Introducing Civic Forum: A New Home for My Political Writing

For some time, my political reflections have lived under the heading Politics of Scale. It was a useful phrase, capturing my belief that political life only makes sense when it is rooted in the appropriate level of community, authority, and responsibility. But as my thinking has developed, and as I’ve clarified the tradition I stand within, I’ve decided to rename that category.

From today, Politics of Scale becomes Civic Forum.

This new title better expresses the spirit of what I am trying to do: to think about Britain’s future not merely in terms of policy or party, but in terms of citizenship, civic virtue, and the shared life of a nation that must rediscover its own political imagination.

Why “Civic Forum”?

Britain has never had a strong civic republican tradition outside of the left. Our constitutional culture has long been shaped by monarchy, parliamentary sovereignty, and a residual feudalism that still clings to our political architecture. We speak of ourselves as “subjects,” not citizens. Our political inheritance is dignified, but it is not civic in the classical sense.

My own position is different.

I hold a high view of citizenship — not merely as a legal status, but as a moral and political vocation. A citizen is someone who participates in the common good, who has duties as well as rights, and who belongs to a political community that is more than a marketplace or a managerial state.

This is why I have increasingly come to favour a Civic Republic for Britain: a constitutional order in which the people are citizens rather than subjects, and where political authority is grounded in civic participation rather than inherited feudal structures. This does not necessarily mean abolishing the monarchy. I’m not some iconoclastic republican who wants to tear down every symbol of continuity. Far from it. The monarchy may endure but without a major constitutional role – doing it what it does best – preserving tradition, a guardian of heritage and national memory.

A Home for My Political Inclinations

The Civic Forum category will gather writing that reflects my particular political orientation — a blend of:

• British Gaullism National independence, strategic economic sovereignty, and a strong but restrained state.
• Communitarian Post‑Liberalism Society as a web of obligations, not merely a collection of individuals.
• Cultural National Conservatism A defence of cultural continuity without racial politics
• A political order based on Subsidiarity and Distributism, Power and property distributed widely, with decisions made at the lowest competent level – most often the individual and the family
• Civilizational Alliances between Western nations, with con-federalist co-operation rather than centralizing, bureaucratic integration.

Economically, I believe the state sets moral parameters, markets operate freely within those boundaries, and strategic industries remain under national stewardship. This is an economy and society with a safety net and offering a ‘help up’ but without replacing personal and family responsibility.

My aim is not to rehearse party politics and gossip about personalities – goodness knows we’ve got enough political parties on the ‘Right’ already. Instead I want to think seriously about Britain’s constitutional future and the civic responsibilities of its people.