The argument of this book can be stated simply. There are two concepts of a free society, one liberal, the other libertarian. For the past fifty years the libertarian view has prevailed. Shared by politicians of the left and right, it maintains that a free society is ideally one in which individuals are free to pursue their own choices, both political and moral.
'The Politics Of Hope' proposes a new politics of responsibility in which families, neighbourhoods, communities, voluntary organisations and religious groups all have a part to play, a politics not of interest, but of involvement. How, it asks, as a society, do we move from the politics of despair to the politics of hope?