Liberty Central - 4 comments

Talk Politics has been busy, aided and abetted by past B4L commenters, Bishop Hill and MatGB, plus several others, on what is intended to be a non-partisan, libertarian blog project. A new coalition of anti-authoritarian forces, it is intended to be.

We noticed the early rumblings, had a bit of a chat about this on Friday, and it's something that we're keeping an eye on.

It could be very interesting - if it holds together. Provided the campaign sticks to - what I take to be the fundamental aims - radical constitutional change, and opposition to centralised and bureaucratic government, then I'm sure most of us would support it. Not that that should be too surprising, though - everyone knows we've wanted it to happen for years.

What I like about this simple approach is that it's something that a huge number of people - on all sides - can agree on, is sufficiently valuable, and radical, for people to remain committed to it, while avoiding fetishising New Labour (sorry, NuLab), and treating them as special cases.

The next step in the plan (or the first step in some people's plans) appears to be the "Anyone but Labour" electoral campaign, which we couldn't possibly support. Anyone but Labour? No, that's totally irresponsible, even if a new website does appear to help you pick out the 'moral' candidate from the 'immoral' one. I'm afraid that as soon as I hear "Bliar", "Safety Elephant", "intrinsic bias", and - especially - "Infrastructure of a Police State, just waiting for the switch to be pressed", I hear a mass movement being jeapordised.

Thus far, there doesn't seem to have been a lot of thought on the following issues:

1. Libertarianism, especially on the web, seems to have been the preserve of obsessives, either frustrated with, or alienated from, the rough and tumble of real-world politics. Moreover, libertarian politicians rarely seem to win the hearts and minds of those motivated by the building of new schools and hospitals, or tax cuts - the fare of traditional British politics. So what likelihood is there of future success?
2. What role for politicians? You can manipulate the (current) electoral system to prevent those judged 'authoritarian' from being elected, but doesn't that (a) merely create a vacuum for other politicians to 'put national security first'?, and (b) fail to address who politicians are, what motivates them, and what the electorate are looking for? What politician can ever be really trusted to reform their own department? And if politicians as a class are to be dispensed with, what of democracy?
3. Though I haven't entirely had the enthusiasm sucked out of me, and my soul hammered wafer-thin, what achievements can British political bloggers - puff pieces aside - really point to?
   

Sooner or later, Labour will be voted-out, and whether Liberty Central was responsible for a fraction of 1% of that, we can't say, but clearly that defeat cannot be enough in itself to guarantee any kind of radical change. Seeing Blair's ashen face would no doubt given immense satisfaction to a lot of people, but is no kind of solution for those who see the enemy as (a) politicians themselves, or (b) the concept of managerialism in politics. It's even less of a guarantee that those who see themselves on the Left of this libertarian debate will see the kind of policies they like.

So, really, the obvious thing is for us all to concentrate what few political resources we can on a genuinely cross-party constitutional change agenda, booting the "Anyone but Labour" campaign down to page 39 or thereabouts.

Yawn!

That's it for now.