The non-violent and mildly civil disobedient protest of UKuncut is firmly in the tradition of the American civil rights movement to which Ed Miliband appealed on Saturday. It is precisely because I support UKuncut and want it to grow that I am concerned by the decision not to condemn violent direct action.

Over at OurKingdom, Niki Seth-Smith argues that any criticism on this basis is misplaced. They can’t condemn violence because it is a network of individuals with different points of view and no leaders who can speak for UKuncut as a group.

But even as a network, UKuncut obviously has to have some basis of common belief in order to be a distinctive campaigning entity at all. Being a network is consistent, for example, with UKuncut taking the common view that tax avoidance is a bad thing. When a network of this kind forms, it has to form around something.

The network is founded in an invitation: ‘Join us in this space if you also believe X, Y and Z‘. Logically, there is absolutely no reason why one of the defining articles of association in such a network can’t include an unequivocal condemnation of violent direct action.

Invitations also have to be issued by someone and this implies an element of leadership.

Perhaps it’s just too late. When the invitation went out a few months ago, and no one said then that UKuncut would be defined, in part, as an association which condemns violent direct action. It would not be fair or appropriate to put some people in a position where they have to leave because they cannot agree with a condemnation of violent direct action.

But there is also a risk of exclusion by not condemning violent direct action. To enter into the sort of mildly civil disobedient spaces that UKuncut creates, many people need some reassurance that things won’t get too out of hand.

Obviously this depends in part on what others – notably, the police – do. The Met’s duplicitous and intimidatory behaviour on Saturday was disgraceful.

Surely the easiest way for UKuncut now to give reassurance is to condemn violent direct action? If UKuncut does not, then I worry that many people for whom non-violence is non-negotiable will drift away.

Or else, they will never take the empowering step through the shop doorway in the first place. And what might have been a mighty movement, drawing from a wide section of the population, will gradually dwindle into marginality.

According to some philosophers, freedom is centrally about not living at the mercy of another.
It is about not being subject to another’s power to intervene in one’s life at their discretion. Freedom is, in this sense, independence – the power to refuse dependency on others and their uncertain goodwill.

Liberalism in Britain has historically seen it as a core objective of the welfare state to help secure independence in this sense.

Yet two reforms to disability benefits announced in the Comprehensive Spending Review last week fail this liberal test and fail it badly.

Two key benefits for the disabled are Employment Support Allowance (ESA) which is intended as an income replacement benefit for those out of work due to disability; and Disability Living Allowance (DLA) which is intended to help with the extra living expenses of disability (e.g., having to buy equipment to help with mobility).

ESA was introduced by Labour as part of its reforms to incapacity benefit. It involves a Work Capability Assessment which is now widely regarded as grossly insensitive to the needs of people with disabilities and health problems. The assessment regime is under review. Given the Coalition’s clear intention to make big savings on the welfare budget, including from disability benefits, one might wonder whether significant change is likely. We’ll see. You never know.

Meantime, as part of the Comprehensive Spending Review, the Coalition has announced two changes to the above benefits.

First, for those on contributory ESA judged to be work-capable, the benefit will henceforth be means-tested after one year. So if you are on ESA, and you are judged work-capable, as the large majority of disabled people now are, then you will lose the benefit after a year if you have any significant savings or a partner with enough earnings.

Second, the Coalition has announced that it will cut the mobility component of DLA for those in residential care.

Both reforms clearly fail the liberal test of protecting freedom as independence.

The DLA reform, which has provoked moving testimony from disabled blogger BendyGirl, takes away the resources that the disabled in residential care need to have independent mobility – to be able to do things like go to the shops without relying entirely on the good will of others to make this possible. It really does put the disabled people affected entirely ‘at the mercy’ of carers for getting around.

The ESA reform, too, undermines independence. It does this, for example, by forcing disabled individuals who can’t find a job to rely even more on their partner for financial support. What’s wrong with that? Well, if one accepts that financial dependency on an individual gives power to that individual, power over those who are dependent on them, there is a lot that’s wrong about that. The reform once again directly creates the kind of vulnerability that, on a liberal view, is hostile to freedom.

I can see one kind of Liberal Democrat response coming. Yes, its bad. We disagree with it. But this is a Coalition. We have to put up with all kinds of things we disagree with.

Maybe so. But there is a need to be honest about just how deep the contradiction with liberal principle is – an honesty that is unlikely to be forthcoming if one follows Nick Clegg’s attempt to redefine the liberal value of independence in terms of the Thatcherite value of ‘self-reliance’.

And in the case of the DLA reform, which saves very little money, I suspect I am not alone in being struck by just how little has been gained in return for the repudiation of liberal principle.

So, in this parallel universe, George Osborne got up in the House of Commons just as he did yesterday and delivered exactly the same speech and spending review policy.

Having imagined this alternative universe, I would like Liberal Democrat readers to ask themselves a question. (As we will see, I hope, in posing this question I am not trying to be confrontational or self-righteous.)

In this parallel universe, how much, if any, of this policy would you support?

Hand on heart. Be honest. To be more specific, can you, hand on heart, in all sincerity, say that you would support:
- Removing contributory employment support allowance after one year for those on this benefit who have been assessed as ‘capable of work’ (but who have not yet found work)?
- Ending security of council house tenure?
- Tightening the already extremely tight eligibility conditions for disability living allowance?
- Making cuts to local government funding that will seriously hurt social care provision for the elderly and disabled?

Indeed, can you say, hand on heart, that you would support the basic deficit reduction strategy – its pace and/or its split as between spending cuts and extra taxes?

Would you regard the Lansley reforms to the health-service as part of an exciting ‘power shift’, or would you be more critical?

Psychologists talk about ‘adaptive preference formation’. People don’t like living with the discomfort of being constrained to do things that conflict with their preferences. So, when they find themselves uncomfortably constrained, they adapt their preferences. They try to convince themselves that what they must do is what they actually, really want to do.

When Nick Clegg tells the Lib Dems to stop worrying and ‘enjoy’ being in government, as he was reported saying at the recent party conference, this sounds to me like a big, warm invitation to his party to get cracking in adapting their preferences. Indeed, Clegg’s own thinking, such as on welfare, seems a model of adaptation, as he conflates the Liberal value of independence with the Thatcherite value of ‘self-reliance’.

But while comforting, this kind of adaptation to circumstances carries a risk of dishonesty or disloyalty to one’s underlying beliefs and values. Down the line, in future years, one looks back and says: ‘How on earth did I manage to fool myself into thinking that was a good idea?’

I should know. After all, many of us in Labour have had precisely this thought about the Iraq War in the past few years.

So if I were a Lib Dem right now, and I wanted to avoid an adaptive, comforting betrayal of my deepest convictions, I think I would apply the parallel universe thought experiment to government policy on a daily basis.

The implication is not necessarily that by asking this sort of question the Lib Dem will stop supporting the Coalition (though she or he might). In some cases, she might decide that, yes, she would still support a particular Coalition policy. Or she might decide that she should be more critical of specific policies but that the Coalition is worth sticking with to get, say, electoral reform.

But by posing the question I would at least make sure I was being honest with myself about the Coalition’s costs and compromises. I would avoid self-delusion. And, in this way, I’d be more likely to stay true to my liberal principles.

The Conservatives did not fight the election on a platform of completely abolishing the CTF. Their policy was to trim it back to the poorest families. The Lib Dems, however, have fought two elections on a platform of abolishing the CTF. The effective abolition of the CTF is, quite clearly, a Libdem responsibility.

Let us not be detained by the argument that this was a financial necessity. Despite being one of the most effective pro-savings policies ever introduced by a UK government, the policy is inexpensive. It could easily have been preserved with government contributions reduced but with a clear commitment to raise them back to present levels as financial circumstances allowed.

When the policy was first introduced, my wife, Kathy, discussed it with children in her classes at school – teenagers in a comprehensive school in Oxfordshire. The children were surprised and enthralled at the idea that the government might invest some money on their behalf. (They understood they were too old to benefit, but they had the ability to empathise with those future children who would benefit from the policy.)

My son’s CTF will continue.

But I think it is a great shame that so many other parents and children in the future will not receive this simple act of affirmation. And that so many of these children will consequently lack the capital to launch ambitiously into their adult life.

The Lib Dems have had fair warning that abolition of the CTF is a deeply illiberal policy. I have argued this case in a range of contexts from multiple Next Left posts to academic articles in Public Policy Research and British Politics.

The CTF was anticipated by policy thinking in the Liberals and SDP in the 1980s. It emerged out of academic efforts to think through the institutional implications of liberal egalitarianism of the kind articulated by John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin and Bruce Ackerman. It finally went some way to satisfy the call for the universalisation of asset ownership which we can trace back through generations of Liberals to the radical republicans of the Chartist movement and back further to Tom Paine.

I think it fair to say that at no point in these years have I received a single adequate reply to the arguments I have made against the Lib Dem policy.

Overwhelmingly, the response has been either silence – as when Nick Clegg ignored an open letter I sent to him on the subject – or embarassed acknowledgement that something was wrong. In private, Lib Dem policy wonks would look a bit bemused and sort of accept that, yes, the party’s policy of abolishing the CTF wasn’t right, but the party had to stick with it to ‘make the figures add up’ and that, ‘after the election’, there would be a rethink.

Some rethink.

When I have spoken at fringe events at Lib Dem conferences on this subject, I have found the audiences thoughtful and responsive. I have never had a sense that opposition to the CTF was a popular policy with the rank and file. The audiences I spoke to took my criticisms seriously.

And when I have challenged Lib Dem canvassers on the doorstep about the policy, I have met with a wall of ignorance: ‘Oh, I didn’t know we were doing that, I’ll have to go away and look it up…’ (canvasser hastily retreats…)

The CTF was one of the great liberal achievements of New Labour.

How sad that one of the first acts of the Liberal Democrats in government is to abolish it. What a self-inflicted wound to that old venerable Liberal ambition of creating a society based on ‘Ownership for All’.

——–
Cross-posted from Next Left.

Even if Labour came third in the popular vote – indeed, if I understand him, even if Labour also has fewer seats than the Conservatives – Barder argues that Labour can and should assume the role of government under Gordon Brown. It should proceed to present a Queen’s Speech and test the nerve of the other parties – in particular the Lib Dems – to vote it down.

Barder envisages Brown producing a Queen’s speech with plenty of goodies – he refers to ‘Lib Dem shibboleths’ like civil liberties – to woo the Lib Dems.

Barder thinks the Lib Dems would think hard about voting Labour down. Why? Because if they did vote Labour down, the Tories would then get to form a minority government. They would probably offer the Lib Dems less. What would the Lib Dems then do?

Vote this government down? Barder argues this would precipitate a fresh election in which the Tories would romp home with a nice majority, thank you very much. Indeed, he confidently predicts that the result of this fresh election would be a Lib Dem ‘wipeout’.

Now if the Lib Dems rationally anticipate all of this, then of course they will stop at the first step: they will support Labour’s Queen’s speech.

As the saying goes, let’s ‘get real’. Any argument of this kind has to be based on a serious estimation of the costs and benefits to the various parties of various courses of action. What makes Barder’s story fanciful in the extreme – aside from being so objectionable in democratic terms – is the way he selectively ignores some obvious and substantial costs while hugely exaggerating others.

First, and foremost, any attempt by Labour to hold onto office on its own in such circumstances (in particular being third in the popular vote and/or being the second party in terms of seats) would drain the party of credibility in the country.

Labour is lower in the polls at the moment than it has been since the 1983 general election. But I dread to think how low the poll ratings would go if Labour attempted to cling on to office in the way that Barder describes.

Second, because we can anticipate that the attempt to cling to office will be so unpopular, we can also anticipate that it is likely to be strongly opposed from within Labour’s ranks. Could the party’s leader carry the party with him on such a journey?

Third, there is an obvious, huge cost to the Lib Dems of voting or allowing through a Labour Queen’s Speech in these circumstances. They throw away their hard-earned credibility as the ‘party of change’.

But what about the supposedly nightmare consequences to the Lib Dems of failing to support a Labour Queen’s speech? Am I not ignoring these?

It is here that Barder’s analysis switches from a convenient refusal to acknowledge costs of action to an implausible exaggeration of costs.

So let us imagine the Lib Dems do vote Labour down and a Tory minority government forms. Either they offer enough goodies to the Lib Dems to stop them voting them out, e.g., a referendum on PR, or they don’t. If they don’t, why won’t the Lib Dems vote them out too? Barder’s claim is that this would (a) precipitate a fresh election which (b) the Tories would win and (c) would see a Lib Dem ‘wipeout’.

Every single one of these assertions is questionable. Assume, for the sake of argument, that elections do get called. Barder has no basis whatsoever for predicting that the Tories would comfortably win.

If a Lib Dem – Tory deal fell through, why wouldn’t that reflect badly on the Tories? Why wouldn’t fresh elections, occurring against this sequence of events, produce a revulsion against both Labour and the Tories and a further Lib Dem surge?

If Labour fails to win a parliamentary majority at this election it had better respect the wish of the British people – something for which Barder apparently has very little respect – which would have spoken clearly against having a Labour government.

It could and should seek to go into a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, not in order to ‘cling to office’, but on a basis of a genuine sharing of power and constructive cooperation on policy.

——–
cross-posted from Next Left.

Rather than trying to learn something from the growing criticism of its record on civil liberties, the party’s manifesto complacently reaffirms Labour’s approach and, with a nice touch of Orwellian ‘war is peace’ bluster, comments that, “We are proud of our record on civil liberties…”, as if there were really no criticism to answer.

According to Allegra Stratton and Patrick Wintour in yesterday’s Guardian, Nick Clegg has said “he was shocked by the lack of reference to civil liberties in the Labour manifesto.”

He is planning to ‘go to war’ with Labour on civil liberties, saying:

It’s a measure of the authoritarian streak of the Labour party that it didn’t refer once to liberty in its own manifesto…..It makes a complete mockery of the claim by Gordon Brown that he can speak for progressive voters in other parties when his own party has turned its back on one of the cornerstones of progressive politics.

I hope that in retrospect Labour will look back on chapter 5 of its 2010 manifesto as the final step in a rather dismal journey – to be promptly followed by a quick turn in the opposite direction.

Its not just that the indifference to civil liberties is objectionable on its own terms – which of course it is.

Its also that if you are trying to defend a seat from a Lib Dem challenger, or persuade Lib Dem voters to support you tactically against a Conservative, this kind of unreconstructed authoritarianism risks being the kiss of death.

—–
cross-posted from Next Left

In a matter of weeks the Labour party leadership will be expecting party members to get out there and make the case for a Labour government on the doorstep. How many in the party agree with the government on DNA sampling and the ‘Tories are friends of burglars’ line?

Let’s remind ourselves what is being proposed. Back in 1995 the police set up a national DNA database. Anyone who was arrested was liable to have a DNA sample taken. This was then put on the database. When a crime is committed, and there is DNA evidence, the police can check it against the database.

The European Court ruled in 2008 that the practice of holding indefinitely samples taken from those not convicted of a crime is in violation of the European Convention of Human Rights (specifically in violation of Article 8 which upholds the citizen’s right to ‘a private life’).

The government responded, somewhat reluctantly and hesitatingly, by proposing to modify the original policy. Under what we may call the Johnson proposal, those arrested but not convicted of a crime will have their samples removed from the national database – but only after six years.

The Johnson proposal has the advantage that, in one respect, it may make it easier for the police to solve crimes. And this, of course, is the basis of the charge that opponents of the proposal are thereby ‘friendly’ to criminals.

But there are at least two strong reasons to oppose the proposal other than sympathy for criminals: that it is disproportionate and that it is potentially counter-productive.

Let’s take disproportionality first. If all we cared about was increasing how many crimes the police solve, then installing police surveillance equipment in every home would be an absolute humdinger of a policy idea. But obviously there would be the question of whether the gain in terms of crime detection is justified given the cost to privacy and the way the policy would change the relationship between the citizen and the state.

To put the point at its mildest, there is a reasonable case that the Johnson proposal is disproportionate. Given other changes in the law, and changes in police culture over the past decade or so, it is now quite remarkably easy for all sorts of people to get arrested. Indeed, there is even some concern that police may arrest people in order to get them on the database.

Under the Johnson proposal, as I understand it, the samples of anyone arrested would be liable to stay on the database for six years. And what message does that convey other than: we’ve arrested you once, so even though you have not been convicted of a crime, you are suspect? I do not want the state’s relationship to its citizens to be corrupted in this very basic way, and that is why I think the proposal is disproportionate.

Precisely because of the message the policy sends to people, moreover, it could well be counter-productive. If people feel they are being labelled as suspects by the police, even when they are not criminals, then this might make them less willing to cooperate with the police. The police are no longer an extension of ‘us’, the law-abiding majority, but become an alien power whom many of us fear and resent. But if the police get less cooperation with the public, won’t they solve fewer crimes?

The Observer’s Political Editor, Toby Helm, also reports that, in view of the changed circumstances, the government is considering freezing the threshold, rather than increasing it as planned.

This would seem to me to be the least the government could do as part of a program for spreading the burden of paying for valuable public services in what are indeed difficult times.

But consider how Helm chooses to describe the issue:

‘Homeowners hoping to be freed from crippling levels of inheritance tax could be hit by new austerity measures…’

‘…he [Alistair Darling] is considering freezing the threshold at which the tax becomes payable….This means that, if property prices rose, more -not fewer – householders will be liable to pay the 40% tax.’

As a matter of maths, nobody, but nobody, will actually pay 40% of what they inherit in tax because no tax is paid on the amount below the threshold. So referring to it as ‘the 40% tax’ is misleading. It risks fuelling the misperception that, once the threshold is breached, you pay 40% on the whole estate.

For example, if someone inherits £400,000, then they would pay 40% on £75,000 – a tax liability of £30,000 on £400,000. So, in this case, the ’40% tax’ would actually be a 7.5% (3/40) tax.

Bearing this in mind, let us now consider the article’s opening reference to ‘crippling levels of inheritance tax.’

Consider those (single people) who would otherwise not pay tax if the threshold were raised to £350,000. They will pay tax because their estate, while less than or equal to the proposed new threshold of £350,000, is above the existing threshold of £325,000. So the maximum amount they will pay tax on is £25,000. They will pay 40% of that: a maximum of £10,000. So they will pay £10,000 on an inheritance of, say, £350,000, a tax of less than 3% of the total they inherit.

It is a rather peculiar use of the English language to describe a tax of 3% as ‘crippling’.

The sort of language Helm uses, while a million miles from the reality of the tax, is what I would expect to see in the right-wing press. They have a tax-cutting political agenda, after all, and an interest in fuelling the kind of misperceptions and misunderstandings that phrases like ‘the 40% tax’ and ‘crippling taxation’ promote.

But Helm is not obliged, as a writer for The Observer, to promote this political agenda.

So why is he using this unreal and misleading language?

However, the Climate Camp needs money to mount the legal challenge:

‘We really, really, need to raise £40,000 quickly to challenge the kettling. It may seem a lot but we think we can do it – small amounts from lots of people will get us to this target. See the Camp Donate page to donate to the Legal fund. Please tell all your friends and rich aunties.’ Relevant links are here (Legal Team) and here (Donations). Let’s give generously!

cross-posted from Next Left

Kathy (my wife) and I met up at the Climate Change Camp at around 4pm. We went to ‘Space 3′ where the New Economics Foundation (NEF) was scheduled to run a session on transitioning to a low carbon economy. Andrew Simms, from NEF, was the speaker. Kathy and I sat down amidst the throng, and gratefully accepted pieces of the tasty vegan chocolate cake that was being passed around. A family group sat next to us, their toddler just about able to walk. Andrew said a few words about NEF’s work and then threw the session open for people to make their own suggestions about how to lower our carbon footprint.

We then took a walk around the Camp, spending a long time listening to the drumming and dancing at the far end. The sun was out. The music was great. Various kinds of food were being cooked and consumed. We started to need a pee, but neither of us could quite work up the courage to try out the Camp’s hastily assembled eco-sensitive toliet facilities (advertised with the not entirely enticing slogan ‘Another poo is possible’). Around ten past five, we sauntered off to Brick Lane for a meal, feeling that we had done our eco-citizenly duty.

On the way we heard on the radio that the situation in Bishopsgate had suddenly become ‘tense’. This surprised us as the atmosphere when we left, about 15 minutes before this radio news report, was entirely peaceful and convivial. It also seemed surprising since at 6pm, the scheduled activities in the Camp were:
(1) Buddhist meditation;
(2) how to fight climate change with poetry; and
(3) activist trauma support.
We decided that we’d take a careful look back at the Camp once we’d finished the important business of having our dinner.

When we approached the Camp for the second time, at around 7.15 pm, the situation had changed completely. Approaching from the Liverpool Street station end we were confronted by a line of police vans, nose to nose, completely blocking entry to the Camp. Police officers in riot helmets were lined up behind the vans. Gradually, they formed a line in front of the vans. Noone was to be allowed in to the Camp. As if to fart in the face of the Climate Change Camp, all the police vans, though stationary, had their engines running (and this superfluous engine running continued for about an hour).

Beyond the first police line we could see a second police line of officers shoulder to shoulder. They appeared to be refusing to let any of those in the Camp leave. Nobody walked out of the Camp in the two and a half hours we stayed. One woman told us that she had managed to run out, had been grabbed by police officers, given an £80 fine for swearing at police officers while she was grabbed, and then released. (I have no way of verifying this.)

We learnt that the same police lines had been constructed at the other end of Bishopsgate, and that the alleys leading into the area were also being blocked off by the police. (The one alley we tried was certainly blocked off.)

The police were besieging the Climate Change Camp.

No-one allowed in; noone allowed out. We thought of the family with the toddler. Had the police allowed some people, e.g., those with young children, to leave before they drew up their lines?

Why were the police doing this? One answer: “It’s the superior powers, I’m afraid”, said one policeman in good temper (rather in the spirit of the WW1 infantry song, ‘We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here’).

Another police officer (something like): “I don’t have to give you an explanation because I am acting on information which is not available to you.”

A third police officer: “There was violence inside the Camp.”

Now this I knew, almost certainly, was a complete, bare-faced lie. I had been inside the Camp up until about twenty minutes before the police started this deployment. Given the atmosphere when I left, it was inconceivable that the Camp had suddenly become violent. It was a party!

So I looked thepoliceman in the eye: “That’s bare-faced lie – I was in the camp just before this started and I know it wasn’t violent.”

His reply? He immediately conceded, with a bit of a laugh, that, yes, he had indeed lied. Feeling a rush of republican self-righteousness hitting me, I asked him if he thought that this is how police officers properly serve the citizenry: by telling them bare-faced lies. Obviously hoping that I would just shut up and go away, he sort-of laughed again and agreed that, yes, this is how police officers properly serve the public.

Some officers were wearing balaclavas under their riot helmets. I pointed out to one officer that this meant I couldn’t see his face properly. (I later learnt from another officer that they are worn because of their flame-repellant properties.) I then also noticed that he had no identification number on his jacket. Thus, if things got nasty, and he ended up in a tussle with a protestor, the protestor would have no way of identifying him: no face, no number. I reported this to the Legal Observer on the scene. About ten minutes later, another officer hastily tacked on some identification numbers to the offending jacket.

So what do I take away from all of this?

First, I feel somewhat sorry for the police. Earlier in the day, they had been relaxed and good-tempered. After the seige started, they were tense – everyone was now tense – and their attitude veered between those who managed to remain reasonably good-tempered, and those who adopted a defensive attitude bordering on contempt. I don’t think most of the rank and file really wanted to be there. What a waste of their time and energy, and distortion of their professionalism.

I say ‘waste’ of time and energy, and distortion of their professionalism, because, despite all of my questions, I never did get an explanation of why the police had decided to lay siege to the Climate Change Camp at around 5.30pm, when the mood was convivial, and, you’ll recall, the next sessions were scheduled to be on Buddhist meditation, how to use poetry to fight climate change, and ‘activist trauma support’.

I can understand not letting people in. Maybe you want the Camp to disperse? But then why also, apparently, refuse to let people out? What is the point of beseiging the Camp? Besieging the Camp would only have one obvious, predictable effect: to create a tense, potentially violent situation where none previously existed. Either the people making the operational decisions are stupid or very sinister indeed.

Third: the one report of this episode I have seen in the mainstream media so far – the tail-end of a piece on BBC News 24 – is superficial and gives no sense of the dynamic I have described above. I invite readers of Next Left to test what they get from mainstream media outlets against the account I have given here (which obviously is only one, limited account).

Finally, I think this episode provides some much-needed perspective on the recent discussion on Next Left around what lessons the British left can learn from Barack Obama’s campaign.

A key aspect of the Obama campiagn was that someone from within a mainstream political party managed to connect with broader social movement politics outside the party system. Obama built a bridge between the two. So to replicate Obama’s success, we surely need to build bridges between Labour and similar social movements here.

The Climate Change Camp is one, vital – and vitalising – expression of this social movement politics. Yet here is a Labour government treating it – or condoning its treatment – with what can only be described as contempt.

Unless Labour stops laying siege to such politics, and builds bridges to it, we will never get the change we really need.

Cross-posted from the Fabian Next Left blog.

But just what kind of liberal is Nick Clegg?

[Update: Evan Harris MP defends his party in the comments]

Right at the end of the Q&A at the ippr event Clegg was asked what differentiates liberalism from ‘libertarianism’. His answer was that liberals think personal freedom is limited by a duty not to harm others, while libertarians do not. This will be news to libertarians. I’m not aware of any libertarian philosopher who thinks we should be free to walk around assaulting others.

Consider, second, his response to another question, about bonuses and placing ceilings on high earnings. Clegg replied, with some passion, that it would be ‘illiberal’ to place such a ceiling on earnings, to try to limit them through what he referred to as ‘punitive taxation’.

In fact, high taxation of high earnings has a long pedigree of support within liberalism. New Liberals like J.A. Hobson and Leonard Hobhouse argued that the state should tax away high earnings because these almost certainly represented ‘economic rents’ which were undeserved by the person getting them.

More recently, liberals like John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin have argued that differences in earnings which reflect unequal talents are ‘morally arbitrary’, creating a presumption in favour of greater equality in the distribution of earned incomes by the means of taxation.

The phrase ‘punitive taxation’ – like the phrase ‘tax burden’ which Clegg used at his party’s Autumn conference – is a give-away as to the underlying philosophy here. That philosophy is one which sees market-generated earnings as ‘entitlements’. It’s because we are, supposedly, already entitled to the income we get in the market that tax deductions can be seen as ‘punitive’.

On the Rawls-Dworkin view, just, equality-promoting taxes do not invade pre-existing entitlements; they define what we are really, genuinely entitled to: they help ensure that resources end up with whomever is genuinely entitled to them rather than with whomever the market selects. On this view, taxing very high earners to help lower earners is not necessarily any more ‘punitive’ than requiring a thief to return stolen goods to their rightful owner.

Now, what political philosophy maintains that market rewards are entitlements? The answer: libertarianism, as brilliantly set out in Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State and Utopia.

Of course, Clegg is no advocate of the minimal state which Nozick defends. But his effort to reposition the Liberal Democrats on tax sees him drawing on what are essentially libertarian assumptions about the market, tax and justice.

His use of a rhetoric based on these assumptions helps to reinforce the grip which these assumptions have in day-to-day public discourse. And this adds to the obstacles facing progressive liberals who want to use the tax system, rightly, in an equality-promoting way.

So, Nick Clegg: more of a libertarian than he thinks.

Cross-posted from Next Left