Why Isn’t Libertarianism More Successful In The UK?

Why are libertarians seemingly excluded from British political debate, and what we can do about it?

Hero-worship is not my style. Alas, in trying to understand why there are so few libertarians in the UK, I have succumbed. The relatively unknown Barbara Oakley is now my hero. For it is she who provides the insight that allows us to understand why British political discourse is so hostile to libertarian ideals. Her theory of pathological altruism can explain how Britain, an island nation that has prospered by being open and free, could become so viscerally attached to the State.

Oakley’s conclusions concerning the decision-making processes within human beings are of vital importance to the libertarian movement. Put simply, most people base their decisions on emotions, empathy and morality, rather than on rational and reasoned consideration. Why? Basically, because it takes the brain longer to consider rational and logical solutions to problems with which it is presented.

This is heavy stuff. But the implications are clear; the rules of the game are fixed against us. With grandiose moral and emotional narratives targeting a human weakness of natural origin, political debate is the territory of the left. But, as libertarians, we have only compounded this problem. Instead of resistance, our biblical sin has been to surrender any claim to morality, targeting the head rather than the heart. We lost the political battle, perhaps, when we chose to express ourselves in spreadsheets rather than emotions.

The libertarian movement in the UK is weak because we lack the means to inflict a political blow. As a weapon of choice, GDP figures don’t stand a chance against claims that the ‘Bedroom Tax’ forces small children to kill their puppies – or whichever social ill Owen Jones ascribes to a benefit cut this week – whilst the Laffer curve withers in the shadow of powerful ‘moral’ arguments about child poverty and social inequality.

Everywhere one looks, our politics has become infected with emotion. The debate over intervention in Syria, for example, slowly but surely descended into a competition to see who can feel most emotional about murdered children. This shows no sign of receding. In fact, it’s getting worse.

A TV in every room, a computer on every lap, a smartphone in every hand. With echoes of Orwell’s Telescreen, we are bombarded with a constant flow of information and opinion; comment and interference that despite being counter to our rational instincts, is absorbed and processed; believed and deployed, on some small subconscious level.

Le_penseur_de_la_Porte_de_lEnfer_(musée_Rodin)_(4528252054)‘Morality binds and blinds,’ claims Oakley. This we cannot change. Instead, we must play the Left at their own game. In the contemporary cloud of information, the headline is king. We must cheerlead our ideology in someone’s name, organising protest movements to block the construction of wind farms on account of the way they kill pensioners who freeze to death, unable to pay their fuel bills. Okay, a little extreme: but it’s that kind of passion combined with an all-mighty rhetoric that allows the Left to set the rules of the moral game before we’re even out of the clubhouse.

Margaret Thatcher once purportedly said, “one of the greatest problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas.” I tend to agree. It enrages me that the most virtuous quality in public life now seems to be a willingness to emote. But in our frustration we have become cruel and lazy.

Too often we have chosen to hate the welfare recipient rather than the state apparatus that traps them there. Even worse, at times we appear ashamed of our own ideology. Zero hours contracts for example, which are a vital part of a flexible and vibrant labour market; the last gasp for many young people thrown upon the rubbish heap by the effects of minimum wage laws. Alas, we are not willing to defend them. Instead we register a half-hearted argument, with mumbled justifications about vague intellectual ideas.

Using clinical terms like ‘necessary’ ‘unavoidable,’ and ‘a price worth paying,’ to describe things most people see as deeply traumatic – unemployment for example – only confirms to the audience that the left-wing, emotive, discourse is correct.  The Left will in any event portray us as cold, calculating and even evil people; we must not make that job any easier for them.

In the information age, human beings are increasingly relying on emotion and moral intuition as a means of making sense of the world. Fear not however. As indebted western economies continue to lurch from ever-bigger boom to ever-bigger bust, we should be confident in our worldview. For it is not our ideals that are wrong, quite the opposite, but rather the way in which we communicate our principles.

The lack of a coherent libertarian movement in the United Kingdom is not because of an intrinsic flaw; rather that we must learn to speak in a language people understand. But this is not an insurmountable challenge and in that we should take great heart.

Jack Wharton


  1. Very nice article. You articulate the problems exactly. In my frequent battles with the Left I’ve found that presenting hypothetical scenarios that expose the consequences of left-wing politics (minimum wage, equal rights legislation…) to be effective. But it doesn’t half take effort and patience given the mountain of skepticism and exasperation you must climb each time you try!

  2. “Everywhere one looks, our politics has become infected with emotion.”

    Politics has always been emotive (not something recently “infected”) and it always will be, simply because politics is about life, and life is about emotion. If the emotion were removed from politics it would become a meaningless pursuit to the vast majority of people who do not concern themselves with grand ideas and philosophies, but instead with the emotions and passions that make their lives whole. Your desire to remove emotion from politics shows nothing but contempt for the human condition, in which case I think your opinions rather inappropriate in the political sphere.

  3. I accept the problem, i.e. the marginality of libertarianism to the mainstream debate, but where I take issue is with the suggestion that the place to start is in an emotional plea for zero-hours contracts. Given our numerical weakness, we should choose our fights. The current issue of bombing Syria is a far better example of an issue where libertarian ideas and emotion can be usefully coupled.

    Rothbard said libertarians should hammer away at the notion that “they are ripping you off”, they being the government. He also said that libertarianism is about justice or it’s about nothing, and there are plenty of issues where the state is either ripping people off or committing injustices against people which readily lend themselves to emotionalising.

    What libertarians haven’t yet quite managed to do is to develop for themselves a coherent movement. If this was done it would be possible to make alliances on certain issues, but without it, then individual libertarians are far less likely to get involved.

    Whatever the state of things today, I am certain that libertarianism has grown greatly in the last decade, due mainly to the internet, and there is much potential for further growth.

  4. Well, the party-political reasons are obvious:

    1.) The Libertarian Party of the United Kingdom (LPUK) were a waste of space.
    And 2.) UKIP have totally betrayed libertarianism by lurching to social-conservative populism.

    WANTED: An economically and socially liberal, and fiscal- and civic-conservative Party. Fast.

  5. Because WW2 and intellectuals’ rose-tinted view of Russia/Stalin/the USSR from 1930-1990 meant people thought that a centrally-directed, ‘common purpose’ style economy (and, indeed, society) was the way forward.

    It never was.

    The tragedy for the UK is the dearth of scientists – biologists specifically – in Whitehall, Westminster and in positions of influence throughout The Establishment.

    They understand statistics, margins of error – and the central principle of life and everything Mankind does or has ever done – evolution.

    And evolution requires diversity, competition and selection – the very antithesis of a centrally-directed society.


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