Liberty Alone

I think you’re wrong to say that community politics is the root cause of us apparently contradicting ourselves in different parts of the country. Community politics is about engaging with voters and involving them in both making decisions and taking action. You mention the reason we apparently contradict ourselves, and that is localism. I feel that both localism and community politics can be strands of liberal ideology - I genuinely do believe that both politicians should do more than compile reports and pontificate from council chambers and that ‘ordinary people’ should be both encouraged to help make decisions and get out on the streets to make a difference.

I agree broadly with what you’re saying - that our community politics should be both compatible with and driven by our princples - but I’m not sure that we don’t already do that.

The only example that I can think of of our campaigning being incompatible with our liberal principles is when some local parties campaign against “postcode lotteries” (when these are in fact a natural consequence of localism).

I genuinely can’t think of any others - although I feel some local parties are content merely to make their politics compatible with our principles rather than using them to drive what we are doing.

If we do have a failing, I feel it’s a tendency to do the “easy bit” of community politics - problems such as graffiti and litter which often don’t even need someone from the community to alert us to them - rather than grasping the nettle of harder problems such as crime and community division.

Sometimes I feel we could all do with a refresher course in door-knocking…

James:

I tried to buy a copy of that, but failed (probably typed my credit card details in wrongly).
I would not be surprised if there’s been some drift away from what was originally intended.

Joe:
I think we focus on the easy too much, and on what local people want to hear. That works in the short term but we need a ‘narrative’ (ugh I hate that term) to make it tie in with liberalism as a whole (which is a diverse thing anwyay…)

Mickelthwait looks like a typical ultra-conservative who has kidnapped the terms Classical Liberal and Libertarian.
I’m not very familiar with Micklethwait, but I’ve just checked his blog and I found extraordinary poisonous rantings against Islam, with no basis in objective thought. I’m certainly not a Muslim, or believer of any kind, but dismissing a whole religion as ‘evil’ is not moral or liberal. Islam includes many advocates of tolerance, inner spirtuality detached from social and political power, who provide a resource for liberal culture just like similar currents in Christianity, alongside all the fanatics, bigots and seekers after state power in both religions. The great Medieval Christian theologians themselves were very dependent on the work done by the classical Muslim philosophers, and Jewish philosophers in the Muslim world. I don’t think Mickelthwait is worth bothering with. He seems to belong to that large class of Brit Libertarians for whom freedom for the state means a hope for a society based on ultra-conservative social and cultural principles, the kind of ‘libertarian’ who celebrates Pinochet. Cicero is a rare exception to this kind of stuff in Britain. US libertarianism includes some of this but is much more varied, and US ’soft libertarians’ are very close to classical liberals in the Lib Dems in thinking. Forget Mickelthwait.