My review of The Orange Book from 2004

Today CentreForum organised an event to mark the 10th anniversary of the publication of The Orange Book. Thinking Liberal was there, and I gather there will soon be videos from the event on Youtube.

I am so old that I reviewed The Orange Book for Liberator when it came out - you can find the whole issue, which also includes articles on it by David Laws and Simon Titley, on the magazine's website.

You will see that I had more time for the ideas in the book than many in Liberator circles, but remember that this review was written after seven years of Labour government with many more in prospect.

Following today's event on Twitter, I saw a hedge-fund manager calling for strikes by people working in public services to be banned from striking. As so often when listening to economic liberal theorists, I wondered who precisely they thought would vote for their ideas.

Anyway, here is my review from 2004.

Orange blossom

Smelling faintly of brimstone, The Orange Book: Reclaiming Liberalism has arrived. If you get past the ugly front cover, you will find that The Orange Book consists of ten essays by prominent Liberal Democrats and a carefully worded foreword by Charles Kennedy: “Not all of the ideas … are existing party policy, but all are compatible with our Liberal heritage.”

That heritage is the concern of the first contribution as David Laws looks at the various strands of liberalism: personal, political, economic and social. He is particularly interested in economic liberalism and the way that  modern liberals seem embarrassed by it. The reason, I would argue, is that for most of the twentieth century liberalism was in decline and socialism was seen as the ideology of the future. It was not surprising that some liberals concluded that the way to prove that liberalism was still relevant was to show that it had anticipated socialism or was really a form of socialism too. So it was that we never mentioned free trade but missed no opportunity to refer to Keynes and Beveridge. The Conservatives' discovery of free-market economics in the 1970s only encouraged this trend.

Laws looks at the party's economic thinking, concluding that “economic liberalism has waxed and waned within the party over the past fifty years, reflecting on the whole the state of contemporary political debate, rather than long-held and cherished Liberal convictions". He is particularly good on the Alliance years: "Liberals and Social Democrats were merely left arguing lamely that the boundary between the public and private sectors should be left undisturbed, wherever it happened to be at the time."

Laws applies his enthusiasm for economic liberalism in a later essay on health, calling for the replacement of the National Health Service by a national health insurance scheme. He envisages a combination of public, private and voluntary providers, with people either choosing to use a state insurance scheme funded by a health tax on their income or joining an independent scheme. Such is the status of the NHS that any criticism of it is seen as near blasphemous, yet the ideas Laws puts forward operate in many Western European states which are every bit as civilised as Britain and which enjoy better health than we do. Nor is it ridiculous to ask whether the NHS can continue indefinitely as it is presently constituted if scientific innovation continues but people remain no keener to pay higher taxes to fund the resulting increased costs.

Other essays in The Orange Book will not raise the reader's temperature so much. Among them,  Paul Marshall writes on pensions, Susan Kramer on using market mechanisms to achieve environmental goals and Chris Huhne on global governance. In what is in many ways the most impressive piece in the book, Huhne concludes that globalisation promises great benefits but that international institutions must be reformed to allow them to operate effectively in a changed political and economic landscape.

Nick Clegg will alarm some readers by calling for powers over social and agricultural policy to be taken from European institutions and restored to national governments, but in reality his essay marks an advance in the party's thinking on Europe. Throughout those long years when people made unkind jokes about telephone boxes and bar stools, the argument that Liberal  members deployed to show that their party was still relevant was that it had been the first to advocate British membership of the Common Market. And in many ways we are still refighting the 1975 referendum campaign. We are happier defending that membership than we are recognising that we have been "in Europe" for more than 30 years (and are going to remain there) and then moving on to examine our views about how the European project should be developing.

Clegg argues that EU powers have developed in a lopsided way. He asks why the EU possesses detailed legislation on the design of a buses, the use of seatbelts in cars and noise levels in the workplace yet "remains invisible as an entity in the UN, ineffective in promoting peace in the Middle East, toothless in tackling international crime and terrorism". Being in favour of Europe is no longer enough: we have to decide what sort of Europe we want. Clegg's formulation is compelling: "the EU must only act if there is a clear cross-border issue at stake, or when collective EU action brings obvious benefits to all member states that they would not be able to secure on their own".

Vince Cable also has things to say about Europe, notably that "the CAP is an economic, environmental and moral disaster". In arguing this he is, of course, quite correct. It is, though, worth pointing out that British farmers were being subsidised 30 years before we signed up to the Common Agricultural Policy. Advocating free trade in agriculture would mean taking on this powerful interest group whether we were in the EU or not. In any case, Cable's contribution is not an anti-Europe rant but an appealing exploration of the tensions between free trade and social justice. He comes to the conclusion that government intervention often does more harm than good, making trade barriers seem something akin to the old nuclear arms race – they impoverish us all nations but they do not trust one another sufficiently to do away with them.

Which brings us to Mark Oaten. His almost tangible ambition gives him an unrivalled ability to get up the noses of  people in the party, but successful political parties are full of ambitious young men, so we had better get used to the breed. In any case, though he is a little too eager to be thought "tough" his essay here is sensible, calling for a stronger emphasis on education in prison and revealing that 95 per cent of prisoners need help with basic literacy. This surely suggests there is something seriously wrong with out schools if young people can emerge unable to read or write after 11 years of compulsory schooling, and also emphasises the missing chapter in The Orange Book – one on education.

Ed Davey's essay is easier to disagree with. He calls for liberals to embrace localism, yet his vision of local government is not attractive. He puts much emphasis on people's lack of respect for councils, yet where this exists it is can be put down to badly run bodies or ones run by the left of the Labour Party, and in both cases people are showing an increasing willingness to vote those responsible out. Davey wants to see fewer local councillors and to have them paid a salary, yet he does not consider the danger that this will distance local politicians from the people they represent and worsen the problem he sets out to solve.

Though there is little about it here, Davey is an enthusiast for regional government, even to the extent of backing John Prescott's version of it. This has little to do with local accountability – members of the new London authority have larger constituencies than MPs do – and much more to do with forcing through large-scale public projects like housing schemes and  motorways. Local government should be more diverse, more spiky and more local than that.

And then there is Steve Webb. Webb argues that liberals should not take a laissez-faire approach to the family, yet his views are not as ground-breaking as he seems to think. With the exception of a pamphlet I published last year, I cannot recall any Liberal Democrat questioning the move, rapidly accelerated under this government, towards more state intervention in family life. Certainly, none of the 64 references in his essay point the reader towards a dissident view.

Webb offers an apocalyptic view: our children are suffering more mental health problems than ever before,  they are starting school unable to talk or listen, they are turning to drink. What is strange is that this view is supported only by references to surveys and magazine articles. As an MP Webb must regularly meet all sorts of people who work for children, yet nowhere does he mention them. Basing his arguments on their testimony would have made for a more interesting essay – and quite possibly a very different one too. As it is, his work reads like a collection of press cuttings; it may be no coincidence, that Webb is the only person in the book to make his research assistant the joint author of his paper.

The answer to our predicament, Webb argues, lies in massive state intervention, delivered through the voluntary sector. He lists a number of schemes with approval, but it is hard to judge them because we have no direct knowledge of them. What is more worrying is that there is no sign that Webb has direct knowledge of them either. Again, he relies upon published references and gives no sign that he has met the people whose work he is praising. And,  while liberals will favour government support for the voluntary sector, its essence lies in the personal qualities of those who work in it and its local nature. Any attempt to roll out a scheme nationally will inevitably tend to reduce it to a trite formula that fails to reproduce the unique characteristics that made the original model work.

Somewhere in Webb's essay is the ghost of a more interesting, more personal contribution. One senses that he really sees our salvation as lying in a revival of marriage – he spends a couple of pages convincing himself that welfare benefits do not encourage young women to have babies out of marriage – and a greater role for religion. It is a shame that Webb did not write that other essay, because it might have offered the beginnings of an interesting critique of free-market economics. The traditional criticism of it is the Marxist one that capitalism will impoverish the workers, but we know by now that this is not true. A more subtle critique is the conservative, communitarian one which sees the free market as hollowing out important social institutions and acting as more of a destructive than a creative force.

Webb's essay as it stands, however, turns our idea of what constitutes virtue on its head. A healthy society sees it as residing locally – in the family and friendship and in strong local communities – and is distrustful of national government because it is distant and anonymous. To Webb, however, virtue resides in the state and in the professionals and volunteers whom it licenses, while families and individuals are weak and morally suspect.

The best thing about liberal economics is that is trusts the individual citizens. Socialists see them  as dupes of advertisers and victims of rapacious bosses, but liberals take a more confident view. Webb risks sneaking this patronising view back into the picture under the label of "social liberalism". He lends The Orange Book an authoritarian tone that may remind the reader of Larry Elliott's observation that the Thatcher years set capital free but left people more constrained than before.

So there you have The Orange Book or The Orange Part. Criticise it by all means, but if you do so from a "radical" position do please use arguments that go beyond warmed up labourism.

A Liberal Democrat approach to reforming our banks

Ed Miliband was right to raise the issue of the dominance of British banking by a small number of companies.

A Liberal Democrat solutions to this problem is supplied by Re-banking the UK: How to create a diverse lending infrastructure. This is a report written for the independent New Weather Institute by David Boyle. The work behind it was funded by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust and carried out with Susan Kramer before she became a minister.

As the institute says, this is important unfinished business for rebalancing the economy, because:

• The big banks bad at assessing and pricing the risk of lending to small businesses, and are consequently no longer geared up to do so.
• Competitor countries have small banks. In the UK, just 3 per cent of banks are local, 34 per cent in the USA, 33 per cent in Germany and 44 per cent in Japan (and they all have better SME [small and medium enterprise] track record).
• Co-operative and savings banks reduce the drain of capital from urban centres and foster regional equality because of their ability to lend to SMEs. See the recent report on stakeholder banks.
• Our lack of local banks means that our recessions are likely to be deeper than theirs, and our SMEs are at a disadvantage.

Lib Dems call for better access at Market Harborough station

If you want to catch a train going north from Market Harborough station you just walk up a ramp to the platform. But if you want to go south you have to tackle a flight of steps.

This is a problem, not just to people who use wheelchairs, but also to young families and people who are not so mobile.

The station staff will take you across the track so you can use the ramp from the other platform - I once persuaded my mother to ask if she could do this chiefly so I could accompany her - but they have to phone up first and it all takes time.

Local Liberal Democrat councillors Sarah Hill, Phil Knowles and Barbara Johnson have taken up the campaign and what transport minister Susan Kramer (also a Lib Dem) to be invited to the town to see the situation and meet campaigners.

The Leicester Mercury quotes a spokeswoman for Network Rail as saying: "A bid for improving access to the station is scheduled to be sent to the Department for Transport in the next few weeks."

Lord Bonkers' Diary: The Rutland International Arts Festival

Lord Bonkers' latest Diary was written on the final day of the Rutland International Arts Festival. At his suggestion, I am reproducing the whole Diary as single blog post now that the new edition of Liberator is with subscribers.

I sit on the terrace at Bonkers Hall, enjoying a hard-earned macaroon and cup of Darjeeling as I survey the crowds in their Sunday best and the trim marquees erected by the Queen’s Own Rutland Highlanders under the supervision of Regimental Sergeant Major Carmichael. Yes, you join me on final day of the Rutland International Arts Festival.

As ever, the Festival is taking place in the Hall and its grounds, as well as at numerous locations across the village and beyond. The performance of The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade, for instance, took place in the Bonkers’ Arms and, though the double booking with the darts match was inadvertent, I am told that, if anything, it added to the drama.

If I may offer an unbiased opinion as Chairman of the Organising Committee, Patron and occasional performer, our annual cultural festival is widely recognised by the world’s leading arts administrators as being a unique event. There is Edinburgh, they often say, and then there is Rutland. In short, it is the eel’s eyebrows.

I could not be present at the Marat/Sade myself as I was at the Home for Well-Behaved Orphans to cheer on their now traditional play. Good as it was, I must have a word with Matron in the morning as there was an awful lot of noise from under the stage towards the end of the performance and the little mites did not reappear to take their bow after it was over.

I have also had the rare pleasure of going to the pictures in my own cricket pavilion. The film I saw was Mulholland Drive, which has certainly made me see the more affluent suburbs of Leeds in a different light (high tea with the Wainwrights was never like that), even if the reels were obviously exhibited in the wrong order. Such are the riches of the week that I could equally well have seen Annette Brooke’s Lord of the Flies or The Outlaw Ian Swales at the same venue.

Elsewhere there has been a traditional huppert show on the village green for the children and, of course, there has been a rich diet of theatrical performances on offer in the Village Hall. Unfortunately, the responsibilities of office mean that the parliamentary party has been unable to put on its usual performance of Shakespeare – for many years, people would come for miles to admire Cyril Smith’s Bottom – but there has still been much to enjoy. Tomorrow I shall be taking in a production of Stephen Sondheim’s musical Anyone Can Birtwistle, which I imagine offers a guide to those ambitious to gain Labour seats in the North, and a musical by one Willy Russell entitled: John, Paul, George, Ringo... & Lorely Burt.

This year I have taken the precaution of staging all the musical events on an island in the middle of Rutland Water. It is not that I object to Susan J. Kramer and the Dakotas playing their “rock and roll” for the young people: the problem is the jazz. Meadowcroft, naturally, was all for there being a large jazz component in this year’s festival, and when I ventured to demur he started leaving copies of the Horticulturalist’s Journal about the place with various job advertisements ringed in red crayon. I took his point, which is why I shall be staying well clear of the shores of the Water this evening. For Meadowcroft will be playing in a concert with the former members of Earl Russell’s Big Band. (You may recall that I offered them sanctuary here on the Bonkers Hall Estate after their leader died. Charitable as we Bonkers have always been, I still think his brother Bob could have Done More.)

Elsewhere on this final evening of the Festival, you can hear the Elves of Rockingham Forest and their “plangent melodies and Aeolian cadences (no money returned)”, while I shall be at the performance of Beith in Venice (Benjamin Britten’s controversial last opera) that is being staged in my own Ballroom.

Some will then take their refreshment in the Bonkers’ Arms – rest assured: extra casks of Smithson & Greaves’s Northern Bitter have been laid in – or at the hog roast on the village green. Miss Fearn will be on hand to offer her assorted fancies, while Mrs Patel from the shop will no doubt be offering her delicious Norman Lamb rogan josh.

The most discerning lovers of the arts will have bought tickets for the Festival dinner, at which I happen to be the guest of honour. Talking of the celebrated Aldeburgh composer, I have a feeling that during the meal I may be prevailed upon to retell my celebrated anecdote about the chamber concert that we put on in my boathouse many years ago. There was a high tide on Rutland Water that night and strong winds; the result was that the waves burst into the boathouse, sweeping away performers and audience alike. I had the foresight to snatch up a double bass as it floated past and paddled myself to safety (accompanied by Benjamin Britten on the piano).

If that were not treat enough, the evening and the Festival will close with the traditional firework display. I like to keep the most spectacular effects under my hat – not literally, you understand – but I fully expect to see such pictures as the Bird of Liberty and a likeness of Nancy Seear painted in the midnight skies. On evenings like this, there is nowhere else one would wish to be but Rutland.

Lord Bonkers, who was Liberal MP for Rutland South West 1906-10, opened his diary to Jonathan Calder.

A new video from Susan Kramer

Liberator quizzes Tim Farron and Susan Kramer

From the new issue of Liberator:

This year’s Liberal Democrat presidential election was unexpected. The incumbent (Ros Scott) was widely assumed to be running for a second term. It seemed unlikely that Ros, a popular and successful president, would face a contest.

Then in early September, after nominations had opened, Ros suddenly announced she would not be re-standing. There was much speculation at party conference about why she had taken this decision – and why so late (see RB, page 4). There was also speculation about who would stand, given the difficulty for anyone of getting a campaign off the ground at such short notice.

Two potential candidates (Jennie Rigg and Jason Zadrozny) soon dropped out, leaving us with a choice between one MP and one ex-MP (the latter rumoured to be about to become a peer). And this is hardly surprising. With the exception of the Lib Dems’ first president (Ian Wrigglesworth), every successful candidate has been a sitting MP or peer.

The electorate is the whole party membership, voting in a postal ballot. The turnout last time (2008) was 47.8%, the previous time (2004) 47.3%. Assuming 65,000 members, a similar turnout this year would produce about 31,000 votes. Given that activists comprise – at most – about 15,000 members, ‘armchair’ members would predominate even on this low turnout.

Ballot papers have already been sent out. The deadline for returning them is 10 November and the count will take place on 13 November. In the meantime, Liberator has asked both candidates a series of questions and here are their answers.

Read the answers on the magazine's website.

Jo Swinson MP backs Susan Kramer to be next Lib Dem President

Six of the Best 100

Liberal Democrat Voice has video from a Presidential hustings with Susan Kramer and Tim Farron taking questions online and from a live audience. Me? I have just voted for Susan.

Welcome news today was the prospect of a scaling down of the baroque vetting and barring scheme that the last government put into place for anyone who wanted to volunteer to work with children. Lynne Featherstone, the minister in charge, has the details.

Times Higher Education considers an underreported aspect of the Brown report: the prospect of greater state control of the traditionally autonomous university sector.

"Both the Coalition's Spending Review and the Labour Party's response completely miss the big picture. We need an overhaul of the entire financial system if we're to avoid crashes in the future," says Susanna Mitchell on the NEF Blog. The problem, she argues, is debt in all its forms.

Rob Reynolds - What's Next? celebrates the appearance of Twitter hashtags on screen in BBC programmes.

Finally, Londonist continues its quest to find a ghost in every borough. This time it covers, alphabetically, Greenwich to Kingston.

Jonathan Fryer backs Susan Kramer for Party President

Six of the Best 97

Lib Dem Presidential candidates Tim Farron and Susan Kramer were both at the Scottish party's conference in Dunfermline on Saturday. So was Caron's Musings.

"A lot of bloggers seem to be socially inadequate, pimpled, single, slightly seedy, bald, cauliflower-nosed, young men sitting in their mother’s basements and ranting," said Andrew Marr at the Cheltenham Literary Festvial. On Liberal Democrat Voice Stephen Tall shows he is "a little bit of a hypocrite".

ffranc says has his own take on the subject: "I may be inadequate, but I am no longer pimply."

Writing on the Prospect site, Angus Kennedy defends study of the Classical world: "There is altogether too much concern to make things relevant to today, to bring them closer, when in truth we will learn more from their very distance, strangeness and, yes, irrelevance."

English Buildings hopes that Hasting Pier, recently damaged by fire, may yet be saved.

The death of the film director Roy Ward Baker is marked by Unmann-Wittering Blog.

Why Susan Kramer wants to be President of the Liberal Democrats

Lynne Featherstone backs Susan Kramer to be next Lib Dem President

Zac Goldmith on Channel 4 News this evening

Zac Goldsmith was on Channel 4 News earlier this evening to answer questions about his election expenses for the Richmond Park constituency at the general election. He gained the seat from Susan Kramer and the Liberal Democrats in a closely fought contest.

If you missed it you should watch the video of his encounter with Jon Snow. There is some background on the Channel 4 News website.

Questions raised over Zac Goldsmith's election expenses

A Channel 4 News investigation has raised questions over the election expenses of Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith in the Richmond Park constituency that he gained from Susan Kramer and the Liberal Democrats in this year's general election.

The report will be on Channel 4 at 7.30 p.m. - and no doubt on the web after that.

Britain's first political blog?

Thanks to the Wayback Machine I can bring you the diary I wrote for Whittington, Susan Kramer's cat, during the first London Mayoral election in 2000.

It has some claim to be the first British political blog. Unless, of course, you know different.

Heathrow third runway: The fight continues

Actors, poets and politicians join Greenpeace, the Woodland Trust and local residents to plant an orchard in the path of the proposed third runway at Heathrow. You may recognise Nick Clegg and Susan Kramer among those taking part.

The latest news on the campaign can be found on the Airplot site.

David Heath and David Howarth favoured in Lib Dem reshuffle

Two of the Lib Dems more respected House of Commons performers have done well out of Nick Clegg's reshuffle today.

David Heath returns to become our shadow leader of the House, the position he occupied between 2005 and 2007. It is a great shame that Nick Clegg's first act as leader was to oblige him to resign by... But don't start me on that.

David Howarth is promoted to shadow justice secretary, a post eminently suited to his talents.

Elsewhere, Susan Kramer is standing down to defend her seat (and oppose a third runway at Heathrow) and Lynne Featherstone takes up a new post as chair of the party's new technology board.

The BBC also says that John Sharkey has been appointed deputy chair of the general election campaign. In view of the robocalling debacle that followed last year's Lib Dem Conference, I hope someone with political nous keeps an eye on him.