Quaequam Blog!

Tag: orange book

  • In defence of liberalism part two: centrism

    Centrism has never been liberal and is now in direct opposition to it. Liberals need to reject it and embrace a more optimistic vision of the future

    In defence of liberalism part two: centrism

  • Jeremy Browne: off his trolley

    The Times’s interview with Jeremy Browne today (link to the Guardian because it doesn’t have a paywall and there’s nothing in the Times original that you’re missing) highlights for me the inherent contradiction of the Lib Dem right wing. They’ve always veered between two modes. One is that the wicked left of the party have…

  • Why Charlotte Henry’s purity test of “real” liberalism is misguided

    Charlotte Henry has a curious article on the Total Politics blog, suggesting that Clegg’s speech on a more participatory form of industrial democracy will help us to seperate the “real liberals” from the “SDP-statist-sandal wearers”. There are several problems with this diagnosis. For one thing, the famed “sandal wearers” and the SDP members are very…

  • Speech: Where we are and how we got here

    Note: I got into a bit of a state preparing for my speech at the Social Liberal Forum Conference on Saturday, staying up the previous night writing and angsting about it: for some reason I found the prospect of sharing a platform with Neal Lawson, Will Hutton and Simon Hughes (who ended up replaced by…

  • For the record…

    I was a bit disappointed by Andy Beckett’s article on the future of the Lib Dems in the Guardian today. It is not that I have been misquoted – although I seem to recall saying that the number of Lib Dem MPs after the next election could be as low as 30 rather than probably…