Stephen Tall

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It’s Saturday morning, so here are eight thought-provoking articles to stimulate your thinking juices…

5 Years On: The Election That Never Was - Damian McBride, Gordon Brown’s former spinner-in-chief whose must-read blog is essentially a memoir-by-instalments, recalls the week in 2007 that turned the new Prime Minister from hero to zero.

Jimmy Savile: The birth of a paedophile hoax on “Have I Got News For You” - John Fleming recounts the curious tale of how some invented, ‘censored’ scenes achieved such wide currency on the internet, eerily anticipating the past week’s revelations.

A speech that, thankfully, will not be made - Hopi Sen, the most thoughtful Labour blogger around, channels what David Cameron’s speech-writers ought to be crafting for him into an astonishingly effective speech.

Free schools: the research lab of state education? - Toby Young may be a right-wing agitprop pundit on many issues, but in founding the West London Free School he’s had to get serious, and I challenge anyone not to be impressed by his passion for the life-changing potential of education.

Hostage to Catalonia - G.T. of The Economist shows it’s not just Scotland which is beginning to think through the implications of separation, so too is Catalonia — including what it might mean for its mighty, all-conquering Barcelona football team.

Debunking the Myths Around School Choice - educational researcher Lee Elliot Major charts his personal journey of shopping around for the best school for his child before concluding it matters a whole lot less than you might think.

David Cameron’s inflexible, Thatcherite party is being exploited by Ed Miliband - Conservative historian Tim Bale reckons the death of the progressive, “one-nation”, Tories who dominated the party from the 1950-70s has created a sweet spot for Labour to occupy.

CentreForum’s ‘Liberal Heroes of the Week’ #16 - find out why I anointed Labour’s Stephen Twigg and former Tory party deputy chairman Lord Ashcroft my liberal heroes this week.

* Stephen Tall is Co-Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice, a Research Associate for the liberal think-tank CentreForum, and also writes at his own site, The Collected Stephen Tall.

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