However, I have to take issue with a couple of points:

1) Must we accept that those that are supposed to govern us abdicate their role to focus groups?

Surely the biggest liberal fallacy of them all is to assume a sort of market in governance where good government, via some invisible political hand, magically emerges from public opinion and some imagined consensus.

Do we all know everything we need to know in order to govern ourselves? If so why not dispense with the state and live under a form of syndicalism?

No this is nonsensical, we have state structures because we expect them to govern, responsively, yes, but also responsibly.

2) Is ‘liberty’ the answer?

Liberty is a very specific and negative (in Berlin’s terms) framing of rights (leave me alone nasty state and I will be fine…)

But if we care about disengagement with politics, we want more active citizens. And if we understand the increase in risk that climate change means, we want better collective risk structures. Since insurance and securitisation is looking a bit silly now, this most likely means strong state structures.

It should be noted that there are many very strong state structures with far better records on civil liberties than the UK, Northern Europe is full of them. So the answer to British Buerocratic foolishness and the centralising impulses in Westminster probably needs to be more rights, and a better state structure, rather than a retreat to the minimal governance traditions of British Liberalism.

If we do not take this long-run view, we may find that our passion for liberty has us waking up one electoral cycle from now realising that we are still horribly ill equipped to make the urgently needed changes to our energy and social-risk-management infrastructure.

Can we afford a loosely structured social fabric in an age where New Orleans could be a common occurrence?