Author Archives: Stephen Lee

Collateral Damage: CentreForum & the Fall & Rise of Liberal Ideas

By Stephen Lee | Tue 16th June 2015 - 12:01 pm

It is now clearly public knowledge that I have left my position as CEO of CentreForum, a job that I have undertaken these past three years with a great sense of privilege, pride and I hope some sense of humility.

We had planned before the general election for a downturn in our fortunes, planning that itself necessitated hard decisions, decisions that impacted on my staff, decisions that I did not take lightly. Like others, I did not foresee the magnitude of the Lib Dem reversal on May 7th. Its impact was both immediate and potentially transformational for CentreForum.

Posted in Op-eds | 6 Comments

The Independent View: Trident – when two into four doesn’t go

By Stephen Lee | Thu 4th July 2013 - 1:03 pm

It is welcome that Danny Alexander is to publish a paper into the alternatives to a like-for-like replacement for Trident this summer. In doing so, the Liberal Democrats have made a sea-change in the transparency of British nuclear weapons policy, which for more than half-a-century has been veiled in official secrecy and occluded behind impenetrable bromides.

But the leaks surrounding the paper suggesting a “Third Way” style compromise on Trident by reducing the number of submarines to two feels hollow. The current four submarine Trident force is the minimum currently required to ensure that one is always at sea

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