I found this article this afternoon, and was appalled by the cavalier definition of Liberalism as a mission to destroy the State.

I do agree with the assertion that Liberalism is a mission to destroy privilege, however the article chooses the moat bizarre definition of privilege I have ever seen; inequalities created by the State.

Presumably these would be inequalities like the destitute being entitled to housing benefit, while millionaire bankers must pay for their own second home, or that people in job centres are entitled to state funded assistance in CV writing and interview technique, while the poor old Etonians funded to the eyeballs by their parents have to make do with the best education money can buy.

Privilege is in none of these places: it is embedded in the sharp elbows of the middle classes. It’s in the unpaid internships, which Nick Clegg, accompanied surprisingly by Louise Mench, has rightly attacked as an affront to Social Mobility, since only those who can afford to live off their savings or parents are able to buy this work experience that often catapults them into the graduate jobs market.

Now tackling unpaid internships is a nontrivial problem &em; the line between these and volunteering, without which the charitable sector would not survive, is a thin and ill-defined one. But this does not give Liberals, those enemies of privilege and vested interests, license to sit back and ignore their effect on keeping the children of the poor down!

A far higher priority must be set on removing barriers to social rising (and falling, which is the flip side of mobility) than on making sure entitlements are not abused. And no priority at all should ever be afforded by any Liberal government to cutting off the lifelines of those who depend on them; which the current government is misguidedly doing thanks to it’s Conservative, not Liberal, influence.

This version of privilege, in short, is that of the Libertarian Tories who which to see homelessness soar and children go hungry, because it is closer to an “Ideal Market”. And The Liberal Democrats, the Social Liberal Internationalist Green party that we are, will never stand for that.