I was going to post this in the comments but it would be a bit hypocritical if I broke my own 300-word rule!
Anyhow, I just wanted to add that every political party has its share of oddballs. The problem is that they stand out more in small (and very small) parties and quite often they rise to the top because there are fewer checks and balances and little or no competition to find the best people to do certain jobs. If you volunteer you tend to be embraced, irrespective of the skills or baggage you bring (or don't bring) to the table.
This still applies, I believe, even to UKIP which relies far too much on attracting disaffected Labour and Conservative supporters or people whose only common interest is hatred or suspicion of the European Union (a feeling I share, by the way, but it's not enough to make me vote for a party that - with respect to Nigel Farage who I like enormously - strikes me as badly organised and insanely reliant on one man for any sort of public profile.
I hear a lot of negative messages from UKIP but few positive ones. If UKIP believes in small government and less intrusion by the state in to people's private lives the party should be bellowing it from the rooftops and making a strong, positive and thoughtful case for a more liberal society.
I don't hear that. Instead, on the rare occasions I have wandered on to UKIP forums, I have found some of the most personal and vituperative bitching I have ever read.
Without Nigel at the helm I simply don't believe that UKIP would be libertarian (or classically liberal) in any serious sense of the word. The fact that some people think UKIP is a potential home for libertarians is a tribute to Farage but that doesn't make it a libertarian party. In any case, I rather share Fredrik's view that hardcore libertarians are probably not cut out for party politics or membership organisations. Too many committee meetings, for a start, and with committees come compromise and administration, and then there's the annual meeting with its elections and and motions and standing orders and ... need I go on?
What has happened to the Libertarian Party happens to a lot of would-be political parties and membership organisations - it all starts so well with the best of intentions before personality clashes, infighting, incompetence, lack of money and ennui take over and eventually the lunatics take over the asylum.
I worked for a membership organisation (now in its 65th year) and, believe me, the biggest problem you face is often the membership itself. Not the majority, who are decent but disinterested in taking an active part in the organisation, but a tiny group of activists for whom the organisation becomes their life and all they want to do is cause mischief or, worse, run it.
Anyway, to achieve a libertarian or classical liberal society you have to win the battle of ideas and that doesn't need a political party.
As I've said before on this blog, the role model for winning the battle of ideas is the Institute of Economic Affairs which was founded in 1956 during an era when Keynsian economic policy was all the rage and free marketeers were treated as flat Earthers.
Ralph Harris (later Lord Harris) was one of the founders of the IEA. He was also chairman of Forest for 20 years and I got to know him very well. He told me how the IEA sold free market ideas to mainstream journalists and politicians. It took a long, long time. By the early Seventies they were taken seriously enough to be adopted by Margaret Thatcher via Keith Joseph.
The point is, Ralph and his colleagues didn't waste time setting up a new political party. They worked incredibly hard, writing, publishing and distributing numerous monographs (booklets) spelling out their ideas. They also spent an enormous amount of time briefing those who were working within the system not outside it.
Arthur Seldon, Ralph’s colleague, was the academic. Ralph was very clever too but he was the ‘hustler’, the man charged with ‘selling’ the message. It helped that he had enormous charm and energy.
They were helped, in hindsight, by the fact that Britain suffered a severe economic decline in the Sixties and Seventies and (some) politicians were therefore more open to a new way of thinking, but that’s not how it appeared at the beginning.
Free marketeers in the Fifties were faced with the same mountain that classical liberals face today. This is a long-term political struggle but, I repeat, it’s the ideas that matter not the mechanism.
Political parties (if you can call them that) run on a shoestring by a handful of dissidents is a waste of time, unless you like the sound of your own voice preaching to the converted. Like it or not, to change the system we have to work within the system. Only an anarchist would think otherwise.
Finally, another reservation I have about UKIP is that since the days of Dr Alan Sked (the founder of UKIP) I see no evidence of any great intellectual ability within the party. I'm not being snobbish. I'm no intellectual myself (I'm pretty ignorant about most things!) and intellectuals tend not to hold high office for a variety of reasons, but any serious political party needs a core of intellectually sound ideas to give it gravitas and drive it forward. I simply don't see that with UKIP.
Look at senior Labour and Tory politicians and you will see some irrefutably clever people. That doesn't make them right or good in government, but it does make them credible and that, in turn, makes them electable.
I'm not suggesting that political parties have to be stuffed with exceptionally bright people – after all, political parties should represent society at large – but there needs to be a core of very bright people in any party if it is to get elected to government.
Sorry, but I see no evidence of that in UKIP or any other fringe party. (I don't even see it in the Lib Dems, although several senior Lib Dems obviously think they're clever!)
PS. Just to be clear, when I talk about 'very bright' or 'very clever', I do not mean academically necessarily. There are lots of very clever people who do not have academic qualifications.
OK, time to stop digging ...
Sunday, May 22, 2011 at 14:46 