If the left wants to rediscover their liberal roots, we should welcome them back!

Something potentially quite significant saw the light of day today. The launch of the "Liberal Conspiracy" website/blog seeks to provide a forum (network hub as they call it) for those in the "broad left" to coalesce and celebrate and promote their liberal similarities rather than their leftist sectarianism.

It is the sort of thing that I would have thought a few years ago would have fitted my political outlook like a glove. I worry slightly though, from their launch document, that they might well be more "American liberal" than "British liberal", so will watch with interest for now to see how it pans out.

As both my readers will know, I am absolutely and unshakably convinced that the ideas of what could then have been called the "liberal left" in the late nineteenth century were the solutions that were never implemented that would have created a more equitable world in which our current "state of welfare" would not have been needed. And that these solutions have been merely delayed thanks to the fragmenting of the "left" into liberal and socialist and the hijacking of British politics throughout at least the latter two thirds of the twentieth century by a ding dong battle between the protectionists of business interests and the protectionists of labour interests.

So, I'd like to be part of this conspiracy, if they will have me, and if I see that what they mean by liberalism can accommodate such old-fashioned radical liberalism as mine...