Fair to say Starmer and co. are off to a rocky start. Interested to see what Lib Dems think are the reasons for this?

Please avoid just doing structural comments and try and actually discuss it showing how the government itself could do better with the circumstances it finds itself in

Congratulations to u/markpackuk on his appointment to the House of Lords!

I know that I can speak for the entire Mod team, and the r/LibDem community when I say that this is incredible news, and that is entirely earned. Well done Lord Pack.

Hey everyone!

Another week has gone by, we've survived whatever calamitous event has befallen us. So, here is a respite to just chill out and talk for a bit.

How was your week?

I think the Liberal Democrats are the closest among British politics to striving for liberal democracy as an ideal. This is good: I broadly approve of liberalism and I think the Lib Dems are the least bad of a pretty bad bunch.

That said, I do think that even liberal democracy has its flaws. This isn’t meant to be a practical political point, but more a political theory: what would be theoretically best in a vacuum if humans could be trusted to not be dicks?

“One person, one vote” doesn’t work because:-

• not everyone has an equal stake in every matter

• not everyone is equally knowledgable about every matter

I think gay marriage is a good example of the former. The only people who are affected by gay marriage are:-

• gay people who might want to get married

• people who perform marriage ceremonies

That’s it. If some straight guy Dave down the pub thinks marriage should be between one man and one woman, then Dave should not marry a man. But he shouldn’t get equal say in whether or not gay people can get married.

And with some issues we recognise this: only Scottish people got a vote in the Scottish independence referendum, and rightly so. But suddenly when the question is whether transgender people should have access to medical care, it’s not about what doctors or trans people think, but about what everyone thinks, including Wes goddamn Streeting who is neither trans nor a medical doctor and so has no legitimate stake in the matter at all.

Similarly if the question is whether Britain’s economic interests are best served by rejoining the Customs Union or not, Dave down the pub who thinks that means Muslims will take over London and implement Sharia law is demonstrably not qualified to make a meaningful decision on that, and there’s no reason why his vote should have the same weight as, say, a Cambridge-educated economist who has published 15 papers on the subject in scientific journals.

It’s an often quipped joke that “democracy is the worst political system, aside from everything else we’ve tried” and I think that’s basically true. The practical concerns of weighting votes according to how much of a stake the voter has in some issue and how knowledgable they are about it are in practice insurmountable.

But in theory, I think perfect liberty can only occur when only the people who are both affected by some issue and qualified to adjudicate it have any actual say. Perhaps a millennium from now, something like this might be implemented.

I just finished it the other day and have no need for my copy any more. Happy to pass it on for free (as long as you cover the postage, if you're outside Glasgow; can hand over in person in Glasgow).