Bright Blue, the independent think tank for defending and improving liberal society, has today published a new publication, Liberalism liberated: Revitalising a traditional and richer liberalism for a better Britain, offering radical policies from a cross-party group of leading politicians and thought leaders to tackle Britain’s biggest challenges and prove liberalism can deliver prosperity, protection and fairness again for millions more Britons today.
The publication argues that liberalism is clearly starting to successfully fight back in the free world after being on the back foot since the mid-2010s. But, in truth, we are only at the start of achieving a post-populist age, with liberals facing hard electoral and diplomatic battles ahead, including the latest UK local elections.
Liberals need to fight their critics and contortionists. But liberalism desperately needs a reset too: in its philosophical foundations, in its policymaking and in the leaders who represent it. In particular, the publication argues that liberals need to be restless radicals, breaking free from its association with hyper-individualism and the establishment.
There are 18 essays in total from emerging and established liberals across party lines, including contributions from Rt Hon Liam Byrne MP (Chair, Business and Trade Select Committee), Monica Harding MP (Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for International Development), Sir Andy Street CBE (Former Mayor of West Midland), Dr Peter Swallow MP (Chair, APPG on Social Mobility), Rt Hon Charles Hendry CBE (Former Minister for Energy and Climate Change), Rt Hon Sir Vince Cable (Former Leader of the Liberal Democrats), Rt Hon Sir Robert Buckland KC (Former Lord Chancellor), Dr Tony Juniper CBE (Chair, Natural England), Rt Hon Sir Norman Lamb (Former Minister for Care and Support), Professor David Nutt (Former Chair, Advisory Council on Misuse of Drugs), Dr Tim Leunig (Former Economic Adviser, Chancellor of the Exchequer) and Professor Paul Gregg CBE (Chair, DWP Labour Market Advisory Board), and more.
Ryan Shorthouse, Executive Chair of Bright Blue and co-editor of the publication, commented:
“Liberals across the free world, disorientated and disappointed over the past decade, are getting their act together, quickly uniting and strongly fighting back.
“But liberals in Britain need to be more united. And they need to be much more radical to mitigate stubbornly enduring — as well as rapidly emerging — challenges Britons face, which is causing them to look seriously at populists from both the authoritarian right and the communalist left.
“Liberals need to fight their critics and contortionists. But liberalism desperately needs a reset too: in its philosophical foundations, in its policymaking and in the leaders who represent it. It needs to lean into its pro-social and radical traditions, breaking free from its association with hyper-individualism and the establishment. This is the way to end the languishing post-liberal age and prove liberalism can deliver prosperity, protection and fairness again for millions more Britons today.”
Contributors and Bright Blue may not necessarily agree with the policies advocated by other contributors.
Key recommendations include:
Personal prosperity
- Allow working-aged people to use their accumulated pension savings to buy a house prior to retirement.
- Replace the current patchwork of Individual Savings Accounts (ISAs), Lifetime Savings Accounts (LISAs), and Help to Save schemes with a Universal Savings Account, topped up with dividends from a new sovereign wealth fund.
National prosperity
- Allowing a share of the taxes generated within the regional economy — including clearly local revenue streams such as stamp duty, vehicle excise duty, airport passenger duty, and potentially even a modest share of VAT — to be retained locally.
- Support frontier technologies by government providing sovereign compute and open data platforms, using procurement to create demand, and building regulatory sandboxes that allow rapid testing.
- Develop AI Growth Zones to anchor clusters of computing power, skills and startups.
- A gradual move away from the triple lock on the value of the Basic State Pension to a more stable uprating mechanism, with the fiscal savings redirected into a new sovereign wealth fund.
- Reform Contract for Differences (CfDs) so that a greater share of clean energy supply chains remains in the UK.
- Maximise the recoveries of oil and gas from our own offshore fields in the North Sea.
- Allow developers to buy up a detached or semi-detached house and replace it with terraces, unless the house to be demolished is in a conservation area or is listed.
- All further education colleges should be funded by the government to offer construction courses to anyone interested and capable of studying.
Individual protection
- Introduce 24/7 community centres for mental health, where people can walk in without an appointment and seek help, or a family member can call in to raise concerns and ask for help for a loved one, with no patient discharged.
- Follow Sweden in encouraging the use of oral nicotine in the form of snus packets as an alternative to smoking cigarettes.
- Banning all advertising of alcohol.
- The provision of safe injecting rooms for heroin, such as those in Australia and Canada.
- A nationwide facility for drug testing to help inform users of the drugs they are taking, as has been running in the Netherlands for over 20 years.
- Introduce regulation for food businesses to make the most nourishing food possible.
National protection
- Local cross-community protection committees should be established, consisting of credible leaders from different communities committed to liberal principles, to articulate shared values and coordinate with local authorities and law enforcement on anti-extremist measures.
- Granting a temporary right to work for asylum seekers.
- Spend more of the official flood budget on nature-based solutions than engineered protection.
Individual fairness
- Introduce a ‘baby bonus’ paid to all new parents.
- Child Benefit should be paid to the family of a 16-year-old enrolling on an apprenticeship not just a further education course.
- Give social housing tenants the power to demand estate regeneration, or to require transfer of ownership of the estate to another social housing provider who promises to do it.
National fairness
- Introduce a more proportional voting system for general elections such as the Single Transferable Vote or the Additional Member System.
- Mandatory socioeconomic background reporting in large firms.
The Rt Hon Liam Byrne MP, Chair of the Business and Trade Committee, said:
“When we lack capital, we are perpetually at the mercy of other people’s interests. Sturdy liberal democracies … require real freedoms for its citizens: the agency, options and opportunities that only a fair spread of material wealth can underwrite. As such, a liberal renaissance that seeks to maximise freedom should seek not simply a wealthy democracy but a democracy of wealth.”
Professor Rob Ford, Professor of Political Science, The University of Manchester, said:
“Just as sailors buffeted by high winds need stars to steer by, moderate politicians need principles to inform their long-term plans for renewal. Commitment to the guiding principles of honesty, prudence, and inclusion can serve as a compass, helping to revitalise politics and combat the siren call of populists.”
Benedict Macon-Cooney, Chief AI and Innovation Officer, The Tony Blair Institute
“The British state is exhausted. Throughout the twentieth century, its remit expanded to the point of it becoming bloated and brittle… The machinery of Whitehall was built for a slower era. That world has gone.
Nevertheless, the answer is not to abandon liberalism but to rebuild it as the creed of capability — anchored in national strength, not detached cosmopolitanism… Liberalism’s survival depends on its adherents being able to find a new purpose and act as disruptors, not as defenders of decaying institutions.”
