'Fiscally conservative, socially liberal' is one of those phrases which immediately sets my leftist spider sense going into a hyperdrive, so much so that it is hard to concentrate on anything at all. It isn’t so much my ire with liberals, hell ,I used to be one, many of my friends are liberals and I think there is a lot of genuine goodwill and human kindness within this self-described group. I don’t even know if I would describe these people as ‘liberals', as there is something much more self-consciously political and anti-social justice about this utterance. The fist part of this epigram is much more concerning to me than the later. It implies that this person is going to be actively supporting a repressive economic agenda, budget cuts, the demolition of the welfare state and privatisation of public services. The second part is more softer, gentler, more agreeable. It implies that this person is an ally in the struggle against racism and for LGBT equality, that they care about women and disabled people being represented in media and powerful spaces.

However, I have severe doubts over how far in the direction of social liberalism it is possible to go, without advocating for the redistribution of wealth and the social power that comes with it. I also don’t get the function of this discourse. In a lot of ways, it seems like the latter statement is working to detoxify and deflect from the troubling former sentiment.

So is fiscally conservative and socially liberal a thing? this is a good faith question based on a conversation that I had with a really good friend. When talking about the Cameron-Clegg coalition government and subsequent Cameron year after the 2015 election in the UK, I argued that this government was institutionally racist and sexist. There has been a lot of research done on how the cuts made to social security benefits and working tax credits, have impacted women and ethnic minorities first and worst (the Women's Budget Group is particularly good on this).

While Cameron certainly presents a more metropolitan and progressive type of conservative politics, in terms of rhetoric, the real material costs and the deprivation of his fiscal policy agenda falls on the back of the LGBTIA community, people of colour, those with disabilities and women. Cameron and Osborne might not have cared much about whether someone was black or white, a man or women, though defending the bankers bonuses was defending the privileges of elite, mostly white men. Also choices to cut benefits, even while taking a gender-neutral, colour-blind approach, have impacts that ripple along the racist and sexist contours of our society.

However, my very knowledgable pal disagreed that this branch of centrist-tory, austerity peddlers were really the racists and sexists I had made them out to be. Of course, they did bring in gay marriage, so they couldn’t be your typical reactionary conservative. I thought that my friend had a point with this, so thought it might be worth exploring in more depth what the implications of ‘fiscally conservative, socially liberal’ are since there is this confusion among leftists about this group.

I am not sure what the answer is to this question and I know that both perspectives probably have something to say- I want to explore the two arguments and come to some sort of resolution to this problem.

Fiscally conservative, socially liberal - is a thing

A wide breath of opinion in the UK seems to orientate around something which sounds quite like the ‘fiscally conservative, socially liberal’ idea. The Liberal Democrats in the UK have arguably made a name for themselves as the party of this position. There was even a cringeworthy party political broadcast where they played around with the idea of which of the centre-right/centre-light labels to embrace. However, even they are not a perfect fit into this category- sometimes they don’t seem all that socially liberal, in having a leader who was conflicted about gay rights and their fiscal conservatism isn’t as hard-line as it once was, as their Scottish party now want to raise income taxes (though on working classes as well as middle earners and the rich).

The power of this perspective however is undeniable, as the dominant presentational mode of our ruling class. We even see this referenced in the British social attitudes survey, which talks about the social liberalism of Britain, which now is more accepting of gay and lesbian relationships and is less concerned about waiting until marriage for sex.

All of this can be true. Lesbian Tories can get pregnant by IVF and be celebrated by the Daily Mail. The Conservative party can have a Muslim, son of an immigrant from Pakistan as Minister for the Home Office. The Liberal Democrats can do some campaigning on the side about boasting the number of women in senior roles and corporate boardrooms. Everything will be fine. Progress.

This also ties into the trope of colour-blindness, that Reni Eddo-Lodge (2017) discusses in her chapter on white privilege in her seminal work ‘Why I am no longer talking to white people about race’.

Under David Cameron’s leadership, the Department of Education started to really make a case for black and minority ethnic children in the care system to be adopted more quickly by getting local authorities to remove consideration of ethnicity. This came about due to the finding that black children in the UK were waiting longer to be adopted. The UK government blamed this complex phenomenon on ‘state multiculturalism’ and argued that ‘issues of ethnicity must not stand in the way’ of matching up families to children in need of care. It is hard to argue that this is an altogether terrible policy or motivated by prejudice, but it does highlight the Coalition government’s ‘colour-blind’ approach to issues of ethnicity, race and identity. What this means for children of colour in these white families is that there is no guarantee that their family will be attuned to their particular experiences of racism and Eddo-Lodge goes into great detail to highlight this issue, as well as those of mixed-race children where white members of their extended family still harbour racist views.

The phrase ‘state multiculturalism’ is interesting in itself, as being a kind of fusion of anti-statist, anti-local authority rhetoric that is the hallmark of the Cameron social liberal, market kink brand, but ‘multiculturalism’ is also the slogan of every reactionary in Europe. For someone who is very cynical about the Tory party in general, and knows them as the people who hire Daily Mail columnists as speech-writers, this seems like a typical appeal to their coalition of both the city boy, class-war from the top, bankers and people with very reactionary social views.

So while the ‘socially liberal, fiscally conservative’ group might not be literally 'the fasc', there does seem to be at least some capitulation to a more traditional, backward looking, reactionary right.

Fiscally conservative, socially liberal really isn’t that liberal at all.

I can appreciate that there is a difference between someone being on the alt-right or a member of the Cameron government, I get that. There has been a huge backlash to a number of my favourite journalists in recent weeks for calling BS on the social liberal credentials of these so called centrists, in a mirror of the criticism dished out for the ’Bernie Bros’ of 2016. A lot of this has transpired after the Windrush scandal at the Home Office. In response to this, the Home Office’s approach during Cameron-Clegg’s ConDem coalition has come under increasing scrutiny.

The Windrush scandal is absolutely heartbreaking and strikes at the heart of the UK government’s liberal credentials, in terms of due process and transparency. It was revealed by journalists at the Guardian newspaper, that individuals who came to Britain in the post-war years, where Commonwealth citizens and their children were given the chance to obtain British Citizenship were being denied services and threatened with removal (or even sent back to nations they had spent little time in) on the basis of their immigration status. Then it transpired that this had occurred due to the destroying go their landing cards, from when citizens from the Caribbean came to the UK. Without personal documentation or any government record, it was extremely hard for people to prove their status. The fall out from the scandal has been a rolling cavalcade of disasters ever since.

Much of the insecurity over status has been heightened during Thersea May’s leadership of the Home Office ( this was also under the ‘socially liberal’ Cameron government). At this time, under pressure from UKIP and a growing British far-right, Theresa May made 'the border’ into a barrier to participation in everyday life and access to services for all those without papers living in Britain by creating what she described as a ‘Hostile environment'. Suddenly, private landlords, high street banks and NHS administrators were taking on a role in immigration enforcement, asking for proof of immigration status and sharing this with the home office. Over the course of several years, a backlog of cases, where people who were under the impression that they were fully fledged UK citizens have been denied treatments, services and referred to the Home Office. While the ‘Hostile Environment’ is really an all right assault on asylum seekers whose claims have been refused by the Home Office, it has brought ‘The Border’ down to bear on people who thought of themselves as British Citizens from the Windrush generation too.

The coalitions claims of ‘colourblindness’ and ‘social liberalism’ shatter to me at this point in particular. How can one department be making bumbling attempts at eradicating racism while another attempts to create a border-zone in every service, creates an environment of suspicion which bears down on communities of black and brown people in particular, as it attempts to determine their immigration status. In the absurdity of this, ‘deport first, hear appeals later’, mission, with targets for deportations, the idea of a fair hearing and due process becomes impossible. The people who are vulnerable enough to end up in this trap, happened to be people of colour most often and ’social liberalism’ has done little to protect them.

In East Dunbartonshire, in the suburbs of Glasgow, we have our own example of this. Jo Swinson, who is our MP and was a member of the ‘socially liberal’ Conservative/Lib Dem Coalition has found herself in some tricky business lately over a union dispute and ballot for a strike over workers rights in the area. Jo Swinson is also one of the most high profile feminist campaigners in the UK, having made the case for shared parental leave and written a new bestseller on gender equality.

Councillors from Swinson’s party, the Liberal Democrats (in another coalition with Conservatives I might add), have voted to reduce the redundancy pay and holiday entitlements of council workers. Unison’s, the Union, representative for the area has argued that this; 'These cuts will hit women the hardest so it is galling that local Lib Dem MP Jo Swinson is currently touting her book on gender equality when her local councillors are attacking women workers.’ Jo Swinson’s feminist credentials are in the dock at the moment, just like every ‘social liberal, fiscal conservative’ person’s seem to be at some point. Jo Swinson hasn’t defended the cuts to workers rights in East Dunbartonshire, but passes the buck to the SNP government in Scotland for not raising council tax.

'“Ultimately, it was the SNP’s failure to give a fair settlement to East Dunbartonshire Council that necessitated the difficult decisions that had to be taken in the budget, so perhaps the unions should direct their ire towards the SNP central government.'

What is interesting is that she doesn’t put the focus on her former coalition partners, the Conservatives, who have been slashing council budgets and the budget received by the Scottish Government too for almost a decade. I don’t know if Swinson is a ‘fiscal conservative’ at heart, some parts of her record and twitter feed are more progressive, although she has certainly facilitated this agenda, voting through Tory cuts to legal aid and welfare as an MP.

Concluding thoughts and context

I really don’t want this to come across as an attack on this epigram and identity. It is just something that I really can’t get my head around.

It is also hard to separate the ’ socially liberal, fiscally conservative’ position from current trends towards attacking socially justice activists. I genuinely support any genuine efforts to create a more equal society. I am just sceptical of the current efforts to man the border of social justice to ensure that it never involves any calls for economic redistribution and social transformation. In the last weeks, I have seen Owen Jones and Dawn Foster, UK journalists on the left, called divisive and hateful and I am just not buying it. There is an attempt to equate any left politics with the far right and with a highly sectarian and conspiratorial discourse, and while we should call these things out when they exist, this has been entirely divorced from an analysis of hate within the UK. Much of this comes from the right-wing, oligarchical bulk of the papers- which often fans the flames of the far right.

To tone police Leftist journalists in this context is suspect to me.

Projecting an image of post-racism, post-sexism and colourblindness is also dangerous, especially when those most likely to be unemployed, in precarious work, come from historically marginalised communities. Work by the Resolution Foundation reveals that household income for Bangladeshi households are £8,900 less than for average white British households, and for Black African British households, incomes are £5, 600 less than for White British families. Colourblindness closes off any potential of having a discussion about who is being economically exploited within Britain (or who is being killed by the cops), so actually enables present day oppression of people of colour.

Jeremy Seabrook says in his excellent work on the welfare reform project in the UK; ‘Cut Out, Living without Welfare’, ‘Today, in a world which flaunts its wealth, the anti-poor ideology has a more malignant inflexion. For the stupendous plenty of the modern world co-exists with shocking poverty, so the fable runs, this can only be the fault of the poor, who have failed to avail themselves of all the opportunities for self-enrichment set before them and embodied in an inescapable imagery of abundance; and it is this perversity that must be coerced, compelled, first into recognition of error, and then into rectification of conduct.’

The combination of ‘we are all middle class now’ and post-prejudice discourse with the failure to have improvements in material realities for marginalised groups is a really scary combination. It feeds into the far right’s socio-biological whispers about hierarchies and the biological basis of oppression. If anti-poor ideology is saying that poor people are lazy, and people of colour are disproportionately poor, then it isn’t hard to see that racists will be making this argument.

In an international context, the intersection of human rights, feminism and tax justice (preventing abuse by financial elites), is a really illustrative example. Across the world, women are overrepresented in the poor, providing the role as carers, both to family and friends and professionally, they use more government services and support programmes. The Bogota Declaration recognises this, so raises concerns that progress towards gender equality, particularly in developing countries will very likely be curtailed by the tax avoidance of the ultra-wealthy and corporations, as well as government austerity measures. The Bogota Declaration which was put forward in 2017, from a combination of tax justice and women’s rights groups, is a great example of how economic and social liberation are the one project. It puts forward a call for governments to;

- Recognise tax as a feminist issue and raise domestic revenue to invest in the gender-responsive public services, social protections, and infrastructure required to fulfil the human rights of all women and achieve gender equality.

-Support the establishment of an inclusive intergovernmental UN Global Tax Commission where all countries have a seat at the table and equal say in determining international tax rules. The world will not be able to achieve women and girl’s rights, gender equality or the Sustainable Development Goals without taking action for tax justice.

As centrist consensus politics cedes ground to the far-right, maybe this the contradictions of ’socially liberal, fiscally conservative' have some part to play in explaining this.

I think it is time to put anti-racism and anti-oppression more generally at the centre of our politics, rather than using any discredited frame of tolerance or post-prejudice. Tolerance without liberation and redistribution, is peace without justice.

Any racism, sexism or transmisogyny is going to be called out, but we will also tie our analysis of prejudice to one of social and economic power, which has the bourgeoisie quaking in their italian leather size 10s.

Sources:

Corlett, A. 2017. Resolution Foundation: Diverse Outcomes: Living Standards by ethnicity. https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/diverse-outcomes-living-standards-by-ethnicity/ <accessed 15th of May 2018>

Eddo-Lodge, R. 2017. Why I am no Longer Talking to White People about race. London:Bloomsbury-Publishing.

Hardmann, I. 2018. Few Tories Even Grasp what Windrush Says about them. Published in The Guardian, 22nd of April, 2018.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/22/few-tories-grasp-windrush-flaws-hostile-environment-immigration?CMP=share_btn_tw <accessed 15th of May>

Reis, S. 2018. UK Women's Budget Group. The Impact of Austerity on Women in the UK. at: http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Development/IEDebt/WomenAusterity/WBG.pdf <accessed on 21st of May, 2018>

Seabrook, J. 2016. Cut Out: Living without Welfare. London: Left Book Club.

Bogota Declaration on Tax Justice Network:

https://www.taxjustice.net/2017/12/07/bogota-declaration-tax-justice-womens-rights/

Unions set for strike action in East Dunbartonshire, in the Kirkintilloch Herald

https://www.kirkintilloch-herald.co.uk/news/unions-step-up-strike-threats-1-4734775