Liberalism seems to be going through an identity crisis. Within a few months, three very different thinkers have published books asking the same question: what has happened to Liberalism, and what would make it relevant again?

Adrian Wooldridge has given us Centrists of the World Unite!, David Howarth Being Liberal, and Nobel Prize-winning economist Daron Acemoglu What Happened to Liberal Democracy?

We are halfway through this parliament, barring Andy Burnham calling an early election. So it’s a good time to search our collective Liberal soul in a quest for clarity of purpose. 

We have 72 MPs, our largest parliamentary party in a century, yet remarkably little influence over the national conversation. If people still struggle to say what Liberal Democrats are for, perhaps we haven’t told a sufficiently compelling story.

I approached Wooldridge’s Centrists with some scepticism. To me, “centrists” implies the mushy middle between left and right, administered by nice people who want to be everybody’s friend/tactical voting choice.

Fortunately, that isn’t Wooldridge’s Liberalism. His is restless and insurgent. Historically, Liberals challenged aristocratic privilege, monopolies and inherited hierarchies. His complaint is that this bold tradition became associated instead with a cautious, managerial establishment.

His challenge is worth hearing. We are good at being reasonable, evidence-led and practical. But competence is not a destination. Liberalism should feel radical.

David Howarth’s Being Liberal explores the Liberal disposition: open-minded, suspicious of abuses of power, uncomfortable with hierarchy, treating people as individuals rather than categories, and accepting that reasonable people can disagree.

It captures something policy programmes miss. Liberalism isn’t only about what government does. It is about how we treat other people – and how we behave when given power ourselves.

Daron Acemoglu starts with people’s economic lives. Liberal democracy prospered when political freedom went alongside rising living standards, decent jobs, public services and increasing political voice. That bargain has broken down as wealth and power have concentrated.

His answer is “working-class Liberalism”: good jobs, stronger communities, functioning public services and meaningful power for ordinary people.

As it turns out, I had been wrestling with many of the same questions over the summer recess. I have been writing an essay about Liberalism for the 21st century, shortly to be published by Compass. 

My starting point was power.

As Wooldridge points out, Liberals have always been suspicious of too much power in too few hands. The gross imbalance of power vs powerlessness in this country is as bad as it’s ever been, and the far right is finding rich pickings amongst the powerless. 

Look at Britain and you see everywhere the consequences of lack of power where it is needed. Decisions move upwards and away from the people affected by them. Wealth drains out of communities. Councils are told what to deliver without the money or freedom to do it. People are “consulted” after important decisions have effectively been made.

The Liberal answer should be clear: disperse power.

Put more of it into the hands of people and communities. If a community wants to save its pub, generate its own energy, restore its river, build the homes local families need or decide how public money is spent, government should help it happen, not make people fight through a maze of permissions.

Give councils freedom to solve local problems. Give workers more say in their workplaces. Take on monopolies that leave customers with no real choice. And make sure poorer communities get the money and support to exercise power too.

That doesn’t mean a weak state. National government must guarantee decent healthcare, education and security wherever you live, and stand up to corporate power that no community could confront alone.

Protect people nationally. Trust them locally.

And Liberals should fight for the freedom of those who come after us. People flourish in communities; communities flourish in places; and all depend on a healthy natural world. A generation that exhausts soils, destabilises the climate and destroys nature is exercising enormous power over people who have no vote in the matter.

This crop of books reminds us that almost every great political struggle of our age comes back to the same question: who has power, and who doesn’t?

Wooldridge asks us to rediscover Liberalism’s radicalism. Howarth its humanity. Acemoglu its commitment to putting power back into ordinary people’s hands.

I agree with all three. But I would go further.

The populist’s offer is seductive: give me power and I will protect you.

The Liberal offer is fundamentally different: people with more power over their lives, their work and the places they call home. The power to challenge an institution that isn’t listening, protect a place they love, or join with their neighbours and change things for the better.

Our promise should be:

We don’t want power so we can run your life. We want power in order to give it back to you. 

That is not the mushy middle. It is a direct challenge to a country in which too much power has been held by too few people for too long.

The populists want people to look upwards for a saviour. Liberals should ask them to look around – at each other, their communities, and what they could achieve with the power to act.

Now that is a Liberalism worth getting excited about.

* Roz Savage is the Liberal Democrat MP for South Cotswolds. She spoke in Westminster Hall on first-past-the-post on 24 June 2026, and is working on a paper for Compass with a working title of "Power Back to the People: The Future of Liberalism in the Twenty-First Century (2026)".