A truly liberal party
From Dr Chris Scanlan
Sir: Your claim that the Liberal Democrats are a bunch of ‘confused bossyboots’ whose only ambition is ‘to bleed the rich’ is extraordinarily misleading (Leading article, 16 April). In fact, the economic proposals put forward by Vincent Cable (that radical anticapitalist lefty who until recently masqueraded as chief financial executive of Shell International) should command the support of all who believe in liberalised free markets: reform of the expensive and immoral Common Agricultural Policy, the promotion of global free trade, the removal of all ‘business regulation’ unless specifically renewed by Parliament, and the abolition of the interventionist DTI. It should also be noted that the single positive economic decision for which New Labour is credited, the creation of an independent Bank of England, was actually a Liberal Democrat policy, and one that never appeared in Labour’s 1997 manifesto.
It is even more absurd to claim that the Liberal Democrats, who have opposed the increasingly authoritarian policies of Tony Blair (compulsory ID cards, detention without trial, the erosion of judicial independence, control freakery over the civil and intelligence services, and restriction of economic migration essential to the continued prosperity of our ageing nation) are somehow more ‘bossy’ than the Labour, and often Conservative, parties which supported them.
Chris Scanlan Oxford
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