Liberal Democrat activists will be familiar with two apparently contradictory refrains.

One is that Liberal Democrats should pursue what is morally right for the country, regardless of public opinion. The other is that ‘no-one ever voted Lib Dem because of our policy on (… insert obscure policy…)’.

The point of the latter refrain is that the public’s problem-solving priorities should dominate policymaking effort.

There is another, potentially reconciling, refrain; that liberal democracy in the UK needs a new popular ‘big idea’. Opposition to the Iraq war is a common reference point, a major contributor to Liberal Democrats having 60+ MPs in the Commons. Electoral reform, de-centralisation and localism or an anti-Brexit campaign (as yet), have not proven so successful, however.

Those scratching their heads for a new big idea can relax. The search for one is not only futile, but detrimental.

Retail politics (the electorate), and wholesale politics (expert and media opinion) will over time decide if one or more of our policies represent a popular ‘big idea’, not us.

Indeed our anti-Iraq-war stance was initially regarded with some disdain before it became popular. What’s more, the search for a big idea as a quick popularity fix can deflect us from the need to get much better at ‘doing liberal democracy’ and all its modern complexities, in practice.

Liberal democracy itself is the big idea; standing sometimes unseen right in front of us. The UK public has been in pursuit of it, in the sense of being against impunity and absolute power, for more than a thousand years. In that context the last 15-20 years where the ‘elite state’ has regained ground, has been a blip. It is no coincidence that this followed a few years after that rival ‘big idea’ against impunity and elite dominance, state socialism, suffered a near-fatal blow.

Something else, however, has entered the political psyche, and weakened a return to that thousand year quest: China.

Over decades academics argued that liberal democracy was economically efficient. The Bretton Woods institutions have argued to poorer countries post-war that importing the symptoms of liberal democracy would thus improve economics. Concepts like ‘property rights’, ‘legal system’, ‘transparency’, ‘fiscal moderation’, and ‘elite profligacy’ littered the pages of their recommendations. Amongst the rich countries there was also encouragement for liberal democracy to be observed through the lens of GDP growth.

Then along came the vast economic expansion of one-party-state China.

Those that, for decades, promoted liberal democracy or its administrative symptoms as merely a route to economic growth, were hoisted with their own petard. The thousand year quest was lost, somehow, and suddenly the central age-old tenets of liberal democracy about power and monopoly, impunity and elite dominance, all but evaporated.

This is the world we cannot escape from. There is more we can say about these tenets, but we must now show that real liberal democracy works, via multiple measures (not just GDP growth), and can respond to the rise of China without pulling up the drawbridge.

In restarting the long quest against impunity, absolute power and monopoly, we now have to show how these liberal democratic tenets can solve the public’s priority problems and sustainably achieve a relatively successful society and economy.

We have already decided what is morally right; democracy and liberalism, and in that we have history on our side. We have a globally important job to do to show it is effective too, or a new dark age beckons. That’s no small idea in itself…

* Paul Reynolds works with multilateral organisations as an independent adviser on international relations, economics, and senior governance. He is a member of the Lib Dem Federal International Relations Committee and an Executive member of Liberal International (British Group).