Lib Dems stop Tories from taking Housing Benefit from the Under 25s

One bit of very good news on welfare front - the Liberal Democrats have held firm and told George Osborne where to shove his ridiculous plan to take Housing Benefit away from under 25s, according to yesterday's Observer. Nor is he getting to freeze benefits as he would have liked.

The piece has a great quote from Greg Mulholland, Liberal Democrat MP for Leeds North West who says:

The Lib Dems would not stand for cutting housing benefits for under 25-year-olds which would not only be unjust and unfair but would have unacceptable consequences for many young people. Neither do we think a freeze in working-age benefits is acceptable.

He went on to say a phrase which made me cringe a little "having spent the last year making sure that benefits are directed to those who really need them most". Actually, we have taken them away from people who really do need them. Ok, it's been as bad as it would have been had the Tories had free rein, but I really wish we wouldn't say self-justifiying things like that because they aren't true and they don't wash.


Whenever George Osborne is due to get up on his feet, there are understandable nerves throughout the Party. There's inevitably going to be stuff in the Autumn Statement that we as a party don't like. The Social Liberal Forum has issued a statement today making it clear what it thinks - no more welfare cuts, and no agreement on spending plans after the next election. I can't see much to disagree with in what they say.

The Social Liberal Forum would not support a Government that takes regressive spending decisions, on the welfare budget in particular, that will go beyond the term of this Parliament.  There is no basis for taking such decisions in the policy of the Liberal Democrats, nor in the Coalition Agreement.  With living standards already squeezed and with the considerable uncertainty associated with the introduction of the Universal Credit – a measure that needs to succeed and will inevitably have consequences that will require adjustment – it would be irresponsible for further such steps to be taken.

It is therefore up to the Government to produce an overall spending package that is functional, that will not further hold the economy back, and that is fair. Senior Liberal Democrats have always clearly stated that addressing a widening deficit through further spending cuts, not least those that harm the spending power of the poorest, would lead to an unacceptable downward spiral of low growth and higher deficits. If the state of the economy leaves the Coalition with a choice between investing in future growth by easing the deficit reduction programme and cutting support to the most vulnerable people in society, it can only choose the former.

We can't put our name towards any further benefit cuts. We've already gone too far in that direction. Nor can there be any slacking in the raising of the tax threshold. At the other end, I want to see more being done on taxing the wealthiest. A mansion tax would be great, but I'd take anything that actually works that means that the well off feel a bit of the pinch. I say that as someone who had to stop claiming Child Benefit today. I am not whinging. It was only fair that I do so. It's a bit of a shame that the only time that my husband has been a higher rate tax payer in his entire working life coincides with the time Child Benefit is being cut, especially as he's had just 6 years' notice that he'll have to wait an extra year before he gets his State Pension. But, the point is, we can deal with it. We are not going to suffer in any sense and it's only right that we should do our bit. There are plenty wealthier than us who could do with digging a bit deeper, too.

Mind you, a sure fire way of making sure the country was rolling in money would be a tax on journalists' whinges about how Leveson is the end of a free press and how they're all being suppressed like it's North Korea... I have never heard such a load of self-serving, petulant nonsense in my whole life.

Social Liberal Forum Scotland conference in pictures

On Saturday 23rd June, the Social Liberal Forum Scotland conference took place in Glasgow. Sadly I couldn't go due to illness, but Norman Fraser took some lovely pictures of the event. Enjoy.

Willie Rennie chatting

Don't we all?

Is everyone in this photo awake?

 Ben Colburn

Robert Brown speaks on our policy problem

The Questions: Ben Colburn's Social Liberal Values Part 4

Ben Colburn, pictured above (credit to Norman Fraser) was a Research Fellow at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and Affiliated Lecturer, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Cambridge until September 2010 when he became a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Glasgow. He recently gave a lecture to the Social Liberal Forum (Scotland) on the subject of Social Liberal Values. From Monday to Wednesday, you've seen the main body of the lecture. This is his appendix in which he reports on the questions he took from the floor of the event. Enjoy - and as I'm away on my holidays, play nicely in the comments threads If you missed it, you might want to also read Robert Brown's speech from the same event.


I am really grateful to Ben for letting me publish this in full. I hope it stimulates and informs debate within the party, not just in Scotland, as we seek to develop our policies for 2015 and beyond.

The Questions

The preceding is a slightly revised version of a talk I gave at the meeting of the Social Liberal Forum (Scotland) on 23 June 2012. It summarises, and incorporates, material from my essay ‘Liberalism for the People – the Orange Book challenged’, in The Little Yellow Book edited by RobertBrown and Nigel Lindsay, and published by Liberal Futures in March 2012. Those who want a little more detail on the ideas above should get their hands on a copy; they will also find, elsewhere in the volume, a set of cracking essays which explore different theoretical aspects of social Liberalism, and develop (better than I have) some specific policy proposals on these foundations. Those who want a lot more detail on these ideas might want to track down my monograph Autonomy and Liberalism (New York: Routledge, 2010), which will hopefully be coming out in paperback soon.

To conclude, I want to reflect on some of the comments that this talk elicited from the Social Liberal Forum meeting. 

Complex foundations

 One comment, characteristically sharp, came from Elspeth Attwooll. Elspeth agreed with my core contention that we should elevate social liberty above its three companions, and that the right way to characterise the relationship between them is by saying that personal, political and economic liberty are instrumentally valuable for social liberty. She worried, though, that it hasn’t so far been made properly clear what it means to say that something is an ‘instrumental’ value; and she complained (very politely, of course!) that it’s difficult to see how social liberty is supposed to fit together with responsibility, on the one hand, and the purportedly foundational value of autonomy, on the other. Aren’t things just getting a bit too complex here?

In response to Elspeth’s question, I’ve somewhat clarified above what I mean by ‘instrumental value’, and in particular I’ve distinguished it from ‘conditional value’. (The former is a relation between two political aims: one aim or value is instrumental when it is advanced as a way of achieving some other aim or value. The latter is what we mean when we say that something is valuable only under certain conditions.) I think I’ve also made it a bit clearer how the whole theory fits together. At the foundation lies the ideal of individual autonomy, which means an individual deciding for herself what is valuable, and successfully living her life in accordance with that decision. For political purposes, this ideal has two components: social liberty, and individual responsibility. A political programme based on autonomy must support and promote both of these as far as possible: they are, we might say, instrumentally but unconditionally valuable.[1] And doing that requires that we take a stance toward to the other forms of liberty: personal, political, and economic. These often support both social liberty and individual responsibility, but not always. So, they are instrumentally and conditionally valuable. Their pursuit in politics must be constrained by a supportive context to ensure that they enhance, rather than detracting from, individual autonomy. My five key questions are intended to articulate this constraint in a way which allows us to audit particular policies to see how far they match up to the fundamental social Liberal principles set out here.

So far, so good. But I think there’s a deeper problem raised by Elspeth’s question, which has to do with the role of complex theory in practical politics.

In one sense, I don’t think we need to be afraid of complexity. Social and political life is complex; we should expect that an adequate political theory will mirror that complexity. As Liberals, we should eschew the tendency we see in other political movements towards procrusteanism; that is, insisting upon an over-simple theory of politics, and twisting the evidence and the reality to try to make it fit.

Nevertheless, theoretical complexity does pose us a practical political problem: how do we articulate these basic social Liberal principles so that they resonate with voters? As it happens, I don’t think that the theory I’ve sketched is so complex as to preclude communication by a talented political commentator. Take the core concepts: the importance of responsibility; the fact that different people’s liberties, and different types of liberty, can come into conflict; and the value of someone shaping their own life according to their judgement about what is valuable that the ideal of individual autonomy asserts. These concepts, though not always framed in the terms I’ve used here, are ones which most people grapple with daily. The problem is that this quotidian political thought has become completely disconnected, in most people’s eyes, from the political process in Britain. In my essay in The Little Yellow Book I suggested that this depressing fact offers us Liberal Democrats an important opportunity. We are justly proud of our experience in community politics. The logical next step in that journey is to start talking about political theory, and connecting with the political thinking that people don’t realise they’re doing. This will help to rebuild trust and electoral success at the grass roots. Apart from anything else, it will show that we are ambitious, both for our Liberal ideas and for the good sense of the British population. 

The common good

 A second worry was articulated by various participants, including Robert Brown, Paul Coleshill, and Allan Heron. Social Liberalism is about recognising the importance of the common good; one of our main disagreements with economic Liberals and with neo-liberal Conservatives concerns their focus on the atomistic individual, to the exclusion of communal ends. Am I not guilty of the same thing, we might ask, by having at the foundations of my proposed social Liberalism the individualistic ideal of autonomy?

This is a penetrating question, and one to which I have no quick answer. All I can really hope to do here is to set out my current thinking on the matter, but it’s clear that this is a point which I (and social Liberals more general) need to work out much more carefully than I have time to right now.

The first thing to say is: the fact that at its roots my theory rests on an ideal of the good life for individuals doesn’t make it atomistic or ignorant of the common weal. As I said above, the Liberal recognises that individuals are of necessity embedded in a rich network of communal life: families, groups of friends, neighbourhoods churches, schools, universities, campaigning groups, political parties, and society more broadly. So, taking individuals seriously just means taking seriously the communal life to which they are committed. The libertarian view that treating individuals seriously means thinking that there’s no such thing as society – to allude to a famous misquotation of Margaret Thatcher – is simply mistaken about human nature: the atomistic and autarchical individuals which it posits do not, never have, and never will exist.

Above, in my discussion of responsibility, I indicate what I think this means. (That section, incidentally, has been somewhat bumped up in response to the questions I’ve referred to.) Let me repeat, and elaborate, here. If we think autonomy is important, then we’re going to take seriously people’s judgements about what makes their lives go well. Most people do place great importance on communal life. So, the social Liberal principles I’ve stated above imply that Liberals should uphold and support communal life and the common good, because of the importance it has for individuals. In particular, we should do whatever we can to support and extend citizens’ opportunities to seek value through engaging in public service, and by wholehearted community action.

There’s also a point here about responsibility. One of the things it means to be socially embedded – born into a particular society at a particular time – is that we necessarily incur responsibilities: responsibilities to our families and other educators, to the society and state which provides the framework within which we live our lives. These responsibilities are inescapable, and a central part of who we are. Above, I said that an important aspect of the ideal of autonomy is guaranteeing that people are responsible for how their lives go. In the present context, that means enabling people to recognise, and live up to, the responsibilities they have to their fellow citizens. Once again, for the social Liberal, taking individuals seriously means doing the same for the common good.

Will my interlocutors be happy with this? Possibly not. (Robert Brown wasn’t, when I talked to him afterwards.) ‘Why not just add ‘the common good’ in as an independent foundational value alongside individual autonomy?’ they might say. ‘Doesn’t this individualistic foundation concede too much to our opponents?’

I disagree, for two reasons. One problem with the proposal just essayed is that it risks a return to a la carte liberalism; that is (to repeat myself) something we must avoid if we are to be intellectually and politically credible. The other is that, while I share the view that the common good is tremendously important, I am mindful that appeals to it are frequently used to disguise policies which, on closer inspection, turn out to be deeply illiberal.

Let me explain why. To start with, I should reiterate that the individualist foundations I’ve laid out in this essay do indeed place a concern for the common good at the heart of social Liberal politics. Everyone has an inescapable responsibility to do their part in supporting a political system which guarantees for everyone the basic conditions of autonomy. It’s a sort of quid-pro-quo: we recognise that the importance of autonomy gives each individual considerable freedom and sovereignty over her own life, but only as much as is consistent with showing the same regard for all of her fellow citizens, and guaranteeing them the same privileges that she herself is claiming.

To insist that there is still something lacking is therefore to argue that our conception of the common good must go beyond this impartial concern for every citizen’s chance of living an autonomous life. That would result, in effect, in hard-wiring into our political system some specific judgements about what makes people’s lives go well. In reply to a question by Paul Coleshill I noted that Liberals are in other contexts rightly scornful of regimes which dictate ideals to their citizenry. We regard the imposition on an individual of a conception of the good life (whether that is by a state, by a church, by a family, or by social opinion) as one of the forms of oppression which Liberal politics is here to oppose. Treating the common good as something valuable in itself (rather than, as above, deriving it from the need to show equal regard for everyone’s autonomy), hence worth giving independent weight to in our political theory, seems to me not essentially different. John Stuart Mill, when remarking on the problem that a pure democracy doesn’t necessarily protect minority rights any better than a tyrant does, referred to the ‘tyranny of the majority’.  We might, similarly, talk here about the ‘tyranny of the common good’, and ask: how far should a Liberal society compel people to contribute to these communal ends if they themselves don’t see any value there? Our answer should be: no more than is absolutely necessary to secure the basic conditions of a good life for everyone.

I’m not certain of this. It’s hard to work out where to draw the shifting boundaries of Liberalism, and I would be delighted to be persuaded that my worries are unfounded. Nevertheless, I think that I have to stick to my guns. I’ve shown how – using just the foundational concern for individual autonomy and the derivative commitments to liberty and responsibility that it implies – one can generate a substantial political role for the idea of the common good. So, there’s unlikely to be any policy disagreement here. Someone might still want to complain that I’m still not giving the common good sufficient centrality. To substantiate that charge, though, they bear a burden of proof. That is, they must show that hard-wiring such judgements into politics can (the worries I’ve expressed here notwithstanding) be part of a consistent and rigorous social Liberalism. I don’t see how it can. Hence, I think the more modest social Liberalism presented here is our best bet.

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[1] Actually, I should say that they are constitutively valuable rather than instrumentally valuable, for they are components of the ideal of autonomy, and not independent means to that end – but the distinction needn’t worry us here.

From social liberty to liberal policy: Ben Colburn's Social Liberal Values Part 3

Ben Colburn, pictured above (credit to Norman Fraser) was a Research Fellow at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and Affiliated Lecturer, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Cambridge until September 2010 when he became a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Glasgow. He recently gave a lecture to the Social Liberal Forum (Scotland) on the subject of Social Liberal Values. From Monday to Thursday this week, at 10 am, I'll put up a chapter of his lecture. Enjoy - and as I'm away on my holidays, play nicely in the comments threads If you missed it, you might want to also read Robert Brown's speech from the same event.

From social liberty to liberal policy

The discussion so far has been rather abstract. What we need is a way to convert social Liberal theory into a set of practical yardsticks by which we can judge proposed policies. In what follows, I suggest five principled questions we can use to decide what the truly social Liberal platform should include.

The first source of inspiration comes from the relationship between autonomy and liberty, as described above. I’ve said this already, but it’s worth repeating: to say that the value of personal, political and economic liberty is only conditional and instrumental is not to say that they aren’t vital parts of the autonomous life. People’s lives do generally go better if they enjoy such liberty. For one thing, it gives them the space to determine the shape of their lives for themselves, rather than having it imposed on them by state direction, social sanction, or the shackles of poverty. For another, people are generally better judges of what’s in their own interest than an outside agency can be, whether that agency is government, commercial interest, or just other interfering citizens. Obviously, people sometimes make bad decisions, but so do governments; on the whole it’s better to leave people to get on with things themselves.

On the other hand, for the reasons given above, guaranteeing personal, political, and economic liberty isn’t always enough. They must go hand in hand with other factors if they are to support what really matters, which is to say the ideal of individual autonomy underwriting social liberty. Merely removing coercion, or giving people options within a market place, won’t be enough. Most importantly, those forms of liberty aren’t much use if individuals don’t have access to full and accurate information about their options, or the wherewithal to understand that information. Under those circumstances the exercise of uncoerced choice (whether in private life, in politics, or in the marketplace) will in the long run tend to degrade the quality of the options available, rather than enhance it.

So, the social Liberal will echo the economic Liberal in arguing for a substantial degree of personal, political, and economic liberty. But this must go hand in hand with measures to secure the sort of supportive context which avoids the problems I’ve just sketched, on pain of self-defeat. This means, when deciding on our social Liberal agenda, that we must ask the following: 

1. Does this genuinely give people greater personal, political, or economic liberty, by increasing the extent and quality of their options? 

Some policies apparently motivated by the desire to extend choice in fact do nothing of the sort – take the privatization of the railway network, for example. True social Liberal policies will be ones that don’t merely appear to extend liberty, but actually do so, by genuinely increasing the range and quality of the options people enjoy.

Still, as I said above, the bare possession of those options is worthless absent the conditions of social liberty which ensure that people are able to take advantage of them. The crucial condition here is information and understanding. So, we must also ask: 

2. Will people have the information and understanding necessary to make effective use of their choices? 

If our answer to either question is ‘no’, then the proposal should be rejected, or at least shelved till we’ve provided other social or institutional structures which provide the necessary guarantees.

The second source of inspiration for our social Liberal tests of policy comes from an aspect of autonomy that I’ve not emphasised so far, namely a concern for individual responsibility.

As this point, many will recoil in horror. Talk of ‘responsibility’ in contemporary politics usually masks something distasteful and illiberal, for example the demonization of recipients of state benefits, which is merely a modern echo of old Toryish distinctions between the deserving and the undeserving poor. When it’s not, it signals vacuity. (Witness David Cameron’s vague appeal for an ethos of ‘social responsibility’ in the wake of the 2011 English riots, or Ed Milliband’s contentless ‘responsible capitalism’ as the solution to the banking crisis.) Reflecting on this, we might rightly think that the rhetoric of responsibility is only ever an attempt to disguise a lack of fresh thinking, with a tabloid-pleasing moralistic twist.

It is high time, then, to reclaim the concept of responsibility from the moralizers of both left and right. We must, because responsibility is as important a component of the ideal of autonomy as is social liberty. To see why, ask yourself what it really means for people to live their lives successfully? What does it mean to own one’s life?

The answer is: the autonomous individual is responsible for her life: she takes charge of her destiny and shapes her life as she sees fit. People are responsible when their lives go well because they make it so. Therefore, a Liberal should seek to guarantee the conditions under which individuals are genuinely responsible for their lives.

As before, this implies that there is an important role for personal, political, and economic liberty in social Liberalism. People aren’t responsible for lives which are characterized by coercion and oppression, so we should seek to eliminate those. It is good that people are able to take responsibility by contributing to the communal political enterprise through democratic institutions. It’s good that people can shape their lives through free choices in the marketplace: they thereby exercise responsibility in forming their lives, and claim responsibility for at least some of the consequences of their choices. Furthermore – and this takes a little further than I’ve argued so far – respect for responsibility means that the social Liberal must seek to reduce how far people’s lives are dominated by state power: dependency and domination preclude true responsibility.

A devotee of The Orange Book could happily agree to all of this, I think. There are, however, three important elements to individual responsibility which are usually missed, both by the conservative proponents of responsibility, and by the economic Liberal.

First, shrinking the state is never enough by itself. Merely turning a given public service over to the private or voluntary sector won’t solve anything. Dependency on charity, or domination by powerful commercial forces, is absolutely no better than state power. (Indeed, it’s a bit worse, given the weakened accountability.)

Second, if we are going to show proper respect for responsibility – rather than just paying lip service to that idea to provide some spurious justification for demonizing recipients of state benefits – we must also, on pain of inconsistency, seek to eliminate those factors which cause people disadvantage for reasons outwith their control. Many lives are blighted because of entrenched disadvantages for which people can’t be held responsible: their family and educational backgrounds; racist or sexist discrimination; lack of employment opportunities, and so on. To the extent that people’s opportunities are shaped by these factors, rather than their own choices, they lack responsibility for their lives. Social Liberal values require that we seek to eliminate these malign factors. It won’t escape the reader that this requirement has very substantial, and radical, policy implications. It means, for example, designing our education system so as to eliminate, as far as we can, the impact of different family backgrounds upon children’s life chances.

Third, control over one’s own life is not all there is to responsibility. Another equally important element is living up to one’s obligations to others in society. Some economic Liberals treat individuals as atoms – essentially unconnected from any other human beings in society. The social Liberal recognises that things are more complex than that. We are all individuals, but we are individuals who are situated in social and familial networks and groups, which support and partially constitute our identities. Part of what it means to be embedded in a social context like this is that we all have responsibilities and commitments, to each other and to the common good, which are as deep a part of our individual identities as anything else. In particular, we each have a responsibility to uphold and promote the opportunity for others to live a worthwhile life: that is, to decide for themselves what is valuable, and successfully to live their lives in accordance with that decision.

That might sound horribly onerous. How do we, as individuals, live up to such weighty obligations without them crushing any chance for us to pursue all the rich and diverse projects we want to pursue in life? Can the Liberal reconcile the need for public responsibility with scope for private autonomy? The answer is ‘yes’. Public services, communally funded and delivered, allow us to meet those obligations in a way which leaves space for us to live our lives as we see fit in other respects. But that requires that we think about the provision of public services as part of the common good. It is in the public interest to have strong public services because it helps all of us: not just those who need their support at times of vulnerability, but also those of us who are liberated by the communal discharge of our individual responsibilities to each other. What remains, of course, is an individual responsibility to uphold this common good. It is important, when deciding how to deliver our public services, that the Liberal doesn’t lose sight (as The Orange Book sometimes seems to) of the fact that they always secure an important common good, even for individuals who – fortunately! – aren’t at a particular time vulnerable and therefore actively reliant on those services.

Drawing together these reflections on responsibility, we get three further key questions which we should ask of any proposed Liberal policy: 

3. Does this proposal reduce dependency and domination, thereby enhancing people’s responsibility for the way their lives go? 

4. Does it go hand in hand with measures which seek to eliminate, rather than entrench, pervasive factors which shape people’s lives for reasons that lie beyond their control? 

5. Does it protect the provision of public services as a common good, in all our interests? 

As with the first two questions listed above, if our answer is ‘no’ to any of these, then, once again, the social Liberal should reject the proposal.

I realise that this is just a sketch, but I think it is a helpful starting point. It offers a useful and consistent test for assessing how Liberal a proposed policy really is, by offering principled yardsticks whereby particular policies can be ‘audited’ for their consistency with core social Liberal principles.

Moreover, from the point of view of someone who wants to defend a robust, rigorous social Liberalism free of a la carte-ism, it also performs the cheeky manoeuvre of taking the concepts at the core of other people’s views – personal and economic liberty, from the Orange Book Liberal, and responsibility, from the conservatives of left and right – and showing how, when they’re properly and clearly understood, they lead in a much more radical direction than their proponents believe. That is why social Liberalism is not merely one way amongst others of understanding our shared Liberal political heritage; it’s the best we have.

Defining Social Liberalism: Ben Colburn's Social Liberal Values Part 2

Ben Colburn, pictured above (credit to Norman Fraser) was a Research Fellow at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and Affiliated Lecturer, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Cambridge until September 2010 when he became a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Glasgow. He recently gave a lecture to the Social Liberal Forum (Scotland) on the subject of Social Liberal Values. From Monday to Thursday this week, at 10 am, I'll put up a chapter of his lecture. Enjoy - and as I'm away on my holidays, play nicely in the comments threads If you missed it, you might want to also read Robert Brown's speech from the same event.

Defining Social Liberalism

So far, I’ve examined David Laws’s attempt to defend and characterise economic Liberalism as the balanced and harmonious pursuit of four types of liberty: personal, political, economic, and social. Laws uses this vision as a way of arguing for the restoration of economic liberty to centre stage in Liberal Democrat policy, but his argument is flawed: in our imperfect world, we can’t pursue all four types of liberty at the same time, because they are not mutually supportive.

This realization allows us to see what we must do to define social Liberalism. I suggest we understand that position as characterized by two contrasts with Laws’s economic Liberalism. First, social Liberals recognise that we have to make hard decisions, and that we shouldn’t ignore the fact that in a non-ideal world these types of liberty can come into conflict. Second, rather than Laws’s lionization of economic liberty at the cost of the other forms of liberty (for that is, in effect, what his proposal amounts to), the social Liberal takes social liberty to be the heart of a truly Liberal programme. I suggest, in what follows, that this is because it is the main political manifestation of individual autonomy, the central Liberal ideal of the good life.

Let me expand on this by elaborating two reasons to give social Liberty this pride of place.

The first is that the other types of liberty – personal, politics, and economic – have only conditional and instrumental value. Their value is conditional, because they lack value if they’re not combined with social liberty. And their value is instrumental because they are worthy of Liberal concern only because, and insofar as, they promote social liberty.

So, take personal liberty, the absence of coercion and oppression. It’s possible to be totally free in this sense, while still being unable to do anything substantive or interesting with one’s life. Consider, for example, someone who finds herself on an uninhabited desert island. She enjoys perfect personal liberty because there’s nobody around to coerce or oppress her. Nevertheless, she lacks social liberty, because she lacks the external resources to do anything more interesting than making sandcastles and cracking open the odd coconut; under those circumstances, her extensive personal liberty is useless to her in living the sort of life we think the Liberal citizen deserves.

Or, take political liberty. Democratic participation is undoubtedly a good thing, but it’s cold comfort if the material necessities of life aren’t provided, and no use if the citizenry lack the information and understanding to use their political liberty effectively.

A similar point can be made for economic liberty. The market is frequently a powerful tool of progress, and offers participants the opportunity to exchange goods and services to their mutual advantage. But this freedom, to make contracts and exchange private property, is no good to someone who is locked out of that marketplace by poverty, or entrenched disadvantage of some other sort. Against a background of considerable inequalities in wealth, economic liberty is either a figleaf for naked self-advantage (the freedom to climb the Forbes rich list, as Nigel Lindsay put it), or an insulting attempt to mask the way in which the disadvantaged are unable to participate in economic, social and political life on fair terms.

So, there’s a strong case to be made for thinking that social liberty is really the fundamental strand of Liberalism: it provides the conditions under which the other kinds of liberty are generally valuable, because of their conditional and instrumental status. Those kinds of liberty are genuinely important, but they are important because they are usually supportive of our deeper ideals. When we push policies promoting political, or economic, or personal liberty, it therefore behoves us to be sure that we do so in a way which empowers people and extends their social liberty. Otherwise, such policies are at best irrelevant, and at worse actively retrograde to our true aims.

The second reason to focus on social liberty is, as I intimated above, its close connection with the value of individual autonomy. In some of my comments above, I’ve referred to the sort of life that a liberal citizen should expect to lead. Let me make those hints explicit. At the heart of social Liberalism, in my view, is an ideal of the good life; that is, a life lived with autonomy. The autonomous individual is someone who decides for herself what is a  valuable life, and successfully lives her life in accordance with that decision. Being able to do so requires a lot in terms of personal, political and economic liberty. But what’s absolutely central to it is the effective ability to use one’s freedom to shape one’s life as one sees fit. Hence the central importance of social liberty for the social Liberal.[1]

So, let me recap. My proposal is that we should understand social Liberalism as a political position which recognises that the good life is one in which individuals decide for themselves what is valuable and successfully live their lives in accordance with that decision. This ideal of autonomy is, at root, what justifies the social Liberal’s focus on social liberty, and it explains why the other notions of liberty must take second place. Personal, political and economic liberty are all extremely important, because of their role in supporting autonomy – but their doing so is conditional upon the conditions of social liberty having been secured first, and their value is anyway only instrumental with respect to our deeper ideals.

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[1] I’ve written about this ideal of autonomy elsewhere; if you’re interested in the philosophical details, you can find most of them in my book Autonomy and Liberalism (New York: Routledge, 2010). Another Liberal thinker who defended this ideal, although he called it ‘individuality’ rather than ‘autonomy’, was John Stuart Mill, in his magnificent 1859 essay On Liberty.

Against the Orange Book: Ben Colburn's Social Liberal Values Lecture Part 1

Ben Colburn, pictured above (credit to Norman Fraser) was a Research Fellow at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge and Affiliated Lecturer, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Cambridge until September 2010 when he became a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Glasgow. He recently gave a lecture to the Social Liberal Forum (Scotland) on the subject of Social Liberal Values. From Monday to Thursday this week, at 10 am, I'll put up a chapter of his lecture. Enjoy - and as I'm away on my holidays, play nicely in the comments threads If you missed it, you might want to also read Robert Brown's speech from the same event.

Part 1 - Against the Orange Book

What is a social Liberal? What are the values that underpin social Liberalism, and distinguish it from other political creeds, both within and outwith the Liberal family? And – most relevantly, for a meeting launching the Social Liberal Forum in Scotland – what makes social Liberalism better? This essay aims to answer those questions, and also to make a start at showing how those foundational values can be put to practical work in developing policies and informing practical politics.

To start with, however, I want to focus on our rivals. Effectively, this means the position set out in The Orange Book,[1] especially by David Laws in his keynote essay ‘Reclaiming Liberalism: a liberal agenda for the Liberal Democrats’. There is much that is wise and liberal in Laws’s essay, and in the Orange Book more widely. Nevertheless, seeing what’s wrong with Laws’s position seems to me the best way of motivating, and helping to characterise, a social Liberal alternative to the economic Liberalism articulated there. As we will see, the theoretical terrain is a good deal more complex than a simple opposition between two clear, distinct and homogeneous rivals; but we have to start somewhere.

The best thing in Laws’s essay is his injunction against a la carte Liberalism; that is, a political position not motivated by sound and consistent Liberal principles, but rather composed of a mish-mash of apparently worthy causes, adopted piecemeal with no overall theoretical framework. Laws is right that this is a bad thing. The danger of such an approach is that, while each of these policies might seem well-intentioned in context, it leads a fractured and contradictory picture overall. The chance of a clear and distinctive Liberal voice is lost, and the failure to articulate clear general principles underlying our policies gives the impression of their being an opportunistic pick and mix, even if they’re not.

So far so good. The social Liberal should agree that we must avoid a la carte Liberalism. Nevertheless, we part company with his positive proposal for how to do so.

Laws identifies four central commitments of the Liberal tradition: personal liberty, political liberty, economic liberty, and social liberty. The first consists in freedom from interference and coercion; the second in participation in the political system; the third in private property rights and the ability to participate in a free market; and the fourth in possessing the necessary internal and external resources to use the other types of freedom for individual and societal betterment. Laws’s view is that Liberalism should be concerned with the balanced combination of these four elements. However (he says) in the twentieth century the Liberal and Liberal Democrat parties consistently downplayed the importance of economic liberty, eventually leaving the Conservatives of Margaret Thatcher to become its champions. In the interests of restoring balance, Laws argues, we must reclaim economic liberty, and return it to centre stage in Liberal Democrat thinking. This is the guiding spirit of many of the essays in the Orange Book as a whole, most of which in one way or another argue for the incorporation of free market mechanisms into the organisation and delivery of public services.

The problem with Laws’s argument is that the four strands that Laws identifies are unhappy companions. True, they have all been elements of the Liberal heritage, albeit in different combinations and with different emphasis at different times. That history, however, doesn’t mean that all four elements can unproblematically now be combined. In fact, the opposite is true. To take one example, unconstrained economic liberty tends over time to lead to large inequalities in wealth and influence. Such inequalities impede political liberty because of their negative impact on people’s ability to participate in the political system on an even footing. To take another example, trying to promote social liberty sometimes leads to people having less personal liberty than they might otherwise have. Laws himself quotes a speech by Joseph Chamberlain in 1885, in which the latter evokes exactly this sort of tension:

The great problem of our civilization is still unresolved. We have to account for, and to grapple with, the mass of misery and destitution in our midst, co-existent as it is with the evidence of abundant wealth and teeming prosperity. It is a problem which some men would set aside with references to the eternal laws of supply and demand, to the necessity of freedom of contract, and to the sanctity of every private right of property. But gentlemen, these phrases are the convenient cant of selfish wealth.

In other words, in our current unjust world, we can’t pursue all four types of liberty at the same time. We can’t always have all the freedoms we might want, because in a non-ideal world the different types of liberty aren’t always mutually supportive. So, the assumption that they can be harmoniously combined and pursued in tandem is unrealistic, and it’s irresponsible to sell a political position by pretending that they can. It’s also dangerous, because it conceals the costs of giving one of the four strands greater emphasis: emphasising economic liberty risks diminishing social and political liberty, and we’d better not pretend otherwise. All of which is to say: if (as we should) we take seriously Laws’s injunctions against a la carte Liberalism, we should worry that his version of economic Liberalism is guilty of precisely the sins against which he rightly inveighs.

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[1] The Orange Book ed. Paul Marshall & David Laws (London: Profile Books, 2004).

Social Liberal Forum Scotland event in tweets

On Saturday, Social Liberal Forum Scotland members met in Glasgow for a day of brainstorming and lectures. I was gutted that illness prevented me from being there but I am promised all sorts of goodies which I will share with you over the next few days.

Also, Cllr Robert Brown tweeted throughout the day. With his permission, I have made a Storify thingy which gives the main points of lectures on social liberal values, the Coalition, market and Willie Rennie's speech. Enjoy.

Robert Brown tells Social Liberal Forum: we must hold firm to our roots and hold our red lines

Robert Brown is, as you know, along with Shirley Williams, Doctor Who, the Pandas at Edinburgh Zoo and Michael Schumacher, one of this blog's heroes. His sound liberal values, his intrinsic sense of justice and his general all round wisdom snd fierce intelligence make him worth listening to.

It actually pained me to speak against him during the debate on the Coalition at the weekend.Some said he called me an unbalanced monster in his reply, but I can confirm that this was not the case, even if you believe that I am.

I also ditched Robert for Nick Clegg and Willie Rennie on Friday evening. The Social Liberal Forum, where Robert was debating Chief Whip Alistair Carmichael on the Coalition clashed with the Scottish Women Liberal Democrats Reception. 

Thankfully, I have a copy of the full speech that Robert gave which is printed below. It's full of good sense and ideas. Enjoy. And if you want more of the same, buy the book.....

I joined the Scottish Liberal Party in 1965. Since then, I have seen great triumph and demoralising setback, exhilarating national by election victories and local ones with results in two figures. I have been a foot soldier, a Party Officer, a Councillor, an MSP and a Minister – and I hope to be a Councillor again in May.

But there has been nothing in my political lifetime to compare with the tsunami of May 2011 – not just because of the devastating defeats, but because of the sense that our trumpet was not sounding clearly, that we had forfeited that precious commodity of trust, and that we were being dragged along in an embrace with a Tory boa constrictor from which we could not escape and which was squeezing the life out of us.

On any view, it has been an extremely difficult time for the Party and for the country. The challenges which the Government have had to wrestle with have been enormous and unprecedented, and often, as with the Euro crisis, largely outwith their control. Far from having all the answers, I am not sure that politicians in any party have even been asking all the right questions.

Happily there are usually people happy to fill a hole and a number of groups and bodies and individuals have come forward with this in mind - the Social Liberal Forum, Liberal Futures, a separate initiative by former MP John Barrett, a variety of politics dinner or pizza clubs, and our own book The Little Yellow Book co-edited by Nigel Lindsay and myself which we are launching at this Fringe tonight. More agonising and debate at grassroots level on policy and strategy than I can remember for a long time! There are vigorous exchanges on Facebook and Twitter and in the blogosphere - all in all a bit of a flowering of fundamental political discourse which is to be welcomed.

Tonight’s Fringe meeting is designed to look critically at the Liberal Democrats and the Coalition and I want to put 3 propositions to you on this:

The first is that the Coalition Government was necessary and inevitable following the election results of 2010 but that, in David Steel's words it is a business arrangement and not the meeting of long lost lovers that its early presentation suggested.

The second is that there is life before, after and apart from the Coalition. In other words the Coalition does not define nor restrict Liberal Democracy in a straightjacket.

The third is that Coalition is an extremely difficult place which has, on a number of previous occasions, almost destroyed the Liberal Party as an effective political force. Consequently the Party needs to have a very strong sense of its own identity, its own core values and the roots of its political beliefs.

There can be no doubt that serious mistakes were made in the early days. The presentation was poor and chimed badly with our core support - particularly but not only in Scotland. There was one central failure which was the debacle on tuition fees. It is true that Labour sold out manifesto promises by introducing both tuition fees and I think top up fees in defiance of election pledges, but the issue was never so central to their image and beliefs as it was to us.

Retrospect is of course a great teacher but I am in no doubt that we could have delivered a better deal on tuition fees and that that would have suited us infinitely better than the huge investment in the unlamented AV referendum.

Now you might say this is ancient history so why rake it up now? But I do so because the mistakes at that time were so devastating to our hard won reputation for trust and because they haunt us to this day. There is also a lingering sense that the leadership were not that keen on getting rid of fees and had indeed agreed to sacrifice them well before the election.

And it remains the case too that there are a significant number of longstanding Party members and supporters who remain unenthusiastic or disaffected from the Coalition or from some of its key policies – part of the purpose of our book and events like tonight’s is to be a bridge to enable people across the Party to feel ownership at least of the terms of debate.

And from the perspective of our earlier Coalitions in Scotland, I am not sure how far the experience of 1999 and 2003 were truly taken on board in London. It would be interesting and useful for those involved to have a critical retrospect and comparison on that.

Now Liberal Democrats in the Coalition Government undoubtedly have significant achievements to their credit –

·       Some major hits on the civil liberties front which were important but regrettably sound not at all in the ballot box.

·       The substantial rise in the tax free threshold and the current campaign for an early achievement of the £10,000 mark

·       Major reform of the state pension and this year’s rise of £5.30 week – carried through by Steve Webb, described as the best Pensions Minister in a generation.

But much will turn nevertheless on the economy and the deficit, all of which is rather uncertain at present. That, after all, is the main national interest for whose sake we went into Government and on whose success we may well stand or fall.

In other areas, Nick Clegg and Vince Cable have been raising the right subjects recently - on splitting the Banks, on obscene executive pay, on co-partnership in industry - but they must be able to deliver, not tinker, otherwise it raises the key questions of their influence, commitment and trust.

So what are the litmus tests for the Coalition?

I would suggest the principles and mood music must include:

·       Having a clear, recognised and independent position in the Government 

In fairness, this is something where lessons have clearly been learned, although not without the assistance of major party rows – but it will be difficult to throw off the defining images of a different kind from the early days. 

·       Delivering the Coalition agreement (which remember was called “Freedom, Fairness, Responsibility”) – but not backing things not in the Agreement to which we have not agreed.

 I remember my shock when I heard the Prime Minister announcing a consultation on plans to end security of tenure for council tenants as if it was Government policy. I remember too my surprise at him exercising the veto at the European Union Council of Ministers – although I confess I remain unclear as to what exactly he vetoed.

 I don’t know how things work inside this Coalition but I don’t believe that such things would have been possible in the Scottish Coalition without Liberal Democrat agreement.

 ·       Being on the side of the underdog and the dispossessed. This is helped by the £10,000 tax free policy and the commendable triple lock increases in the state pension, but it is vital there is no slippage on maintaining the higher 50p rate. The mansion tax is estimable but I am not so convinced that sacrificing the 50p rate for a mansion tax is a good idea. 

·       Sorting out the bonus scandal. This is a specific Coalition commitment with huge popular resonance. While I welcome the limited progress made on this, there is something unappealing about Government-inspired media campaigns to strip people of knighthoods or pressurise them to refuse bonuses. What most people can’t accept is how banks, largely owned by the state, can’t get rid of bonuses – particularly so when the bonuses appear to equate to continuing losses – and why the Government can’t, if necessary, make them do so.

 Since the government feels able to cap benefit payments, why does it not cap pay at state-owned banks – which is supported indeed from the same pot?

 I know this is a tricky area with our Coalition partners but I am personally more than a little fed up with the unconvincing special pleading that we see from the Stephen Hesters of the world. Freedom and opportunity are inseparable from making our country a more equal place too.

 ·       Expanding opportunity particularly for young people. I think we underestimate at our peril the destructive effect of being unable to get jobs – it is a phenomenon which affects teachers, social workers, nurses and lawyers, College graduates and above all those leaving school with limited qualifications. The fear of job loss permeates to all levels of society. I welcome the £1 billion youth contract but it is at best a palliative. I don’t have a magic wand to offer but I cannot believe that the top minds in government cannot identify ways to deliver not perhaps a right to work but an opportunity to work for many more people.

Moving from deficit recovery to economic recovery

On a UK scale, it is the dilemma that afflicts Greece. How sustainable is it to have more and more people unemployed, not using their talents, reliant on state support, not contributing to the national economy and the national wellbeing?

And this echoes with welfare reform, because, whilst the public support the idea that the right to benefit is conditional, most people have problems with welfare sanctions when there are no jobs, and particularly with people with fluctuating disabilities who are at the bottom of the heap.

·      Supporting the public and general interest – My own view is that we have become a bit obsessed with structures and the dubious doctrine of competition in public services, and that this may underlie our difficulties with the NHS Bill in England.

Now some people say that the philosophy of our leaders is not really Liberal, that they are obsessed by revived Orange Book notions of neo - liberal economics, and that they are instinctively comfortable with the Tories.

I don't accept that. The Orange Book essays are well within the fold of longstanding liberal ideas and contain much good sense. But I cannot pretend to feel at home with some of the public sector reform stuff. And I think it is because we have undervalued the idea of the public interest and of public service.

·       And, for Scotland, sustaining and progressing Home Rule and a federal UK is vital. That is a debate for the Home Rule Commission later tonight.  

Some of these themes are developed in The Little Yellow Book which we are launching at this fringe meeting tonight. Many of us have worried for some time about the lack of grassroots debate not just during the Coalition but long before – with a clear foreboding that we had lost our way in Scotland a bit.

Nevertheless the Coalition could be a bit like the story of the frog who was put in a vat of hot water. Frogs apparently adjust to their environment so the frog didn’t notice as the temperature was gradually increased – until he ended up being boiled alive. We have to be careful to avoid the fate of the frog.

We have to be careful too to avoid the problem which beset us in the 30s in the National Govt when some Liberals peeled off to the right and some to the left, leaving an eviscerated rump. This Party must be a broad Church with room and space for all Liberal Democrats.

Now I know that Alistair is worried - as all good Chief whips must be - about party disagreements and debate. But debate is the leitmotif of all good Liberals - to challenge, to argue, to be thrawn, to be difficult, to stand on points of principle, to be radical. Indeed I remember Alastair as a member of the Beveridge Group - which doesn't sound like a body in thrall to economic liberalism.

So I want to finish by saying that the Liberal Democrats need this debate and this argument which will reinvigorate and re-empower us. We need a framework of values from which to critique the Coalition Government. We need red lines in the sand to delineate what is unacceptable for any Liberal Democrat in any Government. And we need thought-provoking ideas to help set our direction of travel. Despite all, I remain, as I know you do, hugely optimistic about the relevance and strength of Liberal Democracy – providing we hold firm to our roots and have themes and a programme that sound true both to the trumpet player and to the public.

Exclusive: Robert Brown's speech to Social Liberal Forum Scotland in full

Regular readers will know that I'm a huge fan of Robert Brown, our former MSP for Glasgow. I really feel that Holyrood is much poorer without his grasp of justice issues. This is the guy who stood up against all the other parties bar the Greens casually agreeing to quadruple pre-charge detention times in an afternoon following the Cadder ECHR judgement. I don't always agree with Robert on every single issue, but I trust him 100%.

So, I view what I'm about to put before you as a major treat. Yesteday, in sunny Partick, the Scottish Social Liberal Forum took place and this is Robert's keynote address.  It's long, over 2500 words, but, hell, it's Sunday, and you have the time to read it. I really didn't want to edit it down because that would be a bit like offering you a lovely box of chocolates and taking out all your favourites. And in terms of an exposition of our party's values, it's a treat. The photos were taken by Norman Fraser and are reproduced with his permission.

I particularly liked his description of our new leader Willie Rennie, and his comparison of our values to those of Labour and the SNP, and particularly the latter's interactions with rich, powerful people.

Enjoy:

There is nothing like a major defeat to make individuals and parties reassess themselves – but it is not an occurrence to be welcomed nevertheless!

My contribution this morning is entitled – “Liberal Democracy in Scotland: the Way Forward” but, in order to look forward, we first have to look back, to identify what went wrong and be realistic about the causes, to ask what sort of people Liberal Democrats are and what we believe, to examine the challenges, and to begin to plot the way forward.I have always believed that Liberalism and Liberal Democracy has been over the years a more coherent, principled and radical political philosophy by far than anything else on offer in British or Scottish politics. It is a source of inspiration and reinvigoration in difficult times, a litmus test of what is right for our country and a solid foundation for hope and optimism in our future.

Now, to say the least, these are difficult times. The disaster of 5^th May cannot be understated – we hold no constituency seats in mainland Scotland, our constituency share across Scotland was 7.93% of the vote - the regional list vote 5.2% and only 2.5% in Glasgow. It is, I think, the worst result in Scotland since 1959.

It is true, of course, that a major cause of the Liberal Democrat collapse was the view taken by the voters of the Coalition Government. I support the Coalition but I take David Steel’s view on it, that “the coalition is a business arrangement born of necessity to clear up the country’s dire financial debt. It should never be portrayed as anything else.”But we have paid a huge price for the failures of our leaders to realise that trust was our strongest asset, that you can’t retain trust by selling out on our most identifiable policy, on which our MPs had made personal pledges, that back slapping on the front bench between Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander and the Tory leadership was the crassest of political blunders, and that a Coalition Agreement which works must require sign up in advance to major new policies. Suggestions that Liberal Democrat leaders agreed to sell out on tuition fees well in advance of the election because they themselves opposed the policy simply add to the image of untrustworthiness.

Nevertheless there is no mileage, in my view, in attempting to pretend the Coalition is nothing to do with Scottish Liberal Democrats, because it defines, for better or worse, our strongest public image.

And I believe it would be a huge mistake to believe that our defeat was nothing to do with the Scottish campaign or the Scottish Liberal Democrats.

The truth is actually stark and depressing and one we need to recognise. There was no substantial reason to vote Liberal Democrat at the Scottish elections. All the glossy, unread newspapers in the world, the blue letters, the targeting is no use if the central strategy and messages are not up to the job.

There was no message to set the heart racing – indeed it was difficult to discern a message at all. There was no narrative as to our view of Scotland going forward. There were no big ideas, and no obvious strategy. There was no strong connection between manifesto ideas and the core values of the Party. There was nothing for urban voters.Above all, there was the trust issue – the evil fairy begotten of the tuition fees debacle in England – which infected our supporters, destroyed our confidence and killed our vote.So where do we go from here?

Our central challenge is to rediscover our own tone and language, to rebuild that trust and to widen the constituency to which we can appeal – and to offer a more attractive appeal as a national Party than the SNP.

The first thing is for us to understand and have confidence in our political beliefs and values. This meeting today is held under the banner of the Social Liberal Forum – but can I challenge the very title of Social Liberal? Social Liberalism is Liberalism; it is Liberal Democracy. We should not allow our Party and our philosophy to be stolen from us by the New Right, by the neo-liberals, by those who believe that freedom means primarily economic freedom - the unrestricted freedom of the market, rather than the freedom of people or communities. Markets, for us, have never been “tools of unrestricted wealth accumulation divorced from any concept of the public interest”[i]

Let me quote from an article by Simon Kovar in the Liberal magazine last year which I think may help us to focus on the key themes and drivers of our cause. Simon Kovar said this:

“Successive generations of Liberal Democrat leaders and politicians, whether of the party’s left or right, have held the following in common. They have fought privilege and corruption; they have argued for a redistribution of wealth and opportunity from the rich to the poor; they have regarded the market as a (limited) means and not an (un-checked) end; and they have recognised the moral limits of markets. They have argued in support of public services and, when they have spoken of public service reform, they have meant alternative means of public provision, not privatisation.”

The late Conrad Russell believed that Liberalism as a philosophy is primarily concerned with the use and dispersal of power. “Beveridge,” he said, “try­ing to protect people from the giants of poverty and want, came from the same tradition as (John) Locke trying to protect them against an arbitrary king. It is a tradition of protecting individuals from the effects of arbitrary power.”

Now surely the last few years have seen arbitrary power at its most obscene.

·         The Iraq War, built on American and British power, without international sanction;·         The power of huge supermarket companies to undermine local economies, impose themselves on local communities, dictate terms to local Councils and local suppliers, and distort food supply chains.·         Above all, the greed and recklessness of the banks which brought down the world economy, destroyed the life chances of individuals and the prosperity of nations, and handed unimaginably huge dollops of money to its top executives – banks which were too big for Governments to allow them to fail.

I am in no sense a Socialist leveller down – but I must say I find the pay package of £7.5 million paid to the Royal Bank Chief Executive obscene, regardless of the justification that it is the going rate. I also find the creep in the salaries of top executives in the service of Government, Quangos, Councils and Universities to anything up to the £1/4 million mark, often together with bonuses, to be distinctly questionable. These are matters on which Liberal Democrats should have a view because they destroy any sense of fairness and common purpose in our country.

I am a “condition of the people” Liberal Democrat – I think most of us here are. For me, equality of opportunity; enhancing the life chances of young people; balancing the disadvantage which afflicts so many, not least in Glasgow, from and before their birth; the liberating power of education; the quality of communities and the urban environment. These things are the essence of Liberal democracy, the fulfilment of our defence of the rights of the individual.

And along with the ideas I have mentioned – fighting arbitrary power, breaking down monopoly, fighting privilege and corruption, good quality public services, we can add the theory of ascending power[RB1]  – that power comes from and is conferred by the people – and the concept of pluralism which means the dispersal of power and the promotion of diversity. The idea of localism which is a powerful, if ill-developed, idea in our lexicon, is linked to these themes. So is our support for the Voluntary sector - and our view of a federal future for Scotland and the United Kingdom.

And one might add that Liberalism also backs a vigorous view of the public interest – from Gladstone counting every paper clip in the Treasury, to Vince Cable warning about the debt mountain and the unsustainable prices in the housing market, from open competition in the civil service in the 1860s to opposition to a single Scottish police force in 2011. Contrast that with New Labour, a party at ease with the excesses of the filthy rich, or the SNP who take money equally readily and without scruple from Edwin Morgan, the late Scots Makar and a gay man, and from Sir Brian Soutar, the backer of Section 28; from Sir Sean Connery, who offers support to the SNP from the comfort and ambiguity of tax exile – or for that matter a party which lavishes SNP Ministerial access and bias on Donald Trump.

I have talked about values. Values should lead to our narrative – about renewing the United Kingdom and Scotland’s place in it, refocusing our identity in a post nationalist age. Home Rule means more powers for a purpose for the Scottish Parliament within a reformed United Kingdom.

We must develop and give meaning to the idea of localism. This is not, as many of our Councillors believe, just a matter of central Government surrendering power to Councils. Councils, Liberal Democrat led or otherwise, should set the local strategy but don’t always have that great a record of truly empowering local communities, social enterprises and the voluntary sector. And there must be solid, clear and attractive ideas that speak the language of the voter.

And a narrative too about young people. If young people support us in greater numbers, there is inevitable growth over the years. If nationalism is old fashioned – as I believe it is; if Labour has lost its soul and purpose – as it has - a principled non-ideological but values-driven Liberal Democrat Party is well-placed; If people are rejecting traditional politics, a community based campaigning Party has the ball at its feet; If the electorate is becoming more middle class and aspirational, if it travels more,  it is more in our image.We need – and we have lost - optimism, hope and a sense of progress. We must be the Party of the future, uniting demographic, political and social trends.

Above all, the narrative should help the debate be fought on our territory, not someone else’s.

What about the way forward inside the Party? We need to reignite debate and discussion and passion about our cause, to write pamphlets and articles, to encourage new thinking, to engage with academics and others with ideas. We need to identify and take forward those ideas on the basis of our values and our narrative, hone them with the voters, challenge our Party at Conference, fight over them in local supper clubs, imbue our elected representatives and candidates with them and train our people, not least our young people, in the language and values of Liberal Democracy.

And, if the direction of these ideas is not that of the Coalition or the leadership, or the Orange Book, we need to have the analytical tools to engage in and win the arguments, to understand and debate the issues around public sector “reform” in particular, the role of the private sector and what we want for schools, and hospitals and the NHS. Because the Party is our Party, held in trust by the present leadership for the future, built on the traditions of the past.

I know there will be some people here today who take the view that the leadership are closet-Tories, that they have sold out the Party’s soul for Ministerial office, that the new leadership project is to reposition us on the centre right. I don’t share that view, but there are undoubtedly areas where the actions of the Coalition and of our Ministers seem at odds with the instincts of the Party. Coalition is a tricky place to be and a strong and assertive Party can strengthen the extent to which Liberal things – things which affect the worse off in society - happen in our Government. Liberal Democrats are not, as indeed Nick Clegg said in a major speech last July, in favour of reducing the size of the state as a matter of ideology, but equally we shouldn’t take hard earned cash from ordinary people to spend on bureaucracy, waste or inefficiency.

I confess I am uncertain how best to widen the ground on which we stand, which currently looks a bit like one of these English coastal villages where the sea has eroded the coastline and demolished everything within 100 yards of the previous beach. It is part confidence and credibility, part relevance of message, part the excitement of new ideas and modern mood music, part identifying and playing to our “constituencies” of interest – which would previously have been the progressive middle classes, the young and aspiring, women, and rural Scotland but had increasingly become a section of the urban electorate.

Our challenge has become immeasurably tougher following our defeat in May. We have, in my view, the right man to lead us in Willie Rennie – the one positive outcome of the elections, but a crucial one. Willie is already articulating our values; he is a man used to winning, and he has the combination of the common touch and personal authority which is needed for the battles ahead. Our cause will be immeasurably helped if he and we can ignite an intellectual ferment within and beyond the Party.

Our belief as Liberal Democrats was eloquently expressed in the pamphlet “We can conquer unemployment (1928):

“We believe with a passionate faith that the end of all political and economic action is not the perfecting or perpetuation of this or that piece of machinery or organisation, but that individual men and women may have life and that they may have it more abundantly.”

But let me finish with a quote, as one must in difficult times, from Russell Johnston on the importance of Liberalism. Not the one about climbing the mountain and seeing the peak, because we have fallen off that mountain. But one from the 1984 Conference in Ayr.[ii]

“Freedom,” he said, “simply for the self to do as he or she wants, if it is not joined with a responsibility to care for the freedom of others, is no more than the pursuit of privilege, the badge of Conservatism through the ages. There is no freedom for the poor....Liberalism has within it the dream that the good and the courageous spirit that resides within mankind can be given release.It is for these things that we walk the wet streets; it is for these things that we commit our time and treasure; and it is these things that we will one day bring to pass.”

I make no apology for ending on this note, with recollection of days when Liberals were confident in their beliefs, because our cause – the cause of Liberal Democracy – remains a great cause, needed in Scotland and beyond, and is something to be confident and optimistic about.

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[i] Simon Kovar – The Neo Liberal Democrats – The Liberal magazine Aug 2010

[ii] Just Russell – The collected speeches of Sir Russell Johnston MP 1979-1986 p56 – published by the Scottish Liberal Party

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 [RB1]The Glorious Revolution of 1688 committed the Whigs (q.v.) to the ‘ascending theory’ of power, in which power came up from the people, who conferred it – or not, as the case may be – on government. (Conrad Russell)