Browsing: Liberalism

Robert Woodthorpe Browne MBE (1943-2022)

There are those whose death leaves friends and family deeply sad – an unfilled chair at the table, a gap in the conversation, and a valued opinion missing from the discussion. Robert’s death does all of these things, but in addition it marks for me the end of a very particular era in the British Liberal contribution to the international Liberal family. The period was mainly marked by the remarkable contributions of two Scots and three Englishmen.

In 2020, societies which were already challenged by the existential threats of climate change and potential nuclear conflict, fragmented by a serious breakdown in trust resulting from widespread corruption, and riven with anxiety about the speed of technological change, are now being fractured by the political and economic consequences of the COVID19 pandemic.