{"id":1628,"date":"2019-06-23T12:25:02","date_gmt":"2019-06-23T11:25:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/?p=1628"},"modified":"2019-06-23T16:10:14","modified_gmt":"2019-06-23T15:10:14","slug":"remembering-the-liberty-message-among-the-brexit-madness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/remembering-the-liberty-message-among-the-brexit-madness\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering the liberty message of the Liberal Democrats among the Brexit madness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Recently there was an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/politics\/2019\/06\/16\/exclusive-conservative-donors-open-secret-talks-nigel-farage\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">article in the <em>Telegraph<\/em><\/a>  about secret talks between some Tory donors and Nigel Farage with a view to a pact to avoid Tory Brexiteer and Brexit Party candidates standing against each other. <\/p>\n<p>My twitter feed had a string of comments from people alarmed at this. The sharpest I saw was from @bulshdetector on 16 June 2019: <!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">This is the Von Papen blueprint, replayed on a British podium: Conservatives acting as Kingmaker for Farage, in the (mistaken) conviction that they can control him. That&#39;s how Hitler became Chancellor in 1933 without a majority. Guys, time to board the dinghies of  <br \/>the Titanic.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Ky Fegte #FBPE (@bulshdetector) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/bulshdetector\/status\/1140375280210644993?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">June 16, 2019<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>This is a different time and the parallels between now and then shouldn\u2019t be drawn too closely, but the anxiety is real and should be engaged with.<\/p>\n<p>Christina Wieland\u2019s majesterial book <em>The fascist state of mind and the manufacturing of masculinity<\/em> gives a perceptive account of how people\u2019s real anxieties left them prey to strong-sounding leaders in Germany and Italy in the 1930s. Earlier this year, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.hansardsociety.org.uk\/publications\/reports\/audit-of-political-engagement-16\">Hansard Society\u2019s 2019 <em>Audit of Political Engagement<\/em><\/a> showed 54% of Britons in favour of a \u201cstrong leader who would break the rules\u201d. It\u2019s tempting to read the show of machismo in the Tory leadership contest as a competition to take up that role \u2014 in eliminating Rory Stewart they removed the voice calling this out.<\/p>\n<p>I can understand people feeling worried. The Liberal Democrat position on liberty is as far removed from the \u201cstrong leader\u201d as our position on Europe is from that of the strident Brexiteer. One answer is to link opposition to Brexit and the support of liberty as civil liberties are values championed by the EU. The danger is that this gets lost behind the stridency of those demanding Brexit as \u201cthe will of the people\u201d [<em>sic<\/em>], and the way many Brexit supporters paint the EU as authoritarian because they see in it, their own authoritarian tendencies.<\/p>\n<p>It can sound as if authoritarianism is everywhere. In the European elections I encountered real anxiety on the doorstep. The number of citizens of other EU nations who arrived at polling stations and found they couldn\u2019t vote contributes to the unease. It\u2019s not being helped by the craziness of the Tory leadership contest: I recently saw a tweet from someone saying that he usually sees Tory leadership elections from the perspective of a curious observer, but this time it\u2019s with the \u201cpanic of an abductee\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Reminding people that there is an alternative in a more Liberal way of being helps to ease some of the immediate anxiety. It\u2019s about providing an alternative that\u2019s not about people losing faith in politics or acquiescing because there doesn\u2019t seem to be a choice.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c#EuropeanLiberalValues\u201d doesn\u2019t quite pack the punch of \u201c#BollocksToBrexit\u201d. But, faced with an apparent competition to get as far from those European Liberal values as possible, this feels like exactly the moment to remind people that:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cThe Liberal Democrats exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community, and in which no one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity.\u201d<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align:right;\">(<a href=\"https:\/\/www.libdems.org.uk\/constitution\">Liberal Democrat constitution<\/a>)<\/div>\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div class=ldv>\nThis article originally appeared on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.libdemvoice.org\/remembering-the-liberty-message-among-the-brexit-madness-61212.html\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Liberal Democrat Voice<\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Liberal Democrat result in the European Elections has shown that the #BollocksToBrexit message has finally got through.  But my twitter feed in the last couple of days makes me think that our position on civil liberties is also very relevant to the chaos around Brexit and all that this stirs up for people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_wpscppro_dont_share_socialmedia":false,"_wpscppro_custom_social_share_image":0,"_facebook_share_type":"","_twitter_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type":"","_pinterest_share_type":"","_linkedin_share_type_page":"","_instagram_share_type":"","_medium_share_type":"","_threads_share_type":"","_google_business_share_type":"","_selected_social_profile":[],"_wpsp_enable_custom_social_template":false,"_wpsp_social_scheduling":{"enabled":false,"datetime":null,"platforms":[],"status":"template_only","dateOption":"today","timeOption":"now","customDays":"","customHours":"","customDate":"","customTime":"","schedulingType":"absolute"},"_wpsp_active_default_template":true},"categories":[72,77,254],"tags":[21,59,255],"class_list":["post-1628","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brexit-politics","category-liberal-democrat","category-liberty","tag-brexit","tag-liberal-democrat","tag-liberty"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1628","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1628"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1628\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1650,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1628\/revisions\/1650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markargent.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}