Rafael Behr
The Liberal Democrat
conference in Bournemouth this week felt like the political equivalent of a convention for model
railway enthusiasts.
The policy debates were a fine technical replica of the
issues facing a full-scale government, but none of it seemed relevant to the
people elsewhere, heading to work on real trains.
This problem predates the Lib Dems’ eviction from office. It
expresses their historic loss of a monopoly on the idea that should give them
political identity.
There are plenty of liberals and democrats in Britain, but
they are not neatly aligned to one party.
Liberalism colonised the centre of
British politics in the 20th century by capturing the upper echelons of the big
two.
In the 1960s, Labour oversaw a social emancipation from the repressive
pettiness of class, religious and cultural establishments; in the 1980s, the
Conservatives made a dogma of free enterprise.
The two strands then
cross-fertilised. Tony Blair disavowed his party’s attachment to state control
of the economy; David Cameron imposed tolerance of ethnic and sexual diversity
on his tribe.
Those shifts have provoked symmetrical dissent.
Ukip’s growth after 2010 was driven in large part by
conservative reaction against a metropolitan elite bias in Cameron’s first
phase of “modernisation”. There was too much cultural continuity from New
Labour.
The election of Jeremy Corbyn expresses frustration that has brewed
for years on the left with New Labour’s economic continuity from Thatcherism.
Both phenomena contain a complaint about the consequences of Britain’s embrace
of liberal globalisation.
Resurgent socialism demands state coercion of markets
to level out uneven wealth distribution. A new nationalism demands protection
for an imagined indigenous identity with tighter border controls.
Tim Farron’s misfortune is to
lead a party that bears the name of an elite consensus but sees itself as a
band of plucky outsiders.
Kippers and Corbynites wave pitchforks against the
orthodoxy, while Lib Dems knock politely and ask for readmittance.
Locked out
of their own tradition, they look in at the windows and grumble that the
place is being trashed by political squatters.
Liberalism’s next chapter is being written not by Farron but
by George Osborne, thousands of miles from Bournemouth.
The chancellor is on a
visit to China with the primary purpose of drumming up investment and the
auxiliary goal of burnishing his credentials as a prime minister-in-waiting.
The trip is a statement of intent to make Britain as eager a participant in
21st-century globalisation as it was in the last century, and the one before
that.
The emblem of this mission is a prospective deal, lubricated with
Treasury guarantees, that would allow Chinese companies, in partnership with
French-owned EDF, to build a new
generation of nuclear power plants in the UK.
There
are not many developed countries that would allow a foreign state, let alone
China, to take such a significant stake in their strategic infrastructure.
But
that is Osborne’s point. He is placing a bet on Beijing as a source of global
growth, and pushing to the front of the queue. “No economy in the world is as
open to Chinese investment as the UK,” he said on arrival.
The chancellor used a speech at
Shanghai’s stock exchange to spell out his confidence that a
recent market crash there was just passing volatility; no cause for alarm.
“Whatever the headlines … we shouldn’t be running away from China,” he said.
“Through the ups and downs, let’s stick together.”
This gamble is born partly of necessity and partly of
conviction.
Osborne is not a laissez-faire fundamentalist. He has an appetite
for intervention, with a particular interest in building things.
He may have
cultivated a political brand as a fiscal disciplinarian, but he would also like
his legacy to include the honour of having refurbished Britain, making it
fighting fit for the economic future.
The two ambitions collide. Infrastructure
costs money but he has made a taboo of public borrowing [hardly, when you check the figures].
Chinese cash is meant
to bridge the gap. In exchange he offers Britain’s expertise in finance and
high-skilled services.
Yet the question of
whether authoritarian China will be a trustworthy or morally
decent shareholder in UK plc is hardly discussed.
Beijing does not plug capital
shortfalls in Europe, nor open its markets to imports, out of charity. There is
a diplomatic as well as an economic quid pro quo.
Osborne slipped a reference
to Britain’s status as a democracy into his Shanghai speech, but as a minor
cultural difference between friends, to be handled with “mutual respect”.
This
is liberalism stripped of the cumbersome apparatus of civil rights and
political freedom to be more economically streamlined.
Osborne is blessed with opposition still struggling to
cope with the stage of globalisation where rules were set to a “Washington
consensus”.
Labour hasn’t begun to get its head around the Beijing-friendly
version.
Jeremy Corbyn’s only apparent beef with the Chinese Communist party is
that its embrace of “market philosophy” has been bad for workers’ health and
safety [rubbish, and imagine if he had suggested all of this].
The Lib Dems will complain from the sidelines about the environment,
civil liberties and constitutional reform, but that is pressure-group stuff.
They are in no state to posit a rival governing creed.
The New Labour settlement
accepted that government could not tame globalisation but might divert some of
the proceeds to spend on public services and compensate those left behind with
benefits or tax credits to top up wages.
The financial crisis exposed the
brittleness of that bargain. It revealed the narrowness of the Treasury’s tax
base: its reliance on the City, private debt and a housing bubble to simulate
rising prosperity.
Recession and stagnation then laid bare a deeper cultural
alienation from the whole arrangement – grievances that are as much about
national identity, migration and job insecurity as they are about take-home
pay.
Those problems haven’t gone away,
but there is little sign that Osborne is engaged with them. They threaten the
consensus that has governed Britain for a generation, of which he is the
custodian.
Without debate or challenge, the chancellor is steering the country
into uncharted waters. He is putting a lot of faith in Beijing, without a
backwards glance for Bournemouth.
There are liberals in all parties who should
find that unsettling.
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