I have spent much time this year thinking about politics and have dedicated a number of my blog posts to examining current affairs in the United Kingdom and globally. As well as providing commentary on issues that are in the news and about which I care deeply, I have also dedicated some time to reflect on where I stand. I know that my politics has shifted, at least in party affiliation, over the years, though there have always been some core features whichever colour I was voting for at the time. In today’s post, I have chosen, after much thought, to try to set out where I stand politically and philosophically.
I believe that every human being is of equal worth and should have the freedom and opportunity to live a life of dignity, security, meaning, and love.
For me, liberalism begins with freedom, but freedom cannot simply mean being left alone by the state. It means being free to speak, think, worship, protest, associate, love whom we love, and be who we are. But it must also mean freedom from hunger, homelessness, destitution, discrimination, preventable ill-health, and the tyranny that comes from having no meaningful choices in life.
That requires both liberty and solidarity.
I want an open, plural, tolerant society in which difference is not merely endured but welcomed, and in which nobody’s dignity depends upon their race, sex, gender, sexuality, disability, religion, class, nationality, or background. Equality is not a competition between minorities. The liberation of one group does not require the subordination of another. We should stand together against racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and every attempt to make one group of people responsible for the difficulties experienced by another.
I believe particularly in rebuilding solidarity across class. Economic insecurity is real. Too many people work hard yet struggle to afford a decent home, food, energy, childcare, or a dignified retirement. But migrants, LGBTQ+ people, minorities, and other marginalised groups did not create that insecurity. A politics that persuades people with relatively little power to blame other people with relatively little power merely protects those who possess a great deal of it.
A decent society should therefore guarantee a social foundation beneath everyone. Healthcare, education, decent housing, food, warmth, and basic economic security should not be luxuries. Prosperity should be created through enterprise, innovation, work, and investment, but its benefits should be broadly shared. Markets can be extraordinarily effective servants of human flourishing, but they should never become our masters.
I believe in democracy as much more than periodically putting a cross on a ballot paper. Everyone should get a say and everyone should get a share. Political power should be dispersed through proportional representation, radical devolution, strong local and regional government, and democratic institutions that genuinely represent the people they serve. Economic and media power require scrutiny too. Democracy is weakened when extraordinary wealth gives a tiny number of individuals disproportionate influence over politics, information, or public life.
I believe in strong public institutions, but I am suspicious of concentrated and coercive power. The state should be strong enough to guarantee rights, provide excellent public services, protect the vulnerable, regulate markets, tackle the climate emergency, and secure our common future. But it should be restrained in its ability to police peaceful behaviour, suppress protest, intrude unnecessarily into private life, or dictate how people should live. The police, courts, government, and public administration should always be servants of the people, subject to law, democracy, transparency, proportionality, and accountability.
I believe passionately in human rights and the rule of law. Rights matter most when they protect unpopular minorities and inconvenient dissenters. Freedom of speech must include speech with which I profoundly disagree. Freedom of protest must include protests that inconvenience those in authority. Equality before the law means applying the same principles of dignity, evidence, fairness, and proportionality even when doing so is politically uncomfortable.
I am an internationalist. I reject the idea that humanity is engaged in a permanent competition between nations in which another country’s success must be our loss. Britain should be confident about itself without becoming nationalist, proud of its communities and traditions without imagining itself superior to others. I believe our future lies within Europe, that the United Kingdom should ultimately rejoin the European Union, and that sovereignty is often strengthened rather than diminished when democratic nations choose to exercise it together.
I believe the United Kingdom itself must change if it is to endure. Power should flow away from Westminster and Whitehall. Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, the English regions, cities, towns, and communities should have much greater control over their own affairs. Our constitution should reflect the multinational, multicultural, interconnected country that Britain actually is.
I believe environmental responsibility is inseparable from social justice. We owe future generations a habitable planet, but the transition to a sustainable economy must improve rather than diminish ordinary people’s lives. Clean energy, technological innovation, public investment, and responsible enterprise can allow us to become greener while also becoming more prosperous and secure.
I believe politics should resist fear. Populism succeeds by identifying enemies, simplifying complicated problems, and persuading us that our neighbours are responsible for our difficulties. Social media and concentrated media power have made that politics easier to spread. Our answer cannot simply be another politics of anger directed in the opposite direction. It must be a politics capable of rebuilding trust, community, common purpose, and hope.
My Christian faith informs this politics without requiring others to share it. At its heart is a conviction that every person possesses intrinsic dignity and that we are called into relationship with one another. I cannot reconcile Christianity with a politics built upon exclusion, humiliation, accumulated wealth without responsibility, or indifference towards suffering. The command to love our neighbour is easy to sentimentalise and extraordinarily difficult to practise. Taken seriously, it demands justice as well as charity.
I do not believe that government can create love, nor that legislation can abolish hatred. But politics determines whether people have homes, whether they receive healthcare, whether their relationships are recognised, whether their voices are heard, whether they can protest injustice, whether wealth purchases political power, and whether minorities live in security or fear. Politics therefore has a profound moral purpose.
The society I want is neither one in which the individual is abandoned to the market nor one in which the individual is subordinated to the state. It is a society of free and equal people who recognise their interdependence.
Everyone should have a voice. Everyone should have a stake. Everyone should have enough. Everyone should be free to be themselves.
And ultimately, I want us to recover something politics has become embarrassed to talk about: our common humanity.
I want us to be free, equal in dignity, secure in the essentials of life, democratic in the exercise of power, generous towards difference, responsible for the world we leave behind, and willing to live not in fear of one another but in love and solidarity with our fellow human beings.
