It is fast becoming the political philosophy that no longer dares to speak its name. "Liberal" is already used pejoratively in the United States (where George Bush castigated John Kerry for the most liberal voting record in the senate). In Britain, Charles Clarke today used his first newspaper interview since becoming home secretary to distance himself from several uses of the term.
Speaking to the Times about binge drinking and alcohol-fuelled violence, Mr Clarke set out a little of his political philosophy.
I am not an instinctive liberal. I am instinctively much more hardline on a lot of issues about civil liberties than others. It depends what you mean by liberal. If liberal is the same as being a card-carrying member of the Bar Council, I am not. But if liberal is trying to promote a tolerant society, I hope I am. I am not a civil libertarian in general.
Mr Clarke's remarks are not especially revelatory. Qualified liberal distancing is in fact something of rite of passage for senior New Labour figures. Tony Blair said last summer's five-year crime plan would herald "the end of the 1960s liberal consensus on law and order" and David Blunkett, Mr Clarke's predecessor, was known for his attacks on "Hampstead liberals". The north London neighbourhood was also the subject of attack from Jack Straw, Mr Blair's first home secretary, who said only "woolly-minded lawyers and Hampstead liberals" were opposed to his plan to curtail the right to trial by jury.
It is not the policies here – there is little in common between Mr Blunkett's anti-terrorism legislation and the end to restrictive licensing laws – but the use of word "liberal" as a straw man for New Labour to define itself against as a more muscular ethos. You could argue that since reformers so determinedly moved it away from socialism, the party has had no choice but to move itself further along the political spectrum for a spot of shadow boxing. But the end result may be a US-style tarring of the word – the kind of attack that sees liberals reaching for euphemisms such as "progressives". A piece last autumn by Guardian commentator Martin Kettle argued for a resurgent British liberalism in debt to John Locke. It should never be a dirty word.
