leadership

Courtesy of the Libertarian Alliance blog, I am drawn to a commentary on the Libertarian Party UK blog about an article by someone called Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. at mises.org (how's all that for being damned by the company I keep, or in this case the blogs I read!) about the relationship between the "state", the politicians who try to make us believe they are "running" it and the people in whose name they are supposed to be doing so.

It introduces me at least to the idea of the "personal" and the "impersonal" state.

The personal state is where the regime in power for the time being is synonymous with the state. Most obviously this is an absolute monarchy for example. The monarch is the state. When the monarch dies the regime dies with them and another replaces it. It may be largely the same but it is still a personal fiefdom if you like of the monarch in charge.

In the impersonal state, the predominant form for the past several centuries (ironically in Britain probably traced to the "Protectorate" or at least the Restoration), the state, its bureaucracy, apparatus and most of its policy direction go rumbling on from one regime to the next. The leader is the manager not the owner, if you will.

He says the political system, of parties, elections and so on, are a chimera, making us believe we are in a personal state. That is we elect a manager who cocks up somehow we just elect another one and everything will be different. But who is really in control?

I'm sure most of us active in politics used to chuckle at "Yes, [Prime] Minister", but we all know there is more than a grain of truth in the message that the bureaucracy just rumbles on, sometimes even deliberately frustrating the will of the current elected managers, knowing that if they hold out for long enough another lot of managers will come along who may be more to their tastes.

And I don't mean that this is a personal thing - that there is some conspiracy between individuals wielding power in smokey rooms and dark corridors. It's just the way the thing works in a big state. Look at the comment the other day by a Labour minister that she thought that by the time of the next General Election the ID card system would be so far down the line that it would be impossible for any new government, even one elected purely on a platform of opposing ID cards, to stop it.

Okay, I think, I hope at least, we can take that example with a large bucket of salt - after all, unless it's been designed by Cyberdine Systems to become "self-aware" on or before 5th May 2010, there will still be an "off switch" on the mainframe! But you get the idea. And if you've been a local councillor, you see it every day in the workings of your council bureaucracy - the same old surly faces, sometimes frustrating the ideas of the politicians and so on. We have come to know some of that as the "can't do" culture.

Rockwell's conclusion is that the political "game" is futile. Ideas can move the world, but they can't shift the bureaucratic apparatus of the state at the same rate. And I have to say, since I combine my party political presence with real action on alternative structures such as Community Land Trusts and social enterprise, that bears out. Indeed, whenever we need the imprimatur of the state, such as in planning issues and so on, the byzantine apparatus seems to do its utmost to frustrate or delay us.

I tend to disagree. Obviously, I suppose, since I remain involved in party politics. But I do recognize that for all the "change" we talk about, Nick Clegg talks about, Obama talks about, whoever talks about, it does seem that most things will just grind on the way they always have. We will complain about them. We may even blame Gordon Brown or someone else for them personally. But if we continue to play that same game we will never really change them.

I am in politics because I believe those big ideas can be introduced through the political system. So did our political forebears like Lloyd-George with his 1909 budget - he at least had the balls also to go head to head with the establishment that rejected his big ideas but still, essentially, lost. I don't advocate violent revolution, though at times it seems that little short of that will actually achieve the change necessary. But I do want us to grow the cojones to be radical, to propose the "ideals" not the "manageables", to aim high and be different. And to demolish this all powerful leviathan and start from the ground up again.

I return again to the idea that we are in an age of epochal change. Of the unprecedented ability for us individually to communicate with others all round the world. We have to begin to ask just how much of that "impersonal state" we need any longer. Cobden had it about right when he said that "peace will come to the earth when people have more to do with each other and governments less." Politicians, let humanity grow up. Realize your limits. Let go and do something productive for a change instead!

I don't blog about work much, but this is exciting news you all ought to share! Last year, here at Oxford Brookes University we got terribly excited about being only the 17th UK Higher Education Institution to have appointed a female Chief Executive , in the form of Vice-Chancellor Janet Beer, who's now had her feet under the desk for nine months or so.

Shami Chakrabarti, new Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University

Originally uploaded at Flickr by martinstabe

In the interim we've been looking for a chair designate of the Board of Governors (I am one of the two elected staff governors), and have selected Joanna Simons, the chief executive of Oxfordshire Councty Council, and of course, another woman.

Today, we are very pleased to have announced that our new Chancellor, a position currently held by Jon Snow, is to be another woman very much in the ascendancy and particularly in the news in the past couple of weeks leading up to last night's vote to abolish Habeas Corpus for people the Home Secretary doesn't like the look of, Shami Chakrabarti, the Director of Liberty (whose "new members pack" I received yesterday by chance!).

We were doing quite well actually with gender balance amongst the top echelon of staff here, but I thought it was important to mark that the top three offices are now all held by women right at the top of their respective careers.

Well, I was getting a bit worried. Royal Mail never seem to deliver to my door, and despite a great big notice to the contrary continue to deliver my mail to the adjoining student flat to which I have no access. So only last night, when the students next door decided presumably to have a bit of a clear out, did I get my leadership ballot paper, together with a final demand to have my flu jab on 15th November, two months of Prospect magazine, my Co-op dividend vouchers (too late I think now to have my divvie turned over to the Community Fund), and the calling notice for the Headington and Marston Lib Dem branch AGM on 28th November (so my apologies are too late, but rest assured as candidate for Headington Hill and Northway next year I'm not completely disinterested in the local branch!). Grrr!  read more »

...it is the economy (stupid), or at least the political economy.

James Graham comes out for Clegg today in his piece at Comment is Free, Ich bin ein Clegghead:

Lesson one from the latest (and hopefully last for a good long while) Liberal Democrat leadership contest is that everything I thought I knew about the candidates was wrong. Chris "master strategist" Huhne has ended up making some appalling tactical blunders, while Nick "great communicator" Clegg, it emerges, can be a bit rubbish on the telly. They both have feet of clay. Despite this, I remain as sure as I was a month ago that both are better potential leaders than either of their two predecessors.

Leaving aside the superficial similarities, what emerges are two very different personalities coming at this campaign at a very different point in their lives and focusing on very different priorities. Huhne invokes Bill Clinton when he states that it's the economy (stupid); Clegg talks about how the economy-focused politics of the 1970s and 80s are now long dead and buried. Huhne talks about devolution, of bringing government closer to people; Clegg talks about empowerment, of giving people more direct control over the public services they use.

It's not his choice I particularly object to, though I disagree with him on that too naturally, but one particular part of the assessment he goes through to arrive at that choice. It's mentioned twice, one of them in the part of his article I quote above, that "the economy-focused politics of the 1970s and 80s are now long dead and buried". This leads to the conclusion, later, that whilst Nick "isn't an economist and notwithstanding his observation that the political debate has largely moved on from such matters" he could "wing it" if he is "surrounded [by] people who can talk with authority on the subject."

See personally I don't think that the focus on the economy in politics should be dead. As I've argued before, I do think the "cosy consensus" between Labour and Tory makes it appear that way - that we are in an era of managerial politics, but that the job of liberals is to put it back on the agenda. Or at least, and it is different, to revive the study and promotion of "political economy". For too long now "economics", the pseudo-science that divorced itself from "political economy" in the nineteenth century, has sought to position itself as a set of inviolable laws, as if they are to society what Newtonian laws are to the universe. That economics somehow trumps politics, is master of the system rather than just a part of the system of how people and resources get on together.

Only a certain amount of politics deals with how things currently are, which is necessarily bound by the parameters of the contemporary economic orthodoxy, because that's how economists tell us the world, markets, property, wealth accumulation and so on works, and that it's inviolable. But the real visionaries are those who can subjugate economics to political principles, who can see ways to change the contemporary orthodoxy to achieve real political priorities. And, whilst I have a healthy skepticism of "schooled" economists, educated with that orthodoxy ingrained into them such that few of them ever dare to challenge it, I believe what we do need is an economist first who can think out of the box, instinctively and be able to defend an unorthodox economic idea spontaneously and with authority.

I think that's what Chris means when he says, as quoted by John Abrams at Liberal Revolution when he asks "Is Chris pitching for the Shadow Chancellors job?"

`Well I think we all have our strong suits, I’m simply saying that my strong suit, clearly having been in those areas is being able to take Gordon Brown on on the Economy, which is going to be dominant issue as Bill Clinton said.`

And I think he's right. Which is why, whatever I may disagree with in the way he has promoted himself as a staunch defender of public provision of public services, I will still be voting for the economist. He may not be as radical as I would like, but neither of them are, but I really think the one with the greater potential for radicalism is the one who stands a chance of understanding how changing the economic rules can feed through into great social change for the better.

Whatever one thinks of the public spat on the Politics Show yesterday, and plenty of bloggers have made their views plain enough, not entirely always to their own credit, I can't help feeling that this is not the cleverest of moves:

BBC NEWS | Politics | Lib Dems consider Clegg complaint:

Senior Liberal Democrat officials are to consider a complaint by leadership contender Nick Clegg over a document describing him as a "calamity". That paper was issued from the camp of leadership rival Chris Huhne. Writing on his website, Mr Huhne "sincerely apologised" and "disassociated himself from it". Mr Clegg's campaign team lodged an official complaint with the party's chief whip and party officials are to decide whether to take further action.

What action could, or should, "party officials" take? Order an apology? It's already been posted, and presumably communicated directly and personally to Nick (if not it should be - a statement on a website is not enough, one to one). What else is there? Disqualify one of only two candidates? Nothing would be more likely to lead to long lasting rancour and recriminations in the party, and I'm not even suggesting it's a possibility, let alone one "party officials" should consider if it were.  So if your two potential remedies are either already in process or impossible, that's the time to let it lie, or be seen as not taking it all with good grace.

It seems to me that all an "official complaint" does is prolong the least glorious moment of the contest for another few days - maybe longer, and, on an individual level for Nick, ensure that the phrase "Calamity Clegg" gets more airing than it ever warranted (which was none). One thing is sure, there'll be a "researcher" somewhere tonight learning the hard way that you can never put out a "catchy" title for a press briefing and expect said media not to take such a thing literally as summing up what you think about the subject of the briefing.

The document itself raises some pertinent questions about differences between what Nick has said or written and what others, friends, have apparently said or written on his behalf. Or at least they would be pertinent if a leadership contest was about setting policy, which it is not. But in demanding definitive statements on this or that an issue from either leadership candidate it seems to me that all that is achieved is putting an entrenched position on the record that can then be thrown back at you when the party, sovereign policy making body of course, decides something different somewhere down the line.

One can just imagine the smug Mr Sopel in a few years' time putting it to the Lib Dem leader, whoever that may be, that "you are losing control of your party, aren't you, because when you stood for leader you said that you would be against such and such and here's the party voting for it".

I have to say with a certain smugness that I was out in the pissing rain and blustery icy wind delivering Lib Dem leaflets while our two men in suits were spitting feathers at each other on John Sopel's lunchtime politics show. And reading some of the blog comments on it, especially, though understandably I guess as the "victim" of the briefing document with which Sopel ambushed Huhne, in the Cleggosphere, I was prepared to be confronted with a truly undignified public school spat complete with debaggings and wedgies.

So, having just now watched it, and having already read the document in question as published by the Huhne campaign team, I did think it was a bit of an unedifying spectacle, but really nothing to get so worked up about as to start talking about bringing "the party into disrepute" or "consign him to the backbenches" or even, from someone who has one blog entitled "Chris Almighty" and another called "The Anti-Chris Blog", a comment that electing Chris would see him resign from the party.

Nick is a big boy. He will have to weather a great deal worse if he is leader. Chris is, tonight, a very silly looking boy, he will have to learn from this - though I have to say that for me, on reading the document (far more useful than watching the spat on television) many of the "inconsistencies" set out in it do ring true in the various things I seen written about Nick's position on the relevant issues compared with what he says himself (hence my earlier confusion in the early part of the contest).

The bigger problem for me is that I don't want someone who rules out vouchers, insurance, the break-up of state monopolies or any of these things that Chris criticizes Nick for, and the fact that in his attempts to clarify his position Nick also seems to rule them all out means I have nobody squeezing me in my "comfort zone" in this election. So I am sticking with Chris, because as I have said many times, I believe the future of the party and the country is in adopting an identifiably Liberal political economy and I believe that means having an economist as leader who can instinctively make those arguments when put on the spot.

Personally, and I realise that with this post I am adding, possibly minutely, to this, I reckon it's the Lib Dem blogosphere and their shrill partisan screams bordering on vitriol, who are the real losers in this spat and I am sure the men in suits will have made up with each other very soon.  And actually - if they don't make up, neither of them deserve to lead this party!

Hot on the heels of a few moans (by me not least, here ) that Chris Huhne needs to produce something like Nick Clegg's comprehensive "Vision for Britain" document so we can all pick it apart and say how good it is, supporters will have received news that Chris will "launch his manifesto with a keynote speech" on Wednesday at noon.

Well...what is a person to do to celebrate the close of nominations when he's already handed his in days ago?

Charlotte Gore mentioned that Nick Clegg has provided us with a 4000 word (I'll take her word for it) treatise on his "Vision for Britain" and so I went in search of this document to have a look. I have to agree with her lament that Chris has, as yet, not produced something similar, though you'll remember my disdain for people with "visions" when actually i want government and politicians to interfere less, but I suppose when you are claiming that your vision actually involves government and politicians interfering less it is forgivable!

I do think Chris needs to produce something of this sort, given the relatively few electors who are going to get to hear and question the two candidates in person at hustings around the country, and Nick's document has certainly cleared up one or two things about his position statement that I had erroneously interpreted from his speech at Newbury last weekend.

So to the apology...several times Nick refers to protectionism as a bad thing in his "Vision", so I take it as read that he is in fact against protectionism as he sees it anyway (which I suspect will always be different from how a mutualist or libertarian sees it) and am happy to be corrected for suggesting otherwise in my post last week.

But neither do I find anything much in Nick's vision statement that moves me "outside my comfort zone". Nor the timetable terribly ambitious. Others may feel that ten years to break "stifling deadlock of two-party politics in Britain ... for good" is just realistic, while I dream of radical liberalism recapturing the same levels of imagination as 1906. Nick points the way, in the form of the issues he picks out, but not, perhaps, the truly radical liberal solutions that could really ignite a fire in people:

"How to counter the epidemic of powerlessness that has left people bewildered by giantism in both the public and private sectors;"

Today's "giantism" was 1906's protectionism. The liberals then offered free trade and captured the mood. That same debate needs to be reopened today. If we are not going to join what Nick calls the "‘Sat-Nav’ politics we are seeing today" we must boldly go, "balls out" as a friend of mine says, with a manifesto that is, to all intents and purposes, "do or die" next time round and not flinch when the others try to portray us as quite mad!

I don't want to fisk the whole "vision" and I do think there is plenty of good stuff in there, but there are a few markers I would put down that really don't, I think, challenge that comfort zone:

"We need to set some ground rules here: our universal public services must be free to use and accessible to all. But beyond that, I want us to think afresh about how they should be funded and delivered."

Why should we assume any government provided services ought to be "universal" and "free" or indeed "publicly" provided? I believe what we should be aiming for in order to "extend opportunity" is "financial independence" for all. We should be aiming to provide people with a basic income as of right that allows them to make choices for themselves and their children, for liberalism must, if anything, be about trusting people to make the right choices if they only had the means to do so.

State monopolies are only needed because other (ie private) monopolies and the (state and multi-national) protectionism that maintain them skew the distribution of the national income towards the already haves. And local state monopolies are not greatly better than a national state monopoly, be it in health, education or anything else - it may increase accountability but it doesn't necessarily increase personal freedom to dissent from the general consensus and choose an alternative. Break those other monopolies and protections, using their surplus "profit" to fund a dividend to all citizens, and you achieve that "financial freedom" and "freedom to choose".

For example, if we "want to see funding for the poorest state school pupils rise to private school levels, not one day, but straight away" then why not let that money be used to buy places at private schools? Why not let St Paul's or Westminster Schools open "branches" in Peckham or Brent, or City of London School in Tower Hamlets? Well maybe not them, per se, because they tend to be aggressively selective on ability also, but there are plenty of private schools in which parents put their faith and cash to add extra value to less able children too. With Land Value Tax you'd soon see these currently deprived areas becoming the haven for "smart money" anyway, pulling up their economic fortunes as people want to trim their land tax bills move there and spend their money there.

Anyway, as I say, there is much that's good in Nick's "vision" and he finishes with a flourish with which I reckon we can all agree:

So my message to my party is a very simple one: trust your instincts and stay true to your beliefs. The politics of the 21st century will increasingly be played out on liberal territory. And we will have home advantage.

Our liberalism is instinctive. It cannot be faked.

Empowering individuals, extending opportunity, balancing security and liberty, protecting the environment, engaging with the world – these are causes which we have espoused for years, but which we must now champion in new ways, with renewed leadership and vigour.

I do still think that we can be even more ballsy though and aim to turn the electoral landscape around, 1906-like, as a result:

Some argue that the best the Liberal Democrats can hope for is third place and a toe hold in government if we’re lucky.

That surely cannot be our aim.

Third place is not good enough. Not good enough for me, for the party or for Britain.

In a time of real political change and shifting public opinion I believe we must be much more ambitious.

If we can address the concerns of the British people and the challenges facing our country, then the next big shift of opinion will be towards Liberalism.

The demands facing us require ambition, verve and self confidence. That is what I promise to bring to the leadership of the Liberal Democrats.

Too right; would it be too much to work towards being enough of a power in 2009 to force the "Spin Twins" to work with each other against the Liberal Democrats as their opposition and win for liberal Britain a few short years after that?

Hat tip to ConservativeHome who highlight an Ipsos MORI poll that shows Lib Dems, leaderless, up two points from our nadir at 13%. Which begs the question; perhaps we should fill the vacancy until and unless it starts to fall again...:)

Labour 1% ahead in MORI poll tomorrow: