another thread, which will now undoubtedly appear rather out of place there. Still, never mind)

I agree that the Lib Dem leadership has indeed been very clear about its political direction – hence my repeated suggestion on Liberal Conspiracy that people stop pretending is a left wing party. It is a free-market small-state party. It is seemingly reasonably happy to be so. It gave some populist left-leaning hints before the election, but that was just to get votes. The real problem is not that the party itself or its leadership professes to be left wing. It is that so many outside of it profess on their behalf that it is left wing despite all of the evidence.

They do that, I believe, because they consider civil liberties issues to be largely left wing in itself. I however think that is a misunderstanding based on two recent phenomenons.

Civil liberties arguments (mainly through talk of rights) tended to be invoked by Labour when campaigning for sexual and racial equality. But that was not a caused based on a deep desire for liberty. It was rooted in a deep desire for equality. And equality, as anyone with common sense will know, mainly comes at the expense of liberty.

At the same time the anti-drug movement tended to be most vehement among the right. But that was not because of a desire for control and state intervention in itself. It was just born of the Christian tradition of people benefiting from staying free from vice. State intervention was thus a necessary evil.

The only area of civil liberty that has been consistently left/right for a long time is probably that of property. The right to private property (and associated issues like lower tax) have tended to be backed by the right wing – while the left has tended to prefer fundementally iliberal things like equal health, education and incomes, which requires a collectivist approach.