Guido and Iain Dale both stick the boot in to the senile old git leader of the (allegedly) Liberal Democrats. Once again, they've seen a problem caused by illiberalism and have adopted a policy of further illiberalism to deal with it. One really does wonder whether they can mention their own party's name without putting their tongues in their cheeks. (Perhaps they should rename themselves the "Liberal" Democrats or even the Liberal
Democrats).
The latest wheeze is to only permit farmers to sell development land to the council. It will be for a "fair" price, of course - apparently ten times the agricultural value is what the Commisar party feels it's worth. It's so illiberal I don't know where to start. Do the People's Revolutionary Liberal Democrats not understand the point of private property? That it underpins free societies? Can they not see that they are simply proposing an extension of the corruption that already engulfs the planning process - the land will simply be sold on to the developer who pays the largest bribes. (Hmm, the Liberal Revolutionary Democrat Fraction are big in local government aren't they?- perhaps I'm beginning to understand their thinking. No doubt it has also crossed their minds that the price of agricultural land is falling while development land is rising in price, so the politicians' cut should grow quite nicely in future).
Jock Coats reckons that farmers are currently engaging in rent seeking (see comment at 1.22, here). This is utterly bizarre. The state removes people's ability to do what they want with their own land, and if they try to get that right back again they are rent-seeking? Whose land is it anyway, Trotsky?
Someone called Tim Leunig (apparently from the LSE) describes the policy as "liberal and localist" (comment at 4.44 here). This is quite frankly, crap. It is simply an abomination of the language to describe price fixing as "liberal". It's liberal in the same way as incomes policies were liberal and look at the damage they did. (And don't try to impress me with Michael Gove thinking they're a good idea either - pointing me at another bunch of statists makes my case better than it does yours, Mr Leunig).
Let me spell it out. Scrap the bloody planning laws and let people build where houses are needed. (And I say this as someone who has just bought a house next to a field which may well get planning permission for the local landowner to build a load of houses on).
Liberal Democrats - pah! The Labour party with jaundice, more like.