British and German Liberals Losing Appeal

The governing coalitions in Germany and the United Kingdom are under pressure as their junior partners have failed to deliver on key election promises. Both liberal parties are currently trailing in the polls as voters flee the center.

Chancellor Angela Merkel's own christian democrats lost seats in the upper house of parliament last May in the wake of the Greek bailout effort. German voters have been skeptical of having to come to Europe's rescue time and again and many are longing for a return of the Deutsche Mark.

The junior Free Democratic Party (FDP) has bore the grunt of voter dissatisfaction however. A liberal free market party, the FDP pledged to lower tax rates ahead of federal elections last year. The liberals won nearly 15 percent of the vote in 2009. Forced to cut public spending, they have been unable to deliver on their promise. In recent polls, the party receives but 5 percent of votes, not enough to make the election threshold.

According to the socialist opposition in Germany, the government's austerity measures as socially imbalanced and some 80 percent of Germans agree. Two thirds of voters are in favor of raising the top income tax rate instead, something both the chancellor and the FDP are opposed to. Conservatives and business leaders are increasingly weary of the coalition meanwhile, predicting its demise as early as this summer.

In Britain the Liberal Democrats, in coalition with the Conservatives since May of last year, have similarly lost part of their appeal, particularly among students and young urban professionals. If elections were held today, the party would receive but 11 percent of votes; half of what they won last year.

As in Germany, the government's fiscal policies are unpopular with voters on the left. The Liberal Democrats agreed to a raise in the value added tax from 17.5 to 20 percent and supported an education reform measure which they said to oppose ahead of the elections.

In other parts of Europe, liberal parties have performed well. Small government conservatives and proponents of the free market were on the rise in Central Europe last year while in the Netherlands and Scandinavia, broad alliances of liberals, conservatives and populists remain firmly in power.

A new right is emerging across Europe, spearheaded in some countries, as in the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Sweden, by traditional liberals and in others, including Germany and the United Kingdom, by conservatives who have moved to the center. Like Swedish Prime Minister John Fredrik Reinfeldt, David Cameron is far from an outspoken antagonist of Britain's welfare state. The political rights favors spending cuts and smaller government but does not believe in abolishing welfare provisions altogether.

The British and German liberals could be part of that new right except their base is divided. Leftists have been disillusioned by their support for spending cuts while moderate voters are drawn to the right where they find conservatives who share their concerns about immigration and crime. There doesn't seem to be much room for social liberalism in the middle anymore.

Originally published at the Atlantic Sentinel, January 6, 2011.

Nationalizing Airports Because Of a Bit of Snow?

Well, not a bit of snow actually. Some tens of thousands of travelers were stranded at the London airports because of the poor weather conditions there. No wonder that Britain's leftist newspaper The Guardian favors renationalization then.

According to The Guardian's Neil Clark even before last weeks terrible delays, Britain's privatized airports, "with their shortage of public seating, their lack of reasonably priced food and drink outlets, and their depressing, unfriendly atmosphere, were an international disgrace." I never noticed Heathrow had a lack of "public" seats but I do wonder just what constitute "reasonable" food and drink prices according to Mr Clark? Also, could he point to a single government building that has an uplifting, "friendly" atmosphere to it? And is that really what travelers were upset about when they spent the night at the airport?

Airports' "spectacular failure to adequately deal with recent snowfalls has," according to Clark "surely exposed to all but the most fanatical free marketeers, the enormous price we pay for having our infrastructure in private ownership." He reminiscences about the 1960s when state owned terminals had to provide "lots of seating" for the public whereas according to the "commercial attitude" of private airlines today, "every square inch must be turned over to retail space." Isn't that despicable?

Unlike its state owned predecessor, the privately owned BAA is seemingly guided by just one concern: maximising profits for its Spanish owned parent company, Ferrovial.

Clark seems startled to find that a private company cares to turn a profit. Indeed, it's ridiculous, he writes, "to have profit hungry multinational companies running things that really are best left to the public sector." If that includes airports, what doesn't it, I wonder?

Public seating aside and disregarding the moral implications of public versus private ownership, there is no doubt that privately owned services always do better than their public counterparts. As Clark so disgustingly points out, private companies care about maximizing profits. That means that they have to offer better products and better service than their competitors else their customers will turn elsewhere. Indeed, people are quite willing to drive an extra mile for an airport that serves cheaper airlines and flights. They aren't usually so willing to pay extra for comfortable seating though---which is probably why many people fly economy while very few buy a first or business class ticket.

Public ownership by contrast has no competitors. Consequently, it has no reason to innovate, no reason to improve its service, for the people have nowhere else to go. The only reason government has to ensure that its nationalized companies do well is some altruist benevolence maybe or the fear of being voted out of office. History tells us that the profit motive is a far more solid incentive.

WikiLeaks, Doing the Work of Totalitarianism

Theodore Dalrymple is skeptical of WikiLeaks' release of confidential American embassy cables. He warns that the whistleblowers are unwittingly doing the work of totalitarianism.

The idea behind WikiLeaks is that life should be an open book, that everything that is said and done should be immediately revealed to everybody, that there should be no secret agreements, deeds, or conversations. In the fanatically puritanical view of WikiLeaks, no one and no organization should have anything to hide. It is scarcely worth arguing against such a childish view of life.

What WikiLeaks will accomplish, Dalrymple predicts, is precisely the opposite of what it champions. "Far from making for a more open world, it could make for a much more closed one."

Secrecy, or rather the possibility of secrecy, is not the enemy but the precondition of frankness. WikiLeaks will sow distrust and fear, indeed paranoia; people will be increasingly unwilling to express themselves openly in case what they say is taken down by their interlocutor and used in evidence against them, not necessarily by the interlocutor himself. This could happen not in the official sphere alone, but also in the private sphere, which it works to destroy. An Iron Curtain could descend, not just on Eastern Europe, but over the whole world. A reign of assumed virtue would be imposed, in which people would say only what they do not think and think only what they do not say.

Dissolving the distinction between public and private is characteristic, if not the outspoken aim, of any totalitarian regime. "Opening and reading other people’s e-mails is not different in principle from opening and reading other people’s letters," argues Dalrymple. WikiLeaks has assumed the role of censor to the world, he believes, "a role that requires an astonishing moral grandiosity and arrogance to have assumed. Even if some evils are exposed by it, or some necessary truths aired, the end does not justify the means."