Even its much-vaunted pragmatism is actually coercive in nature

Even its much-vaunted pragmatism is actually coercive in nature. An interest only in “what works” reduces government to a problem-solving machine, in which human evils can be eradicated by legislation or regulation that only the stupid or the corrupt would oppose. It is not a disinterested machine – its operators prefer to tackle problems that deliver an electoral reward – but it is grounded in a rational rather than a moral view of the world. In the New Labour view of the world, it is only the “forces of conservatism” that stand between us and an age of universal happiness.Yet true tolerance means tolerating what we find intolerable.

The truly tolerant man is expressing a conviction that, despite the fact he finds a practice or opinion false, undesirable, meretricious, vicious or even evil, freedom is put at risk if men and women are not free to believe nonsense, pursue bad habits and hold rival conceptions of the good life. This entreaty is as pertinent for those on the right as it is for those on the left.A truly liberal civilisation does not seek to alter behaviour through compulsion, but by the cogency of argument. On a host of issues – pornography, prostitution, abortion, homosexuality, alcohol, drugs, hunting – people in Britain today hold a wide variety of deeply entrenched and incommensurate positions. Beyond guaranteeing that every individual has the same civil and personal liberties as every other individual – of which the equalisation of the age of consent is a good example – there is nothing the state can usefully do to reconcile these opposing positions. Indeed it can only exacerbate the fissures by appearing to favour one position over another, by imposing legal bans on one group or granting legal rights to another. Its preferences are bound to be influenced not by liberal principle but by what is electorally advantageous or even fashionable.It is far better to let free men and women determine the outcome themselves, and even allow different outcomes in different parts of the country After all, whoever is right will in the end be proved right.

Much can be destroyed on the journey, but eventually truth and goodness will always triumph. Alan Duncan MP is shadow Trade and Industry minister and author, with Dominic Hobson, of ‘Saturn’s Children’ (Politico’s).. So that’s just about it, then, for another year. Surely for a day or two, at least, there will be a silent pause, a period when all who inhabit the strange, unruly world of politics shut up

So that’s just about it, then, for another year. Surely for a day or two, at least, there will be a silent pause, a period when all who inhabit the strange, unruly world of politics shut up.
Well, yes, there is a silence of sorts There are no grand announcements. The never-ending political interview programmes that normally clutter up a Sunday have vanished briefly from the screens. There will be no interview today with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury on the Public Sector Borrowing Requirement.

Nor will the shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury have to lie in wait ready to respond, probably on another interview programme. And there will be no newspapers tomorrow to report on the exchanges, to bestow on them a false importance There will be silence instead.Yet the silence is deceptive. During this pause, when the cacophony of conflicting voices cannot be heard anywhere in the land, politicians reflect and plan ahead. With party hats on their heads, with laughter from family and friends ringing around their ears, they think often about their world that has briefly fallen silent.