The news coverage I’ve been hearing about the upcoming UK General Election says that the Liberal Democrats are making a stronger showing than ever before. So, if this is the LibDem moment – just who are these LibDems (apart from being neither Labour nor Conservative, which seems to be their strongest selling point at this juncture)? Are they the “centrist” party, or are they to the left of Labour? As I understand it, they were the centrist party to begin with – that is, they were formed of a merger of the Liberal Party (very, very roughly equivalent to the Libertarian Party in the U.S.) and the Social Democrats. The SDs, at that time, apparently stood to the right of Labour and to the left of the Tories – but that was before Tony Blair and New Labour shifted the party rightward, making it (very, very roughly) equivalent to the Democrats in the U.S. So, where do the LibDems stand now?
Definitely left of Labour; they were the only major party to oppose the invasion of Iraq. In the U.S. they’d be called far-left commie pinkos.
Pretty much all the three main parties have become more centrist over time (though to what extent changes depending on who you’re talking to). The Lib Dems are noticeably but not vastly to the left of Labour. I would argue that Labour, these days, are the “centrist” party, if any party really is, but they’re generally considered left-leaning. The Conservatives are to the right of the scale.
They’re a centre-left libertarian party. Their main selling points are: the only party to be anti-Iraq war, in favour of strong electoral reform in both houses (bringing in PR, electing the upper chamber), and anti-ID cards. Notably, their economic spokesman, Vince Cable, is just about the only MP in any house who speaks sense, and the only one who seems to know what the hell he’s talking about (he’s a former chief economist of the Shell petroleum company).
The MPs are only in the lower house.
Aside from that, you can’t really describe them as left or right… they have policies all over the spectrum.
We’re about to find out in the next few months. Up to now they’ve been able to fly under the radar as a national outfit to some extent because nobody ever took them seriously. This allowed them to run to the left of Labour in heavily Labour areas like the north and as more caring, compassionate conservatives in southern Conservative heartlands. So now they’ll have to have a national agenda and I’d guess they’ll try and split the difference as much as they can.
What do you mean, “anti-ID cards”?
I presume CRSP means that they are opposed to the introduction of compulsory ID cards.
The Political Compass website places them slightly to the left of Labour and signficantly more libertarian.
There have been moves to introduce a national identity card scheme, the Liberal Democrats have opposed the idea and have said that they will reverse the scheme, along with passports carrying biometric data , apparently.
Specifically (some) foreign nationals are now required to hold ID cards, but for the rest of us it is a voluntary scheme. It’s been scaled back bit by bit from the original proposals - first it was going to be mandatory for all, then for people like airport workers, now it’s mostly voluntary. If that makes you wonder what the point of the scheme is, you’re not alone.
“Compulsory” in what sense? That you need to show them to vote? That you have to carry them at all times and show them if asked by a police officer?
There have been proposals to have an ID card that must be carried at all times. Most countries in Europe have these (so, if you’re a tourist, you need to carry your passport instead).
I don’t think it’s terribly meaningful to try to place parties on a one-dimensional axis such as “left” vs. “right”. Even two-dimensional spectrums are simplistic.
I’d say that the Lib Dems are more consistently liberal on social issues than the other two parties, who both have factions that are more authoritarian. On economics and taxing and spending they are indeed probably somewhere in between the more free market, small government Conservatives and tax & spend, interventionist Labour.
Incidentally, I don’t think it’s accurate to describe the old Liberal party as being even roughly equivalent to US Libertarians. They actually weren’t terribly different in outlook to the current Lib Dems. The SDP, with whom the Liberals merged, were a social democrat breakaway from the old school Labour Party, which was a proper socialist party. But Labour itself later became a social democratic party under Smith and particuarly Blair, and I think that aspect of the Liberal-SDP alliance then faded.
There’s that terminology problem again. In the U.S. “liberal” and “authoritarian” are not antonyms, at least not WRT social policy – that is, professed “liberals” support non-libertarian social policies such as affirmative action, and “conservatives” call them “authoritarian” for it.
So, is there any major or near-major party remaining in the UK standing for socialism as such?
Yeah, I forgot that “liberal” is a loaded term in the US. Here, we go more by the plain dictionary definition, meaning something like “favouring individual liberty”. But regarding something like affirmative action, I think proponents of that would be much more at home in the Labour party than in the Lib Dems and certainly not among Tories. In that sense, Labour is the British equivalent of the left wing of the US Democrats.
There’s no major socialist party, no. Some of the nationalist parties in Scotland, Wales and NI are maybe more Old Labour than Labour is, but on a UK-wide level, no.
Although I believe doper psychonaut is a parlimentary candidate for one of the UK socialist parties. I wouldn’t know which one, nor do I know the differences between them (think Judean people’s front) but he may pop along.
The usual suspects - I saw an interview with the Communist party spokesman a while back on TV. But nothing major. I’d guess probably the largest of the more socialistic parties (at least in terms of actually holding seats of some kind) are probably the Greens, but they’re really not anywhere near a major party.
They might be, next time around, if this time around the LibDems demand a proportional-representation reform as a condition for joining a coalition government, and get it.
Maybe, but I doubt it. They have an even bigger version of the Lib Dem problem; they just aren’t taken seriously as a party with power. They’ve had not inconsiderable success on a local level, and i’d wager that would be more their focus, even with a PR system. I can’t really see them being a big force in coalition negotiations.
Agreed. Introducing proportional representation to the Commons and electing the Lords would big a huge step backwards in what is currently, IMO, the best democratic system (i.e. the Westminster system).
I’m a Yank, so without any context I am reluctant to say which party I would support if I were British, but the LibDem policy platform speaks more to me than the other major parties; I can’t believe such a reasonable party would be so blinded by their own failures at the ballot box to be so cavalier with proposing this kind of backwards electoral reform.