Liberal Democrats and political philosophy - let's not be strangers, eh?

Perhaps it requires exposure to the brisk, clean air of a properly liberal country to get the old philosophical juices flowing but, finding myself in the Estonian countryside this afternoon, along with Ros and Cicero, talking about what is wrong with British politics, I find myself faintly perturbed by the relationship between political parties and political philosophies. Or, in the case of the United Kingdom, the evident lack of such a relationship.

The Labour Party has little in common with socialism these days, and Conservatives behave in a way which is anything but. And, it dawns on me, Liberal Democrats have a not wholly consistent relationship with liberalism. As a self-confessed liberal, that does rather trouble me.

"Ah yes,", I hear you say, "but what sort of liberalism do you mean - social or economic?". And I find myself thinking, why choose? For to choose either is to deny the benefits of the other, to determine that one is secondary to the other.

So, for example, we debate the level of private sector involvement in the delivery of public services. All very interesting, I'm sure, but shouldn't we be more worried about how the market works in reality - avoiding the creation of effective private sector monopolies and cartels, encouraging new providers and nurturing a spectrum of delivery vehicles for those services? Does Mrs Brown worry about the logo on the side of the bus that takes her to market on a Thursday, or is she more bothered about the fare and the quality of the service? Does choice trump quality or vice versa? By creating larger contracts in an attempt to create economies of scale, are we, as David Boyle so astutely notes, creating a chasm between the day to day needs of humans and the behaviour of big, impersonal institutions?

How can we empower people, so that they aren't enslaved by conformity, ignorance and poverty? How should we educate our people to allow them to think for themselves, to evaluate information in an ocean of data and place value upon it? What is the role of the State, what size should it be and why, where should power be exercised?

I have this uncomfortable feeling that Liberal Democrat thinking has developed an acceptance that change can only be delivered within the confines of our current political construct, that legislation is the first tool to be reached for in any given circumstance. In Parliament and at the heart of our Party, we have fallen into the trap of playing the game the way the big boys want it to be played, rather than exploring a new form of politics, one that reflects the rapidly-changing world in which we live.

And, worst of all, we seem to become ever more rigid in terms of the solutions we propose. There must, it seems, be an answer to everything which will, well, answer everything, leaving no room for doubt or uncertainty. Life is full of doubt and uncertainty, and our political response should face that slightly discomforting proposition.

So, perhaps the biggest challenge for the Party, regardless of the result in May, is to decide what Liberal Democrats are for, and how you create an effective campaigning vehicle to win those things. Sadly, I fear that we'll instead choose to wring our hands and allocate blame...