Where have the big government liberals gone?

By Emily Thornberry MP

What would Sarah Palin, Tea Party goers, and right-wing shock jocks in the U.S. make of David Cameron’s Big Society?

After all, Palin et al are forever railing against ‘big-government liberals’. They want big- government supporters out of power and they want them eradicated.

Curiously, in Britain, as the coalition government promotes its Big Society, our big-government liberals seem to be eradicating themselves.

It all started when the coalition agreement boldly asserted that Conservatives and Liberals “share a conviction that the days of big government are over”. Lib Dem MPs and activists may have assumed at the time this was more rhetoric than anything of great substance. Not so: Nick Clegg meant it.

Clegg’s attacks on big government often start with a criticism of Labour’s record on civil liberties; a criticism with which many of us in the Labour party have some sympathy. But his attacks don’t stop there – they fast move through being libertarian to straight anti-government.

Take Clegg’s government-sponsored “Your Freedom” website. What is remarkable about this site is the negative view and tone it sets about any government intervention.

Its preamble declares the government is “committed to restoring and defending your freedom”, and users can add ideas under three headings: restoring civil liberties; repealing unnecessary laws; and cutting business and third-sector regulation.

How do people go on to the site to contribute ideas for new laws to protect your rights? Or new laws to encourage equality, or to rein in big interests? They can’t – the site is pushing the libertarian “freedom from” rather than the progressive “freedom to”.

So visitors to the website have suggested making the installation of smart meters in homes voluntary, repealing the hunting ban, and scrapping trade unions. These are user contributions and not Clegg’s own ideas – but the tone his site sets is clearly anti-government.

This site reveals something about Clegg and co.’s involvement in the government overall. Far from an awkward partnership, it is as if they have come home. Their ease of place in an anti-state government reveals itself as right-wing orthodoxies become part of leading Lib Dems’ rhetoric and ideas.

We have Clegg co-authoring a Telegraph article saying “it’s time for the central state to allow the genius of grassroots innovation, diversity and experimentation to take off” – with measures such as “opening up the state monopoly on education” (July 15).

How many Lib Dem councillors are truly happy with how this translates into a policy of cutting money to rebuild dilapidated schools and instead give it to groups of sharp-elbowed middle class parents who fancy running a school?

At the Treasury, we had David Laws almost relishing declaring that “the years of public sector plenty are over”. As he left office, the Tory right could have been forgiven for believing they had lost a one-off small-stater in Laws – but his successor, Danny Alexander, has taken up this baton, describing the budget as “redressing the balance between the public and private sector”.

And then witness the response by Chris Huhne – once known as ‘Tribune Huhne’ – criticising green job targets in a commons debate as a throwback to “the Soviet Union’s Gosplan” . He was so keen for new market solutions over state intervention that he was later forced to protest that he was “not a market fundamentalist”.

These Liberals and others are helping to create a zeitgeist that government is not part of the solution to the nation’s problems. But they are wrong.

Take climate change; the ultimate example of market failure. We desperately need big government if we are to avoid its effects and create a green economy.

Across all departments, the new political climate created by the coalition is allowing the government to propose cuts of up to 40% over this parliament. This is far more than Thatcher and far deeper than any cuts for more than a generation. And it is becoming clear that they are much more severe than would be needed to reduce the deficit alone.

In the face of this decimation of the public sector, the Lib Dems have been criticised as offering a fig leaf for the Tory administration. But in fact, the closeness between Clegg and Cameron’s vision of the role of government means their co-operation goes further than this.

The ConDem meeting of minds has been like an injection of steroids for the Tories: giving them the energy to be the most anti-state government for generations.

Privately, certain Lib Dems express their shame at such an aggressive reduction of the state. As they sit on the government benches in their yellow ties, Lib Dem MPs certainly look increasingly uneasy. And so they should. The ruling faction around Clegg has let their libertarian principles merge into support for a committed anti-government administration.

When she stepped down as Alaska’s Governor last year, Sarah Palin implored her audience “Please, let’s not start believing that government is the answer.” If Palin ever makes a public speech in the UK, I wonder if she’ll be tempted to paraphrase the last Prime Minister and say she agrees with Nick?