What Kemi Badenoch Should Read on the Train

There are two kinds of people on the morning train. Those who stare silently into the middle distance, contemplating the meaning of life. And those conducting a speakerphone conversation that somehow involves three estate agents, a Labrador called Colin and 'the invoice from Dave.' Both, in their own way, are expressions of freedom.

Which is why, if I found myself sharing a carriage with Kemi Badenoch, I'd quietly leave John Stuart Mill's On Liberty on the table before disappearing into the buffet queue like a literary ninja.

Now, before anyone starts writing angry emails, this isn't because politicians need lectures on liberty. Quite the opposite. It's because Mill reminds us that freedom is less interesting when everyone agrees.

His central argument is beautifully awkward: if nobody challenges your ideas, you never discover whether they're actually true or merely familiar. That's an uncomfortable thought in an age where algorithms have become remarkably efficient at introducing us to people who already think exactly like us. It's less a marketplace of ideas than a village fête where every stall sells confirmation bias.

Mill insisted that disagreement isn't a design flaw in democracy. It's the maintenance schedule. Every opinion should occasionally be taken for a brisk walk and exposed to fresh air.

Commuters know this instinctively. Sit opposite someone reading a book you'd never normally pick up and, for forty minutes, another world quietly opens. The economics graduate is reading medieval poetry. The retired engineer is halfway through a novel about Japanese tea ceremonies. The teenager in headphones is working through Plato.

You begin to suspect that people are gloriously more complicated than their social media profiles suggest. Politics sometimes rewards certainty. Books reward curiosity. The latter generally leads to more interesting conversations.