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I've made quite a big thing about Chris's European Parliamentary experience both in writing to him when encouraging him to stand and to other people. It seems to me that, now that Blair's pretty lacklustre presidency is over and with the sceptic Brown on the horizon and with Cameron likely to pull the Tories even further away from Europe there is no longer any desire to champion Europe in the higher echelons of the other parties and that pro-Europe voters have nowhere to hang their hats.

Chris is just what Britain needs in a champion for the European cause. As an MEP he's been at the heart of the working of the EU and, perhaps more importantly, in the representative part of the EU where he has scrutinised and held the other arms of the EU to account. For too long the political discourse on Europe in the UK has focussed on the supposed excesses and lack of democracy of the Commission or the inter-state wrangling in the Council. In Chris we have an opportunity to explain and promote how a truly democratic Europe can be made to work for us, its citizens.

We all seem to agree that we want a distinctive agenda marking us out from the other parties. In the next few years, while they do their best to look embarrassedly apologetic about Europe on the one hand or downright anti-Europe on the other with Chris we can be positive about Europe and our place in it. And vastly strengthen our position as the only party for pro-Europeans in the UK.

Just as we are trying to get to grips with whether the Liberal Conspiracy is actually Liberal, so now we have Dave the Chameleon saying the the Conservatives and the Co-operative Movement have always been natural bed-buddies:

The co-op movement has generally been associated with the political left. I think that's a shame. First, because there have always been people on the centre-right concerned about the effects of capitalism on the social fabric. Men like Carlyle and Disraeli, following the tradition of Edmund Burke and Adam Smith himself, who recognised at the outset of the industrial revolution that profit was not the only organising principle of a healthy society. And second, because the co-operative principle reflects an important part of the vision of social progress that we on the centre-right believe in: the role of strong independent institutions, run by and for local people. That's why Conservatives have always argued that free enterprise and the co-operative principle are partners, not adversaries.

It is true that, faced with an alternative between co-operative localism and central state organization, the Conservatives have occasionally championed the mutual. Notably in 1908 when the Old Age Pensions Act was passed the Conservatives tried to promote the use of Friendly Societies and Mutuals instead of a state pension system. And it may be that there have been well-meaning Tories worried about the "effects of capitalism on the social fabric". And yes, co-operatives operate in the same markets as capitalists often and compete, often successfully with them.

However, the International Co-operative Alliance provides the ground rules for bona fide co-operative enterprises. And the Co-operative Values they promote are indeed motherhood and apple pie stuff: "Co-operatives are based on the values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity."

But the Co-operative Principles, developed from this vision and building on the rules of the Rochdale Pioneers, set bona fide co-operatives at odds with the traditional capitalism that the Tory party has long championed. "Democratic Member Control" for example means that every member, regardless of their financial stake, has an equal say in the running of the business. Capitalism is based on the exact opposite - that he with the most shares has the greatest say.

"Voluntary Open Membership" was a challenge to the "Church and State" party - with many mutuals founded precisely because their non-conformist members were barred from services and facilities because of their religious associations.

The Co-operative Movement, at least in Britain, was basically founded to empower the lower classes against the Tory ruling class and its economic hold over them. Its principles can be and are used to democratise and devolve services from an overbearing state as with Cameron's regurgitation of the liberal Milton Friedman's idea for co-operative schooling. But it is an extra-ordinary claim that the principles of the Co-op Movement are compatible with the protectionist capitalism embodied in the Conservative party.

Dave incidentally perpetuated the popular story that the co-operative movement started in Rochdale - they codified the idea of course, but it was proto-socialist Robert Owen who opened the first co-op store for his workers in New Lanark, and, to take it to its logical origins, Gerrard Winstanley's Diggers in 1649 who set the scene for the long battle between co-operation and collectivism on the one hand and enclosure and privatisation of our common birthright on the other. I doubt the Conservative Co-operative Movement will be agitating any day soon for wholesale equitable redistribution of the common wealth.

Incidentally Guido - I believe you are quite wrong in this respect - a hedge fund partnership cannot by definition be a bona fide co-operative since one of the other obligations of a bona fide co-operaive is to promote and educate about the co-operative principles. The hedge fund exploits to the max the capitalist principles of shareholder power - might is right. I don't have a principled objection to hedge funds and private equity - they have their place in this broken world, but they cannot be counted as members of the co-operative movement by any stretch of the imagination.

Not the sort of image I wanted over dinner:

“The Conservatives are half right and half wrong.

“They are right when they admit that fifty years of social engineering by Conservative and Labour Governments have been a miserable failure. We have been taxed. We have been subsidised. We have been regulated. We have been endlessly preached at. And, after two generations of all this, we have, as a nation, been made neither happier nor more virtuous. There is more illegitimacy, more divorce, more drunkenness, more crime.

“But the Conservatives are wrong when they believe that the harms of social engineering can be cured by different social engineering.

“Above all, this Report shows the usual Tory obsession with sex. These people seem to believe that, without laws to restrain us, most people would be copulating in the street. This is probably true for some Conservative politicians. Most ordinary people, however, are naturally inclined to join in stable, heterosexual unions and to produce children. Some people are not inclined to this, and libertarians respect their choice. But most people are so inclined. They do not need to be bribed with their own money into getting married. They do not need “help” from politicians."

The trouble is, I do find Sean Gabb to be quite intemperate and obnoxious when presenting his arguments, and I'm not clear how this helps the message. I too am an "angry not-so-young man" as far as government interference in our lives goes but I hope I keep my language at least temperate! The question is, how is a libertarian supposed to put libertarian policies into effect except by winning the power to do so in the first place?

Technorati Tags: conservatives, libertarianism

One last post on this, not because I care, but because I report "news" in this instance...

It was to be expected I suppose that the events of the past few days would be mentioned in Vince Cable's talk at the Oxford East constituency dinner this evening, and he didn't disappoint.

So for all of those out that are talking of splits in the party and and bad feeling, his message was quite clear.

There are no splits. We are (except perhaps for me) the most united party on the whole issue of Europe. There were differences of opinion over tactics; whether abstaining was going back on a manifesto promise, or rather whether abstaining specifically on the treaty rather than the constitution was going back on such a promise. Some people took that position. Those who resigned the front bench before voting did so with good grace and no rancour towards Nick or anyone else.

He did seem to me to suggest, but I'm sure not say explicitly, that the regrets are over the events of the last couple of weeks as a whole. The profile that by implication Nick has given to this one issue. For me of course, I think that's just the new boy not quite realizing in time he was being set up by the Tory Euro-shambles to take the fall for their own irresponsibility on the issue. And perhaps a regret that Nick was backed into a position in which he felt it was right to make it a three line whip issue.

Cameron has not faced such a media backlash for his massive rebellion because although it was a front bench position to abstain from Bill Cash's amendment, he had not insisted on whipping it - but the rebellion was larger than ours and shows up the Tory incoherence on Europe.

The parliamentary party are only too aware that they have caused headlines for the wrong reasons and are apologetic for that. But todays newspapers...