So, Nigel Farage has been elected to Parliament. Congratulations Nigel! Really, well done. Should libertarians welcome Nigel Farage and Reform UK into Parliament and as a political force in Britain though? I think this is a tough question for a number of reasons. Here are a few thoughts on it.
Nigel Farage and Reform UK must be viewed as largely positive in regards to their economic policy. Raising the threshold of the basic rate to £20,000, increasing the inheritance tax threshold to £2m and scrapping stamp duty for homes under £750,000 is great stuff. Analysis by the Institute of Economic Affairs also found their manifesto to be the only one to reduce the overall burden of regulation. Their commitment to classical liberalism extends to cutting the foreign aid budget by half and they’ve pledged to cut £5 in every £100 of state spending too. Though the IFS found their manifesto to be the second most spendthrift manifesto to only the Green’s. When comparing them to what they may displace though on the economic front I think Reform must be welcomed. I think Murray Rothbard and Hans Hermann Hoppe would certainly welcome Farage into Parliament. (In the 1992 election Rothbard initially backed Ross Perot even though he was a protectionist before backing G. W. Bush Snr. in the end.)
On the issue of the culture wars the libertarian verdict on Reform UK is far from clear though. Farage wants to reduce immigration to net zero and deport people who come illegally. In a recent speech by Farage there was a real focus on ‘family, community and country’ from him as well. Indeed, the justification for immigration control is very much about ensuring the good of the British people. A collectivist ideal. Even accepting Hoppe’s argument about forced integration the grounds Reform UK are standing on are illiberal grounds. They follow David Miller in seeing the British people as having an interest in preserving their culture, which, according to him, grants them a right to exclude outsiders. There is a communitarianism about Reform UK. As I have written in The Critic I take the proper libertarian position to be open borders, but, disregarding this contentious topic in the political philosophy, I think libertarians must agree the moral grounds of Farage’s argument’s are anathema to the individualist ethics which undergird libertarianism generally. There is a real tension here.
Against this though Farage is a robust defender of individual freedom in debates concerning paternalism. There’s a great speech by him here to the Oxford Libertarian Society in 2009 where he opposes the tobacco ban and too much government generally. He self describes as ‘a Gladstonian liberal’. Fortunately, Farage has kept up this message of freedom too, being one of the few politicians of note to oppose Sunak’s tobacco ban. Contrariwise when asked on whether he’d legalise cannabis recently he prevaricated and gave off the answer being no. Broadly Farage and Reform UK today are slightly less sound than Farage and UKIP in 2010. Reform UK today even want to nationalise energy companies, but, against that, again, we have Reform UK proposing healthcare reform which wasn’t in the UKIP manifesto of 2010 (though it proposed vouchers to opt out). Lee Anderson MP being a leftist on economics I think will cause friction with the libertarians of Farage, Richard Tice and Robert Lowe too.
So, there is a broad-brush picture of Farage and Reform UK: Liberal on economics and lifestyle issues and national collectivist on immigration. Now a certain sort of libertarian can come to a verdict on whether to favour Reform UK by simply weighing up the goods and bads of their existence and then agreeing to support them should they create a net amount of good (easier said than done but the moral mechanism is clear). Among these libertarians would be Milton Friedman. Among proper libertarians such as Robert Nozick, Murray Rothbard and Eric Mack though I think the answer is far from clear. Sure, I’ve outlined how Reform UK is libertarian, or, rather, favours libertarian leaning policies, but of the two axis of politics today, i.e., culture and economics, they are unlibertarian on one of them. How do the deontological libertarians determine whether the gains on one axis outweigh the losses on the other axis. This is a question of nonideal theory which libertarianism really doesn’t deal with very well. Certainly, libertarianism does not advocate for the minimisation of injustice, so, we can’t use injustice reduced as our metric on which to make the trade off on the two axes. I don’t know the answer either, and, I’m not going to try and answer it here. I can’t see a ratio existing within libertarianism which says you can only go right X units on the economic axis if you give up less than Y units on the cultural axis going up. Maybe I’m wrong.
I would add though the thinking of Reform UK voters is not liberal in the slightest, meaning, accepting politicians follow their voters, and, Reform UK’s and Farage’s rhetoric looks like it does, Reform UK will be a greater influence on cultural issues than economic or lifestyle issues. And here it will be an unlibertarian force. It will forward a collectivism which is opposed to the moral foundations of the libertarianism supporting their other policies (or that should). To back up my claim, see the fact Reform voters backed conscription more than any other set of voters. Let’s be honest, the main driver behind Reform UK is a national collectivism which embodies itself in being against uncontrolled immigration. This is no surprise given the nature of the psychology of mankind. It sounds like I’m pooh-poohing Reform voters and I do vehemently disagree with them and their implicitly held political theory, but I would not dismiss the sentiment behind their votes entirely. Of course, I want a career, so I won’t elaborate on any commonalities I have with them here.
Recently Matt Zwolinski and John Tomasi have outlined in their book, The Individualists, how libertarians have faced the problem of which cultural stance to adopt since the early 1990s with the fall of the common enemy in socialism. They outline how libertarians have often been divided between radicals, or, progressives sorts, such as Lysander Spooner, and, reactionaries, or, conservatives, such as Herbert Spencer. (I review the book here.) Today it’s the culture war, or, better, immigration, which is causing the real divide. And the prominence of this dispute has only come to the fore since the realignment of politics starting in 2016 with culture becoming the central division of politics with economics becoming the secondary divider. (Steve Davies is great on this). And in the absence of a nonideal theory which is convincing, libertarians are really going to align their support with political parties and vehicles on the basis of feels and vibes on culture issues. Libertarian ideal theory has lots of answers to culture war questions (mainly privatisation) but they’re all so very politically unimplementable. Whether libertarians will back Farage and Reform UK then will largely come down to their feels and vibes. Now when it comes to the feels and vibes at the IEA and on Tufton Street I can say it is overwhelmingly to favour the reactionary side of libertarianism. Only in one room at the IEA on one occasion have I witnessed a consensus on open borders.
Now I should add much of the culture war is entirely outside the arena of libertarian theory, ideal or nonideal theory. Whether British society is better or worse since 1950, or, whether we should use certain pronouns, libertarians have no answer as libertarians. And where they do have answers, they are, again, entirely unsavoury to most politicians (see Hoppe’s private covenant communities). I have a residual loyalty to Nigel Farage, he got me into politics at the age of fourteen, so I don’t like to criticise him. And I suppose I don’t properly know whether libertarians such as myself should back him and Reform UK either. It’s an area of nonideal theory where libertarians have ill developed thoughts, or, possibly, a political philosophy which simply doesn’t have an answer to any of these fourth or fifth best choices at all. As such feels and vibes now rule the day, and, perhaps, just perhaps, feels and vibes should rule the day.
I'm altogether fed up with the way our general elections are held. I would go either for proportional representation or voting for a particular party to govern and a particular MP (whether of the same party or not) locally. The winning party would form a government from within its ranks and the constituencies would be represented in parliament by their chosen candidate from whichever party he/she happened to belong to. That way, whichever party the most people had voted for would actually get to represent the majority which would be nearer democracy than the system currently extant.
Having said all that, Nigel Farage seems to me like the best candidate (of those offering themselves) to represent those of us who believe in liberty and a government which renders service to the people rather than being served by us.
Interesting piece, Charles. I find voting so difficult, honestly. The ‘minimising injustice’ argument is indeed difficult to apply with each party having so many contradicting policies. Although, Rothbard would definitely not be keen on Farages Pro-Israel stance.
If a party was to only increase the personal allowance threshold, that would be easy to pick them. George Galloways party was also increasing it as-well. To some, voting for him may be better to align with foreign policy views as-well (Palestine), at the cost of domestic economic policy of course.
Though, once we get into quantifying who has the least ‘rights violations’ we start sounding utilitarian. It’s situations like these I’m reminded of Roderick longs mention of voting being an ‘endorsement’ of the use of force. Perhaps that means in certain situations not voting may be the most moral thing(?).
~The trolley is going to hurt people anyway, so some would say choose the one with the least harm~ But switching the trolley is still an ‘endorsement’ of who is harmed. I, for one, would not vote reform- due to feels and vibes.