October 2023 – thinking liberal

Starmer triumphant

Photo: Petr Kratochvil PubicDomainPictures.net

Recognition of Sir Keir Starmer’s achievement as Labour leader has been grudging. Even as Labour dominates the opinion polls with leads of over 10%, and local elections and by elections confirm it, the response has been “Yes, but…”. Any straw in the wind that might throw doubt on Labour’s dominance is leapt on and magnified. Labour’s victory in two by elections last week, in two ultra-safe Conservative seats, should end that, following as these do a spectacular victory over the SNP in Scotland in a another by election. The party can win almost anywhere it chooses to fight.

The three October by elections each throw a different light on the stranglehold Sir Keir now has on British politics. The first, in Rutherglen and Hamilton West, on the outskirts of Glasgow, shows that Labour is at last breaking the SNP stranglehold north of the border, which resulted in Labour winning just one seat in Scotland the 2019 general election. The constituency was marginal but the swing was huge. This follows the implosion of both the SNP and the Conservatives, which had been the second party in Scotland. This is important, as Labour failure here under both Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn was a critical aspect of the failure of both of these leaders. This makes winning an overall majority in the country as a whole much easier, both directly and indirectly, as the prospect of the SNP holding the balance of power has been used to scare English voters into voting Conservative.

The second by election was in Tamworth, in the West Midlands. This seat shared characteristics with the “red wall” seats that used to be Labour, but which have been swinging to the Conservatives since 2010, and especially in 2019 – and which voted heavily for Brexit. In this case the Conservatives first won it in 2010 and improved their margin in each of the elections in 2015, 2017 and 2019 (even in 2017 when the national swing was against them). Labour’s success here is a sign that Labour is at last reversing this trend; even if it can’t back to 2010 in a general election, pre-2019 will bring in plenty of seats.

The third seat was Mid-Bedfordshire which is altogether more middle-class, and a classic, largely-rural safe Conservative seat that they have always held. What was particularly interesting this time was that the Liberal Democrats fancied their chances here, after their four spectacular by election victories this parliament, including two from third behind Labour, as in this seat. The argument was that many voters might contemplate voting Lib Dem but would never consider Labour. The Lib Dems put in a massive effort on the ground. But Labour’s success in the safe Tory seat of Selby suggested to them that they could win here, putting the Lib Dems in their place. And so it proved. Apart from the battle with the Tories, this was a trial of strength against the vaunted Lib Dem by election machine. Labour won.

Labour can’t win just by reinstating their red wall losses, even back to 2010, or recovering the seats lost in Scotland in 2015 – they lost in 2010 after all. But progress in Mid-Bedforshire and Selby show that they are making ground everywhere except, perhaps, in a few areas where the Lib Dems are already well-established, and London which they already dominate. By contrast their failure in Uxbridge, on the same day as Selby, and which the Conservatives and their supporting commentariat took to be a sign of hope, is an outlier. It is a London seat and London is the one area where the party had progressed since 2010.

All this brings to mind the build-up to the 1997 general election, and Mr Blair’s landslide victory for Labour, when Labour was similarly winning across a broad front. Then too, the Conservatives clutched at every available straw; they talked of creating “clear blue water” between themselves and Labour, much as they do now, without using those words. The Conservative prime minister was John Major, and his advisers kept saying that “the darkest hour is just before the dawn,” oblivious to actual cycle of light (the darkest hour is midnight). Meanwhile Labour shadowed Conservative fiscal plans in order to head off fears about extra taxes – and generally tempered its radicalism. I recently heard a claim that Labour promoted radical policies before 1997, and so should not fear doing so again. This is nonsense: any radicalism was confined to constitutional policies that were popular amongst key minorities, and few others cared much about. There were no promises on country-wide electoral reform or English devolution, and radical increases in spending on the NHS, for example, did not come until Labour’s next term.

But there are differences between now and 1996, and they are interesting. Then Mr Blair was putting most of his energy into winning over liberals. He had an unwritten pact with the Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown, but it was a scary time to be a Lib Dem – what was the point when Labour seemed so interested in liberal ideas – promoting education, Scottish devolution, freedom of information – and even some signs of flexibility on electoral reform? Sir Keir is not interested in any of this – except with the adoption of a green agenda, though he is hedging even on that. The Tories have alienated liberals so thoroughly that he doesn’t have to try to win them over. Instead, he is focusing on Brexit-supporting working class and lower middle-class voters, which Mr Blair did not completely neglect (his law-and-order policies were designed to appeal to them), but treated secondary. Sir Keir dead-bats the endless culture war provocations that the Tories throw at him and drives home his message on chaotic state of public services, important to this group. Sir Keir’s uncharismatic style seems calculated to reassure, compared to Mr Blair’s slippery charisma.

Of course, Labour’s strength largely reflects the Conservatives’ weakness. And yet there is little they can do to correct that. Their attempts to imitate the US Republicans with nativist and culturally conservative causes, and rowing back on green policies, seem to have little traction with their key audience, while alienating middle-class liberals, who have been a key part of their electoral coalition. Perhaps their best hope is to stoke up fears of tax rises under a Labour government. But the dire state of public services has probably reconciled most people to higher taxes, and the Conservatives have shredded their reputation for competent management. Even those who think the prime minister Rishi Sunak is competent, will not think the same of most of his colleagues, and will have noted how often the party ditches its leaders.

Big swings can happen in a short space of time. A notable case was in 2017 when Theresa May lost a commanding lead over Labour in weeks. But that was a snap election when neither side was prepared, and Mrs May compounded it by trying to capitalise on her lead by putting risky policies in the party manifesto. Most people expect the Conservatives to close the gap a little, leaving Labour with a small majority or just short. But a complete Tory meltdown is also on the cards, such is the party’s weak credibility and penchant for self-destruction.

There are legitimate questions over Sir Keir’s policies. His talk of making public services work better through reform, and not by radically increasing funding, is just not credible. Furthermore, the public finances are looking weak. High inflation means a tight monetary policy. The country still depends on funding from foreigners, and yet the funding environment is getting much more difficult. Promising to fill this gap by growing the economy lacks credibility too, given the headwinds of demography, the retreat on open trade, and the rise of low-productivity services.

But whatever the doubts, Sir Keir Starmer is offering a much more convincing alternative government to the Conservatives, and there seems to be nothing the latter can do about it.

The three narratives of Israel-Palestine offer no prospect of resolution

Flowers in Kibbutz Be’eri By Maqluba2023 – Phot: Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=138887313

I don’t make a point of listening to BBC’s The Today Podcast as I don’t need extra things to listen to. But I caught some it on the radio last night while brushing my teeth. In it Nick Robinson and Amol Rajan talked about the Gaza war – and Nick (as the BBC like to refer to him) explained how there were three incompatible narratives to the history of the Israel-Palestine troubles. It is a very good way of making sense of what is going one here, even if it offers no hope of how it might eventually resolve.

I have had a special interest in Israel since I volunteered on a kibbutz in the summer of 1979 between graduating (it was organised through the university) and starting my training as a Chartered Accountant. It was at Kibbutz Be’eri on the Gaza border. I was there for about six weeks. The kibbutz organisers soon decided that I had limited value as a worker and had me doing duties in the communal kitchen, cleaning floors, etc. – after starting off in agricultural work. Our stay included a tour of Israel organised by the kibbutz. I and one one of the other volunteers then did our own bit of tourism, based in Jerusalem, but including an organised trip to Sinai, then under Israel control. In the course of this I met a wide variety of people: our Israeli hosts, Palestinians both in Gaza and elsewhere, and American Jewish tourists. This was inevitably light on the Palestinian side of things, but a group of us volunteers did walk into Gaza one day, and all the way to the beach, before getting a taxi back. Back in 1979 the Gaza’s were quite open an friendly – they simply wanted the rest of the world to know how things were. To the kibbutzim, though, Gaza was just Other, and they feared to go over the border. Security was ever present. 44 years later Be’eri was overrun by Hamas terrorists, and over 100 people were murdered, with others, I presume, kidnapped. Things had moved on in the intervening period after my stay, but not in a good way.

The first of Mr Robinson’s three narratives is that of Israelis. The establishment of the Israeli homeland in the original land of Zion was a response to many centuries of persecution, where a pattern was repeated. After their dispersal by the Romans in the first century AD, Jewish communities became minority communities spread across the world (reaching as far as China), maintaining their faith and distinctive customs. A pattern was generally repeated: the community would try to fit with their host community, with a greater or lesser level of commercial interaction and with a generally passive approach. This would work fine for a while, but sooner or later the hosts would turn on them, expelling them or massacring them. In the 18th and 19th Century in Europe many Jews integrated with the newly liberal middle class in Europe, even taking up the Christian religion. And yet this simply provoked an even more violent backlash, culminating in the Holocaust. Even outside the Nazi empire, prejudice was rife. In Britain, France and America Jews were still Other. Many were appalled at Nazi policy towards Jews, but in a rather detached sense and they lifted hardly a finger to help. Few refugees were accepted, even as the persecution became more extreme. Zionists decided that they could only be secure in their own community, and so Zionism took off, leading eventually to the foundation of Israel.

How does this narrative deal with the Palestinians? They were a problem because they violently tried to stop the establishment of the Israeli state, leading to the war of independence in 1948. It is central to the idea of Zionism that the Jewish people be able to match violence with force, and they must not compromise on the idea of controlling their own fate. If that meant establishing their state using terrorist tactics against the British, or deleting Arab villages, then so be it. What struck me back in 1979 when visiting Yad Vashem (and also meeting those American Jews) was how much Israelis were treating non-Jews as Other. Gentiles were divided into friends of the Jews and Enemies. You cheered on your friends, and fought your enemies. Since 1948, according to this narrative, Palestinians have been given every opportunity to peacefully coexist with Israeli, but instead have used those opportunities to attack. The Hamas assault on 7 October is only the latest example of using freedoms allowed by Israeli to plot against it.

Next comes the Palestinian narrative. After the dispersal of the Jews the land of Palestine was populated by tribes that were local to the area and shared it with them. We refer to Palestinians as “Arabs” but this is a misnomer – they, or only a few of them, did not originate from Arabia. The Bible provides us with a series of names – notably Canaanites and, of course, Philistines, after whom Palestine is named. They adopted Arabic language following the Muslim invasions, and the Islamic religion, a faith which draws heavily on Jewish traditions, and has adopted Jerusalem as holy site. These peoples have a strong historical right to this land. More so, perhaps, than the Saxon and Norse English have to England. While some Jewish people living in Palestine have deep historical roots there, the influx over the last last century amounts to an alien invasion. Palestinians were violently displaced from their land in 1948, with further displacement taking place ever since. This is a historic wrong that can only be righted through active resistance. Israeli occupation and rule increasingly resembles Apartheid South Africa, with the natives forced to occupy depleted homelands with only nominal sovereignty, if that.

And third there is the Western liberal narrative. If only the Israelis and Palestinians could sit down to talk, and learn to live together peacefully, in two states, or even one! Various opportunities have been presented to do this, but repeatedly thwarted by weak leadership and the influence of hotheads.

Each of these narratives has more than an element of truth to it. The Western liberal one may look very weak, but it is the only one that looks towards a resolution.

When looking at the terrible mess, most commentators respond along the lines of “I wouldn’t start from here”. Various people are blamed for moving the parties to this wrong place, but in the end blaming people doesn’t offer any kind of solution. Each of the two principal narratives has its own strong, grinding logic. History offers no encouraging precedents. India went for partition, which led to mass murder and ethnic cleansing. The German diaspora in east Europe was likewise settled with population transfer, only thinkable after a devastating war. Yugoslavia collapsed in a vicious civil war. It is hard to see Switzerland offering much of an example to follow.

I would like to offer hope in this gloom. I won’t take sides. Israel has suffered an appalling atrocity whose scale it is hard to take on. But the Palestinians have suffered more.

Why The Economist is wrong about the global economy

The Economist print edition was published before Hamas’s shocking attack from Gaza, and led on one its own stories. I will stick with that story today. This blog isn’t meant for instant reactions and the dust is a long way from settling. All I will say is that I was a volunteer at one of the kibbutzes (Be’eri) attacked on Saturday back in 1979 – long ago but it still adds depth to my reaction.

The Economist‘s lead is a challenge to “homeland economics” – the rejection of globalisation in developed economies, with the rise of protectionism and massive state subsidies to locate manufacturing in home country. The case is made by an extended essay (“special report”) on the world economy by Callum Williams, senior economics writer. This in turn is fronted by a leading article, Are free markets history?, which frames the issue as a challenge by politicians to the ideas of free market economics, which will lead to bad things. “Governments are jettisoning the principles that made the world rich,” it says. Having free market instincts myself, I find much to agree with in this critique. Most of the justifications offered for the increase in protectionism and extended government programmes don’t add up. But the newspaper’s writers are making three mistakes. They are taking the political narrative at face value without trying to understand the forces that shape it. They underestimate how much free markets themselves are driving the changes to the economic system. And they don’t know what they want. “The task for classical liberals is to prepare…a new consensus that adapts their ideas to a more dangerous, inter connected and fractious world.” Yes, but what on earth does that look like? It may turn out to be surprisingly close to what the world is doing now, but in slightly different clothes.

I see things differently – while at the same time using classical liberal economics as my basis. The expansion of global trade has been one of the most critical aspects of the development of the world economy since the Second World War. At first the main beneficiaries were the Western European and American economies – but this started to run out of steam in the 1960s – as the war-damaged economies of Europe recovered. Then Asia burst onto the scene, in three distinct phases – first Japan, then the “tiger economies” of South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore – and finally and most dramatically with China – with India, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh playing a significant role too. This last phase, from the mid 1990s up to the financial crash of 2007-09, was the most dramatic of them all and was given the monicker of “Globalisation”. The impact was dramatic – many scores of millions were lifted out of poverty; China rose to be a superpower; and living standards in the developed world (now including Japan) steadily advanced as falling prices of manufactured goods fed through. These advances had three critical ingredients: free trade, technology and comparative advantage. The weakness of The Economist‘s argument is that it concentrates on the first part of this holy trinity without appreciating the impact of the other two.

Let’s consider technology. The first critical development was the rise of manufactured consumer goods. Technological developments from the Second World War – from manufacturing technology to the use of plastics – saw a massive rise in the production of cheap goods from cars to washing-up liquid which came to occupy a dominant position in the economy. Advancing agricultural technology also led to huge agricultural surpluses in some countries. These goods are readily tradable and thus gave rise to a huge opportunity for trade. The second critical development was the advance of information technology in 1980s and onward, which allowed the development of long, global supply chains and the relocation of manufacturing and other economic activity, sometimes to the other side of the world. This again greatly expanded the scope for increased trade.

Then there is comparative advantage. This classical piece of economics has been well understood for two centuries and more. It gets taught in basic economics courses (“Economics 101”) as a wonderful illustration of the power of counterintuitive thinking. Then, after Economics 101, it quietly gets forgotten by trained economists. While its strategic impact is obvious, it is very hard to incorporate it into the mathematical and computer models that are at the heart of professional economics. That is unfortunate, because its dynamics are critical to understanding patterns of trade. It suggests that benefits from trade exist when two economies have structural differences that lead to different opportunity costs for different economic goods and services – for illustration the amount of wheat production that must be foregone by redeploying resources (typically labour) to make a car, say, or vice versa. In an undeveloped economy, like China in 1990, agricultural productivity is very low and you don’t have to forego much wheat to make a car. In America, agricultural productivity is sky-high, and the amount of wheat forgone to make that extra car is much higher, even allowing for much higher manufacturing productivity. So China is said to have a comparative advantage in car production, and America in wheat production – even if America is much more efficient at car production. So if China redeployed labour from the farms to factories and imported wheat from America to make up the shortfall, it could make more cars than the Americans would forego to redeploy labour to produce the extra wheat. Of course, that specific example is flawed: America can’t simply send workers to the countryside and expect that to raise agricultural production. But the general principle stands: export where you have comparative advantage; import where you don’t – and everybody should be better off. Exchange rates gravitate to levels that make the exchange beneficial to both sides, allowing for the differences in absolute productivity. This is one of the main reasons that exchange rates do not follow purchasing power parity.

Now the point that isn’t made in most Economics 101 courses, and fails to be fully appreciated by even trained economists, is that these gains from trade arise from differences in the structure of economies. If two national economies are identical, there will be no gain. And, in principle the more economies differ, the bigger the potential gains. Sometimes these differences arise from geography – if one country can drill oil in its jurisdiction it will certainly have a comparative advantage in oil over one that doesn’t – and production of oil will tend to drive out production of other goods (one reason why British de-industrialisation was particularly acute when North Sea oil was plentiful). But other differences are less rooted. The main difference that drove globalisation was the state of development – and in particular a vast, unproductive agricultural workforce compared in developing countries compared to a fully mechanised one in advanced ones. This did not necessarily drive agricultural trade, which is often subject to heavy protectionism, but led to low manufacturing wages, and thus an advantage in lower-tech manufacturing. But as these economies developed, starting with Japan, and moving on to China, they converged with the developed world. Manufacturing wages rose and the exchange rate of the developing nations appreciated. The gains from trade were based on much more subtle differences, and there were generally less of them. Outsourcing manufacturing from America to China is a much more nuanced economic proposition now, even without all the political baggage.

The role of technology in trade has changed too. Manufacturing technology has advanced to the point of being so productive that its role in the overall economy is much less dominant than it was. Indeed The Economist points out that one of the issues with relocating it “back home’ is that it doesn’t bring many jobs with it – it will not be recreating the good old days of plentiful mid-level jobs in the 1970s. Technology itself continues to evolve at a rapid pace, but it is far from clear that it is doing so in a way that opens opportunities for trade. It may even be doing the reverse by making it easier for economies to be self-sufficient after paying due homage to the technological giants that control so much of it. And the tech giants do not employ all that many people.

So it’s not at all surprising that the bottom is falling out of globalisation. There are just fewer opportunities to make profits. And with this tightness comes political sensitivity. It is much more likely that government policies will affect trade patterns because it takes less effort to turn the tables. And other issues such as resilience and security weigh more heavily. In particular China’s unsubtle effort to tilt economic advantage its ways in particular economic sectors, and use economic leverage to bully (countering, no doubt they would suggest, the American propensity to do the same) is drawing an understandable political reaction.

Where The Economist is right is to suggest that the new developments in structure of the world economy will yield disappointing results, especially in the developed world. The loss of gains from trade as a result of convergence adversely impacts the world economy. By and large they result from increased productivity in developing nations, who are able to offset the loss of trade gains by banking the extra productivity. The developed world can’t offset the loss in the same way. The costs of imported goods rise relative to domestic goods and this amounts to a headwind against living standards. A tailwind turns into a headwind for economic growth, to be added to other headwinds such as adverse demographic changes.

These are, funnily enough, the problems of success. Globalisation has done a huge amount to advance human development, but we’ve reached the top of the escalator (leaving aside, for now, the issue of what happens to the remaining less developed economies, in Africa for example). Much the same can be said of developments to manufacturing technology. We must look in a different direction to make future advances.

That different direction may include market economics, and surely it includes a trade in ideas – but physical trade will play a lesser role. Restoration of the environment, a better appreciation of human psychological needs, and a rethink of public services will be the critical elements. We can’t look to the recent past as our guide.

The Liberal Democrats prepare for the next election

Bournemouth – site of the 2023 Lib Dem Autumn Conference

I haven’t posted for a month. I’ve been on holiday, and then last weekend I went to the Liberal Democrats conference in Bournemouth. This is the first in-person Autumn conference the party has had this parliament, since September 2019 in fact – and my first conference of any kind since then. It was lovely to catch up with friends and acquaintances, people-watch and sample some of the internal debates the party is having. But what did the event say about the health of the party?

Overall the party was in good heart after a series of spectacular by election wins and good local election results. This was widely expected to be the last Autumn conference before the next general election (a shorter Spring conference in March in York should go ahead) – which is expected next year in May or in September or October. It showed. Much passion was on display on the conference floor, and many excellent speeches – but little actual debate: few speaker’s cards were placed against motions or even amendments. It resembled the managed affairs of the Labour and Conservative parties. There was one notable exception, on housing, which I will come to.

The party leadership’s electoral strategy is clear: it is to increase the party’s representation in parliament to thirty or more seats (it is now 11 plus four by-election wins), almost entirely by winning seats currently held by the Conservatives (one or two SNP seats are in the sights, and perhaps the odd Labour one). The unspoken hope is that this will be enough to overtake the SNP as the third party in parliament, with a substantial increase in the party’s ability to influence the agenda there. It may also be enough to hold the balance of power, should Labour fail to secure a majority, and thus influence government policy in one way or another.

The contrast with 2019 could hardly be greater. The party then had momentum as a rallying point for those hoping to reverse the result of the Brexit referendum – and it talked of forming the largest party in parliament with its leader as prime minister. A lot of political capital was spent on the proposition that the party would not rerun the referendum if it won an overall majority. But the party was out-manoeuvred by Labour’s support for a second referendum (much good that it did them) and the bubble was burst in the December 2019. Following this debacle the party commissioned a post-election review by Baroness Thornhill, who, as mayor of Watford, was one of the party’s most successful politicians. Unlike most such reviews, which are generally discarded by the party managers before the next election arrives, this review has been taken to heart. Ambition has been lowered; the communications agenda is led by public opinion rather than activists’ priorities; efforts have been made to professionalise the party’s core workers and reduce staff turnover.

This gives a great deal of credibility to the party’s strategy. Early in the conference many activists were a bit glum after seeing a presentation by psephologist John Curtice that showed that the collapse in support for the Conservatives was benefiting Labour and not the Lib Dems. But what matters is what is happening in about fifty seats out of the 650, and national polls will not show this clearly. Another pollster, Rob Ford, showed that the party was doing well among better-off graduate voters, and that the numbers of these voters was increasing in the seats likely to be Lib Dem targets. The Tories’ courting of “petty bourgeois” voters by ditching green policies, and ratcheting up nasty rhetoric on immigrants, plays into Lib Dem hands here. In 2019, the Tory leader Boris Johnson was careful to nod to these voters; the current leadership knows no such subtlety. The Lib Dems should benefit from the collateral damage of the Labour-Tory contest for the petty bourgeois – rather as the Tories benefited from the collateral damage of the Labour-Lib Dem battle for the professional classes in 2019. The party’s prospects thus look good in a decent number of seats in the South-East commuter belt around London, and equivalent seats further north, such as Hazel Grove outside Manchester. The prospects are murkier in the party’s former heartlands in the west county, however, where the professional classes are much less in evidence – though with Labour relatively weak there, there must be some opportunities.

However this strategy is creating a lot of tension in the party. Listening to the electors and letting them set the agenda may be good for curbing arrogance and winning parliamentary seats, but party activists want something more ideological and radical. But the radicalism is being suppressed. The party will not explicitly campaign to rejoin the European Union, as many activists wish – a goodly proportion having joined the party in the first place because of support for EU membership. Rather like Labour, the leadership are sticking to a much vaguer line about better relations. A flirtation with Universal Basic Income (UBI) has been firmly squashed – though in general the party remains stronger on ideas for spending more public money that raising it or saving it. This conservatism led to the only serious, open conflict of the conference: on housing.

Housing developments are not generally popular in the rural and semi-rural areas that comprise the party’s best prospects. City-dwellers fume that this is “nimbyism”, but living in one such area (bordering decent Lib Dem prospect seats, though not actually in one) I can say that this is oversimplifying things bit. Many developments comprise mediocre-quality houses in environmentally sensitive areas, with inadequate plans for supporting infrastructure – because these are more profitable for developers. The Conservatives are in full retreat on their commitment to building more homes, and are attacking the Lib Dem national target of building over 300,000 houses a year (even if this commitment was in their 2019 manifesto too) – though this did not do the Tories any good in local elections here in Sussex. The Lib Dem leadership were worried enough about this to propose dropping this target in a new housing policy, while at the same time still committing to building roughly this number of homes, by increasing social housing, developing garden cities, and so on. But the Young Liberals organised a counter-attack. Younger voters feel as if they are the centre of a housing crisis, with increased rents and vanishing prospects of buying their own homes. The housing target has important symbolic value to them, and the policy looked like a retreat. The leadership tried to win by deploying heavyweight speakers, but their arguments were thin gruel. Former leader Tim Farron delivered a “barnstorming” speech in defence of the leadership position by shouting increasingly loudly that housing targets wee “Thatcherism” without explaining why. “Has he lost the plot?” my wife, next to me, asked. “Yes,” I said, and we both voted for the Young Liberal amendment, which was carried. That was the only act of defiance by the membership, however.

In the conference fringe, things were a lot more interesting. My especial interest was rural policy: how to turn around farming policy so that it helps restore wildlife and absorb carbon – without too much damage to productivity. For me this is a critical area: carbon policy will fail unless the land is made into an efficient carbon sink, and we end extractive farming practices – never mind ending the destruction of wildlife. I was encouraged by the party’s support for this, which is winning converts among many farmers. But hard choices beckon, as it is hard to see how this can work without a substantial reduction in the consumption of meat. I was also interested by the arguments made in favour of UBI at a couple of fringes. There is something deeply flawed in the conventional thinking about tax, benefits and public services – and UBI might be part of the solution. But if it is, it feels like only one leg of a three-legged stool and it will not work by itself. More on that on this blog later, as I gather my thoughts.

In his closing speech, the party leader, Ed Davey, harped on the familiar themes: outrage at water companies for dumping sewage into rivers and the sea, supporting Net Zero policies, and a new policy about health care and cancer treatment. What party activists were more interested in were his mentions of closer relations with Europe, advocacy of electoral and political reform and an attack on Labour for lacking ambition and caving in to Tory policies. He said about the minimum here, in comments that were not picked up by the media coverage. The attitude to Labour is interesting. There is no love lost between Labour and the Lib Dems. The two parties are battling against each other to win the Conservative held seat of Mid Bedfordshire in a by-election, in an interesting trial of strength. Activists were repeatedly called on the help there. The party needs Labour voters to come over to it in its key seats, and so is careful not to antagonise.

I think Ed is right in his overall approach. The next election will clear a lot of air, and hopefully the party can develop its more radical instincts afterwards. If Labour win, as seems likely, then the party will need to define itself clearly against it – and that will be a lot more interesting.