In a recent post, I raised the possibility that the leader of the Liberal Democrats in the U.K., now deputy Prime Minister, might in fact be a liberal in the old sense of the word, or at least something close. A recent news story provides one more bit of evidence in favor of that optimistic conjecture.
6 comments:
This is good news - but this was announced by a Conservative rather than Liberal Democrat minister. So it doesn't prove the theory. Having received training for a financial exam from a close competitor of BPP (which has now been allowed to become a University) I can happily attest that the quality of the teaching far exceeded that I received at regular Universities. The LibDems have some good people. Laws was great but had to go due to an expenses scandal. Clegg is ok, but Cable is an over rated fool. Still, a large part of the party are just libertarians of the Chomsky variety.
"Libertarians of the Chomsky variety" is a phrase that sounds very strange to this American.
There's a fissure within the Lib Dem party.
There's what are essentially social democrats there and something pretty close to classical liberals. The classical liberals are known as "Orange Bookers" after a book of essays a few years back called "The Orange Book".
Yes, Clegg is one of them.
I was struck by one quote from the article:
"Private providers are not accountable to the public and do not deserve to be put in the same league as our universities," said the leader of the lecturers' union.
Surely, all private companies are accountable to their customers and even to their prospective customers, who will go elsewhere if not satisfied. Is there a need for them to be accountable to anyone else?
... shareholders too, in a different way.
This Conservative-Liberal Democrat alliance seems to be working for the best, so far.
It makes me hopeful for a conservative libertarian alliance here in the United States.
Post a Comment