David Marquand and Progressive Politics

Throughout his career, David Marquand grappled with the shape of modern British history, arranging it into different traditions, lineages and timelines. The Progressive Dilemma was the culmination of one such strand of work, centred around his interest in the relationship between social democracy and social liberalism. This informed both Marquand's historical work and his practical politics—most obviously in the SDP-Liberal Alliance. But though this resurrection of the ‘progressive tradition’ now feels intuitive, I want to suggest that this was by no means inevitable. Indeed, to many Liberals, the idea of resurrecting a historic partnership with social democrats seemed more of a threat than an opportunity.