Why I'm a Liberal (and Social) Democrat

People who know me personally probably already know that I tend to refer to myself as a Social Democrat. A lot of people seem to get confused by this, I'm a supporter and member of the Liberal Democratic Party, and my blog quite literally has the world Liberal in the title, so what's going on?

To get the simple one out the way first, the Liberal part of the blog title was chosen to appeal to my target audience. (Other Liberal Democrats.) However, the quote and 'New Model' were moreso a personal choice as they referenced one of my favourite historical figures, Thomas Rainsborough, who fought on the side of the English Parliament in the British Civil War and campaigned for the adoption of a Republican Constitution based in radical ideas of limited Government, and freedom for the many, even those who had never had their voices represented before in the feudal system of commerce and nobility. To this day I feel that we as a country still haven't achieved some of the ideals the New Model Army and other progressive factions fought for, particularly the end of aristocracy, entrenchment of our natural rights, and the common ownership of the land. That is why the blog is titled as it is, as part of my, perhaps naive, hope that we may come closer to this more free and equal society first articulated in this period of major upheaval.

Now to the other point - the reason why I chose to join the Liberals - it would be best to start with my political background, and then go on to explain how I differ ideologically to it; to say I come from a Labour-supporting family may be the understatement of the century, my Great Grandfather was a Communist who enthusiastically supported the Labour Party during the Great Depression, his daughter, my Grandma ran as a Labour Councillor in '86, her daughter, my Aunt has written for the Fabian Society, one of my cousins is a staunch trade unionist, and, a little more personally, my Mum complains to me often that there, "Aren't enough people like Tony Blair in politics these days." With a background such as that it would seem inevitable that I would join the Labour Party myself, but I didn't, and the reason is really quite simple; the Labour Party has some really bad tendencies. Let's go over some of my favourite examples:

For one, Labour has a tendency to highly centralise state power. Hold on! I already hear you yelling at me about Scottish and Welsh devolution, but Tony Blair has very consistently downplayed his support for it, so it's hard to count as anything other than triangulation politics to net votes for New Labour. I think a better example of Labour policy on decentralisation, or, lack of, can be seen in the new English "Devolution" Bill which seems to be entirely dedicated to weakening County and District Councils in favour of these behemoth Unitary Councils which can make sweeping decisions for regions. This has been framed, apparently wrongly, as a cost-cutting measure. In my mind it'd make more sense to cut Westminster down to size instead as the number of MPs we've been hovering around since the 19th Century is completely arbritrary, we have the second largest legislature in the world, and the last time we were below 600 MPs at an election was in 1796 when less than 10,000 people are believed to have had the vote, a tiny fraction of the 48 million who held a vote in 2024, not to mention the dreaded House of Lords we've been faling to replace since 1911. The reason for this avoidance of electoral reform is twofold; Labour doesn't want to cut seats for fear it could lose some of the smaller industrial constituencies that support it in the same way the Tories don't want to risk losing a few swing seats that strongly affect their generally lower majorities. The Liberals meanwhile have been struggling under our outdated First Past the Post electoral system for years and as such are committed to creating a more proportional electoral system while also supporting changing our incredibly uneven system of devolution into a Federal Government that prevents Westminster from imposing unecessary levels of control over any Nation in the country. To me this is simply the most logical line of policy to pursue so that the Union can remain in place while giving everyone in it a voice.

Another issue I have with Labour is the fact that the higherups really seem to struggle to back minorities if it could cost them political points, the most recent example of this I can think of is their terrible mishandling of Trans Rights - mind you, as far as I can tell most of the membership do support this stance, but I find the top-down structure of the Party makes that all meaningless anyway. Things started alright during the campaign season, with promises to ban conversion therapy and a slightly more vague one to 'remove indignities' for Trans people were included in the 2024 Manifesto, but then things started to go awry. There are too many single examples to count, but there are two major ones for me; the first is the uneqivocal acceptance of the Cass Report that seeks to end the use of reversible puberty blockers alongside any other gender-affirming care for under-18s, which will no doubt lead to an increase in poor mental health among those affected. Alongside this, the review itself has been found by several medical associations to be highly biased in favour of an anti-trans approach, refusing to hear the voices of trans people themselves, and is noted to have used a flawed and vague methodology. I only learned basic biology in secondary school, but even I know that evidence must be easily repeatable and unskewed to be valid. The second one is the support of the Parliamentary Party for the Supreme Court decision on the definition of sex as mentioned to in the Equality Act 2010 as only referring to biological sex, even with a Gender Recognition Certificate. Once again, the evidence for this was flawed, as no trans people were heard for evidence. (I'm noticing a pattern here...) With the principle of Parliamentary Sovereignty in our Constitution, it'd be very easy to pass an Act to override these decisions, but the fact Labour hasn't is telling. Of course, this is just a single example of a group harmed by Labour's avoidance of political risks, though I have heard time and time again from people like Diane Abbott and Jowan Owusu-Nepaul that the party has been incredibly bad at representing BAME voices too, to the point where the Conservatives of all people are a more diverse party. As far as I am aware this isn't so much of an issue in the Liberal Democrats, which is actively committed to diversity, has recognised the flaws of this Supreme Court decision, and has attempted to remove discriminatory voices from debate, even if they have fought it.

The final, and perhaps most worrying tendency I notice within the Labour Party is the backing of fundamentally authoritarian policies in the name of security. The most notable of these is the constant support shown for compulsory ID Cards, whether that be physically in 2005, or digitally in 2025. While to a lot of people these seem like a harmless way of streamling the identification process to help deal with immigration, to me they represent a fundamental attack on our privacy and liberty, particularly the more recent digital proposal; I believe this for a few reasons, firstly, we tried this before, and it resulted in prosecution of those not carrying cards, even after the war they were intended for ended, secondly, the requirement of a sex marker could lead to further discrimination against Trans people regarding their use of bathrooms (see previous paragraph) which is even more of a concern considering current opinion polls for the next Government, and finally, we already have other forms of ID that are less intrusive such as our passports or NHS Numbers. Unshockingly the Liberals have always been against unecessary ID except in extraordinary crisis such as the aforementioned wars. Other ways Labour have introduced authoritarian policy into our system include the continued weakening of the Right to Protest, refusing to undo the Public Order Act 2023 and cracking down on anti-genocide protests regarding Israeli actions in Gaza. This has been compunded by the ridiculous 4289 crimes introduced under New Labour, most of which were justified as anti-terror legislation.

 

This statue of Winston Churchill now has more rights than I do thanks to anti-protest laws.

These are all massive dealbreakers for me backing the Labour Party, as I feel the areas they choose to focus on changing and the ones they don't are all backwards. I admit that thus far I've framed this in such a way that makes it look like I fully back the Liberals on everything, which I don't either, and is part of the reason I call myself a Social Democrat and not a Liberal. For one, while I am highly critical of state power being used to impose unecessary laws and regulations on people's lives, I am equally skeptical of the significant economic power held by large coporations to do the similar, and believe the Government needs to take a strong Keynesian stance to make sure that competition, the main benefit of a free market, is maintained. To this respect I think that - while we shouldn't impose a structure of business on any company - should favour ethical businesses such as co-operatives when the opportunity comes up. I'm also probably more open to nationalisation than your average Liberal, as I believe that natural monopolies should be in the hands of the Government to ensure a good baseline service that maintains equality of opportunity. I'm also a Georgist and believe in replacing parts of our tax system with a Land Value Tax, parts of our Welfare system with a Universal Basic Income, and a guarantee of the Right to Roam, which have become very fringe ideas within the Party since our initial failure to implement them under Lloyd-George, even though they have been successful when properly implemented elsewhere. I'm aware viewpoints like these are somewhat unwelcome in the party at times, particularly as the party line has been to appeal to marginal Tory Constituencies, but I'm of the mind that our last attempt at this is what caused our lurch to the right under Clegg and the disasterous coalition which should have never been formed with the Conservatives - or Labour either, for that matter - unless there was a real guarantee of Proportional Representation instead of whatever that referendum was. Simply put, if we want to form a Government, we're going to have to appeal to marginal Labour Constitutencies too at some point, and that means we need to differentiate ourselves and our values  from the big two. Believe me, if the SDP existed today, (not that one) I would probably have joined it instead, but it doesn't, so here we are.

The short of all this is to say that, no, I'm not some Owenite who's still angry about the Liberal-SDP merger, and I think the people who are don't actually align with the original party at all. However, I think you really ought to read the Limehouse Declaration again and question if the SDP is less represented in the Liberal D then they once were. To that effect, I want to represent what that party stood for, I think there's still a place for it in the Liberal Democrats, and I don't think there's a place for it in Labour.