I had this exact argument with a friend over lunch last week (a political friend. My non-political friends don’t care).  I wrote about it in October last year.  I’m sure most political operatives, particularly in the daily grind of opposition, would take a win for any reason.  But in their more reflective moments, they know that winning for winning’s sake isn’t really the point.

The point of winning an election is that you have principles and policies that you want to put into action in order to improve your country and the lives of all the people who live there.

I want us to win an election because I think we have better ideas for government. I think our ideas will enable society to revolutionise itself (because that’s the key – decisions are not made by someone sitting in Whitehall but by communities and individuals who have the freedom and the trust to do so).  I think our ideas will allow people to take responsibility for themselves, which will in turn lead to communities, businesses and hopefully governments doing so as well.

There are some pre-requisites to this assumption of responsibility. People need the right information. They need to understand the consequences of their decisions. As far as is possible, they need to stand or fall by those decisions.  

Most importantly (and you might be surprised to read this) there need to be absolutely clear limits on how far people can do as they please.  This is not an argument for some mad libertarian bacchanalia.  Society is an association of individuals, families and communities. No-one exists in an individual bubble.  Absolute freedom is as undesirable as total repression.  But the balance can and must be shifted back to freedom.

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Tags: Cameron, Campaigning, Governing, Making a Difference, Responsibility

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 19th, 2009 at 3:19 pm , written by Fiona Melville and is filed under General Politics, Must-Reads. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.