Political

Nick Clegg: we are the new progressives

Earlier this evening I went along to The Guardian’s offices at King’s Place to hear Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg give the Hugo Young lecture.

Given the fractious recent relations between Liberal Democrats and Guardian journalists, it was a slightly incongruous combination, especially when the topic of Clegg’s speech – progressive politics – was preceded by rather posh canapés.

But to the substance of the speech (a version of which appeared on Comment is Free earlier today and whose comments on control orders I blogged about earlier); Clegg set out his stall for a different version of progressive politics from that espoused by many on the left, arguing that 2010 will be a major watershed in the development of progressive politics:

The need for fiscal discipline is sharpening the choices we face. It is forcing us to be clearer about what it really means to be progressive. With less money, we need more focus.

The need to make choices is revealing an important divide between old progressives, who emphasize the power and spending of the central state, and new progressives, who focus on the power and freedom of citizens. For new progressives, the test is not the size of the state, it is the relationship between the state and the citizen. Old progressives conflate the idea of progress with the control and reach of the central state … . In the mid 1980s, a senior Labour politician wrote that Labour must be the “we will make you free” party, not the “we know what’s best for you” party. It is not very often you’ll hear me say this, but I think the author, Roy Hattersley, was right.

Clegg mocked those who judge how progressive a government is simply on the basis of how much the state is spending:

The new progressive test for any form of state intervention is whether it liberates and empowers people. There are some areas where a new progressive approach would imply more state intervention and investment, such as early years, narrowing educational inequalities and promoting a greener economy. That is why I have argued many times that it makes no sense whatsoever to use a phrase like ‘small state liberal’. It is not the size of the state, but what the state does, that matters.

After rehearsing by now familiar arguments that there is nothing progressive about saddling future generations with our debt, Clegg emphasised a different approach to public services from Labour’s traditional model – or indeed that of the right-wing of the Conservative Party:

For old progressives, the NHS needs more money, more targets and more national standardization. For free marketeers, the problem with the NHS is that it is a monopoly with state funded care, squeezing out the possibility of a fully-fledged market in health. For new progressives, the problem with the NHS is not that it is monopolistic, but that it is monolithic. The NHS should offer more diversity, more personalisation, and more flexibility – but all within a tax-funded public system that is always free at the point of delivery.

Similar points about other public services, such as education where Clegg called for local authorities to oversee a schools system where all are Academies, were followed by Clegg addressing his overall vision of what constitutes a fair society:

But it is also too static. Can we really think that a society in which people are temporarily lifted above a statistical line by a few pounds is, in the long run, fairer than one in which opportunity is genuinely dispersed and people’s future life chances are fundamentally improved?

Inequalities become injustices when they are fixed; passed on, generation to generation. That’s when societies become closed, stratified and divided. For old progressives, reducing snapshot income inequality is the ultimate goal. For new progressives, reducing the barriers to mobility is.

No wonder given this definition that there were some polite barbs at the approach of the IFS and others to judging the government’s policies:

There have been studies undertaken of the impact of the spending review that use one measure – income – at one point in time. And they are valuable for precisely this reason. But they are not a full depiction of all of the things that matter in a person’s life. You cannot airbrush out the services that make a difference to a person’s fortunes: the support you get in the classroom when you are young; the care you receive from the NHS if you are sick; the childcare services you can rely on when you are working. You have to take into account the lives that people live in practice, not that they live on paper.

That is why the Government’s own analysis, which did include services, showed a different picture, one which showed the richest fifth losing the most from the spending review, and the poorest fifth losing less.

As for tuition fees and higher education more generally,

I will defend the Government’s plans for reforming the funding of universities, even though it is not the one I campaigned for. It is not my party’s policy, but it is the best policy given the choices we face…

Our plans will mean that many of the lowest income graduates will repay less than they do under the current system. And all graduates will pay out less per month than they do now. Nobody will pay a penny back until their earnings reach £21,000 per year, compared to £15,000 now. The highest-earning graduates will pay back the most. We will spend £150 million a year to lower the financial obstacles for applicants from the poorest backgrounds. For the first time since Labour introduced fees, we will abolish the requirement for part-time students to pay upfront for tuition. These students are generally older and poorer and make up 40% of all students. Providing they are studying for at least a third of their time, our plans mean they will no longer face an upfront fee.

And, perhaps most important of all, we will make sure that universities wanting to charge more for degrees are made to open their doors to the many, not just the few. For those institutions seeking to charge more than £6,000 a year – up to the proposed £9,000 limit – there will be stringent access requirements and real sanctions for those who fail the meet them.

In fact, looked at objectively, our graduate contribution scheme is very close to the so-called graduate tax advocated by the NUS. Except it’s even fairer in the way it’s applied.

There is lots of anger about higher education at the moment and I understand it. I am angry too. Here’s what makes me angry. Oxford and Cambridge take more students each year from just two schools – Eton and Westminster – than from among the 80,000 pupils who are eligible for free school meals. Scandalously, the number of disadvantaged students going to these universities is going down, not up. And a young adult from an affluent background is now seven times more likely to go to university than one from a poor background.

Turning to localism, Clegg took on centralising critics who warn of postcode lotteries:

It is not a lottery when decisions about provision are made by people who can be held to democratic account. That is not a postcode lottery – it is a postcode democracy… For new progressives, the localisation of power – which means, necessarily, of money – is one of the most urgent tasks facing us. Reversing a century of centralisation will not be a quick or an easy task. But we have made a good start.

To end, Clegg turned to a familiar liberal figure:

As John Stuart Mill wrote, “A State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes — will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.”

I do not underestimate the scale of our challenges a nation. We face very deep problems: the crippling deficit, threats of terrorism, climate change and social division. But you cannot be a liberal without being an optimist. And it is my unquenchable conviction that if we place our faith in people rather than in institutions, our future, and the future of new progressive politics, is bright.

In the questions afterwards, Clegg talked about quite what he means by ‘progressive’ in terms that echoed old Liberal Democrat rhetoric about the Conservatives being the enemies and Labour being the rivals. He did not use those terms, but placed his new progressives as agreeing with collectivists over a desire to bring about change but differing from them over methods. Both, Clegg argued, were distinct from Conservatives in sharing that common desire for change. For all the change in British politics, that is a fundamental outlook which echoes that of previous Liberal Democrat leaders Campbell, Kennedy and Ashdown.

For two other reactions so far to Nick Clegg’s speech or article, see Liberal England and Decline of the Logos.

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