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Liberalism needs a louder voice Samuel Brittan: Financial Times 01/08/03 Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary, has, with the support of Tony Blair, rejected both Treasury and Ministry of Defence advice favouring a competitive bid for advanced training jets. The contract was instead awarded to BAE Systems for its Hawk aircraft. The decision is supposed to epitomise a defence industrial strategy. This has all the fallacies of the old policy of "backing winners" - which all too often turned out to be losers. National prosperity does not depend on promoting arms sales. It is an example of the mentality of job-saving at any cost, common among politicians. The Tories are hardly better. A Conservative government in the 1990s overturned a permanent secretary's publicly minuted objection to support the Malaysian Pergau  dam. On the Hawk contract itself the Tories could only bluster. On the left the Hawk decision, it was said, would massively bolster Hoon's position among Labour MPs, trade unions and some misguided industrialists. This is merely the latest item in the progress of an increasingly discredited Labour government. A few days ago, Alastair Campbell, Mr Blair's controversial communications director, was described by Tessa Jowell, culture secretary, as a "force for great good" who "in every fibre of his body believes in Labour's values". If so, so much the worse for these values. Recent developments have shown how New Labour's values have developed in a way that is inimical to traditional liberties. John Mortimer, barrister, playwright and lifelong Labour supporter, claims he has witnessed over his lifetime a slow improvement in the humanity of the law until the advent of the present Labour government, which "seems to have been born without a single libertarian instinct". Mr Blair's government is determined to curtail the right to trial by jury, to question the presumption of innocence. And this is not to mention the control freak culture of ministers and their advisers. A 21st century dominated by Labour would be hardly more attractive than the 20th-century Tory domination that inspired Roy Jenkins's ill-fated attempts to persuade Mr Blair to construct a lasting Lib-Lab alliance. Any realignment of British politics still depends on the Liberal Democrats. The historical error made by that party - in its old Liberal guise - occurred in the first election of 1974, called by Edward Heath, Conservative prime minister, in response to a miners' strike. Sir Edward narrowly lost and called in Jeremy Thorpe, then leader of the Liberal party, to see whether some basis could be found for either a deal or a coalition. The talks proved abortive within a couple of days, not because of issues of substance but because Thorpe was besieged with messages from Liberals all over the country demanding that he should on no account make common cause with a rightwing party, however temporarily. This was a near-fatal error. If the Liberals are always going to be closer to Labour and never talk to the Tories, they are doomed to become just another social democrat faction. In the still unlikely event of their taking over from the Conservatives as the main opposition, the country would be faced with two rival interventionist parties putting in bids to introduce yet more government intervention as a cure-all. It would be equally bad if the Lib-Dems positioned themselves permanently closer to the Conservatives. In the immediate postwar decades there were still candidates who called themselves "Liberal Nationals". These were the descendants of the Liberals who had joined in the so-called National, but in fact Tory-dominated, crisis government of 1931. The Liberal Nationals soon became just another name that Conservative candidates adopted in a handful of constituencies for historical reasons. There is a contrast here with the behaviour of the German Free Democrats, who in their heyday were in coalition with both the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats. At the moment they have been marginalised because the union paymasters of the Social Democrats prefer to have a coalition with the fourth party, the Greens; but they have had a long run for their money and could still re-emerge. It is a tragedy that in Britain the cause of competitive market capitalism has had to be represented by a party with authoritarian moralistic tendencies, a xenophobic posture towards foreigners and an instinct to punish and condemn. If anyone thinks I am raking over the ashes of long-dead attitudes, they should think of the prejudiced reasons the Conservatives recently rejected both Michael Portillo and Kenneth Clarke for the party leadership. The Lib-Dems start the British party conference season in September. The first thing they need to do is to switch the emphasis back to the party's traditional commitment to civil liberty and protection of the citizens against big government. If the Lib-Dems are to have a worthwhile future it is surely not by outbidding Labour trade unionists, control freaks and high public spenders.
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