Here’s a simple plan:

‘The Blogosphere’ produces a simple black and white leaflet with the headline, “Free Trade is GOOD” and a brief explanation about why. We put links on to a website with more information. Keep it aimed at people who don’t read political blogs, keep it simple – the desire is just to get the message out there.

Then, get as many blogs as possible (at least the ones that support Free Trade anyway) to write about this particular campaign, encouraging their readers to do just one simple thing:

Print out the leaflet go deliver it on just your street, whether that’s 5 homes or 50. Just your street. That’s it. Well, if you feel confident enough write, “Hi, I’m from number 4″ on it, so that if people are interested then you have the means of making connections then go ahead, but you don’t have it.

Next month, do another one. Then another one. Then another one. Keep putting out non-partisan leaflets explaining basic political concepts and ideas in an accessible way.

So this isn’t exactly well thought out, but it does illustrate how it might be possible to use some of the tools of the Evangelical trade to help translate existing enthusiasm into growth of a movement.

A more ethically dubious idea, but stealing directly from the Evangelicals, would be to run a political equivalent of the Alpha course. Sell libertarianism, for example, not just as a political system but as a means of viewing the world that can bring benefits in its own right. People have compared libertarianism to a religion, so why not spread it like one?

See, political campaigning is supposed to be about big money – everything’s always done by ‘someone else’ funded by big party machines. Bloggers have no money and have access to a niche audience only. You see the problem…

Yet the blogosphere’s audience are the front line of political thought in the UK. They’re the most interested, most engaged people in the UK. If not the blogosphere’s readership, who? Well it’s the Unions, and the Parties, and the Churches. That’s who.

In other words, with our interest in politics comes the responsibility not to just sit on our arses moaning about the fact that people don’t understand Free Trade, that they think planning is actually quite cool, that protectionism ‘can be good’ and so on – we can do something about that if we choose to. The readership of the blogs are ‘big party’ sized – it’s already enough people to affect real change. Parties use a small number of people to reach a very large number of people. I suggest that the next logical evolution of the blogosphere is to do the same.

We have to start “evangelising” out in the real world, and we have to do it independently of any political party, so that the groundwork can be laid for public opinion itself to demand, of the parties, the sort of policies that will help this country. I see no other means of breaking the ‘dash for the centre ground’ deadlock that seems to have crippled real debate between the mainstream political parties, reducing elections to popularity contests and appeals to trust and competence alone.