Author Archives: Jonathan Parry

Political Liberalism

By Jonathan Parry | Tue 29th April 2025 - 9:00 am

How do we apply Liberalism in day-to-day politics? A thoughtful new book, When We Speak of Freedom, edited by Paul Hindley and Benjamin Wood, deserves more discussion here. The subtitle is ‘Radical Liberalism in an age of crisis’. For the editors, the crisis is part-political, caused by the challenge of populism and nationalism, but primarily ethical, about a failure of community and a sense of alienation.

Alan Butt Philip’s foreword introduces one important theme of the book: how individual citizens can find a way of living that is environmentally sustainable and morally fulfilling. Michael Meadowcroft’s opening chapter addresses the ‘deep hollowness at the heart of our politics’ and the need to reorient community identities away from the rat race in an era of low growth.

Posted in Books | Tagged Faragism and liberalism | 14 Comments

Is this a Liberal moment?

By Jonathan Parry | Tue 8th April 2025 - 10:03 am

Can the election of Donald Trump be a major opportunity for Liberal Democrats? Quite possibly, though the jury is still out. In fact I’ve just written a short history of British Liberalism which ends with that question.

I’ve argued in the book that British Liberalism has made the political weather when it has mobilised public opinion in favour of a political reset, or against a particular threat. Liberals have campaigned best when they have attacked powerful vested interests and damaging concentrations of power – when they have urged constitutional reform (the nineteenth-century Reform Acts) or stood against tariffs and sectional economic policies (the Corn Laws; Tariff Reform). But it’s not always easy to convince voters that constitutional and structural issues should matter to them. Timing is always central to political success.

In the nineteenth century, Liberals’ favourite slogan was ‘Reform’, which was shorthand for changes to the distribution of parliamentary seats and to the franchise. Reform was demanded for several reasons, particularly to stop high taxes and government oppression of minorities. It was a call for a new, more responsive politics.