As we know, there were several fairly eccentric and spurious reasons given by the Leave side for supporting Brexit last summer. One of the most bizarre reasons, however, is that made by erstwhile UKIP MP Douglas Carswell, that it represented the fulfilment of the legacy of Liberal Prime Minister William Gladstone, perhaps our greatest political forerunner as Liberal Democrats. It needs challenging.
According to Roy Jenkins’ 1995 biography, Gladstone did as much to define Britain’s Victorian golden era as the Queen herself. Nonetheless, his name is only vaguely recognised today-– he died in 1898, on the cusp of recorded sound and in 2002 he was not even included in the BBC list of 100 greatest Britons. Despite this contemporary obscurity, and total lack of importance in the referendum (compared to promises of a reinvigorated NHS), the Gladstone-Brexit argument is no less peculiar – and perhaps all the more revealing.
Carswell, and certain Brexit allies across the Tory Party, have frequently cited Gladstone as an inspiration. On April 19th last year:
It’s because UKIP is the closest party to Gladstonian liberalism today that this picture of the Grand Old Man appears in our Welsh manifesto. UKIP – like Gladstone – stands for freedom. Like him, we’re against a big, intrusive state.
Carswell keeps Gladstone’s painting in his office.
Gladstone’s career is too epic to effectively summarise– he spent 63 years as MP and 19 as Chancellor, and is the only person to have served as PM four separate times. Nonetheless, there are six clear ideas in his long life, which suggest somewhere behind a famously stern poise, he would be wincing with us in fear, bemusement and embarrassment at Britain’s upcoming Brexit disaster.
First, and most important, Gladstone was British history’s greatest advocate for free trade. He broke with the Tory party in 1846, because it would not support his mentor Robert Peel’s efforts to reduce tariffs on corn. Their triumph helped the emerging working and middle classes-build railways and initiate a second industrial revolution- whilst it hit the sclerotic land owning gentry.
1846 and 2016 have often been compared, lately by The Economist (set up in 1843 as an anti-Corn Law pamphlet) and many others, as triumphs and disasters over the same issues of British free trade. Whilst Carswell sometimes vaguely spoke of “soft Brexit” as a path to Free trade – this now looks forlorn, just as was obvious before last June for those of us in the Remain campaign. As George Osborne recently observed, leaving the Single Market would appear “the biggest act of protectionism in history”.
Gladstone was born less than two decades after Adam Smith died and lived until a decade before the Model T Ford and lived at a time where it was clear trade expanded people’s wealth and options. As he said, famously, money should “fructify in the pockets of the people” – he would be appalled by the impact that the predicted inflationary Brexit crash in the pound has come to pass and the impact it is having today on the poorest people in Britain.
Second, Gladstone was the first true spokesperson of liberal internationalism. As he said in 1880: “Remember that He who has united you together as human beings in the same flesh and blood, has bound you by the law of mutual love; that that mutual love is not limited by the shores of this island, is not limited by the boundaries of Christian civilization; that it passes over the whole surface of the earth, and embraces the meanest along with the greatest in its unmeasured scope”. Whilst we can take Carswell at his word that they actually want to increase immigration and reduce racism, his choice of bedfellows is, at best, sloppy. In 2014, Carswell rejected the Coalition for Nigel Farage who stated he felt uncomfortable sharing trains with eastern europeans; In 1880 Gladstone left comfortable retirement to lead the “Midlothian Campaign” on a platform of minority rights for Bulgarians in eastern Europe. Whilst he has left UKIP, he is as yet to condemn the innuendo of the Brexit campaign.
Third – perhaps most awkwardly for Lib Dems – Gladstone was not an unfettered direct democrat. Gladstone “liberals believe in trust in the people, tempered by prudence”. Whilst he knew Tory misanthropy too well, he also knew the fragility of minority rights in the face of a majority; unlike Carswell, he was an “Old Whig” who believed in liberal values at a steady pace. Of course, post-Brexit, neither UKIP nor the Tories are conservative in the usual sense, both are opposed to global citizenship and are radical.
Fourth, Gladstone actually achieved greatness through legislative action and an appetite for the more boring administrative side of politics. In 1853, his Budget lasted 5 hours and as historian H. C. G. Matthew wrote, Gladstone “made finance and figures exciting, and succeeded in constructing budget speeches epic in form and performance”. Gladstone cut taxes on consumer goods, and kick-started mass newspaper publishing by cutting paper duties in 1860. In contrast, Carswell, like most Brexit leaders, have thus far shied away from government responsibility, despite starting off as ambitious – and capable – young Tories.
Fifth and most dangerously, in later life, Gladstone made his “mission to pacify Ireland” with Home Rule. Hard Brexit and the prospect of a hard land border with Ireland represents the biggest present threat to peace in Ireland.
Sixth, and perhaps most germane, Gladstone made clear his support for the “Concert of Europe” throughout his career and said in 1888 that “We are part of the community of Europe and must do our duty as such”.
The imprecise image of Gladstone is vulnerable to those seeking a blank canvas on which to paint a new utopia, like Brexit. Gladstone, in reality, personified the self-confidence of the Victorian age which used trade to make our small island the most powerful nation in the world; Brexit speaks of a pessimism likely to do the exact opposite. Carswell should either swap sides in this great struggle for global comity and free trade in our own time, or find a new hero.
* Douglas Oliver is secretary of the Liberal Democrat History Group and is based in London.
