Such beliefs, mediated through fallible human beings, do not ultimately require the backing of reason and logic and are therefore unable to gain the willing consent of the public. The inevitable consequence is a recourse to repression and force. Consent is essential to the survival of democracy and can only be sustained within a civil society based on rational debate and democratic decision making. The answer to these challenges lies in Liberalism. Ours is not an economically determinist party.
Quality is far more important than quantity.
The past decade has seen remarkably parallel developments by the Labour and Conservative parties. Initially the Conservatives in office nationally dragged power back to the centre and forced their ideology on local government, and on the economic structure, by the sale of national assets and by the destruction of integrated education, housing and transport policies. Labour, where in power locally, centralised power in the local state and forced its ideology on the voluntary sector and sought to control all aspects of municipal life. As Professor Nicholas Deakin, head of the National Council for Voluntary Organisation's commission on the future of the voluntary sector, and himself a Labour supporter, said recently Some of us started our voluntary sector lives dealing with old Labour local authorities, and what they wanted to do was to basically bash the life out of us. Later the two parties slowed down their parallel moves to the political extremes and, in pragmatic terms, began to move back towards the centre ground.