Labour's instincts: freedom and equality

In recent weeks the mask of decency, adopted by David Cameron to woo fair-minded voters, has begun to slip. Whether it is his mean-minded efforts to sabotage Gordon Brown's prospects of taking up a role as international statesman, his childish exclusion of Blair and Brown from the Royal Wedding or his patronising 'calm down, dear' taunt - all these reveal an upper-crust haughtiness which sees no value in those who oppose him.

He has even extended this profound disrespect to his Lib Dem partners over the referendum on electoral reform. If your instincts are for freedom and equality, then you recognise the right of others to participate in society without using your power to undermine their contribution. If you don't like their contribution, you argue against it rather than try to silence it.

It is this essential illiberalism on the part of Tories that makes them unusual bedfellows for the Lib Dems. Perhaps the hope was that Lib Dem participation in the Coalition would soften the meaner instincts of the Tories? But it is hard to see where this has been accomplished.

Even Lib Dem priorities like removing the detention procedure in the anti-terroism legislation has merely been given a new name and trimmed round the edges. Detention remains. In power, they are faced with the same issues as the Labour ministers they criticised and, unsurprisingly, coming up with the same solutions.

That is sad. Some of the excesses of the last Labour Government were a knee-jerk over-reaction to the moral panic about terrorism that engulfed western societies in the wake of 9/11. The time has come for a more confident reassertion of individual liberty against the precautionary security-oriented policy of the last decae.

But in a moment of uncharacteristic generosity, Cameron commended the post-1997 Labour Governments on making Britain a more tolerant society. It was, indeed, Labour who promoted gay rights and repealed the Tories' repressive Clause 28. It was Labour who instituted the Lawrence inquiry and acted to tackle hate crime. It was Labour who brought in the Freedom of Information Act which has been responsible for exposing corruption. And it was Labour who brought in the Human Rights Act - the most progressive piece of civil rights legislation ever. And it is this Act that the Tories have vowed to remove, setting up a joint committee with the Lib Dems to decide how to water down the existing rights.

There is no doubt that in the Coalition the Lib Dems are reduced to having say on how far they water down civil liberties and how they can 'spin' inaction as some radical change. Had there been a Labour-Lib Dem coalition, I suspect the debate would have been about the extent to which civil liberties were extended. Even now, it is Ed Milliband alongside Vince Cable who is making the case for AV much more effectively than Nick Clegg.

The only way fair-minded voters with an instinct for freedom and democracy can shake the LIb Dems out of their complacent complicity with Tory illiberalism is to vote for Labour candidates in the coming elections.