Tag Archives: paul marshall

Caron Lindsay

David Laws and Paul Marshall boost Michael Gove’s leadership bid

By Caron Lindsay | Wed 6th July 2016 - 9:52 pm

I’m finally getting round to reading David Laws’ Coalition. I’m getting a very strong impression from Laws’ account of his time as Schools Minister that he found Michael Gove, and in particular his adviser Dominic Cummings, to be pretty exasperating. It was slightly surprising, therefore, to see Laws write a column for the Times (£) basically suggesting that Tory  MPs should keep in Gove in the leadership race.

He goes out of his way to back up Gove’s account of last week’s Boris-related shenanigans, when most of us think that he couldn’t just have decided on the spur of the …

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Stephen Tall

10 Years on from The Orange Book: What should authentic liberalism look like?

By Stephen Tall | Sun 19th October 2014 - 8:55 am

Orange_Book“10 Years on from The Orange Book: what should authentic liberalism look like?” That was the title of a Lib Dem conference fringe meeting in Glasgow, organised by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), at which I was speaking alongside MPs Tim Farron and Jeremy Browne, Orange Book co-editor Paul Marshall, the IEA’s Ryan Bourne and ComRes pollster Tom Mludzinski. Here’s what I said…

I often describe myself as an Orange Booker. Like most labels it’s a short-hand. To me it simply means I’m a Lib Dem at ease with the role of a competitive market and who believes also in social justice. To many others in our party, though, Orange Booker is a term of abuse – Orange Bookers are thrusting, smart-suited, neoliberal Thatcherities, never happier than when mixing with red-blooded free-marketeers like the IEA.

What I want to do briefly is make a pitch for something that’s become quite unpopular among the party ranks: I’m going to make a pitch that the Lib Dems should be a party that’s unabashedly of the liberal centre.

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NewsHound

“The Guardian view on the Lib Dem Orange Book”

By NewsHound | Sat 28th June 2014 - 4:30 pm

The GuardianAs we noted earlier this week, the tenth anniversary of the publication of The Orange Book was marked by a conference hosted by CentreForum on Tuesday. Today The Guardian publishes an editorial reflecting on the book’s impact a decade on. Here’s an excerpt:

The book certainly signalled that the Lib Dems were not – or not only – a party of protest for those who resented tuition fees or the Iraq war. The market-minded emphasis of David Laws, who proposed a social insurance model for the NHS in his essay,

…

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The Voice

LDVideo: David Laws on the success of The Orange Book, 10 years on

By The Voice | Thu 26th June 2014 - 5:55 pm

On Tuesday, Centre Forum, the liberal think tank, held a one-day conference in London to mark the tenth anniversary of the publication of The Orange Book (we have already run pieces on the event by Stephen here, by Andrew Chamberlain here and by Rebecca Hanson here).

David Laws, one of the co-editors of The Orange Book (along with Paul Marshall), delivered the key-note speech on the day, a video of which has now been put online by Centre Forum. You can view it below, or here on YouTube.

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Posted in YouTube | Also tagged , , , , , and | 29 Comments
Andrew Chamberlain

Opinion: “Orange Bookers” are the boldest thinkers in the party. They need also to be the most progressive

By Andrew Chamberlain | Wed 25th June 2014 - 11:44 am

David Laws speaking at Lib Dem Spring conference, Liverpool 2008“No return to soggy socialism” was the message that David Laws chose to end his keynote address to Centre Forum’s Orange Book Ten Years On conference yesterday.

It’s a message that is bound to antagonise people in the party who define themselves in opposition to the Orange Book and its endorsement of liberal economics. However much Laws and his co-editor Paul Marshall emphasised that their support for economic liberalism was predicated on the belief that it would promote progressive ends there will still …

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Stephen Tall

The Orange Book, 10 years on: 5 thoughts on its legacy

By Stephen Tall | Tue 24th June 2014 - 9:50 pm

Orange_BookToday saw what its co-editor Paul Marshall called the belated launch party for The Orange Book – such was the controversy surrounding its publication 10 years ago that the original event was cancelled. I was only able to attend one of the sessions (on public service reform) so here are five more general observations on its legacy…

1) The Orange Book remains much misunderstood, sometimes deliberately by those who enjoy internal warring, more often by those who’ve not read it (whisper it, some sections are pretty turgid) but know its reputation and assume it’s a right-wing, Thatcherite manual for destroying this country’s social contract. As Paul Marshall re-affirmed today, the aim of The Orange Book was to show how socially liberal aims could best be achieved through economically liberal means, recognising that in the real world both markets and governments fail. Two of its leading contributors are currently the most popular Lib Dem ministers in government: Vince Cable and Steve Webb. That said, it was (for both Marshall and David Laws at any rate) also a very deliberate statement of intent in 2004 that the Lib Dems needed to do more than simply out-Labour Labour by proposing new money and extra staff in every area of public service and argue that was liberalism (which is largely what the party’s 2005 manifesto did).

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Stephen Tall

The two Orange Bookers who’ve won over the Lib Dem membership

By Stephen Tall | Thu 22nd May 2014 - 10:00 am

Orange_BookIt’s 10 years since The Orange Book was published. Edited by David Laws and Paul Marshall it was widely regarded as an attempt by economic liberals within the Lib Dems to wrest back control of the party from social liberals.

Both Laws and Marshall would argue their attempt at ‘reclaiming liberalism’ (the book’s sub-title) was more about re-balancing liberalism as practised by the Lib Dems — that the party had grown intellectually lazy, happiest with simply saying ‘tax more, spend more’ as the answer to every public policy problem without thinking …

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Stephen Tall

LibLink: Paul Marshall – England should run football the German way

By Stephen Tall | Sat 17th August 2013 - 9:55 am

A football groundToday is the first day of competitive action in the Premiership. To mark the occasion, The Times has published an article by Paul Marshall, ‘England should run football the German way’.

Paul is well-known in Lib Dem circles as chair of the liberal CentreForum think-tank and co-editor of The Orange Book. He’s also a passionate Manchester United supporter and was one of the so-called ‘Red Knights’ who fought for a supporter-based buy-out of the club. And his article sets out what English football needs to learn …

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Mark Pack

Was there a Clegg coup? Review of The Clegg Coup – Britain’s First Coalition Government Since Lloyd George by Jasper Gerard

By Mark Pack | Wed 23rd November 2011 - 9:54 am

Many book titles reveal little about what their book contains, either providing but a banal name for its contents or a clever, clever name which obscures rather than reveals. However, The Clegg Coup – Britain’s First Coalition Government Since Lloyd George by Jasper Gerard has a title which is revealing in two aspects. First, the way general accuracy in the book is marred by detailed slips – for whilst the general point of the title is true, with the May 2010 coalition being the UK’s first peacetime coalition in Westminster since before 1939, the title does not use the …

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The Voice

The Independent View: Sorry ActionAid – it’s time to put people in charge of their own development

By The Voice | Tue 20th September 2011 - 11:27 am

This is a response article to ‘The Independent View: Centre Forum is wrong about aid – UK aid makes a difference’ by Centre Forum’s Pauline Dixon and Paul Marshall

Failure to allocate international aid more effectively on a rising budget will lead to a rapid decline in public support for it. This is what the CentreForum paper ‘International aid and educating the poorest’ seeks to address, and this is why ActionAid’s concerns about our paper, set out last week on Lib Dem Voice, are misplaced.

We are not opposed to international aid (ActionAid comes close to implying we are). Nor do we oppose …

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Posted in Op-eds and The Independent View | Also tagged , and | 2 Comments
Lucia Fry

The Independent View: Centre Forum is wrong about aid – UK aid makes a difference

By Lucia Fry | Wed 14th September 2011 - 2:56 pm

At a time of economic difficulties, it is welcome that the Coalition Government is retaining its commitment to the UK overseas aid budget. Indeed, UK aid is demonstrating great value for money, and making a real difference in the lives of the poorest. Which is why CentreForum’s recent paper by Pauline Dixon and Paul Marshall ‘International aid and educating the poorest’ is so puzzling. The report paints an alarming – but highly partial – picture of aid doing little to help reduce poverty, promote growth or achieve progress in education, and everything to line the pockets of corrupt elites. …

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Posted in The Independent View | Also tagged , , and | 3 Comments
Stephen Tall

The Lib Dem donor who’s “one of the most powerful men in the City”

By Stephen Tall | Mon 28th December 2009 - 2:40 pm

The Times today profiles Paul Marshall, founder of top hedge fund manager Marshall Wace, and a former SDP/Liberal Alliance candidate who has donated in excess of £162,000 to the Liberal Democrats as well re-founding the liberal think-tank Centre Forum. Here’s an excerpt:

Mr Marshall, who stepped back from his investment role in 2004, decided to take on a more active position at the hedge fund last year as the markets started sliding and the group’s profits were reportedly down 75 per cent. However, the hedge fund made an £88.8 million profit in the 18 months up to February

…

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Stephen Tall

Top Lib Dem donor short-selling bank shares

By Stephen Tall | Wed 28th January 2009 - 9:43 am

Late last week, there was a small flurry of media interest in hedge fund Lansdowne Partners:

A hedge fund run by two Tory donors made a £12million killing in days by exploiting the collapse of Barclays shares, it was revealed yesterday. Financiers Paul Ruddock and David Craigen have donated more than £300,000 to the party, most of it since David Cameron became leader. Within hours of the ban on the controversial practice of short-selling being lifted last Friday, their company Lansdowne Partners sold shares in Barclays worth £28.4million. They were bought back on Wednesday, by which time the bank’s value

…

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