The Crisis of Political Conviction updated

Democracy faces a paradox. We have more information than ever before, yet less clarity about truth. We have more ways to express political will, yet feel increasingly powerless. We demand authenticity from our leaders while punishing them for holding firm convictions. This isn't merely a crisis of politics, it's a crisis of thought leadership, and understanding it requires examining how conviction, pragmatism, and truth interact in our political systems.

The Death of Conviction Politics

Conviction politics, the idea that leaders should govern according to deeply held principles rather than popular opinion, has become almost quaint. Margaret Thatcher famously declared "the lady's not for turning," and whatever one thinks of her policies (I am personally not a fan), there was clarity in knowing what she stood for. Equally, and even worse, we know what Trump stands for due to his frequent social media posts and rambling speeches about immigration, tax, tariffs and NATO.

However, Trump aside, today's politicians conduct focus groups to determine not just their messaging but their positions themselves. They test-market policies like consumer products, crafting platforms designed to offend the fewest people rather than to inspire. Labour today, with arguably one of the most freeing majorities for some time, seems frozen in the headlights and running policy based on reaction to leaks in the press: the last budget was one leak after another, seemingly to test public appetite.

This shift from conviction to calculation creates a peculiar hollowness. When politicians reverse course at the first sign of resistance, voters correctly intuit that these leaders don't actually believe in anything. The focus group approach produces politicians who speak in the language of consensus while standing for nothing in particular. They are, in the worst sense, professional rather than passionate.

Yet pure conviction politics carries its own dangers. The leader who knows with absolute certainty that they are right becomes impervious to evidence, deaf to criticism, and prone to authoritarianism. This is where Camus offers a vital corrective. His philosophy embraced the idea that we must act decisively while remaining aware of our own fallibility. We can hold strong beliefs without claiming absolute certainty, we can hold conviction without being dogmatic.

Debate, Rhetoric, and the Performance of Politics

The distinction between debate and rhetoric has collapsed in modern politics. Debate seeks truth through reasoned exchange; rhetoric seeks victory through persuasion. Classical rhetoric was considered an art, a way to make truth compelling. But today's political rhetoric often operates in service of obscuring rather than revealing truth.

Watch a contemporary political debate and you'll see not an exchange of ideas but a series of prepared talking points delivered regardless of the questions asked. Politicians are trained to "pivot" away from difficult questions, to answer the question they wish they'd been asked rather than the one actually posed. This isn't debate, it's performance art designed to generate viral clips and avoid gaffes. And it turns me off completely.

The media environment reinforces this. Twenty-four-hour news cycles and social media demand constant content, but not necessarily thoughtful content. A politician who says "that's a complex question requiring careful consideration" loses to one who offers a simple, confident answer, even if that answer is wrong. Nuance becomes a liability. Admitting uncertainty becomes weakness. Simple messages win, even if dumb or abhorrent.

Idealism, Realism, and the Corruption of Power

The UK Liberal Democrats offer an instructive case study in how idealism confronts reality. For decades in opposition, they could afford to be purely idealistic, advocating for tuition-free university education, constitutional reform, and civil liberties without the burden of implementation. When they entered coalition government in 2010, they discovered that governing requires compromise. They broke their pledge on tuition fees, and voters punished them.

Was this hypocrisy or pragmatism? The charitable interpretation is that they chose to be in government making partial progress rather than in opposition making none. The cynical view is that they discovered their ideals were negotiable when power was on offer. The truth likely lies somewhere between, but the episode illustrates how quickly ideals can become corrupted when they collide with the machinery of governance.

This echoes the Michael Ritchie film "The Candidate," where Robert Redford's idealistic politician gradually hollows out his message to win, until election night when he asks his campaign manager, "What do we do now?" He has won the prize but lost his purpose. The film understood that the process of campaigning itself corrupts, that the skills required to win office are almost antithetical to those required to govern well.

The challenge is that opposition idealism serves a purpose. It expands the Overton window, it challenges the status quo, it reminds those in power that alternatives exist. But idealism without the capacity for implementation becomes merely performative. The question isn't whether to be idealistic or realistic, it's how to remain connected to core values while accepting the constraints of reality.

The Rise of Simple, Divisive Messages

When societies face stress, economic insecurity, rapid cultural change, threats real or perceived, they often turn to nationalism and simple messages. Marine Le Pen's National Front (now National Rally) in France, Donald Trump's MAGA movement, Nigel Farage's various campaigns, these represent a pattern that recurs throughout history. They offer clarity in confusing times: the problem is them (immigrants, elites, the other), and the solution is us (the nation, the people, the real citizens).

This isn't coincidence. Simple messages are powerful messages. "Take back control" worked as a Brexit slogan precisely because it was vague enough to mean different things to different people while conveying a clear emotional appeal. "Make America Great Again" similarly promised restoration to an idealised past without specifying which past or how to get there.

These movements succeed because they offer what focus-grouped centrism cannot: passion, clarity, and the promise of transformation. They may be selling illusions, but they're selling them with conviction. Against politicians carefully hedging every statement to avoid offense, the firebrand who speaks without filter appears authentic, even when they're lying.

The nationalist moment also exploits a genuine vacuum. When traditional centre-left and centre-right parties converge on technocratic centrism, when they speak in the language of spreadsheets rather than values, they abandon emotional and moral territory that nationalist movements happily occupy. People want to feel that politics is about more than GDP growth, they want meaning, belonging, purpose. If mainstream parties won't provide that, others will.

Truth in the Era of Fake News

The concept of truth has always been contested in politics, but something has shifted. It's not just that politicians lie,they always have. It's that we increasingly lack shared agreement on how to determine what's true. Different communities inhabit different information ecosystems with different facts, different experts, different epistemologies.

This isn't entirely new. What is new is the speed and scale at which falsehoods spread, and the sophisticated infrastructure built to create and disseminate them. Social media algorithms optimise for engagement, which means they optimise for outrage, which means they optimise for content that confirms existing biases and triggers emotional responses. Truth becomes just another narrative competing for attention.

As I explored in my last article, the traditional gatekeepers, newspapers, broadcasters, expert institutions, have lost both their monopoly on information distribution and much of their credibility. Some of this loss is deserved; these institutions made mistakes, displayed biases, and sometimes failed to hold power to account. But their weakening has created space for alternative information sources that operate without editorial standards, fact-checking, or accountability.

Politicians adapt to this environment by lying more boldly. Why worry about fact-checkers when your supporters don't read them, or when being called a liar by mainstream media might even boost your credibility with a base that distrusts those institutions? Why engage in good-faith debate when you can simply declare any inconvenient fact to be fake news?

The solution isn't simply better fact-checking, though that helps. It's rebuilding shared epistemic foundations, agreement on how we determine what's true, even when we disagree about values or policy. This requires restoring trust in institutions, improving media literacy, and creating incentives that reward truth-telling rather than tribalism.

Models That Work: Learning from Global Democracy

No political system is perfect, but examining different models reveals possibilities. New Zealand's mixed-member proportional representation encourages coalition-building and gives minor parties representation while maintaining stable government. The Swiss system of direct democracy, where citizens regularly vote on specific policy questions, creates engagement but also requires an informed citizenry. Scandinavian countries demonstrate that strong social democracy can coexist with economic dynamism when there's social trust.

What these successful democracies share isn't a single institutional design but certain cultural and structural features. They have relatively high social trust, meaning citizens believe their fellow citizens and institutions generally act in good faith. They have strong civic education that prepares people for democratic participation. They have media environments that, while imperfect, maintain some shared factual foundation. They have electoral systems that encourage consensus-building rather than pure winner-take-all competition.

The American system, for all its historical achievements, reveals the dangers of excessive polarisation, gerrymandering, and the influence of money in politics. The UK's first-past-the-post system can produce stable governments but often leaves large portions of the electorate unrepresented. Systems that use proportional representation tend to require coalition-building, which can moderate extremism but can also lead to gridlock or give small parties disproportionate influence.

Perhaps the most important lesson from comparative politics is that institutional design matters, but culture matters more. The same institutions can produce different outcomes depending on the norms and values that animate them. A constitution is only as good as the people who operate within it.

How to Vote for Better Outcomes

This leads to the practical question: given the flaws in our political systems, how should we vote? Several principles suggest themselves.

First, vote for people over parties when possible. Look for candidates who demonstrate genuine curiosity, who can articulate their values without reading from scripts, who show they've thought deeply about issues rather than simply adopted the party line. Look for those who can say "I don't know" or "I was wrong" when appropriate, this is strength, not weakness.

Second, consider the systemic effects of your vote. In first-past-the-post systems, voting for minor parties might feel good but can enable outcomes you oppose. In proportional systems, voting your true preference makes more sense. Understand your electoral system and vote strategically within it, while also advocating for systemic reform if your system is broken.

Third, vote for politicians who support structural reforms that improve democracy itself: campaign finance reform, electoral system changes, independent redistricting, strengthened institutions, protections for free press and civil liberties. A politician's specific policy positions may matter less than their commitment to the democratic process itself.

Fourth, be wary of simple solutions to complex problems. If a politician tells you there's one easy answer, they're either lying or they don't understand the issue. Look for those who can explain trade-offs and acknowledge complexity while still articulating clear values and priorities.

Fifth, consider character and judgment as much as policy positions. Policies can change with circumstances, but character endures. Does this person have the temperament, wisdom, and integrity to handle crises you cannot foresee?

Rebuilding Political Thought Leadership

Fixing political thought leadership requires changes at every level. We need politicians willing to lead rather than simply respond to polls, but we need voters willing to reward thoughtful conviction rather than punishing any deviation from purity. We need media that rewards substantive engagement rather than performative outrage. We need educational systems that prepare citizens for democratic participation. We need electoral reforms that encourage coalition-building over tribalism.

Most fundamentally, we need to recover the Camusian balance between conviction and humility. We need leaders who can say "this is what I believe we should do" while remaining open to evidence and argument. We need citizens who can hold firm values while recognising that others might see things differently for legitimate reasons. We need to rebuild the capacity for genuine debate, not as combat, but as collaborative truth-seeking.

This isn't idealistic, it's necessary. Democracy cannot function when all politicians are focus-grouped robots, when all political discourse is tribal performance, when truth itself becomes just another partisan weapon. We've seen where that leads: to demagogues who offer simple solutions, to nationalism that defines itself against the other, to the gradual erosion of democratic norms and institutions.  To Brexit and almost wilful self-harm!

The path forward requires both structural reform and cultural change. We need better electoral systems, yes, but we also need to rebuild the habits of democratic citizenship: critical thinking, good-faith engagement, willingness to compromise without abandoning principles, respect for truth and expertise while maintaining healthy scepticism.

Can we do this? The answer depends on whether we're willing to do the hard work of democracy, not just voting every few years, but engaging continuously, demanding better from our leaders and ourselves, building institutions and norms that reward substance over performance. It requires being idealistic about what's possible while realistic about what's required to get there.

The alternative is to continue the spiral: more polarisation, more nationalism, more post-truth politics, until democracy itself becomes merely performative, a hollow ritual concealing the reality of power exercised elsewhere. We can do better. We must do better. The question is whether we will.

In the Moral Universe I like to think we can.

P.S. If you feel the above was too optimistic then I would highlight 2 fresh elements that show there can be conviction in politics. We are not alone:

1. Mark Carney at Davos. Really great speech from him with some great quotes: “The power of the less powerful begins with honesty”, “A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile and less sustainable”, “if you are not at the table, you are on the menu”.

2. Gavin Newsom State of the State address: “the greatest tragedy is not the clamour of bad people but the appalling silence of good people”, “We created the conditions where the dreamers and the doers, the misfits and the marvels, with grit and ingenuity, come to build the impossible”, “California has never been about perfection. It’s about persistence. The courage of our convictions and the strength to embody them”, “So we continue on because, years from now, we can tell our children we did not settle for the world as it was. We can say with pride: we built something worthy of them. We built the future.”