If you live in Brighton and Hove, or any other city looking at local headlines struggling with hastily installed cycle lanes brought about by the pandemic, you will be wondering just how temporary are the temporary cycle lanes being installed.

Our own experience in Brighton and Hove, judging by a somewhat lengthy Environment, Transport and Sustainability Committee, would suggest that these cycle lanes are not very temporary.

Two engines drive this thought, this idea of the ‘not very temporary’ temporary cycle lane. The first engine is that that the city does not have data on usage of the cycle lane. Not before, not after. For a number of years, the city has not gathered the evidence base it needed to gather in order to drive informed and resident-supported policy initiatives.

The second engine is lined to this latter component, public support. There is none. Or, there is no proof – data – that there is any. With both of those, components in place, what can only be described as illiberal liberals are having a field day.

The idea or concept of the illiberal liberal is not a new one. Back in 2001, Brian Anderson wrote that liberals used to be the staunchest advocates of reasoned, civil debate. No more, he argued back then. Now (2001), he points out, ‘it’s argument by name-calling’.

The tendency to use close-minded and uncivil language, he noted, betrayed what was (and is?) liberal in liberalism.

Citing the American political project, he goes on to say that, without reflection or reason, politics degenerates into tyranny or mob rule. This is especially true where politicians, or anyone for thar matter, dismisses the views of out of hand.

John Locke, liberalism’s father, believed that general good will and regard for all people were very important. One must not show contempt, disrespect, or neglect of others.

Cycle lanes introduced under COVID financial support packages are a good example of this. A councillor recently wrote of the Brighton and Hove cycle lanes that a ‘dogmatic approach [to transport policy] is only serving to turn many people against the positives of having better active travel solutions precisely at the time when the council needs to gain as much support as possible. The illiberal in the liberal appears to be winning the day.

Writing about public debates some 20 years ago, Brian Anderson explores how recent (2001) public discussion, ‘liberals haven’t engaged in much reasoned argument with conservatives or shown much civility toward them’.

In those 20 intervening years, this debate has not gone away. In fact, it gets picked by Paul Krause in 2019 when he writes of the myth that is illiberal liberalism.

Krause hits back at those who believe in the ‘true’ classical liberalism, or authentic liberalism, set against various strands of leftism today, which, some argue, aren’t in any way, shape, or form meaningfully liberal.

The good life, according to the classical liberal fathers like Hobbes and Locke, consists in avoiding harm, writes Krause. This good life, he points out, is freedom from harm, or avoidance of harm.

Thinking in terms of this harm, where does this leave our cycle lanes or the dogmatic decision to keep them when residents have already identified them as harmful?

We cannot pick and choose our fights. We cannot support green spaces and opt to build on gardens. We cannot choose some petitions over others because it is convenient.

This position we find ourselves in today, in Brighton and Hove, is Krause note, akin to wanting the economics of Smith without the moral theory of Smith or the anthropology of Locke without the political and logical implications of Locke’s anthropology.

This is why the illiberal liberals in our midst will eventually be called out. It is inevitable.