The road to slavery is paved with Liberals: part deux

Lets start with the end, the Liberal Democrats are a capitalist party, not a reformist party, not a bourgeois workers party, a straight up capitalist party. As such it should be obvious they are not a substantial alternative to current mainstream orthodoxy.

Due to their intellectual inheritance as well as their recent past they are capable of showing a left face. Labour’s rightward drift has made it easier for them to manoeuvre this way. The most obvious example was their presence on February 15th. Despite barely gracing the anti-war movement they were its chief beneficiaries (we're talking about you, Sarah Teather).

The Liberal Democrats have become Britain’s third party thanks to the quirks of the current electoral system, which they have long promised to get rid of. They were born from the SDP-Liberal Alliance. In 1983 the Alliance threatened to electorally eclipse the Labour Party. In 1988, after more disappointing results, the bulk (so to speak) of both parties decided to merge.

The reasons this happened are not important (or interesting). The Liberal Democrats held on to several of their seats in 1992. Their strength was based in mostly in rural constituencies and 1997 they benefited from the wave of anti-tory tactical voting, doubling their size in parliament. They tacked left, at least in rhetoric. Promising a 50% top rate of income tax to pay for improvements in education gave them a nice, well defined left face (although today we have a 50% top rate of tax that pays for nothing).

The Labour Party, however, won a thumping majority of seats, depriving the then leader Paddy Ashdown of his time in the sun (don’t worry, he was made the uncrowned king of Bosnia). The Liberal Democrats proved themselves in local council chambers. In the 21st century, as the Labour Party’s base crumbled they often governed in coalition with the Tories, which should have belied any left-wing reputation they had.

They have been enthusiastic privateers and service slashers. A good example, with a happy ending, is in Leeds, where the council attempted to rob £6,000 each from bin workers wages. The bin workers struck back. The council risked public health by holding out in the face of a solid, well-supported strike for several weeks, before admitting defeat. If David Cameron makes them junior partners in government this is what they’d do on a grand scale.

But this is not surely why they are enjoying a surge in support. We have had thirty years plus of neo-liberal government, both Labour and Tory. Despite being deeply unpopular, neo-liberalism has resisted all formal democratic attempts to change or remove it. Democracy as we know it today is broken.

For several years now Gordon Brown has been a lame duck and David Cameron Prime Minister in waiting. All the smooth calculations of the political class have been thrown off by one TV show. The Liberal Democrats will probably lose a fair chunk of their new support before votes are cast, but I reckon they will hold onto a significant number of those who agree with Nick.

There’s no point predicting a surge of Bolshevik magma beneath a thin Liberal crust. Bolshevism is our business and our responsibility (“our” in the broad sense). But the surge in Liberal Democrat support represents, in its best instants, a healthy desire to twit the ruling class.