ABSTRACT
This chapter examines British political ideas that emerged through the narrative arc of events as theory met practice in terms of changed political realities over three turbulent centuries of British political history. From concentrating on favoured forms of government, the focus of political ideas moved on to such questions as: the desirable degree of state involvement in everyday life; the health of the economy; and levels of poverty and government’s obligation, if any, to alleviate it. Liberalism originated with seventeenth-century British and European Enlightenment philosophers such as John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau. Their writings marked a break with traditional unquestioning deference towards church and state. Liberals also argued that government interference with ‘markets’ would seriously harm or disable their potency: capitalism should be left to work its own magic.
